Expansion of Scope, Further Work
Without having tabulated the results myself, the documents I have found answer my question. Austin Restricted describes, in terms of the Taeuber Index of Dissimilarity, that Austin is comparable to other American cities with sub-populations relegated to small, defined ghettos.Â
My initial question was answered. Austin, and within it, East Austin, qualify as the standard American Ghetto in reference to archetypical examples including Oakland, Baltimore, and Norfolk. However, Rise and Decline described other means of definition for these urban ghettos, specifically a qualitative analysis in the comparison of their three primary growth periods as defined by Rise and Decline.
• 1890-1940: Starting, there is a single ghetto in Norfolk, VA. Ghettos are born as freedmen (organically and inorganically) form communities, enclaves, within their respective cities.
• 1940-1970: There are now at least fifty-five recognized ghettos. They expand, but are already defined. From this point, they maintain a standard size and grow considerably in neither size more density.
• 1970-1997: Ghettos become less ethnically defined as migration pushes outwards.
• 1990-1997: Racism is decentralized as “whites pay more than blacks to live in predominately white areas;” in contract to the earlier century’s overt Jim Crow laws.Â
Rise and Decline was published in 1997, and the original authors have offered no follow-up analysis. The time between 1997 and 2015 has, I believe, seen a shift from ghettos pushing outwards, to an ethnic and socioeconomic gentrification. The former ghettos with which I am familiar—East Austin, inner-city Baltimore, and Oakland—have all experienced seeming density increases with each region’s respective startup and tech boom. Furthermore, this growth is entirely extrinsic; existing residents do not move for work, but the increase in job availability causes foreigners to move to an area, seek inexpensive housing, and rapidly colonize former ghettos. In contrast to the “for whites only” advertisements that brought troves to Hyde Park, this new immigration is re-claiming formerly segregated areas for a new working class. This then increases the cost of housing, and relocates the area’s existing tenants.Â
1997, Rise and Decline’s year of publication, was the start of the dot-com boom (1997-2000). The authors neither discussed nor predicted the gentrification following the cities’ large population influxes. I now want to study maps of the former ghettos, and track the movement of their former populations while comparing their gross income over time, and their destination’s relative value of housing (cost of living compared with income).
My new research question is:Â Are American ghettos in a common and new period of evolution centering around twenty-first century economic peaks, and how is this period defined?
With multiple other researchers, this website will later function as a living document where we log indices of dissimilarity across multiple years by tabulating every available census per city, probably focusing on Austin, Dallas, Oakland, Baltimore, Norfolk, and D.C. Dallas provides contrast with other Texas cities, Oakland is the first former ghetto to enter gentrification, Baltimore is a non-Texas ghetto, and Norfolk and D.C. are the first and one of the earliest ghettos. We will explore any major differences between this data, and if the cities remain comparable, we would continue with indices of dissimilarity following 1997.Â
At this point, a transition to Massey and Denton’s dimensions of residential segregation will be necessary. Taeuber and Taeuber’s measure is appropriate for earlier work in which density is a lesser factor; however, I believe that from my own experiences in East Austin, ethnic-population density will be a deciding factor in the identification of ghettos undergoing gentrification, and identifying the areas that have become, or remain, ethnically-defined ghettos. Massey And Denton’s measures identify “evenness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering“ of populations, and thus is a far richer measure than Taeuber and Taeuber’s unilateral measure.
If able to find common scores across these five axes, we will have successfully identified a new growth period. Firstly, we would analyze other ghettos across the country and search for any that have experienced and left the gentrification period. What follows the gentrification period, and is it commonly maintained, or do the ghettos differentiate following gentrification? Is there a way to predict the nature of growth following gentrification?Â
More specifically, in regard to recent events in Ferguson and across the country, what power dynamics lead to disparity in enforcement, legal, and political representation? Of those measures, what leads to violent interaction between enforcement and residents?
I do not seek to create a “what-if” approach, but rather to identify at-risk regions as well as better understanding the factors that lead to violent outcomes. Few seem to understand urban and community planning well enough to disallow these events on a national scale, let alone a local scale.Â
