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Originally Posted by Capsicum
Good points. I wonder what share of cities are following the "everywhere or near-everywhere in the metro area is going down socioeconomically" trend vs. the "some get rich, some get poor within the same city with gentrifying areas as the city/metro itself gets more expensive". For various reasons, I've actually spent less time living in the really sprawling cities (though I have visited many for sure, just not lived there), and had often to live in cheaper places in expensive metro areas. In my mind, NYC, Toronto, Vancouver and the Bay Area's trend of "some places get real rich, others get poorer, while the metro area still is expensive" colors my view of cities, which is probably unrepresentative.
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Most cities have at least a little gentrification in the core. The few that don't are probably in such a desperate situation that the core neighbourhoods were already about as low as they could get in the 80s-90s, and probably experienced a decline in the MSA income that made the core neighbourhoods seem like they experienced a small relative improvement. I'm thinking of cities like Jackson, MS or Youngstown, OH.
Cities like Milwaukee, Kansas City, Columbus, Nashville, Orlando, Raleigh, San Antonio, etc are still going to have a few gentrifying and stabilizing neighbourhoods in the core, even if parts of the inner city are still declining. However, those kinds of cities will probably have very few suburbs that are getting wealthier, mostly just wealthy suburbs that are growing rapidly but also becoming more socio-economically diverse in the process.
Even Toronto has few suburbs that are getting wealthier, unless you count areas like Central Etobicoke or Bedford Park or something, but to me, those are essentially just extensions of the core. Aside from that, I think only South Oakville and Thornhill and maybe a couple small pockets of Southern Mississauga have seen an increase in relative wealth, thanks to having very large lots that can't be subdivided, in a metro area where those are a scarce resource. Basically everywhere else saw a decline in relative wealth.
Los Angeles is interesting though. It's a large city, that has basically run out of land for outward growth. But it's downtown isn't as dominant as a job center, there's also plenty of well paying jobs in West LA, Santa Monica, Hollywood, Glendale, Pasadena, Burbank, even Irvine. As a result, pretty much all of LA County is stable income wise (Lancaster-Palmdale is the main exception).