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Old Posted Oct 10, 2019, 8:50 PM
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Capsicum Capsicum is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by memph View Post
The main exception to the pattern of "everywhere is declining" these days is in core cities that have healthy downtowns and intact nearby neighbourhoods to gentrify. I suppose the reason why the Woodward Ave suburbs of Detroit were able to get more desirable is partly because they have many of the qualities people find desirable about downtown/inner city living like walkability, proximity to jobs, historic homes and mature trees, and Detroit is bombed out enough that it's not able to compete against the Woodward Ave suburbs as well as healthier urban cores are able to compete against their own streetcar suburbs.

The other exception can occur when there are significant geographic or government limits to continued outward growth. In that case, more new housing gets built in the inner core, and lower income areas don't get abandoned because there's a tighter housing market. Also as the city gets denser, homes on large lots get more and more valuable, and a lot of those can be in suburbs relatively far from downtown, so for example with Toronto, that's parts of Oakville, Thornhill and Southern Mississauga are getting wealthier.

However, for your typical sprawling city, like Nashville, Indianapolis, Detroit, Houston, Atlanta, Kansas City, Phoenix or Orlando, the vast majority of suburbs will be going down on the socioeconomic ladder and only a few inner city neighbourhoods will be going up.
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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