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Originally Posted by Steely Dan
^ cool, thanks.
pittsburgh's mount oliver looks like it might be the closest of those to a hamtramck/highland park type of situation, though it is absolutely tiny at only 1/3 of a square mile. talk about a weird little tiny leftover.
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It's not as weird as it looks. Pittsburgh's last big annexation push was in the 1920s and early 1930s, when it scooped up a lot of formerly independent municipalities (typically termed "boroughs" in PA) to the south of the city. Mt. Oliver was the only one that held out, which made it into an enclave.
Historically, it was a pretty solidly middle-class area, which is why it could buck annexation. However, it went downscale and working-class white over time. Like a lot of the adjoining areas of Pittsburgh, things got worse when nearby housing projects were closed/downsized in the 1990s, and it has had a bad opiate issue (based in the white community, not the black newcomers) over the last two decades). It's now about evenly split between white and black, with a large (10%+) Latino community by Pittsburgh standards.
Mt. Oliver has a nice, mostly intact business district, so I'm hopeful it turns around instead of becoming a full-on ghetto. It's only a short distance away from
much more revitalized Allentown.