Trading Places

Missing from this excellent piece is a discussion of education options in the cities. I live right near 14th and U St. in DC and many upper middle class families like mine are raising kids and the one thing that could make us move out to the 'burbs is schools.

Some, like us, have started our own charter schools. Demographic shifts don't happen immediately. You need pioneers, people who are willing to accept racial and income diversity, people who see trash, rats, and crime and imagine it improving over 5, 10 years, people who will start their own schools if they don't already exist. Most "gentrification" started with gay singles and couples, followed by young couples with no kids or just starting families. The neighborhood pioneers are racially diverse, often racially mixed, but well off. It will be a very long while before wealthy suburbanites "flee" to the city.

Outstanding piece of work! I'm a resident of Pittsburgh, a Rust Belt City going through a nearly identical process as those you mention in Chicago and Charolette, though in a slower form. Old neighborhoods in the city that used to be close to the steel mills have become close to the new educational, technological, and entertainment-oriented development that have charicterized the city during my lifetime (I'm 18 now). Even in downtown Pittsburgh, though the retail industry still suffers, there have been signs of upscale living and residential development. The hole in the middle of the doughnut of urban America is starting to fill.

As an artist who grew up in manhattan in the 50's and still manages to live there I am astonished as to how wrong headed and self congratulatory this article is.
What made New York as culturally rich as it was, was that it was possible to live in manhattan if you were poor.
It was also possible to partake fully in the culture of NY because the cost was not prohibitive.
It is what made NY a magnet for artists of all kinds.
This is no longer the case. There are no longer cheap spaces for artists and musicians. A kind of economic pacification has taken place, and the result is the economically well off stare at each other in upscale restaurants and the city is on the way to becoming a cultural vacant lot.

Great article. If anything, I would give transportation a more central place in this puzzle. Recently I was at a GIS workshop in Somerville MA (a suburb of Boston, but also a city in its own right) and someone had overlaid a map of walking routes to transit with property value assessments. There's a protected walkway that cuts through town leading to the downtown Davis Square Red Line station, and it was startling to see that parcels facing directly onto the walkway are worth hundreds of thousands more than parcels just a few yards away without this convenience. You can see the opposite end of this phenomenon out in Central California (my original home) where 3000 sq ft tract homes have been sprouting like weeds. But as the foreclosure blight washes over this cash crop and prices rapidly drop through the floor, wonder who's going to end up living out there? Whether you call it 'smart development' or 'urban sprawl', land use planning often ends up serving very different populations than intended.

Pontormo has a point about New York. One of the reasons Chicago has gone through the roof culturally in the last 25 years is that it's still possible to be an artist there. Rents are a fraction of what they are in NY. Mind you, the people I know in Chicago are beginning to feel the squeeze, but it's nothing like what's happened in New York. The result: a substantial proportion of the best-received shows in New York this year originated in Chicago.

I think that the real issue is that rich and poor people very rarely live together; who'se in the suburbs and who'se in the center really doesn't matter much. The issue of service sector suburban jobs being out of reach for poor people isn't solved by this transition, because the service sector jobs follow the rich. Likewise, the desire for grit, culture and excitement isn't much satisfied by a shift into the city center that pushes out all of the poor people. Segregation by income is going to happen whenever rich people prefer living with other rich people or are indifferent, since people tend to share economic considerations of rent and travel time with others of the same income level. Thus the only real way that American cities are going to fundamentally change is if the American middle class takes a liking to porrer people and creates heterogenous suburbs and centers.

I am a young urban elite. Almost. I am interning in Chicago for the summer and am still a student.
Anyway, I chose Logan Square for the summer because I knew nothing about Chicago and took the cheapest one. I am glad I did. The dynamics in this article are at least some what apparent. In Wicker Park the culture is hipster, and Lincoln Park is the same thing.
Basically, it is the kids who grew up in the burbs. Mostly white.
I am white, and I met a guy here who I am now dating, and sometimes I feel like we just stare at each other in upscale restaraunts.
Pontormo is insightful. But I think it is a good thing for America. The artists can live freely in the burbs, trapped in a habitat so much of their work used to be based off of. The can then begin to disect and portray city life as cookie cutter, white, blah blah.

As a Canadian, I'm pleased to see the lengthy comment on Vancouver. However, I'm puzzled that you would make reference to Jane Jacobs, and not mention her long-time home,Toronto. This city is a perfect example of your "inversion". The condo market has been berserk in the last decade, as young software engineers, medical researchers, and other skilled people enjoy living and working in the hothouse environment of downtown Toronto.

Great article and one that I would like to see further expanded on with perhaps a few more follow ups. It would also be great if more visuals were included to help folks picture what form this transformation is taking place and how various cities are responding to this re-urbanization of their cities. On my last return to my hometown Denver, I keep finding new infill projects that vary in scale and scope throughout the downtown area, LODO, the Highlands and Five Points neighborhoods. I'm excited to see that many of the neglected first-ring suburbs and city neighborhoods are experiencing not only a renaissance but an influx of families that are committed to investing in the communities and neighborhood schools.
I also think that municipalities have to have a regional plan that maps out where concentrated growth and redevelopment occurs in the second-ring suburbs that have experienced not only a decline in quality of life due to commute times but also the dearth of services beyond the strip Mall. The Denver metro region has managed to get all the municipalities to start rezoning areas around the expanding light rail stations to outer suburbs like Littleton, Arvada and Westminster which will lead to these suburbs into rethinking how they reinvest and develop denser commercial and business centers, mixed-use development and mixed-density housing beyond the single-use zoning and planning that has dominated planning and zoning boards for decades.

I think the "typical American suburb" will become an anachronism in the next few decades as transit oriented development and mixed-use development shapes and informs these once bedroom communities into thriving small urban centers.

Well, artists CAN still live in NYC, just now it is above 96th st, or over in Brooklyn. To whine about such things is to ignore the history of artistic conclaves in this city over time. Rent Control is one factor, and arguments can be made both ways. There is little cheap housing here, most of it seems to be in the hands of people like Charlie Rangel and Gov Patterson. The rent system itself is unfair to ALL new arrivals. if you have been here since the 50's be thankful. New business kids used to be able to get walk-up studios on the UES, now they are in Hoboken.

I grew up in the suburbs of Milwaukee. By chance I purchased a house on the inner north west side of town in 1979 and I'm still there. I'd love to move downtown where all the action is but I have 2 problems:

(1) it costs a lot and I want to retire in a few years.

(2) it's almost impossible to find a place with a yard large enough for 3 medium sized dogs.

So as I approach retirement, I'm watching for rural communities that are facing a financial crisis of the loss of a dominant employer. So military base closings and mill closings in the boondocks is where I want to go; someplace cheap with lots of space.

"The era of the mom-and-pop grocer, the shoemaker, and the candy store has ended for good. We live in a big-box, big-chain century."

Perhaps, however Mr. Ehrenhalt my experience living in Chicago, also a Chicago native, is that in many areas of the city there has been a reemergence of merchant owned shops versus the shuttering of the same I recall from my youth in the late 70's throught the 80's. Most people my fiance and I know rarely if ever shop and big-box stores. We do most of our shopping at nearby stores, or for large items often online. Our time is too valuable to waste driving to the nearest Target or Best-Buy.

What the article doesn't discuss is why Vancouver is different from US cities. The real reason people want to live in Vancouver is because it's very libertine realative to a US city. The age of consent is 14, bars are open till morning, sushi on a rotating barge of boats(kaiten style), hardbodied Japanese, HK, and Korean girls, nighclubs, non prosecution pot laws, cheap electricity....simply formula. Concentrate all that stuff at over 13,000 people per m2 and even St. Louis could turn around.

When I lived in the NY's East Village as a struggling musician and filmmaker, those of us without money but with arty, "edgy" fashion forward hipster cache sneered at the weekend "bridge and tunnel" crowds coming in from Jersey and outer boroughs. I suppose the kids in Hoboken and the Bronx still sneer at the bridge and tunnel crowd, only now, they're go out from Manhattan!

Agreed, aba. With all this in-depth discussion of the reemergence of downtown as a demographic shift, why ignore the same shift in consumer power? The young, especially middle-class and above, do not go out to their nearest Wal-Mart anymore. In fact, I would venture to say one of the main reasons downtown is such a particularly exciting option is the thrill, and the gas-saving possibilities, of being able to walk down the street and pick up the things you need at a place owned by people, just like me, who are struggling to make it here, too.

Another big reason for the success of Vancouver's downtown: a mandate that a certain percentage of downtown condos have more than two bedrooms, which encourages families with children--and extended families with single parents as well.

It's really difficult to find 3 bedrooms or more in any of the new developments, be they in LA or Charlotte or even urbane Portland.

This is an intersting article. One major problem that makes it difficult for young couples to remain in the downtown area is the lack of condos for families. If you have 2 or 3 kids, it is tough to find an affordable 3 or 4 bedroom unit. This process will only continue if developers wake up and realize that there is a demand for family housing in downtown areas. At the same time, young couples will need to push for increased housing options.

I very much appreciated this article, but I am surprised it glossed over a common complaint of many urban dwellers: families are pushing out nightlife. Where the stroller goes, the nightclub flees. In Manhattan, couples with children are moving into nightlife districts, areas known for exciting rock clubs and dance venues. The new residents (perhaps unaware that they were moving into apartments above decades-old dance clubs) complain about the noise, the clubs get shut down, and the appeal of the area disappears. The same goes for every aspect of street life that thrives on a childless culture: street vendors, sex shops, art galleries, etc. If Manhattan wants to remain a cultural mecca, it would do well to limit the power of the stroller drivers and their attempts to turn everything they touch into a "child safe" environment.

it seems a longer term trend is the move to smaller cities all over the country. smaller cities generally have a superior quality of life yet many are quite vibrant. in the knowledge economy, many people can work from anywhere and they are choosing smaller cities with quality-of-life amenities in Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas and everywhere else. there is no longer any need for urban life to be concentrated in a few dozen large cities.

I beg to differ on the central tenets of this article. Particularly on the assumption that the rich 'gentry' are the culturally active elites. These often predatory bookkeepers and businessmen certainly are not the cultural elites. Neither in America nor in Europe.
I live in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Except for the historic canals area, most 19th century neighbourhoods of the city have been inhabited by workers and the well-educated non-affluent elites 'doing their thing'. The demise of the harbour has left many empty warehouses and factories. These became occupied by poor artists from all over the planet. These people have to courage and imagination to listen to modern classical music rather than Mozart or Beethoven. The harbour area now has one of the largest centres for modern music in Europe. It is true that it attracts rich kids and young adults from the suburbs on the run for consumerism and existential meaninglessness that is so prevalent in much of modern American life. Equating affluence and civilization is clearly wrong.

JDK accurately describes the typical effect of today's protective parents upon cosmopolitan city environments. It's interesting to note that, for Jane Jacobs, one of the central concerns of her analysis of life in the Village was to explain, and save, the compatability of child-rearing with urban life. For example, she offers a brilliant analysis of the benefits of wide sidewalks. It would be interesting to consider whether the combination of kids and cosmopolites was already under strain in her day, or whether it was, and remains, possible to strike a sustainable balance between the two.

If wealth migrates toward the center city and the poor and recent immigrants settle in the burbs how can u be sure that the service jobs will stay in the burbs? Seems like the affluent city dwellers will prefer to enjoy their service amenities nearby (department stores, even big box stores)so the less well off will still have to face the same challenge of getting to distant service jobs, but just in reverse since those new jobs will be in the city. So we're facing the same problem of transportation equity and underdeveloped public transport..

Before people jump to conclusions like families and the childless are in conflict in urban space, I think we'd do well to remember that we in the US currently have no really mature urban culture. We've forgotten what it is over the past century. It seems short sighted to conclude that loud musical venues where drunken singles swap herpes virus is the main litmus test for having a successful urban culture. Clearly that's all that was left in OUR urban cultures of the past 60 years, but that doesn't mean that's the best we can do. This article points to the beginnings of new urban culture; there's lots more to do. The high prices in Manhattan and elsewhere could be seen simply as indications that this nation doesn't yet have urban housing for a large population. If that is remedied in coming decades, this urbanization could easily continue and return vibrancy across the spectrum to US cities. We've been so badly waylaid for decades by the commercial interests (the big 3 car makers and other large corporations concerned with one model - consumption that optimizes their size and profit), we still have no idea in this country how we really want to live, it seems to me. I'm one of those raised in the burbs in the 70s and 80s who now can't stand them. Seems like there is something in this new urbanism to me.

Alan,

I was with you until the very end, and your panglossian take on the future of suburbia. You assume that suburbs will gradually adjust to this deluge of new Americans and the urban poor. This ignores the worldview of many who moved to the suburbs one and two generations ago - they intended to create a safe space for themselves and their families. The very point was to get away from the poor and make them someone else's problem. As such, these same people and their communities are viewing this "new suburbanism" and the concomitant decline in their perceived quality of life with dismay. Further, economically, these communities are far less well equipped to deal with this demographic change than the cities were with middle class migration in the 1960's and 70's. Most suburban areas are a patchwork of villages, towns and counties that raise money largely from their property tax base. An influx of the poor will burden limited local services and lower the property tax base. Given all this, I would expect many of the affluent will retreat to city centers, wealthy suburban or exurban enclaves, leaving other areas to go into decline.

this article is missing a hard look at a solution to those poor people who are moving to the ghetturbs. As the separation between the classes becomes more extreme the burgeoning if not supple police state will, as history shows, defend the rich and their property from the lives of poor people. The poor are not migrating, they are vacating, forced out by predatory bankers and landlords,food and transportation costs, job acquisition and retention, a livable wage, health insurance and so many other economic challenges. When the rich get richer and the poor get poorer on the scale the Bush/Cheney clowns have taken it we, Americans, are fast entering third world territory. With the dollar dropping and inflation getting worse those big luxury lofts with their big dumb LUXURY LOFT banners hanging from them are akin to H2Dummers, unsustainable BLOATED examples of an outdated era of excess. Heating an 8000 square foot glass box with 12 foot ceilings for a young couple is absurd. A whole neighborhood of that type of lifestyle is almost czarist in its stark conflict with the street below. The long term solution for the poor to rise up to a decent standard of living is education, jobs, livable wage, equitable taxation, tenants rights, civil rights an end to the prison industrial complex and a balancing of the courts and laws currently stacked against them. if the playing field were leveled the urban migrations would be less stark and the wealthy would have to wait their turn just like everybody else.

This is an excellent piece--in content and in the way it was relayed. While I think a discussion on transportation to-and-from the city requires its own investigation and subsequent feature in TNR, I have to wonder about cities built more like Los Angeles, where there is not "heart", per se. You bring up Detroit in one section, and I think you are onto something: being the dilapidated sprawl-mare that it is, and with arguably the worst metropolitan economy in the US right now (or at least exemplary of), the resurrection of the Motor City will need much more than a simple demographic inversion. Perhaps this is the distinction: cities with a heart (NYC, Atlanta, Denver) will experience a renaissance with the help of demographic inversion, while "cities" consisting of an amalgam of townships will continue to be in decline.

I agree with you about New York City, but this is not the case in Chicago where economic diversity and a reasonable cost of living have helped the city's cultural life thrive. Back in New York this summer I was disheartened to see many off broadway theaters shuttered for the summer. This is not the case in Chicago where the city is THE place to be in the summer. I guess in NYC many resident customers go to the Hamptons or New Jersey. It seems a cultural wasteland aside from the Disney-esque Broadway and corporate funded institutions like MOMA and MET etc. Very sad to see a lack of cultural vibrancy in one of the greatest cities in the world.

At the first opportunity...

In this period,
and in its true
light, the sound
of a picture forgets
and emotion in
the care of a faith;
a candle reappears,
a delicate silence
remembers a river
and then, at the
first opportunity,
I'll love you my
darling.....

Francesco Sinibaldi

One quick addition to the comments on Vancouver: it doesn't expand because it can't expand. Vancouver's development is dictated by geography: it is sandwiched between the North shore mountains, the Strait of Georgia and the Fraser River. The downtown is built on a small peninsula connected to a somewhat larger one which holds Vancouver and Burnaby. The rest of the suburbs are either built on the river delta to the south (Delta, Richmond and Surrey) or extend up the Fraser Valley.

There's very little flat land.

Ehrenhalt's article seems almost quaint, from the perspective of this long-time resident of one of Toronto's many downtown neighbourhoods.
The flight to the inner city is so well established here that someone moving to the burbs is remarkable enough to occasion a story in The Globe and Mail interviewing them at length about how they have discovered a neighbourhood with many of the virtues of life downtown.
In many downtown neighbourhoods a major source of conversation and complaint are the congestion problems caused by flocks of mothers with strollers crowding sidewalks, cafes and shops.
One emerging trend: retired people moving downtown to be close to their children and grandchildren.

Wait a minute. There were 4,315,000 born in the US last year, a record. The population is increasing at about 30 million a decade. This incredible growth can't be stuffed exclusively into urban centers. What's really happening is the growth of once-small cities towns in the South and West into much larger entities. I live in Nevada, and our population has increased nearly 80% THIS DECADE, and is projected to near-double in the next 20 years. Similar stories in other Western states.

There's nothing that would make me happier than a resurgence of merchant-owned shops. I was making a generalization about the overall commrical scene. But if I underestimated the small-scale revival, I'm delighted to be wrong.

Well, it seems to depend on which smaller cities you're talking about. Ann Arbor, yes. Flint, no. Boulder, yes. Youngstown, no.

www.flintexpats.com

It's funny how few numbers there are in this piece.

I grew up in Chicago, and I lived at 9th and U in DC, just a few significant blocks (mine still had crack-cocaine out the wazoo) from the area described.

Regarding Logan Square: The author describes the price of houses on the square itself -- but fails to mention that housing in the area is still relatively affordable, that the majority of people living there are still working and lower- (as in not rich) middle-class Hispanics, and that while Logan Square is gentrifying, it's doing so pretty darned slowly compared to DC, as a walk down Milwaukee Ave will tell you.

A handful of yuppy restaurants on a single block don't make a case. Numbers do. On that note, I saw precious little reference to the fact that the housing market has crashed, a factor that may preserve Milwaukee Ave. in all its blue-collar grit for some time.

The author continues:
"To describe what has happened virtually overnight in Logan Square as gentrification is to miss the point. Chicago, like much of America, is rearranging itself, and the result is an entire metropolitan area that looks considerably different from what it looked like when this decade started."

Logan Square did not change overnight - there's been a burgeoning middle-class white scene there for decades -- and the "entire metropolitan area" of Chicago does not look different. In the last ten years, some parts of some neighborhoods have undergone radical changes. Most visible changes, though, have been gradual, and places like Lincoln Park gentrified long ago. That's not news.

Then there's the assertion that the young gentry-to-be can't get by without cars -- a fact gleaned, apparently, from a few people the author spoke to on the street. I never owned a car while living in DC, and neither did most of the people I knew - all of us young, upwardly mobile (though not all white, thank you). Perhaps asking a few token young people on the corner isn't the most statistically significant approach to understanding the niceties of gentrification.

This is a late, lugubrious plod through well-tilled soil. Gentrification IS interesting - but how about getting off one's duff and doing some research, other than than standing on a few corners and waxing philosophical. You never know - the results might not be yesterday's news.

It's funny how few numbers there are in this piece.

I grew up in Chicago, and I lived at 9th and U in DC, just a few significant blocks (mine still had crack-cocaine out the wazoo) from the area described.

Regarding Logan Square: The author describes the price of houses on the square itself -- but fails to mention that housing in the area is still relatively affordable, that the majority of people living there are still working and lower- (as in not rich) middle-class Hispanics, and that while Logan Square is gentrifying, it's doing so pretty darned slowly compared to DC, as a walk down Milwaukee Ave will tell you.

A handful of yuppy restaurants on a single block don't make a case. Numbers do. On that note, I saw precious little reference to the fact that the housing market has crashed, a factor that may preserve Milwaukee Ave. in all its blue-collar grit for some time.

The author continues:
"To describe what has happened virtually overnight in Logan Square as gentrification is to miss the point. Chicago, like much of America, is rearranging itself, and the result is an entire metropolitan area that looks considerably different from what it looked like when this decade started."

Logan Square did not change overnight - there's been a burgeoning middle-class white scene there for decades -- and the "entire metropolitan area" of Chicago does not look different. In the last ten years, some parts of some neighborhoods have undergone radical changes. Most visible changes, though, have been gradual, and places like Lincoln Park gentrified long ago. That's not news.

Then there's the assertion that the young gentry-to-be can't get by without cars -- a fact gleaned, apparently, from a few people the author spoke to on the street. I never owned a car while living in DC, and neither did most of the people I knew - all of us young, upwardly mobile (though not all white, thank you). Perhaps asking a few token young people on the corner isn't the most statistically significant approach to understanding the niceties of gentrification.

This is a late, lugubrious plod through well-tilled soil. Gentrification IS interesting - but how about getting off one's duff and doing some research, other than than standing on a few corners and waxing philosophical. You never know - the results might not be yesterday's news.

I bought my first home in Buffalo 3 years ago, because it's cheaper then the burbs. Now a lot of people are starting to move downtown to condos. A decent amout of vacant buildings are being developed as condo/stores/offices. Yes urban developement in downtown Buffalo, Hell has frozen over.

Excellent comments. The good thing is that change is inevitable. I love the fact that cities morph into new experiences. If culture is leaving Manhattan and moving to Chicago, I say move to Chicago if that's what you are looking for. The great thing is whatever your lifestyle, there is a place to suit you - suburban or urban.
For me, I prefer Paris - for some reason it's rhthym and pace suit me.
Chicago sounds like fun though, I was born there, haven't been back in a while.
I better go check it out, thanks for the tip.

The Edgewater neighborhood as well as Rogers Park have changed significantly in the last 10-15 years. A lot of the dilapidated buildings have been torn down and luxury low and high rises have replaced them. The author already mentioned UIC...It seems to me that a lot more of the northside and near west side neighborhoods have improved and been gentrified. Although, closer to North Lawndale and further south and west of that, commercial and residential developments are moving more slowly, but it is still happening.

You are right though when you state that Logan Square is still a blue-collared community, but that is changing as well. There are a lot more of the yuppies in Logan Square; they just appear to be more "green---" and perhaps that's why you don't notice them as much. Perhaps, because you are younger, you see and read an older person's perceptions differently and therefore you judge that he had not done enough research.

On a different topic, many immigrants also have moved to the North Lawndale area, west of Pilsen, west of Western because it is more affordable. I used to live there and I have a friend who told me that a lot more diverse group of residents have moved into the area --- she noticed them on the California station of the Pink Line. I recently visited her and have noticed a lot of positive changes such as a big, clean supermarket selling fresh produce and other grocery items called Pete's Market and a Staples opened there. Some people might look down on the big box retail stores, but these stores indicate that progress is moving their way, toward their poor community. This means more jobs and better community services for all those who live there.

Demographic inversion has been going on in San Francisco for some time now. As richer people moved into the city, the artists, working class and poor people moved out. Many artists & musicians moved to Alameda, and there is a thriving art scene there. Many poor people moved to nearby small towns, brought in by teaser loans and a chance to escape the inner-city crime. Unfortunately, dense pockets of poor people in these small towns are straining the social resources and increasing crime. It's a feedback loop. Wealthy people now avoid those towns, making them poorer, and making them more attractive to poor people, etc. As goes California so goes the Nation ...

Fabulous to read this article, because the transformation of the inner city is happening on a smaller scale in Ogden, Utah. Destined to be THE premiere outdoor recreation capital of the world, Ogden's inner city has been filled with blighted homes for the past 20 years or so, despite the fact that it is a National Historic Register distric with over 3700 eligible historic homes. Our Historic 25th Street downtown is full of character and new businesses; the 80's-era mall was torn down and a new high-adventure recreation center established; the Ogden Raptors (L.A.Dodger farm team) entertain us all summer; and world-class skiing at Snowbasin and Powder Mountain are 20 minutes away in the winter...and the FrontRunner commuter train now takes us to Salt Lake City... without the car. The families moving into the inner city are looking forward to having their own affordable historic home, walking to amenities downtown, sitting on their front porches and talking with neighbors. It is an exciting time to watch the positive effects of gentrification and is comforting knowing that Ogden is reflecting the trend of large metro areas. Gotta love it! www.suewilkerson.com

I lived near 14th and U in DC in the early and mid 90's and I am seeing the same process that I saw there while I was in college take place in nyc (well it's pretty much finished) and in my hometown Newark. First you get overly aggressive police force to harrass the people who have lived there for years and then they take the buildings with cheap rent "redecorate" them and slap $1000 dollars onto the rent so that it only becomes affordable to outsiders. I went to U st a few years ago and it resembled nothing of what I remember. It had a active nightlife back then, the only thing that has changed is the population. NYC killed the nightclub and you can't go anywhere without finding a cop to make sure that you are being a well behaved citizen. Theres always a feeling that you are being watched and even if you aren't doing anything illegal it is annoying as hell. But change is constant.

"The few available trains coming downtown from the northwest side filled up with middle-class white riders near the far end of the line, leaving no room for poorer people trying to board on inner-city platforms.
...
Today, this could never happen."

It could not have happened then either. I can only assume you have never been to Chicago, or are relying on dubious information. Since when would African Americans (or anyone else) not push onto trains, and if necessary push off middle class whites (or other African Americans), if transportation were required?

When have you ever observed people to wait for the next train in a snow storm?

In the last twenty years the population of the US increased by close to 10%, over 20 million people. Compare that demographic change to that of middle class people moving downtown. The latter is a blip of the tragically hip.

Hello, Boston, anyone, Boston? Clearly you've got to visit Boston. Boston has already completed the Demographic Inversion. Many affluent people both LIVE and WORK in the city. As opposed to modern Paris where many affluent live, but most of the office buildings are in the suburbs and outskirts. In Massachusetts, there's nothing to do in the suburbs but drink and watch TV. The lame live in the subrubs, the smart and wealthy and social live in the city. It's called self-selection, those people who are lame choose to live in a place that is lame, they go home at night and only watch TV (and drink) and say why do I spend so much for my condo in the city when they never go out. Those in Boston (or Chicago or Vancouver or Manhattan) want to go out and they meet other people who want to go out and live surrounded by people who want to go out, so those that like to go out self-select to live in the city. Over time... the lame are in the suburbs and the smart and wealthy live in the city. It helps to be smart, because it isn't easy. If you are stupid and slow, the suburbs are much easier.

I lived for a year in Vancouver's Yaletown (the part with most of the slender condo buildings) and spent two years living in Manhattan's Battery Park City. I enjoyed both, but Yaletown was far better because of its proximity to the "real" downtown - theatres, eateries, nightclubs. Battery Park City is very pleasant, but it is kind of sterile and quiet, especially on weekends, though it has some great parks for youngsters.

I grew up in the 'burbs, and spent a lot of my university career commuting by car through Vancouver's constricted traffic, and so I loved living a 10 minute walk from my work or a convenient Subway. All that said, I don't have kids yet, and I wouldn't want to deny my kids (when I have them) the pleasures of playing in a yard or playing street hockey with the neighbors, which is why I still think that I'll be headed to the 'burbs at some point.

I live in Columbia Heights D.C.. I've lived in D.C. since '89, bought a fixer upper in 2000, crack house neighbors, dogs, crime etc. etc. Now 2008, let me tell you this city is changing: bike lanes, Target, good grocery stores, new movie theatres, etc. My car sits for days and days. I have three kids and the only thing that saved me from moving to the wastelands of suburbia was Charter Shools.



I play in a band, and we have gotten about 5 gigs this year to play in Town Centers from Haymarket, VA., Ranson, West Virginia, Pentagon City, Rosslyn and a few more suburban areas. These suburban towns are getting smart and trying to incorporate an urban community sense into their strip malls, like the author stated. It's a good thing, I guess, still have to drive to the strip mall though.



Now the poor in my neighborhood are good for now, due to Section 8 or rent control, but their kids are going to have to move to PG County.

Very interesting article. I agree with some of the other posters here that the author glossed over some details, such as pending changes in transportation and government structure, although these issues could be covered in-depth in future articles. The impact of peak oil production on the US cannot be over-emphasized. Global demand for oil is outstripping supply and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. For a US so dependent on oil to power cars, trucks, planes and virtually every other aspect of its' infrastructure, this ongoing development will be nothing short of devastating, bringing about mass social, political and economic upheaval on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. People will move back into urban centers not simply because it's the hip and cool thing to do now, but because these areas were generally constructed at a time before the victory of the oil-powered automobile over all other forms and considerations of transport. They will move back into the urban cores for reasons of personal survival, because life and survival in most decentralized, car-dependent sprawling suburbs and exurbs will become extremely harsh and difficult, compared to what people now living in these areas have become accustomed to. I also believe that most suburban and exurban governments will break down within the next several years as the real fallout from the mortgage crisis manifests: the end of sprawl as an economic engine and tax base. Most of the newer car-dependent burbs started off decades before the sprawl boom as small farming villages, trade outposts or townships. Most of these places had no major economic activity before the big developers came, promising their trustees truckloads of cash in exchange for farmland and a "partnership" in building up their own little fiefdoms. But now the money has dried up and the oil is running out. The developers have gone bankrupt, the big box stores they built are closing down, and the suburbanites and exurbanites themselves are losing their McHomes. Without tax-paying businesses and households, government breaks down. Most suburbs will fold, perhaps being absorbed back into their counties, the central urban government itself, or some new form of centralized regional government.

I'd like to echo 'warn tnr' and say that this article is poorly researched and for any of its anecdotal evidence one can easily find a counterexample. But the 3rd comment by pontormo really makes the best point.

If you want to see really lively urban life, go to Montreal. Not particularly many people live 'downtown' (i think it's about 70k), but probably a good million live in the 'inner city'. Rent is cheap, apartments are big, crime is low, and a diversity of people can live there, while subways and bike paths make everything accessible without the need for cars, though of course some people still have cars because they're useful machines. Downtown proper, on the other hand, is overpriced and soulless.

This article plays off a dichotomy of 'suburbs' and 'downtown' and as far as I can tell is cheering for a huge population of rich people to move downtown. That seems silly to me... it would be so expensive, and I think most people like having a reasonable sized walk-up apartment rather than live in a downtown broom closet in a skyscraper. The pendulum has been really far towards huge homes spread far apart. Now it's swinging the other way, but one needn't assume a jump to the opposite extreme.

While there is much talk of the center city, I think the street car suburbs in cities like Charlotte are showing the most dramatic changes you are talking about. Neiborhoods that were emptied out because of white flight are seeing property values skyrocket as singles, DINKs (dual income, no kids) are moving back into these areas. These areas are close to the city center and offer the 'character' that people are looking for that can't be found in the new home communites on the urban fringe. I have a majority of people under 40 that I work with (I am a Realtor) that want to live downtown but it is out of young professionals price range that chose to live in as close as they can afford. It will be interesting to see how our cities will look 15 years from now. Great article!