Information AboutWhite Flight |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT WHITE FLIGHT | |
| demographic history of the united states | |
| human migration | |
| urban decay | |
| history of racial segregation in the united states | |
| urban studies and planning | |
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White flight is a term for the neighborhoods. White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism How East New York Became a Ghetto by Walter Thabit. ISBN 0814782671. Page 42. In some of the largest cities in the United States , the trend started to reverse itself in the 1990s. (See '' Gentrification ''). WHITE FLIGHT IN THE UNITED STATES White flight has taken place in nearly every major and the ensuing economic and Baby Boom s. A variety of factors during this period allowed for the explosive growth of suburbs and demographic change in cities, including the creation of high-speed highways and suburban parkways, which greatly reduced the travel time between suburbs and downtowns and bypassed some city neighborhoods. The effects of the phenomenon have been significant, particularly in the cities of Atlanta , Philadelphia , Detroit , Memphis , Miami , Cleveland , Houston , St. Louis , Milwaukee , Newark and New Orleans , all of which lost more than half of their white populations; but it has affected every Metropolitan Area in the United States. History In the years after World War II, many White American s began to move away from inner cities to newer Suburb an communities. Major cities had experienced tight housing markets during the war years along with an influx of blacks seeking war work. White people with the means to leave sometimes did so to escape increasing Crime . In other cases, whites left simply because they thought that suburban communities, with their new housing stock and schools and their open spaces, were more desirable places to live, and due to economic conditions or racial discrimination, blacks were frequently unable to follow. Discriminatory practices, especially those intended to "preserve" white neighborhoods, restricted the ability of non-whites to move from inner-cities to suburbs, even when they were economically able to afford it. In contrast to this, the same period in history marked a massive suburban expansion available primarily to whites of both wealthy and working class backgrounds, facilitated through highway construction and the availability of federally subsidized home mortgages (VA, FHA, HOLC) which made it easier for families to buy new homes in the suburbs — but not to rent apartments in cities. "Racial" Provisions of FHA Underwriting Manual, 1938 Recommended restrictions should include provision for:White flight was made easier by state and federal governments paying for highways to carry suburbanites to work in cities where the jobs remained (the National Defense and Interstate Highway Act and its successors). The creation of these highways in some cases divided and isolated black neighborhoods from goods and services, many times within industrial corridors. Blockbusting See Also: Blockbusting Another important aspect of this migration was the phenomenon of "blockbusting." Real estate agents would facilitate the sale of a house in a white neighborhood to a black family by subterfuge, often buying the house themselves, or using a white proxy and reselling, perhaps at a reduced price, to the black family. A panic, fanned by the real estate agents and the media, would then ensue among some white homeowners, who feared that their property values would drop — which of course they did as soon as they began selling in large numbers, generating large commissions for the agents. The real estate agents would then sell at higher prices to the incoming black families, reaping the profits of the price difference as well as the sales commissions. It was not uncommon for the racial makeup of a neighborhood to be completely changed in the space of a few years by this process.http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/147.html Urban decay See Also: Urban decay As the wealthier white residents abandoned inner-city neighborhoods, they left behind increasingly poor non-white populations whose neighborhoods deteriorated in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s. Suburban transplants took their tax and investment dollars and related services, such as grocery stores, and clothing retail outlets, with them. The 1967 12th Street Riot in Detroit is an example of a worst-case reaction to these events. With no local jobs or businesses, the neighborhoods disintegrated and ultimately degenerated into poverty-stricken and crime-ridden slums with failing Public School s. Other trends Several poorer predominantly white communities also face conditions similar to those of areas that have experienced white flight. The cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls in New York serve as prime examples. The 1960s saw significant white flight from the inner city of Columbus and smaller Ohio metropolitan areas, such as Dayton and Springfield . In these areas, manufacturing jobs were once dominant but have now largely disappeared, resulting in urban decay. Governmental aspects of white flight Due to the nature of American local governmental structure, white flight enabled people who moved into the suburbs to create new municipalities outside the jurisdiction of the original city, without any Legacy Costs of maintaining existing infrastructure. By the enactment of restrictive Zoning , these new entities could ensure that few poor (or in some cases middle-class) emigrants could afford to move into their enclaves. Such municipalities were incorporated by the hundreds on the peripheries of cities. The details, of course, varied according to state statutes and local politics. Milwaukee, for example, was able to annex parts of surrounding Towns , including the former Town Of Granville and thus expand to a greater extent than many landlocked cities (Then-Mayor Frank P. Zeidler famously inveighed against the destructive effect of the "Iron Ring" of new municipalities incorporated in the post-World War II decade.http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=459264). Schools and busing See Also: Desegregation busing White flight has also affected education. The landmark 1954 '', v. 84 n. 3, pp. 698-705. Busing and desegregation orders in education had also in some cases led to a further, non-geographical white flight: out of the public school systems, which are subject to desegregation orders, and into private schools, which are not. For instance, in 1970 , when a Federal Court ordered desegregation of the public schools of the Pasadena Unified School District (in Pasadena, California ), the proportion of white students in those schools reflected the proportion of whites in the community, 54 percent and 53 percent, respectively. After desegregation began, a large number of whites in the upper and middle classes could afford private schooling and so pulled their children from mixed public schools. As a result, by 2004 Pasadena was home to sixty-three private schools, which educated one-third of all school-aged children in the city, and the proportion of white students in the public schools had fallen to 16 percent. The superintendent of Pasadena USD characterized them as being to whites "like the bogey-man" {Link without Title} and mounted policy changes and a publicity drive to induce affluent whites to put their children back into the public schools. White flight in recent decades White flight continues today, but it has taken on a new aspect as some of the older suburbs have been experiencing urban decay similar to their parent cities—for example, in some of the "inner-ring" southern and western suburbs of Chicago, such as Harvey and Maywood . East St. Louis and many of the neighboring communities on the Illinois side of the St. Louis metropolitan area have also long suffered from urban decay with the decline of the manufacturing industries that had once powered the economies of the region. Suburban areas of numerous cities including Prince Georges County, Maryland in the Washington D.C. area, DeKalb County, Georgia in the Atlanta area, and portions of the Chicago Southland region such as Matteson have become majority-black including many affluent professionals, although their public schools remain low-performing. Many low-income whites in East Coast cities have moved to close-in, working-class suburbs or other, more heavily white neighborhoods within the same city. This often leaves Senior Citizen s (especially " Empty Nesters ") who have often lived in a particular community for a very long time as the only white residents in neighborhoods that have otherwise seen complete "white flight". Usually, when these seniors die or move to retirement communities, the process is complete. It should also be noted that affluent and professional whites sometimes remain in specific parts of a city that have otherwise been affected by white flight. For example, well-off whites continue to live in St. Louis neighborhoods around Forest Park and the Central West End even as the surrounding neighborhoods have been transformed by the white flight that has been occurring there since the 1950s. Many whites, some working at the University Of Chicago , populate nearby neighborhoods Kenwood and Hyde Park on the south side, surrounded by 98%+ black neighborhoods. In New Orleans, there is a concentrated white population in the Garden District south of St. Charles Avenue and in the Lakeview neighborhood east of City Park and North of Robert E. Lee Boulevard. There is also a large artsy and bohemian white population in the French Quarter , Warehouse District , and in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood. In general, whites who remain in such locations do not have children or, if they do, their children attend Private Schools , which is also a common characteristic of New Orleans. It must also be noted that the city's Catholic population is high compared to other large cities in the nation. The immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina further complicated this situation as more whites have returned to the city, than blacks, mainly to the west bank (with the recent gentrification of Algiers and the west bank) Even though the demographic makeup of New York City has been dramatically altered due to white flight from the outer boroughs, parts of Manhattan have actually become more white during the past 20 years due to Gentrification (see below). Some southern sections of Harlem that border the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of Manhattan now have as high as a 20% white population, whereas as recently as the early 1990s these enclaves had non-white population percentages in the high 90s. The population decline of some Midwestern , Northeastern , and Western cities has slowed down or has even reversed (such as in parts of Chicago and St. Louis), while other areas remain economically devastated due to seemingly-permanent economic shifts and job losses (such as in Detroit , Cleveland , Milwaukee , and Buffalo ). A recent trend has been white flight due to large-scale Immigration of Hispanics and sometimes other groups, such as East Asians , South and Southeast Asia ns, Middle East erners, and North Africans . This trend has been most pronounced in New York City , northern New Jersey , and Southern California , where most of these groups have settled. From Queens , white residents first moved from the northern areas of New York, then from the central and southern areas, largely choosing Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island . While both Brooklyn and Queens are still home to a sizable number of white residents, their overall percentage has dwindled. Neighborhoods in Queens dramatically affected by white flight to the point of total change include Flushing and the surrounding areas, Long Island City , College Point , Jackson Heights , Elmhurst , and Corona . Neighborhoods currently being affected by a more casual white flight in which children move away (largely to Long Island) include Ozone Park , Rosedale , and Briarwood . This form of white flight rarely involves a drop in income, but involves more ethnic change, and the community is usually not affected negatively, as this is a slower and more casual process of migration. Some parts of the area experiencing this are much of The Bronx and some sections of the 3 cities on its northern border ( Yonkers , Mount Vernon , and New Rochelle ), urban areas in Union County, New Jersey such as Elizabeth , and (though only on the periphery of the area), parts of Norwalk and Bridgeport in Connecticut . Central New Jersey has recently become a perfect example of the newer white flight. Towns such as West Windsor , Plainsboro , Edison , East Brunswick , South Brunswick , North Brunswick , Highland Park and Woodbridge , mostly Middlesex County towns, populations have shifted between 15-47 percent less white due to a modern wave of Asian immigrants in just one decade. In these cases, the economic status of the region has not become economically disadvantaged, but has stayed the same and in many of these cases has become economically better off. All of these towns are former suburban pride of New Jersey, and while their home values have generally increased seven-fold over the past decade, the majority of white and black families avoid buying in these areas. Exemplifications of this white flight, and in this case now black and Hispanic flight can be seen in the public schools of these areas where in a matter of 2-5 years can see a drop of over 10% in the white population. In southern California, eastern Los Angeles County , the eastern San Fernando Valley , sections of the San Gabriel Valley , sections of the Antelope Valley and sections of Orange County and the Inland Empire have been affected by white flight due to Hispanic immigration. In Florida and Texas , as in California , the immigrant influx is creating a is considered to be in a far stronger position among Hispanic and Asian immigrants, the large-scale immigration and white flight have helped to transform California into a stronghold of the Democratic Party . Hispanics turning back to Democrats for 2008 Exit Poll of 4,600 Asian American Voters Reveals Robust Support for Democratic Candidates in Key Congressional and State Races White flight in Southern California The forces and groups involved in white flight in Southern California are distinct from those in other areas due to the region's demography and history. Many whites once lived in urban neighborhoods in Los Angeles before departing the city in large numbers after the , large numbers of white Californians left Southern California or left the state entirely. The phenomenon has affected not only the central city basin, but also the suburban regions of the San Fernando Valley and the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California , where many Working-class Hispanics and lower to upper-middle class Asians have moved during much of the 1980s and 1990s. In addition, during the 1990s and 2000s, many blacks have continued to move out of the historically African American communities such as '', October 16, 2005. Page E1. Some of the people leaving Los Angeles have moved to inland California and other states. Many of these ex-Californians ended up settling in the Rocky Mountain States of Arizona , Colorado , Idaho and Nevada . Another form of white flight is also taking place in many parts of , Saratoga or, in Southern California San Marino . WHITE FLIGHT OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES The phenomenon is also found in South Africa n cities, most notably Johannesburg , Pretoria and Durban , which saw a mass influx of Black African people into the inner cities during the final years of Apartheid , and from which white people fled in great numbers to the suburbs (or out of the country altogether). In some areas of New Zealand , there has been a gradual process of white flight, in response to mass urbanisation of Māori and arrivals of Pacific Islander guest workers between the 1950s and 1970s, though in Auckland the process has largely been in reverse since the 1980s, with white (Pakeha) New Zealanders moving to previously Māori and Pacific Islander neighbourhoods such as Ponsonby, Grey Lynn and Kingsland. Similar gentrification trends have occurred in Wellington inner city suburbs like Thorndon, Newtown, and Aro Valley. White flight has also significantly affected many areas of Rotorua , with the phenomenon being blamed for the cities' slide into proverbial "Third World" conditions.http://www.nzherald.co.nz/specialreport/story.cfm?c_id=1501094&objectid=10392647 In Canada, particularly the Greater Toronto Area , suburbs such as Brampton , Markham , Mississauga , and Richmond Hill , have seen dramatic cases of what might be considered White Flight, although this is probably due as much to the city's growing urban sprawl and growth than to any real ethnic tensions. From the early 1980s until the late 1990s neighbourhoods went from being predominantly White European to predominantly Pakistani, East Indian, and Chinese. Brampton is now considered to hold a major Asian community. As a result many towns and cities in the vicinity of the Greater Toronto Area such as Hamilton , Burlington , Oakville , and Oshawa have seen an influx of residents from Toronto {Link without Title} . In the or, in some parts of the country, general regional decline.http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/CBCB/census2_part1.pdf While many skilled Working Class / Lower Middle Class whites have moved out of the less desirable areas of east, southeast and west London to suburban communities in (respectively) Essex , Kent and Surrey , this has been tempered in central London by rapid gentrification. However, in outlying industrial areas such as Newham , Woolwich and Hounslow , which are not seen as attractive to young professionals, demographics have been skewed to the extent that white people are in some cases a minority. This is a new phenomenon in urban Britain. Industrial towns and cities with large south Asian populations such as Magazine, 4 September 2006, accessed 21 September 2006 GENTRIFICATION See Also: Gentrification The opposing social trend of wealthy social groups moving into an inner city area and displacing the existing residents is called neighborhood of Los Angeles and (to a lesser extent) the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee and the bohemian sections of the 9th Ward of New Orleans. NOTES REFERENCES
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