Study Documents the Shifting Racial Boundaries of Gentrifying Cities

Ryan Briggs shares news of a study written by Jonathan Tannen, for his dissertation at Princeton University. Tannen's research uses a Bayesian modeling system to detect racial borders in the 100 largest U.S. cities, quantifying "the invisible lines of segregation."

Briggs summarizes one of the key findings of the research: "As more suburban whites moved back to urban areas, old racial boundaries were moving, and spreading outward. But the neighborhoods themselves weren’t desegregating." Instead, the process of neighborhood change discovered by Tannen is better described as resegregation, according to Briggs.

Tannen found evidence of these boundary movements in cities like Chicago, New York, and Boston. "But interestingly, and potentially uncomfortably for proponents of walkable urbanism, the phenomenon was only apparent In auto-centric cities, gentrification was more diffuse, and racial boundaries were less clear," according to Briggs.

However, none of  Tannen's study amounts to a final say on the impacts of gentrification. Briggs is careful to note the limitations of the research, and other studies that find evidence of the limitations of gentrification and its displacement effects.