People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

iatee, from yr. linked paper:

Because the focus of our research is on the demographic trends in gentrifying neighborhoods, we do not want our definition of gentrification to determine the results. Some definitions of gentrification require educational up-skilling, racial turnover and even displacement, but our analysis of in-migration and exit will be much less interesting if we condition our sample on these outcomes. We instead take gentrifying neighborhoods to be those tracts in the low-income neighborhood sample that experience an increase in average family income between 1990 and 2000 of at least $10,000.

Low income

So the problem then is that this definition theoretically won't beg the question with regards to up-skilling or displacement, but by construction it *does* select for an increase in income. So the results you cite, even in the best possible interpretation, say that for neighborhoods that poor and got less poor, the people in those neighborhoods got less poor. The distribution of how they got less poor would be interesting, but the figures only capture a portion of it. The strongest result seems to be that in neighborhoods so selected, the people who got less poor the most were black people with high school educations. But there's no causality there at all. All we really know from this is that of the poorest metropolitan neighborhoods, those of them where income rose generally can attribute a fair amount of this rise in income to increases in income of black high school graduates living in these neighborhoods. Which is I guess a fine observation, but once you break it down, has nothing at all to do with gentrification -- especially since going from an avg. family income of under 30,000 to one of under 40,000 is not at all what any of us in this thread have been using as a metric for "gentrification."

Also if you read the methodology, the discussion of synthetic cohorts should make it clear that they really have no idea how many people moved in and out -- just a story about shifting demographic ratios. Which, again, is interesting, but hardly is capable of doing the lifting you would like it to.

er, above, "low income" should read "low income is defined in this paper to be avg. income in the lowest quintile of u.s. families"

but in cities, people w/ money have substantially more opportunities to create service jobs than they do in a wealthy suburb. dog walkers, tutors, dry-cleaners, restaurant workers, taxi drivers etc.

other than taxi drivers, is there any reason to think that this is true?

in fact lemme toss some things in complete opposition in there for you - yard cleaners, lawn service, landscaping, fence peeps, car mechanics

Yeah, landscaping is a HUGE thing.

Not to mention home maintenance. I like homes, but having some shared resources in a building cuts down on the number of maintainable items. Individual houses each have their own power, water, and sewer service along with heating, cooling, and all related costs and maintenance issues. All of which mean more service jobs.

especially since going from an avg. family income of under 30,000 to one of under 40,000 is not at all what any of us in this thread have been using as a metric for "gentrification."

right, most people haven't been using a definition at all. it's not a process we can measure, it's an undefined and vague'bad'. if gentrification *doesn't* select for an increase in income, how do you measure it? change in ethnicity? increased frequency of exit-from-neighborhood? rent prices? those are all things that occur outside of the narrative of 'gentrification', measuring them doesn't get at what we want. I agree that there isn't a *direct* causality between 'gentrification' and higher incomes for hs grads - esp since most jobs aren't where you live - but rather would say that they're both probably due to similar positive-macro-level-changes.

I'm not arguing that poor people aren't priced out of their neighborhood and that that isn't a bad thing. that does happen, sometimes due to hipsters even, tho it's less of a problem than our snail-speed growth of dense urban housing. there isn't much of america to really gentrify - detroit isn't a substitute for brooklyn. this 'gentrification' is mostly part of a bigger process that's ultimately 'a good thing'. our inner cities collapsed because the middle and upper classes left. the knee-jerk reaction to their return is ridiculous, esp since it's fairly clear-cut that as far as everything but rent goes, it's a huge plus for the metro economy, including the poor. neighborhoods and populations change and always will. the real problem is our nearly-fixed supply of dense urban housing stock, not the fact that some people are going to get priced out of their neighborhoods over time.

other than taxi drivers, is there any reason to think that this is true?

Not to mention home maintenance. I like homes, but having some shared resources in a building cuts down on the number of maintainable items. Individual houses each have their own power, water, and sewer service along with heating, cooling, and all related costs and maintenance issues. All of which mean more service jobs.

yes. you can find someone to fix your car (if you have one) or clean your yard (if you have one) in a dense city. these jobs aren't necessarily linked to lack of density, they're linked to personal consumption-choices (some of which are more appealing to people outside of cities). if, instead of buying a house in iowa city, you lived in the smallest, cheapest apartment in iowa city and decided to spend all your money at restaurants in iowa city, you'd still be fueling the service industry. likewise the money you spend on your car is partly a personal consumption decision (if you want a nice car), but it's money that would be spent on other stuff if you bought a cheaper car or took the bus.

the big difference is that there are countless personal consumption choices that *can* exist in dense cities that can't exist elsewhere because the scale doesn't add up. you can get someone to make and bring you a pizza in the suburbs, but you generally can't get someone to make and bring turkish food. you can get someone to bring you a newspaper once a day, but you can't order your groceries online - even if you'd prefer spending $10 to having to go out and go shopping yourself today, that's not a choice you have, because the scale isn't there. there are consumption choices that can only be made when the scale exists, and that's not limited to food.

on top of this, density is linked to productivity and wealth, an effect that's partly constrained by the distortions in the housing market: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/one-path-to-better-jobs-more-density-in-cities.html

there are just straight up *more people* in cities

iatee, the thing thats kind of frustrating abt all of this is that you make these statements as if they are fact when they aren't? i can get (actually) turkish food, and have it delivered where i live, and i can get groceries delivered too. i think sometimes you make some pretty questionable assumptions based on just having no real experience with non-urban living.

ie yeah you can hire someone to do yard work in the city, but given that i think we can agree that there are far less yards, and thus less yard work, that doesnt really work as a rebuttal - i mean you can take cabs in the suburbs too, it is just far less common a behavior than it is in NYC

Individual houses each have their own power

like let's focus on this.

now the pg&e guy who checks my building's electricity is going to be checking proportionally more customer electricity bills per hour than the one in iowa city. in a way, you could frame this as job loss - 100,000 people in queens require fewer dudes to check their electricity than 100,000 people in iowa city. but the ones in nyc are far more productive on an hour by hour basis. we could double the number of guys out there and make them all do half the work, matching the hourly productivity of an electricity dude somewhere else. but I don't think, when you frame it like that, anyone would believe that's a great way to create jobs.

iatee, the thing thats kind of frustrating abt all of this is that you make these statements as if they are fact when they aren't? i can get (actually) turkish food, and have it delivered where i live, and i can get groceries delivered too. i think sometimes you make some pretty questionable assumptions based on just having no real experience with non-urban living.

lol I grew up in the suburbs dude. I would say 'you cannot get turkish delivery' is a fairly reasonable assumption for the average american suburb. maybe minnesota is different, I admit, I have never been to minnesota. anyway food isn't even 'that important' it's just an easy example.

i thought the new cw was that for great 'ethnic' foods find the places in suburban strip malls

From that NY times editorial:

"Many of them left for places like Phoenix, which attracted over 500,000 residents from other American cities, despite wages 40 percent below Silicon Valley levels.

Factors like taste and taxes account for some of the migration, but the biggest reason for the shift is housing costs."

What is this, I don't even.

"In every year from 1992 to 2009, Phoenix granted permits for two to three times as many new homes as did the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas combined."

And that construction boom worked out great! A++ would bubble again!

well you see the difference between phoenix and san jose is that san jose is the center of one of the most important global industries and phoenix has an economy dependent on, idk, old racist people

the argument here cant possibly be that a suburb of a given geographic size 'creates' or 'requires' or 'supports' as many jobs as a city, can it?

Sterl, a failed construction boom in Phoenix is not even remotely credible as evidence in the argument over construction in NYC. We have had a bona fide housing shortage for years!

Yes max people are just talking about geographic size and not population, clearly. They are in fact arguing that Alaska because it is so big has more jobs than anywhere else. You nailed it!

xpost: Hurting I'm just making fun of the stupid editorial which is *hailing* the boom in Phoenix.

And the boom in Phoenix was also sprawl not tall. Which isn't an argument for or against anything except for that editorial being stupid.

yeah you're misreading it

max the argument is that somehow an upper middle class person in a city has more job creating power in the service industry than the same UMC person in a suburb, which i dont think is true

here is the same author on phoenix:
http://www.ryanavent.com/blog/?p=1780

Worse still, the metropolitan economy of Phoenix relied extraordinarily heavily on home construction. Construction came to employ about one in ten workers in the area during the long housing boom. Given the massive housing overhang, it’s unlikely that most of those jobs will come back, even after the national economy recovers. It’s not surprising, then, that there are signs of population decline in the Phoenix area. I believe the city will ultimately recover, but there is little in this tale that reflects strength, and little worth emulating.

Yes max people are just talking about geographic size and not population, clearly. They are in fact arguing that Alaska because it is so big has more jobs than anywhere else. You nailed it!

xpost: Hurting I'm just making fun of the stupid editorial which is *hailing* the boom in Phoenix.

― s.clover, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 3:32 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not arguing with you dude! arguing with john!

yeah but the argument wasnt phrased as more jobs created per square mile, it was saying that somehow the urban UMC persons money can buy more service related jobs, which is questionable at best.

in fact if anything wrt labor rates and cost of living, it would seem that the suburban peeps have more disposable income to hire lawncare services or dog day care or whatever

well i dont think id argue that suburban residents couldnt, if they wanted to, spend as much money on service as urban residents do

in fact if anything wrt labor rates and cost of living, it would seem that the suburban peeps have more disposable income to hire lawncare services or dog day care or whatever

a. there is evidence that density and productivity are linked so the average umc person is going to make and spend more money than they would elsewhere
b. cost of living = see: land use regulations, there is nothing *inherently* expensive about density
c. thought experiment: if the opposite is true, what are the consequences? if sprawl led to sustainable job creation and wealth, wouldn't even sprawlier sprawl lead to more? how would the disproportionate productivity and wealth of sf and nyc fit into that picture?

iatee, the fact that avent has written something elsewhere that shows he knows better doesn't mean that the op-ed in the times, on its own, isn't really goofy nonetheless.

every single other thing he has ever written doesn't fit with the way that you are misreading one sentence. he doesn't 'know better', he has an extremely consistent pov that has spanned years of published work.

the guy who's been writing about densitifaction for years isn't gonna accidentally say 'phoenix is awesome' in the nyt

i mean you can take cabs in the suburbs too, it is just far less common a behavior than it is in NYC

I'm just a spectator in the larger argument but on this topic, I think it's like this? Because more people want a thing or service, let's say grocery delivery, a provider of that service can make their margins based on volume rather than pricing structure? Like if only one person in my business area wants grocery delivery, I might have to charge them $100 for that. But if 20 people want it, the price comes down to $5 and suddenly my potential customer base explodes because lots of people are willing to pay $5 when they couldn't have paid $100. So in cities, where there are lots of potential customers, the hypothetical service can be a lot cheaper and therefore a valid business model.

Sorry for the over-explaining. :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CFibAP5IBQ

but I don't think, when you frame it like that, anyone would believe that's a great way to create jobs.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise! But I am sure some people who believe that everyone deserves a 50s-style ranch home, a chicken in every pot, and a front yard for kids to play in would say it's good.

Also, proud to own American cars. My wife has two Cadillacs she drives..

My wife has two Cadillacs she drives..

Now you guys are just trying to make iatee explode with rage, right?

what, by sarcastically quoting Mitt Romney? I think he's probably immune to that by now.

Those foreign cars are so small, right? You do need two -- one for each foot.

(apols. Henny Youngman)

I knew it was sarcastic, but didn't know it was Mittens. Make sense though.

i think that part of the reason that this thread seems less like a debate and more like a series of polemics is that the two thought states seem to be "cities are great, anything else has no redeeming qualities" vs. "hey cities are cool but suburbs and rural and pretty much wherever peeps choose to live can have positives aspects as well" vs. some imaginary city hating strawman so we dont really discuss anything but mostly just make cheap points off of each other.

i mean yeah hi dere internet and all but i know thats why i only stop in here once every few months and then get frustrated and bail

yeah I don't send a lot of time talking about how much fun cities are, I mostly focus on how they're a better and more productive use of resources. I'm sure millions of americans love their lil suburb. we just shouldn't have a legal and policy structure that subsidizies them.

see right there is the self-important tone i have come to expect from this thread

people are political about political issue shockah

wellll theres a difference between political and unwilling to entertain the possibility that you are wrong about anything but well wait i guess that depends on how you define political so

well I'm not really concerned about being wrong about 'is sprawl bad for the environment'

It's weird to me to think of urban zoning restrictions as a way to subsidize suburbs. I don't think people who live in suburbs really care either way about zoning in cities. It's the people living in cities who support these zoning restrictions, largely I think because of NIMBY-ism and misguided fear of change. Cities already seem dense enough to most people, so the thought of additional density tends to be unpopular. People only think of the negative side-effects: congestion, noise, pollution, strain on infrastructure, etc. People don't usually think about the cool new businesses and restaurants that might be able to thrive in their neighborhood if it got a bit denser.

john how long have you been on ilx, you have to realize that acting super sensitive and pouty when iatee is impolitic abt his opinions just makes everyone pile on right

y/n: suburbs make people pouty

all the recent stuff abt zoning aside the big argument here is between people who think that increasing density leads to vastly more efficient and sustainable use of resources and people who get hurt when that's said in a zingy way

but this thread doesn't even read like the suburb defenders are disagreeing wrt denisty being more efficient and sustainable

like jjusten say's its just zings circling around each other at this point