Gentrifying Neighborhoods Open Opportunities for School Integration

 

With more white and middle- and upper-class families opting to settle in urban centers over the past generation, gentrification has transformed many American urban neighborhoods and public schools.

Historically, gentrification has been a modest force of urban change, largely driven by avant-garde artists and concentrated in a small number of neighborhoods in cities such as New York and San Francisco. In recent decades, however, the breadth and scope of gentrification has accelerated far beyond these two cities, growing faster than researchers’ ability to track it.

In a forthcoming study of California cities by the UCLA Civil Rights Project, researchers found gentrification to be widespread across various metropolitan areas of different sizes. This phenomenon is not limited to California. According to another analysis by Governing magazine, nearly 20 percent of low-income neighborhoods in the country’s 50 biggest cities have undergone gentrification since 2000. With record-low housing inventory and soaring prices spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, these trends are sure to have accelerated.