The newer cities, which developed after this practice became illegal in the 1960s and 70s, don’t have the same problems. They still have some poor inner-city/rich suburbs split due to spillover from the rest of the country, for example the bus/poverty association, but it’s less stark than in the North and Midwest.

Then you consider European cities. They have very homogenous populations, mostly monocultural. In this case, the drive to be close to “folks like them” might have kept them where they were, and resulted in a majority of the population that favored reinvesting in the central city, as opposed to disinvesting.

Now take this and apply it to the concept of this post. What if the cities like Portland and Austin have more support for investing in their urban cores because of the lack of diversity? What if people feel more comfortable investing in downtown because they see folks like themselves living there, instead of people that look different or have different cultural views. That would have significant ramifications for our policies.

Having said all this, while a correlation has been shows, I don’t see a proven causality het, so let’s not jump to conclusions.

“national” white flight is not to Portland and Seattle, which are attractive for reasons other than racial homogenity. The white flight is from California to the Intermountain West and now to places further east.

PG County, Cashin explains, is your average suburb, where the residents are as neurotic about trying to keep poorer people out. In one section of the county, when youths from poor inner suburbs traveled in to make use of a richer town’s basketball court, the town hired a private security firm to keep them out. The irony of middle-class blacks hiring security to restrict lower-class blacks was lost on most of the town’s residents.

What’s worse is, both PG and DeKalb Counties are the poorest suburbs in their respective metro areas – in fact, they’re located on the side of downtown diametrically opposite the favored quarter. Upscale chains are loathe to open branches in the local malls, forcing the residents to drive a long way to the favored quarter suburbs. They have above-average income, but on social development metrics, they underperform even in absolute terms: PG County has both the worst schools and the highest crime rates in Maryland outside Baltimore City, with a murder rate of about 20/100,000.

Because of racism, there is an excess concern over whether services will go to “people like us” (ugh) in cities with more black people. *This makes it harder politically to do any sort of urban design, because it’s all tied up with providing service*. In short, cities with low levels of diversity have less trouble convincing people that everyone will benefit from whatever they build. Because so many people are bigots.

If there were a 90% black city with any money (is there?), I would expect that it might be able to be a pioneering model city too.