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The Black population is very large in the DC region. The Black population living in the suburbs is suburbanized because they live in suburbs.
The Black population living in DC is urban and outnumbers the Black urban population in Boston so I don’t think that is an accurate representation of DC compared to Boston. The size of DC and Boston plays a major role in that. NYC on the other hand has an extremely urban and large Black population because NYC is around 300 sq. miles.
I didn’t compare Boston and DC. Though they are comparable cities in a general sense. What comparison did you think I made. If anything it was a grouping- we often group those cities together for various reasons.
I’m talking about city propers, not regions.
This also has littke to do with size - note that I listed New Haven, Connecticut which only has 40,000 black residents and New York City which has -~2,000,0000 black residents: you simply build to the size that fits the circumstances. All of the cities I listed have very different sized black populations.
In short, the places that would be most prone to seeing a push for black led urban development in black urban neighborhoods are the places where ROI is highest, there are constraints in accessing the suburbs, the urban bones are already there, where there are municipal funds and political will to start these projects, places with sufficient black leadership/wealth, and that sort of development is already going on.
Baltimore would be on here if it wasn’t so easy/desirable to move to the suburbs and if there were enough ROI to justify that sort of investment for on a public-private POV. Right now the only areas seeing that level of imaginative development are along the water which is very white by and large. So again- nothing to do with size when we consider Baltimores black population is larger than DCs. Same with Detroit.
In DC you have enough black people willing to in the city but it doesn’t meet have the suburban restraints these other cities do. The city has to compete with the suburbs more for black middle class residents than Boston or New York or Philly where majority black attractive suburbs are much harder to come by. You won’t find a county in NY PA or MA that’s has more black peoples than the primary city. Not even close, this is another way in which DC is more sunbelt-like. But reasons you already said and have listed extensively- I think DC will see some return to the city and black-led developments.
In Boston, black people mostly only *want* to live in the city and the suburbs won’t be conducive of an influx of black people (or any people) due to zoning and expense; and we already have seen that sort of development via Nubian Ascends, Parcel 3, and Bartlett Place.
In New York it’s mostly the commute that will keep black people wanting to be in the city. And Eric adams would 100% be in favor of more black living in the city for his own political reasons. And I think NYC already sees that type of development: usually in the form of rehabilitation and repurposing.
In New Haven they have the ability to do it but it’s pretty cohesively urban as is, so I doubt it would happen in a major scale. What New Haven has goi bf for it is what any northeastern city has going for it- already has traditional mixed use walkable retail/residential corridors that aren’t as slick or trendy as what you see in the sunbelt but still very functional and easy to access.
In Philadelphia I think the ROI is there and the funds are there. Ideologically/politically it makes sense, the suburbs of Philly are pretty low density and very white too (but there are certainly a number of blacker ones- but they’re old). The city is going through a renaissance despite the crime and black people aren’t leaving Philly in significant numbers.
Milwaukee is a place I know much else about but I know it’s conditions of segregation with respect black population so heavily concentrated in north Milwaukee and not the suburbs or the south side of the city- means it has perfect conditions to incubate this type of growth. The issue is does it have the black wealth/developers.
Last edited by BostonBornMassMade; 11-08-2022 at 08:15 AM..
I agree with what you’re saying here, but restaurants, theater, and nightclubs aren’t digital. Those venues are the only ones I was referring to. While businesses that sell other types of goods are important, the shopping mall killed the brick and mortar retail shop. I feel like most of your argument is about things the shopping mall and online shopping killed. How are restaurants, theaters, and nightclubs impacted by those things? I feel like they never left the city. The only thing that happened is Black owned spots closed while White owned spots flourished.
I used retail as an example because I was following your lead:
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Originally Posted by MDAllstar
That same sentiment is why many Black people started shopping at stores outside of their communities and attending shows and entertainment outside the Black community after integration happened.
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Originally Posted by MDAllstar
It’s almost like Black businesses were only successful because Black customers had no choice but to shop there. Once Black customers were given the opportunity to shop at White owned stores, they stopped supporting Black businesses.
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Originally Posted by MDAllstar
Don’t you think owning your own building for your retail establishment would make a difference? Retail businesses that own their space aren’t impacted to the same degree as businesses that rent their space.
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While I agree urban renewal and highways destroyed Black communities across America, I think a high density of Black middle-class families would have offset any decline of Black business districts. This is really a density discussion as much as anything else. Also, Greenwood and Tulsa for that matter shouldn’t be discussed in the same group as cities like NYC, Chicago, DC, Philadelphia, Boston, Oakland, Atlanta, etc. which is what I have been referring to. They are different weight classes.
We'll never know since Black neighborhoods in that era weren't socioeconomically homogenous; Black folks of all classes lived amongst each other. However, declining housing stock due to overcrowding and lack of economic investment gave local governments justification to condemn such areas as slums in need of clearance, and that's exactly what happened.
I used to believe that Black people had to accept a good deal of the culpability in the quality of our communities. We, I thought, hadn’t made the investment we needed to make to maintain our homes. We didn’t embrace entrepreneurship to start small businesses that would populate neighborhood commercial districts. We didn’t develop the necessary institutions (beyond churches) to contribute to our social well-being.
I don’t believe that anymore. I believe we’ve done the best we could with the resources available to us. Our neighborhoods suffer not from inaction, but disconnection. Segregation continues to underscore everything about our neighborhoods. Segregation creates inequality.
Detroit's Black Bottom neighborhood serves as a relevant counterargument also.
On the whole, Black commercial districts in the postwar period experienced a greater degree of decline as CBDs all across the country as a result of the policy decisions of that era, but they all experienced decline nonetheless.
Here's an interesting article about the challenges of developing Black commercial districts using Chicago as an example.
Here's an interesting article about the challenges of developing Black commercial districts using Chicago as an example.
damn this was depressing. But also reaffirms why I didnt include Chiago in the first place.
"Including West Englewood, they found 33 Black-owned businesses across the combined area with around 57,000 nearly all Black residents. That ratio of businesses to potential customers did not sit well with Butler. Although the median income of the neighborhood is only around $23,000, collectively Englewood households earn around $300 million, but according to one older study some 70 percent of those earnings get spent outside the neighborhood."
"The businesses will get a deep discount on rent in exchange for hiring from the neighborhood, which had 25% unemployment before the pandemic. RAGE has raised enough money so far, from one anonymous donor, to acquire and rehab two or maybe three small commercial properties"
"It can be challenging to acquire and revitalize commercial properties in any predominantly Black, largely disinvested community. Just getting the capital to do so can be an impossible barrier.
Even if a small, local developer from that community has a good relationship with a lender, most lenders make loans based on market value of the property, and they usually determine market value by looking at “comps,” i.e. recent sales of comparable properties nearby. For disinvested neighborhoods like Englewood, sometimes there are periods when there just aren’t many sales of anything commercial or residential. For commercial properties particularly, in places like Englewood, there might not have been any sales for years, even decades along some corridors. So the banks don’t have any comps to use for the purpose of underwriting a loan."
This seems like it should be a great tool but is caught up in byzantine bureaucracy... But if a property in Cook County has tax liens that go unsold in at least three consecutive years, then it gets moved into the scavenger sale.
In the scavenger sale, the right to collect on the taxes owed gets sold to the highest bidder, and the minimum bid is just $250. The scavenger sale happens only in odd-numbered years. Similarly, if the underlying owner doesn’t pay, the scavenger sale buyer has the right to foreclose and take ownership of the property free and clear of the previous tax debt.
So the scavenger sale gives potential buyers a chance to acquire properties for as little as $250, no matter how much in property taxes the previous owner might have owed. But going through the foreclosure process itself is onerous.
“The process is bananas,” says Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, who also chairs the board of the Cook County Land Bank Authority. “It takes about four years, and 75 distinct steps to go through if you want to take ownership of a property out of the scavenger sale.”
I didn’t compare Boston and DC. Though they are comparable cities in a general sense. What comparison did you think I made. If anything it was a grouping- we often group those cities together for various reasons.
I’m talking about city propers, not regions.
This also has littke to do with size - note that I listed New Haven, Connecticut which only has 40,000 black residents and New York City which has -~2,000,0000 black residents: you simply build to the size that fits the circumstances. All of the cities I listed have very different sized black populations.
In short, the places that would be most prone to seeing a push for black led urban development in black urban neighborhoods are the places where ROI is highest, there are constraints in accessing the suburbs, the urban bones are already there, where there are municipal funds and political will to start these projects, places with sufficient black leadership/wealth, and that sort of development is already going on.
Baltimore would be on here if it wasn’t so easy/desirable to move to the suburbs and if there were enough ROI to justify that sort of investment for on a public-private POV. Right now the only areas seeing that level of imaginative development are along the water which is very white by and large. So again- nothing to do with size when we consider Baltimores black population is larger than DCs. Same with Detroit.
In DC you have enough black people willing to in the city but it doesn’t meet have the suburban restraints these other cities do. The city has to compete with the suburbs more for black middle class residents than Boston or New York or Philly where majority black attractive suburbs are much harder to come by. You won’t find a county in NY PA or MA that’s has more black peoples than the primary city. Not even close, this is another way in which DC is more sunbelt-like. But reasons you already said and have listed extensively- I think DC will see some return to the city and black-led developments.
In Boston, black people mostly only *want* to live in the city and the suburbs won’t be conducive of an influx of black people (or any people) due to zoning and expense; and we already have seen that sort of development via Nubian Ascends, Parcel 3, and Bartlett Place.
In New York it’s mostly the commute that will keep black people wanting to be in the city. And Eric adams would 100% be in favor of more black living in the city for his own political reasons. And I think NYC already sees that type of development: usually in the form of rehabilitation and repurposing.
In New Haven they have the ability to do it but it’s pretty cohesively urban as is, so I doubt it would happen in a major scale. What New Haven has goi bf for it is what any northeastern city has going for it- already has traditional mixed use walkable retail/residential corridors that aren’t as slick or trendy as what you see in the sunbelt but still very functional and easy to access.
In Philadelphia I think the ROI is there and the funds are there. Ideologically/politically it makes sense, the suburbs of Philly are pretty low density and very white too (but there are certainly a number of blacker ones- but they’re old). The city is going through a renaissance despite the crime and black people aren’t leaving Philly in significant numbers.
Milwaukee is a place I know much else about but I know it’s conditions of segregation with respect black population so heavily concentrated in north Milwaukee and not the suburbs or the south side of the city- means it has perfect conditions to incubate this type of growth. The issue is does it have the black wealth/developers.
New Haven is like/similar to Interior Northeastern cities in that regard and has similar demographics. In general, Northeastern cities is where this is more likely to occur, for those reasons.
Last edited by ckhthankgod; 11-08-2022 at 10:51 AM..
New Haven is like/similar to Interior Northeastern cities in that regard and has similar demographics. In general, Northeastern cities is where this is more likely to occur, for those reasons.
It’s similar I agrees. With some thing will let you know it’s coastal. Still a pretty large share of black immigrants, it’s in the coast, seeing development, light on blight, prestigious Ivy League university and AMTRAK access. Synergy with close by major/mid size metros.
That is a direct result of slavery. We lived on plantations as slaves in rural areas and after emancipation, we either stayed on the plantation or moved to areas around them. I know that is our history, but that is not a part of our history we should celebrate in my opinion. The great migration to cities around America is when Black people really started to flourish creating business districts and culture.
It's nothing to either celebrate or shun; it is what it is. Our ancestors lived in small, rural villages and in cities in Africa also. And while most slaves were on plantations, there were more than a few located in the cities of the South.
On top of that, we can't pretend that there weren't big downsides to our migration to cities here in America either.
Again, we have what it takes to thrive wherever we choose to live.
Except none of us can say what's best for all Black folks nor should any of us presume to do so.
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Where im and in my circles from- we don't want to live in the suburbs. We are forced there.
That's my point: we aren't at all a monolithic people and it makes sense for you to make the choice to live where you do based on your reality. I just don't see how that serves as justification for believing that your reality means that all Black folks should live in cities. For starters, the exposure to high levels of violence is enough of a deterrent for millions of Black folks to not live in cities.
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