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What is allegedly happening in Minneapolis doesnt necessarily mean it is happening in every city. Yes alot of cities are seeing young professionals moving back into the downtown areas, but they are only a sliver of the actual fabric of the entire city.
Philadlephia has the 3rd most populous downtown in the USA and it has alot of young professionals migrating to center city. But guess what? Center City is about 2% of the entire city. So as Center City Philly and a few other select neighborhoods prosper, the middle class of Philaldephia continues to make its exodus out of the city and into the suburbs. The middle class is still being replaced by a lower class of immigrants which will try to follow in their predecessors footsteps.
Unfortunately US cities over the past 100 years, as a whole, are usually nothing more than repositories for the poor and castoffs. Thats not all going to change overnight.
This isnt just happening in Philadlephia but most of the big eastern cities including NYC. I looked at the data from Hennepin County MN., and its showing a per capita of incoming residents of $24,354 and a per capita of outgoing residents of $30,017.
I don't know the Minneapolis area at all but my guess is that its no different from the other big cities. There is an elitist part of town usually the downtowns that pull in young professionals, but as the middle class of Minneapolis builds up equity they move out and raise their families in the suburbs for better schools and less crime.The ephemeral city.
Study this map and 99% of the counties with big cities in the US are showing significant negative wealth in regards to migration patterns.
Lets not carried away here. Its very small areas of the cities that are seeing newfound wealth and growth.
What you did is make a prediction about the future using current data. I feel that current demographic trends indicate that more and more people are moving into the core cities in most places. There were recent stories about Washington and Atlanta becoming white cities within the next ten to twenty years again as blacks moved out. Although washed in racial overtones, some interesting inferences could be drawn from it. Prediction is akin to predicting white flight knowing that in 1955 the very richest people were beginning to leave cities. I believe this is happening. It doesn't make me a socialist, and it doesn't necessairily make someone else's opinion wrong. People in America, for some reason, equate poverty and crime. The people who cause problems are mostly already here. For the most part, immigrants come here to live on the up and up. So even an increasing poverty rate doesn't preclude wealthy and upper-class people from moving toward the city. If we haven't noticed, the middle-class is shrinking anyways.
San Francisco is the greatest model for this demographic change. When rich move in, poor don't necessairily move out for a long time. But, more poor people do not continue to move in. The poor that do come into the metro move to places like Richmond. Most suburbs do not become blighted, but some do. Those that do become severely blighted. It is actually ironic, the movement of wealth creates two classes of poor: old poor and new poor. There are still impoverished areas in San Francisco proper, but they are "dead men walking", because as soon as those houses hit the market, only somebody with much more wealth than the current inhabitants will buy it.
So put it this way. The rough areas of a city, speaking on a metropolitan level, are pretty small. South Chicago has, what, maybe a million people? Eight million live in Chicagoland. Eventually, a million people from the suburbs (or elsewhere)will choose to move into the city. The million people currently living in south Chicago will move to one or two confined geographic areas in south suburban Chicago. The Northside will densify somewhat, but remain mostly unaffected as will a great majoirty of suburbs.
Some places will not follow this trend. Metro Detroit does not have the economic impetus needed for people to move into the couple areas of Detroit that would be considered inhabitable. They may rebound at a much later date, but it is unforseeable. Miami should also see more trouble because of the glut of condos in the city.
P.S., Hennepin County has over a million people. Minneapolis has just under 400,000. Alot of that accounts for suburbanites moving from suburban Hennepin County to Carver County because it is cheaper. Very strong options exist within the city of Minneapolis for families that want to remain within city limits. There are Mpls. high schools that are comeptitive with most suburban schools. They aren't downtown. Some families move, some stay. It is entirely their decision because there are two options, at least here.
Do you have any ideas about how city schools can improve themselves?
The biggest reason most city schools are in trouble in the first place, is because the middle class left the city for the suburbs.
Come on. That's a tired old class warfare argument. Unless you are implying that schools with poorer minority children cannot function effectively unless a certain number of white middle class children are also at the same school.
Instead of blaming problems in inner cities on the middle class leaving those areas, how about asking WHY the middle class felt compelled to leave those areas in the first place. I think it's pretty safe to say that this problem is still with us today because it is not 'politically correct' to ask such a question due to the PC crowd that run nearly every big city in this country today being unwilling to confront the reality of the potential (and likely) answers.
Wouldn't believe everything one reads, esp when written by often-socialist journalists who tend to live in a dumpy part of some city in a rathole and ride lovely mass transit to get to their highly paid job....
Actually, in past 10yrs, would argue trend has intensified for many of wealthiest, most educated and <40yo to live and work in suburbs, e.g., SiliconValley and Greenwich....and rarely visit the alleged "city"...
Suspect most middle-class families in urban regions prefer a newer, 3K sq ft house on 0.4 ac; good, safe public schools; ability to easily drive one's new Camry/Accord, etc ?20mins to one's office in a suburban office park: the model of life for many in places like Plano, TX; Naperville, IL; Irvine, CA; Cupertino, CA; CherryHill, NJ; Scarsdale, NY, etc etc....
Most families aren't big on nightlife, tourist attractions, skyscrapers and exposure to poverty/violent crime on a daily basis....easy enough to watch/read about all that stuff on one's high-res screen in suburbia somewhere....
The typical suburban elitist that us "survivalist" city folks despise.
If the suburbs go to hell, then there will literally be no quality public schools in this country.
Ok...so...by your logic, the middle and upper class moving to the suburbs are what make suburban school systems great. If suburbs become blighted and people come back to the cities, including those middle and upper class folks, the schools will still not improve? Hm. Good logic.
Ok...so...by your logic, the middle and upper class moving to the suburbs are what make suburban school systems great. If suburbs become blighted and people come back to the cities, including those middle and upper class folks, the schools will still not improve? Hm. Good logic.
First off, why do YOU think suburban schools are better than urban schools?
My point is there is going to have to be a major wave of middle class families that move back to the city to convince the rest of us to go. It may very well happen, but that first bunch that does it is sort of sacrificing their kids. Would you put your kid through public school in many neighborhoods of Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Detroit, Cleveland, Nashville, etc... Urban school districts don't seem to be getting better? Who would want to put their kids in schools where 20% are proficient in algebra or 30% are proficient in English by the end of high school? The point is, I don't think the middle class families will move in the first place. If they do shift to the cities, then the suburban schools may decline, but I just don't see it happening.
First off, why do YOU think suburban schools are better than urban schools?
My point is there is going to have to be a major wave of middle class families that move back to the city to convince the rest of us to go. It may very well happen, but that first bunch that does it is sort of sacrificing their kids. Would you put your kid through public school in many neighborhoods of Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Detroit, Cleveland, Nashville, etc... Urban school districts don't seem to be getting better? Who would want to put their kids in schools where 20% are proficient in algebra or 30% are proficient in English by the end of high school? The point is, I don't think the middle class families will move in the first place. If they do shift to the cities, then the suburban schools may decline, but I just don't see it happening.
The problem with urban schools and their performance has little to do with the quality of the school itself. They may be underfunded, and the facilities may be showing their age in most places. Neither really has anything to do with the quality of education that can be achieved. If anything, they are fundamentally better in terms of teachers; the best indicator of a system's quality. Think about it, teachers in most urban settings have to work exponentially harder than their suburban counterparts. They cope not only with academics, but social problems and problems with parental involvement. The point is if your kids wants to learn, and you support those desires as a parent, most schools will teach to a very acceptable level. The reason why urban schools have such low proficency rates is because the demographics of the students are such that there are often language barriers, lack of stability and parental involvement and a good number of the kids themselves are unmotivated after a certain level. 10% of children in Minneapolis schools do not live in the same household for the entire school year. An idiot could tell you how few of those kids are going to succeed. If you put these kids in a suburban school, their performance would be the same given the same situation. If you put a kid in a suburban situation (parental involvement, self-motivation, English proficency, et cetera) they would perform at the same level pretty much regardless of where they are.
Come on. That's a tired old class warfare argument. Unless you are implying that schools with poorer minority children cannot function effectively unless a certain number of white middle class children are also at the same school.
Instead of blaming problems in inner cities on the middle class leaving those areas, how about asking WHY the middle class felt compelled to leave those areas in the first place. I think it's pretty safe to say that this problem is still with us today because it is not 'politically correct' to ask such a question due to the PC crowd that run nearly every big city in this country today being unwilling to confront the reality of the potential (and likely) answers.
That is a pretty good question. Why would that first middle-class person living in a stable city community leave the area circa 1955? Maybe they saw greener pastures in a quarter acre lot. Maybe they didn't like paying city taxes. I think, though, that that first person to leave the neighborhood (a person like my mother) had a different answer. It rhymed with bigger and diggers. What was the rationale of those first few people to leave the city? That is the reason why so many cities look like hell today. The people who left subsequentally were a symptom of the problem caused by the thought pattern of those first people. The answer isn't "lousy" schools or rampant crime. It isn't the presence of poor people, they had lived in those cities for hundreds of years before we all decided to leave.
I'm curious to see your answer, because innuendos are so silly when we can hide between the anonymity of the internet.
Finally. For the record, the poll question is flawed. Some suburbs will decay, others will remain stagnant and others will grow and prosper. If you study it hard enough, you can even figure out which ones will and which ones won't (at least in the forseeable future).
Finally. For the record, the poll question is flawed. Some suburbs will decay, others will remain stagnant and others will grow and prosper. If you study it hard enough, you can even figure out which ones will and which ones won't (at least in the forseeable future).
Yes, this is something I agree with. A trend cannot be generalized to an entire country. We have urban areas that will prosper and areas that will go for the worse, suburbs that will continue on and suburbs that will become ghost towns. It all depends on a specific area. What might happen in the Atlanta area is not the same as what might happen in the Baltimore area which might not be what happens in the San Diego area which might not be what happens in the St. Louis area.
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