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Degree

MA, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences : Sociology, 2010.

Abstract

This research examines the significance of preexisting racial/ethnic composition on the likelihood of gentrification, the socioeconomic upgrading of poor neighborhoods. I use U.S. Census data for tracts in Chicago from 1980 to 2000. There is an extensive literature attempting to account for its causes, but it focuses almost exclusively on population and housing traits and locational attributes, largely omitting issues of race/ethnicity. This omission is significant because prior housing preference literature consistently reports an unwillingness of whites to move into neighborhoods with even relatively small African-American populations. The absence of race/ethnicity in the gentrification literature appears to have led to an undervaluing of its role in this type of inner city change. Using logistic regression, I measure the significance of the percent of non-Hispanic blacks in census tracts at risk of gentrification in 1980 on the odds of gentrification by 2000, while controlling for population and neighborhood characteristics as well as proximity variables. I hypothesize that a large African-American population decreases the likelihood of gentrification. In the initial analysis, the percent non-Hispanic black was not significant in the full model. However, after removing the black gentrified tracts, the tracts upgraded by middle class African-Americans, and running the same analyses again, the percent non-Hispanic black remains significant in each model. I draw from these results that the size of the African-American population influences a tract’s gentrification outcome. Further, black gentrification is the most likely means for poor census tracts with large African-American populations to gentrify.

Subject Headings

Sociology

Keywords

Neighborhood Change; Gentrification; Chicago; Urban Sociology; Race; Housing

Committee / Advisors

Jeffrey Timberlake, PhD (Committee Chair)
Jennifer Malat, PhD (Committee Member)
Paula Dubeck, PhD (Committee Member)

Pages

48p.

Document number: ucin1277125658
Permalink: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1277125658

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