This article examines the process of gentrification and racial transition in one neighborhood in Cincinnati between 2000 and 2016. Madisonville (Tract 55) was defined as a racially integrated middle-class neighborhood in the 1970s. In the early 2000s, substantial private and public investments in the neighborhood initiated the process of gentrification and an in-migration of wealthier (mostly white) residents. This revitalization of Madisonville coincided with the Great Recession of 2008 and with a massive exodus of the middle-class African American population. Median housing values and median rent in Madisonville increased significantly between 2010 and 2016, indicating that cost of living had become too expensive for a percentage of the population. In 2000, the white and African American population in Tract 55 had comparable median household incomes, but by 2016, white median household income was 3.5 times that of African Americans, suggesting that two separate and unequal housing markets had emerged. Using Google Street View and a gentrification index designed by Hwang (2015), this article undertakes documentation of the process of gentrification between 2009 and 2016 to visually support that gentrification occurred in the built environment after the Great Recession.
Gentrification, the upgrading of formerly disinvested neighborhoods in a city through in-migration of population with higher median household incomes and educational levels, was first noted in large cities in the U.S., but has since diffused to smaller cities. One of those smaller cities is Cincinnati and is the focus of this article. One major question surrounding gentrification, regardless of where it occurs, is its possible displacement of lower-income individuals (mainly minorities). Displacement in this article is indirectly measured by documenting census tracts that experienced at least a 5.0 percent decline in the percentage of the tract that was African-American between 2000-10 and 2010-16. Logistic regression was then used to determine if tracts in Cincinnati undergoing gentrification during 2000-10 and 2010-16 experienced displacement of African-American population. Over the short-term (2000-10) there was no significant relationship between gentrification and displacement. However, tracts that gentrified between 2000 and 2010 were more likely to experience displacement between 2010 and 2016 at the 0.05 level suggesting that displacement occurs later in the gentrification process. It is suggested that the Great Recession adversely affected the ability of minorities to enter or remain in neighborhoods undergoing revitalization and may have contributed to displacement.
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