Gentrification, Race, and Immigration
While residential segregation and disadvantaged minority neighborhoods remain defining features of US cities, gentrification—the socioeconomic upgrading of previously low-income neighborhoods—has also been taking place throughout cities and in many of these neighborhoods. These projects examine gentrification’s uneven evolution across time and space and the role of race and ethnicity in this process, as well as the changing dynamics of race and ethnicity associated with widespread immigration since the latter half of the twentieth century. The projects draw on novel measures of gentrification and segregation and several unique data sources to study how the process of gentrification both shapes and is shaped by racial and ethnic composition and patterns of immigrant settlement.
Pathways of Gentrification
Partial Residual Plot for proportion Black (left) and proportion white (right) predicting 2007 to 2009 Neighborhood Gentrification Stage Scores. Source: Divergent Pathways (2014).
How does the racial and ethnic composition of neighborhoods affect the location and pace of gentrification? These projects draw on a variety of data sources, ranging from census data, Google Street View imagery, police records, prior street-level observations, community surveys, proximity to amenities, and city budget data on capital investments in Chicago and Seattle to examine the social pathways of gentrification. By examining these distinct metropolitan contexts, these studies uncover the importance of the legacy of segregation, and the racialized residential preferences and perceptions of disorder that come with it, in Chicago and the importance of immigrant replenishment in Seattle in shaping the uneven development of low-income neighborhoods.
Academic Publications: Gentrification without Segregation? (City & Community, 2020), Divergent Pathways of Gentrification (Am. Sociol. Rev., 2014)
Public Engagement: Divergent Pathways Summary (blog post, 2014)
Selected Media Coverage: Bloomberg CityLab, The Boston Globe, Chicago Magazine, Gizmodo, Joint Center for Housing Studies, The New Yorker, Next City, NPR Code Switch, Slate.com, The Wall Street Journal, WHYY
Immigration & Gentrification
A mural in San Francisco’s mission district. Source: Fabrice Florin via flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
The influx of immigrants to the U.S. following the passage of the 1965 Hart-Celler Act stabilized declining cities and altered the social and economic conditions and racial and ethnic compositions of neighborhoods. The growth and diversification of new immigrants and shifting patterns of settlement since the 1990s have reshaped metropolitan contexts. Yet, few studies have considered the role of immigration in the rise of gentrification in the late twentieth century or the increasing spread of gentrification since the late 1990s. These projects examine how immigration and its associated racial and ethnic changes are associated with gentrification. One project considers the early wave of gentrification during the 1970s and 1980s, and the others focus on the contemporary wave of gentrification.
Academic Publications: Gentrification without Segregation? (City & Community, 2020), Pioneers of Gentrification (Demography, 2016), Gentrification in Changing Cities (Ann. Am. Acad. Polit. SS., 2015)
Public Engagement: Immigration and gentrification (blog post, 2015)
Selected Media Coverage: Joint Center for Housing Studies
Gentrification & Segregation
A series of buildings side-by-side, each painted with a different color. Source: Community Housing Transformation Centre.
Gentrification contributes to the spatial reorganization of cities. By changing the socioeconomic standing of low-income neighborhoods and reshaping where people of different races and classes move, gentrification is a mechanism restructuring broader patterns of segregation. One project uses a novel decomposition approach for measuring segregation to assess how the prevalence of gentrification is associated with changes in the structure of segregation for ethnoracial groups by income and the spatial distribution of these changes across metropolitan areas. Other studies rely on proprietary data to examine how gentrification affects individuals’ residential mobility patterns that result in emergent patterns of residential stratification.
Academic Publications: Unequal Displacement (Am. J. Sociol., 2020), Racial Segregation & Housing (Book Chapter, 2019)
Public Engagement: How gentrification reproduces racial inequality (blog post, 2021), Racial Inequality and Segregation (blog post, 2014)
The Role of Property Owners in Gentrification
While gentrification and research on the topic has grown substantially in recent decades, there is limited understanding of the role of property owners, both owner-occupants and investors, in shaping housing market dynamics and the trajectories of neighborhoods. In this project, we assemble and analyze a database of ownership records, transactions, and owner characteristics in the City of San Francisco over the last 30 years. How do changes in the types of owners (e.g., corporations, individuals) and the race and ethnicity of owners shape how neighborhood ethnoracial and socioeconomic compositions change?
Publications & Data
Academic Publications
Hwang, Jackelyn and Lei Ding. 2020. "Unequal Displacement: Gentrification, Racial Stratification, and Residential Destinations in Philadelphia." American Journal of Sociology, 126(2): 354-406. [Preprint]
Hwang, Jackelyn. 2020. “Gentrification without Segregation? Race, Immigration, and Renewal in a Diversifying City.” City & Community, 19(3): 538-72. [Preprint]
Hwang, Jackelyn, Elizabeth Roberto, and Jacob S. Rugh. 2019. “Racial Segregation in the Twenty-First Century and the Role of Housing Policy.” In How Public Policy Impacts Racial Inequality, edited by J. Grimm and J. Loke. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
Hwang, Jackelyn. 2016. “Pioneers of Gentrification: Transformation in Global Neighborhoods in Urban America in the Late Twentieth Century.” Demography, 53(1):189-213. [Preprint, Data and code]
Hwang, Jackelyn. 2015. “Gentrification in Changing Cities: Immigration, New Diversity, and Racial Inequality in Neighborhood Renewal.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 660(1):319-340. [Preprint, Coding guide]
Hwang, Jackelyn and Robert J. Sampson. 2014. “Divergent Pathways of Gentrification: Racial Inequality and the Social Order of Renewal in Chicago Neighborhoods.” American Sociological Review, 79(4): 726-51. [Preprint]
Public Engagement
Hwang, Jackelyn and Lei Ding. (2021 May 20). “How gentrification reproduces racial inequality.” Work in Progress Blog. American Sociological Association.
Hwang, Jackelyn. (2015 October 21). “Immigration is an important dimension in how we understand gentrification across US cities.” USAPP—American Politics and Policy Blog. London School of Economics.
Hwang, Jackelyn. 2014. “How ‘Gentrification’ in American Cities Maintains Racial Inequality and Segregation.” Scholars Strategy Network Policy Briefs, August.
Hwang, Jackelyn and Robert J. Sampson. (2014 July 9). “Google Street View shows that gentrification in Chicago has largely bypassed poor minority neighborhoods, reinforcing urban inequality.” USAPP—American Politics and Policy Blog. London School of Economics.
In an effort to make our findings accessible, where possible, we provide a link to preprint versions of our publications. We are also steadily assembling our data and code to share publicly when possible.