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Absolutely ! In Manhattan finding rental property is practically zero, just ownership prevails. Why would the Times precieve it as race. It seems that one tax bracket is pricing another out of the market. I am sure there are other ethnic groups that make very little money and have not had the opportunity to save a bundle over the years. Just like there are different ethnic groups that are very wealthy. How dare the article imply race after all we live in a democratic society where the majority wins.

Gentrification isn't a race issue it's a money issue.

This illustrates the possible future decline of indistinguishable tract suburban housing once deemed desirable.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime

And yes, inanmac, race is not a causation of poverty and I don't think the article was positing as much but rather the usual allegory of gentrificification of affluent people (predominantly white) venturing to places once deemed undesirable and largely inhabited by poorer people (predominantly latino or black or even Native American as referenced in the Portland article).

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If good electric cars come to auto showrooms, maybe the edge suburbs will do fine.

If not, in the medium term, I think suburban McMansions might be to the punk kids of the 2010s and 2020s what burned out brick rowhouses were to the punk kids of the 1980s and 1990s.

In the long run, I think the solution is to figure out a way to encourage employers to minimize employees' average commutes.

Right now, employers have no incentive whatsoever to hire an employee who lives near the office rather than an employee lives far away.

If, say, employers had to pay a tax equal to a percentage of each employee's monthly gasoline bill, then maybe employers would be willing to use some kind Craigslist system to trade long-commute employees for short-commute employees.

In some cases, maybe employers could shorten a lot of commutes by building operations centers in the suburbs.

Another strategy would be to make sure that all edge suburbs have a little shopping area with a supermarket, a drug store and some kind of general store (e.g., a Target, or a Kmart), to minimize the number of long trips residents have to make just to buy a few groceries.
they trade

The Ex-burbs will be decimated by rising transportation costs-- places like the NJ/PA border.

Older suburbs built in an urban style-- street grids around a central downtown-- will thrive, like Montclair, Highland Park, Ridgewood, Princeton, Rutherford.

New suburbs-- endless mazes of cul-de-sacs, strip malls, and office parks-- will have serious problems too because they are car dependent and nearly impossible to serve well with mass transit.

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Actually I think that the suburbs will readjust and develop new transportation methods (trains, buses) which will mitigate the burn of gas price and make there communities more accessible.
The gentrification of cities has stop to a crawl due to widespread speculation. The only people I see moving back to cities are people in coastal areas like Florida due to the threat of hurricanes, taxes, and insurance.

The problem here is a confusion between race and economics. The population in these Portland neighborhoods are being marginalized because they are poor, not because they are black. Superficially it may appear grounded in race, but this is a correlation with poverty, not a causation of poverty.

Rising fuel prices will increase the pace of gentrification in all urban areas like Portland and JC that have mass transit systems in place and will make suburbs less attractive.

Three excerpts from the article that this thread is based upon.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Northeast, white cyclists in sleek helmets pedal past groups of young black men whose faces are hidden beneath hoodies. Buses rumble by, too, the only transportation alternative for some residents, not just a green alternative.

?It?s not drug infested, but then you say, ?Well, what happened to all the black people that were in this area?? ? said Margaret Solomon, 84, who is black and has lived in the neighborhood for more than 40 years. ?You don?t see any.?

It is a white world now, Ms. Solomon said: ?They?re sitting around with their bikes and out on the sidewalks and all that. It?s rough to imagine.?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/us/ ... .html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Somewhat reminiscent of the Flag Wars Documentary.