Earlier today, an anonymous blogger on a local anonymous blog linked to an article in The National Review concerning “demographic inversion,” which seems to be a roundabout way of describing the unintended effects of gentrification in large central cities.
The blogger wondered whether demographic inversion was somehow a part of the discourse of smart growth, implying that I (personally) secretly espouse this notion yet carefully couch my discussions in the language of smart growth. Quoting from the blogger:
It seems that I have stumbled across the real motivations of Lamar White, racism and elitism.
Came across this long story about how rich, white Chicagoans are pushing out blacks and immigrants for housing in downtown.
Isn’t that what Lamar calls smart growth?
However, the story admits that it doesn’t solve the city’s problems, just shuffles them around.
In fact, this quote pretty much sums up the futility of wasting tax dollars on downtown: “Joel Kotkin, perhaps the most prominent of the downtown debunkers, declares flatly that, until families begin turning up in significant numbers on downtown streets, we are talking about a blip rather than a major cultural phenomenon.”
Why are we spending $40 million for a blip? It’s policy that our young mayor seems to unfortunately been sucked in to.
I highly encourage people to read the entire piece and then comment on whether or not they reach the same conclusions. The piece is not about Chicago, which this blogger would have recognized had he or she actually read past the first three paragraphs. It’s about national market trends, shifting demographics, and the reinvestment in inner cities (and with that, the “inversion” of certain development patterns).
But either way, Chicago, which I recently visited and blogged about, is – obviously- very different than Alexandria. In Alexandria, there isn’t any housing downtown, so there aren’t any people to hypothetically “displace.” Our downtown, like many downtowns across the nation, is primarily office and retail space.
What we’re seeing in Chicago is a reflection of the changing lifestyle habits among younger working class professionals and even retirees. The changing demographics of the inner city, in other words, is actually a function of market demand, not a symptom of some nefarious racist and classist policy agenda.
The National Review piece says as much:
Ultimately, though, the current inversion is less the result of middle-aged people changing their minds than of young adults expressing different values, habits, and living preferences than their parents. The demographic changes that have taken place in America over the past generation–the increased propensity to remain single, the rise of cohabitation, the much later age at first marriage for those who do marry, the smaller size of families for those who have children, and, at the other end, the rapidly growing number of healthy and active adults in their sixties, seventies, and eighties–have combined virtually all of the significant elements that make a demographic inversion not only possible but likely. We are moving toward a society in which millions of people with substantial earning power or ample savings can live wherever they want, and many will choose central cities over distant suburbs.
Incidentally, the writer believes this is actually a good thing:
In the 1990s, a flurry of academics and journalists (me among them) wrote books lamenting the decline of community and predicting that it would reappear in some fashion in the new century. I think that is beginning to happen now in the downtowns of America, and I believe, for all its imperfections and inequalities, that the demographic inversion ultimately will do more good than harm. We will never return–nor would most of us want to return–to the close-knit but frequently constricting form of community life that prevailed 50 years ago. But, as we rearrange ourselves in and around many of our big cities, we are groping toward the new communities of the twenty-first century.
It is critical to recognize that he is speaking specifically about large American metropolises and the rearrangement occurring on a massive scale in those cities. Again, this rearrangement has much more to do with market demand than with public policy, and it’s not something that the 49,506 people living in Alexandria need to be preoccupied with, at least in terms of our own redevelopment strategy.
Smart growth isn’t about displacing neighborhoods; it’s about strengthening neighborhoods. And this isn’t done through pie-in-the-sky projects (though certain catalytic developments can make a difference); it’s done by improving infrastructure and accessibility, increasing home-ownership, and reducing crime. Of course, one would be naive to think that displacement never occurs, but if you are careful and deliberative and if you directly involve the community, large-scale displacement can be mitigated. Neighborhoods and the community spirit they foster can be strengthened.
I fully recognize the dialectic between gentrification and displacement. I’ve written about it in the past. But, in short, although we should guard ourselves against the negative effects of gentrification, S.P.A.R.C. seeks to strengthen existing neighborhoods through targeted investments in infrastructure; it does not seek and does not intend to displace. It simply recognizes that decades of neglect have created blight and that certain corridors have long deserved our attention.
CenLamar 
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