Five decades of neighborhood classifications and their transitions: A comparison of four US cities, 1970-2010

This paper examines 50-year spatio-temporal trajectories of neighborhoods (Census Tracts) for four cities discerned by their population growth trends and spatial patterns of growth: Buffalo, New York; Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; and Portland, Oregon. Using five decades of Census data from 1970 to 2010, a clustering procedure is used to establish five classes of neighborhoods: Suburban, Stability, Blue Collar, Struggling, and New Starts. The transitions and sequences of neighborhoods through these groups are compared, revealing marked differences in the dynamics of neighborhoods according by city. Findings show that while Struggling neighborhoods, characterized largely by high poverty and unemployment levels, were very unlikely to transition out of this group over the course of 50 years in the cities of Buffalo, Charlotte, and Chicago, nearly half Portland's struggling neighborhoods transitioned to a neighborhood of higher socioeconomic status during that time period. The types of neighborhoods that exhibited signs of gentrification also varied according to city. The variability of neighborhood trajectories was greatest for the rapidly growing cities of Charlotte and Portland while neighborhoods in Buffalo and Chicago tended to follow a more predicable downgrading process.