GSO makes the short list (with Detroit, OKC, and Toledo) of cities with "biggest rises in income segregation in the decade."

Thnx to reader JB for the pointer.

Part of our occasional series, It's Rarely Good News When We're In the New York Times.

Comments

[Billy Jones]

"Same as it ever was, same as it ever was..."

[Andrew Brod]

Well, no. The point is that it's much more than it ever was.

[Billy Jones]

"Well, no. The point is that it's much more than it ever was."

"And that's the way it was."

[Roch101]

A bit of good news from the same source, although glacially slow and still very lopsided, our neighborhoods have become less segregated over the past 30 years.

[justcorbly]

Sometime in the early seventies a coworker told me she needed to keep working because she and her huband couldn't afford their mortgage otherwise. In fact, wouldn't have qualified. The norm now, but still a bit unusual back then.

I remember saying something about there not being a three-income family. Crude, but accurate.

[bubba]

"Well, no. The point is that it's much more than it ever was."

"And that's the way it was."

So when's the Occupy New Irving Park protest going to take place?

[Billy Jones]

Roch: "A bit of good news from the same source, although glacially slow and still very lopsided, our neighborhoods have become less segregated over the past 30 years."

Not my neighborhood.

Bubba: "So when's the Occupy New Irving Park protest going to take place?"

It's in the planning stages-- nothing is off the table.

[Andrew Brod]

I have a suggestion: Occupy Bubba.

[MojoNixon]

How does one occupy vacuous space, Brod?

[Billy Jones]

Bubba's been occupied for longer than we've known him.

[bubba]

"How does one occupy vacuous space, Brod?"

Glad to see you asking for help, JoJo......but you're asking smeone who suffers from the same affliction you do.

[polifrog]

How does one occupy vacuous space, Brod?

One should first understand that there is no such thing as a vacuous space:

In modern physics, there is no such thing as "nothing." Even in a perfect vacuum, pairs of virtual particles are constantly being created and destroyed. The existence of these particles is no mathematical fiction. Though they cannot be directly observed, the effects they create are quite real. The assumption that they exist leads to predictions that have been confirmed by experiment to a high degree of accuracy. (Morris, 1990, 25)

Therefore there is nothing to occupy that isn't already occupied.

Silly people.

[Ed Cone]

There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be. (Lennon/McCartney, 1967)

But I'd still be concerned about the safety of occupiers on the medians of Willoughby, esp. between St. Regis and Redford. Dog poop also is a concern.

[Andrew Brod]

I took a look at the linked study, and Greensboro/High Point's measure of income segregation in 2007 was essentially at the national average (actually a tad below). So yeah, the trend is looking bad, but things aren't so bad here.

... yet.

[Billy Jones]

Ed, "Dog poop also is a concern."

Dog poop means there are dogs. I've been to places here in the USA where people eat dogs. When stewed, Spot tastes like any other red meat.

Andrew Brod, ...yet.

Lest we forget that Guilford County has the highest foreclosure rate in North Carolina. Yet may be sooner than you/we think.

[Billy Jones]

PS. There's always West Cone Blvd.

[polifrog]

There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be. (Lennon/McCartney, 1967)

Channeling lost lines...

[Andrew Brod]

Billy, it's important to understand what this study says and doesn't say. It doesn't say that people in the GSO/HP metro area were getting poorer as of 2007. It says that the variability of neighborhood income distributions across the GSO/HP metro area was increasing as of 2007.

Yeah, I know. But that's what it says. It's about the geographical distribution of income, not metro-wide level. Fewer poor people live near rich people, and vice versa.

Well, 2007 was four years ago, and your foreclosure observation is from right now. How has the Second Depression affected economic segregation since 2007? There are no stats yet to answer that, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if income segregation has actually fallen, precisely because of the drop in incomes. If more people are poorer, there might be less neighborhood-level variation.

[Andrew Brod]

And it's valid to bring up one of Roch's favorite caveats, which he might raise if he weren't busy yelling at conservatives over at Guarino's blog. The GSO/HP metro area includes Rockingham and Randolph counties in addition to Guilford. GSO and HP account for about half the population of the metro area. So this result is as much about the rural parts of the three-county region as it is about the two core cities.