Affordability and the City
Interesting article: Alan Ehrenhalt argues in The New Republic that cities throughout North America are undergoing a "demographic inversion," in which the center city is once again becoming home to the well-off rather than the poor.
Chicago is gradually coming to resemble a traditional European city--Vienna or Paris in the nineteenth century, or, for that matter, Paris today. The poor and the newcomers are living on the outskirts. The people who live near the center--some of them black or Hispanic but most of them white--are those who can afford to do so.
That certainly rings true for Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, too. In fact, Ehrenhalt discusses Vancouver, with its "forest of slender, green, condo skyscrapers," at some length. So apparently, the problems of urban housing affordability aren't just local ones; they're international in scope. (At least we're in good company.)
The article also makes a trenchant observation: the recent North American view of the city as a dumping ground for people who are too poor to escape is something of a historical anomaly. More typically, cities have been magnets for wealth, not repositories for the impoverished. Recent trends are, as much as anything else, a return to historic norms.
Still, Ehrenhalt argues that the urban resurgence is being driven by some ahistorical demographic shifts: later childbearing, professional couples choosing fewer (or no) kids, more empty nesters in good health. Those kinds of shifts are likely to persist -- which will mean plenty more people will opt for urbanity over suburban living. And high demand will likely mean higher prices for homes close to downtown.
So my question in all of this is: given that people with lots of disposable income are choosing to move closer to downtown, is there a good way -- or, indeed, any way -- to retain decent, affordable housing for middle- and lower-income folks close to downtown jobs?
