Housing
The Gentrification Puzzle
Why does this phenomenon affect some cities much more than others?
Gentrification is a highly charged issue, to say the least. Perhaps that's why a new analysis by Daniel Hartley, a research economist at the Cleveland Federal Reserve, has generated so much attention.
Hartley’s study used Census data to examine the extent of gentrification across America's 55 largest cities over the past decade. (His data track the change between the 2000 Census and the results of the 2005-9 American Community Survey, which he shorthands as 2007). He defines gentrification as a neighborhood (more precisely, a Census Tract) that moved from "the bottom half of the distribution of home prices in the metropolitan area to the top half between 2000 and 2007."