Watching Los Angeles Gentrify

Public transit can’t cause gentrification. As Richard Florida notes, this much-discussed phenomenon is the result of a complex interaction of factors—population density, education, marital status, racial segregation, housing age, and proximity to a central business district. But studies have shown a correlation between transit access and gentrification. Adding this amenity to a neighborhood can bring on changes in the local housing market, which in turn, can price out lower-income residents. Even though these poor Americans stand to gain tremendously from living near a bus stop or train station, it’s the richer folk who can ultimately afford to pay the premium for living in these areas.

There’s arguably no better place to examine this kind of transit-adjacent gentrification than in Los Angeles, a city that’s been trying to expand and strengthen its public transit apparatus since the 1990s. And that’s precisely what researchers UCLA have done in a new map, which shows where neighborhood change is taking place in the city, and how it relates to transit.