theatlantic | Public policy has “focused on the concentration of poverty and
residential segregation. This has problematized non-white and
high-poverty neighborhoods,” said Goetz, the director of the Center for
Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota, when
presenting his findings at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. “It’s
shielded the other end of the spectrum from scrutiny—to the point where
we think segregation of whites is normal.”
Goetz and his team are still researching the effects of this
self-segregation of whites, but he thinks that a high number of RCAAs
may be a negative factor for cities.
“Some people argue that when whites and affluent people segregate
themselves, it can erode empathy, and it can inhibit the pursuit of
region-wide remedies,” he told me. “It can inhibit a sense of shared
destiny within a metropolitan area.”
This brings to mind a metro area such as Detroit, which emerged from bankruptcy
last year, and was characterized by a poor and segregated urban core
and wealthy white suburbs that did not contribute to the city’s revenue.
The executive of Oakland County, to Detroit’s north, which is one of
the whitest areas in the nation, has said publicly he doesn’t feel any incentive to help the city of Detroit.
Goetz and his team also researched the RCAAs’ and RCAPs’ distance to
downtown. Areas of affluence are located, on average, 21.1 miles from a
metro area’s downtown. In Detroit, racially concentrated areas of
affluence are, on average, 24.2 miles from the city’s downtown. In
Washington, D.C., racially concentrated areas of affluence are 25.1
miles from downtown; in Chicago, they’re 22.1 miles. Racially
concentrated areas of poverty, on the other hand, are on average 6.6
miles from downtown, and in cities such as Baltimore, St. Louis, and
Philadelphia, they’re much closer.
