If White Flight never happened, would urban and inner-city communities be better off today?

Question

White Flight is believed by many sociologists to be a key factor in the urban decay that followed the 1960s riots and the heroin and crack drug epidemics in the 70s & 80s.

Our professor told us that mostly Caucasian WWII veterans used GI benefits to take out mortgages to purchase houses outside of cities for their families. The inner cities were left without jobs and tax revenue since businesses and factories moved to the suburbs as well.

Some feel that this laid foundation for racial and class divide that even today is closely linked to higher unemployment, incarceration and other social inequities within urban American communities that decided their deep political affinity with the Democratic Party for the next generations to come. What do you think?

Answer 1

I don't think that it's a race thing; obviously 'white' and 'black' (make that pinkish to cream and shades of brown) are mentioned most, but 'yellow' (yeah well, Asians, especially Chinese) people are important too. They just seem to kinda go unnoticed.



A big difference is that Chinese people tend to want to live close to their businesses, which stops them moving out to the suburbs.



Suburbs mean (in the USA at least, a little less so in Europe thanks to public transport availability being planned in) having to have a car; we currently see that young people are becoming less interested in having their own car and that they prefer to live in or close to the city because .... welllll ...... the suburbs are so DULL!



Of course the reason is, in part, the ever increasing traffic problems that didn't used to be an issue when suburbanization started.



And of course suburbanization, with that need to have a car, meant having to have a car and all the costs that go with it. And a place to park the damn thing when you go to the city, which again costs money.



There is also the factor of family size .... and the change in lifestyle (traditional 'daddy goes to work, mommy stays home' families? Try mom and dad both having a job as standard nowadays). If both parents work, having the kids home alone in the sprawling suburbs is a problem (not to mention how the kids are supposed to get to school and back home). The average family size is getting lower; so a city home will do - with a bigger family, a suburban house - typically larger - has its advantages.



In short, it's a gross over-simplification to pick out some single factor.

Answer 2

after the war there was money available to borrow to buy a home, suburbs were cheaper and thought of as a better place to raise a family, you had a yard. I don't believe that businesses moved to the burbs, banking, and commerce stayed in the cities to service people there, I don't know of any cities emptying out. In a sociology class I did a lot of research about 'women of color' one frustration was that as a black family became economically better they moved out of the old neighborhoods to better places and did not stay and try to upgrade the neighborhoods they grew up in. It is human nature to try and do better than your parents and then move to an area that has a better place to live, less crime, etc.

Answer 3

The trend is actually reversing for the past 25 years. Whites are moving closer to the inner city as Minorities are moving to the Suburbs or out of the Metro areas entirely. Whites especially college educated ones looking for the best jobs are finding them in the City. Many of them are tired of the long commutes and would rather live closer to where the action is. Jobs, Sights, things to do. You dont get that stuff in the Suburbs anymore.

Answer 4

It is possible that if it had never happened, if they had bought buildings or condos in the inner city all along, that we would have mixed housing - but the other possibility is that rents would have gone up and the poor would have been forced to relocate to substandard housing built outside the active and attractive inner city.

Answer 5

Tell your professor that his/her job is to teach, not to indoctrinate by providing simplistic versions of social dynamics just to fit a 'blame the whites' narrative.



"Rachael A. Woldoff offers a fresh look at race and neighborhoods by documenting a two-stage process of neighborhood transition and focusing on the perspectives of two understudied groups: newly arriving black residents and whites who have stayed in the neighborhood. Woldoff describes the period of transition when white residents still remain, though in diminishing numbers, and a second, less discussed stage of racial change: black flight. She reveals what happens after white flight is complete: "Pioneer" blacks flee to other neighborhoods or else adjust to their new segregated residential environment by coping with the loss of relationships with their longer-term white neighbors, signs of community decline, and conflicts with the incoming second wave of black neighbors."

Answer 6

In moderation, suburbs were ok. But now these idiots are building mega stores, mega malls, mega ice cream shops, mega toy stores



They are cutting down trees to make these suburbs bigger. Enough is enough!