Abstract
Since the 1990s, the gentrification process in the U.S. has diffused down the urban hierarchy and to neighborhoods further from downtown. This paper focuses on one census tract in the inner-ring suburbs of one mid-sized city in the U.S. undergoing gentrification between 2000 and 2016. While the use of census data to measure gentrification has been around for decades, a new tool, Google Street View, can now supplement the measurement of gentrification. Using census data, Google Street View imagery, and Hwang’s (Gentrification, race, and immigration in the changing American city, Harvard University, Cambridge, 2015) gentrification index, I document change in the built environment of the neighborhood of Northside (Tract 74) in the city of Cincinnati. This tract’s accessible location to downtown Cincinnati and the University of Cincinnati/Hospital Complex as well as the availability of high-quality, low-cost housing made it a focal point for individual, corporate, and government investment after 2000. By 2014/16, that investment had transformed the built environment of Tract 74. There is no evidence that the Great Recession slowed the gentrification process as Tract 74 transitioned from disinvested in 2011 to early stage gentrification by 2014/16.
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Notes
New research from the University of Ottawa (Ilac et al., 2019) has claimed some success at training a computer to identify instances of possible gentrification in the Google Street View program by comparing structures over several years. This new program identifies clusters of areas undergoing gentrification that do not adhere to the zip code, census tract, or block boundaries. This may in the future result in new methods for identifying gentrifying areas.
A map for 2011 is not included as the changes are not significant enough from 2007 to warrant inclusion.
The best the user can do in Google Streetview is to position the image on a cross street and look down the alley. I excluded all alleys because this was insufficient to carry out the detailed analysis using Hwang’s criteria.
Most gentrification studies focus on census tracts as the unit of analysis as blocks are not large enough in population or territory to indicate whether a neighborhood has undergone gentrification.
These block face scores are averaged to create the block score and will not necessarily match the table.
Recall that buildings are not coded for stage of gentrification. The entire block face was examined using the coding criteria. This example at Mad Anthony and Apjones was the most impressive as it displayed a total rehabilitation of the structure. The rest of the block face had experienced gentrification, but not to the scale that this building had.
This building was in worse shape in 2011 than it was in 2007. By 2011, the windows were boarded-up suggesting that the building had been abandoned during the Great Recession.
Unlike the building at Mad Anthony and Apjones in Block 1004, this building is representative of the gentrification process on this block face.
Personal communication in May 2019 with representative from Northsiders Engaged in Sustainable Transformation (NEST) which was organized in 2004.
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Ravuri, E.D. A Google Street View analysis of gentrification: a case study of one census tract in Northside, Cincinnati, USA. GeoJournal 87, 3043–3063 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-021-10412-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-021-10412-7