possibly noteworthy wrote:
In this decade alone, two of Atlanta's huge suburban counties, Clayton and DeKalb, have acquired substantial black majorities, and immigrants arriving from foreign countries are settling primarily there or in similar outlying areas, not within the city itself.
Reading back over this, one wonders to what degree its an oversimplification made by someone who doesn't actually understand how this city is laid out. I mean, generally speaking I think that there is some gentrification of downtown Atlanta that has been going on, but you can't rely on data about counties to understand the relationship between urban and suburban here because thats not how the counties are laid out. It seems like thats what they are doing - are they presuming that the demographic data for Fulton reflects "the city itself?" In fact, the "city," which I think of as the area inside the perimeter, is split 55 - 40 between Dekalb and Fulton with the other 5 percent going to Clayton. Fulton includes huge suburban areas southeast and north of the city, including well to do Sandy Springs where houses on quarter acre lots go for $500,000.* DeKalb has lots of immigrants because there used to be (1970) a huge industrial area along Peachtree Industrial Blvd. with numerous factories. They have been shutting those factories down, which caused property values in the area to collapse, Detroit style. Except Atlanta is not Detriot, and a huge, diverse immigrant community swept in to take advantage of the cheap rents. Its like if you took all of the immigrant clusters in NYC, shook them up, and placed them in a single neighborhood. Referring to this place as an "outlying area" and an example of demographic inversion is simply misleading. Today the area is starting to gentrify a bit. They renamed part of "Peachtree Industrial Blvd" to just plain "Peachtree Blvd." One of the last big factories, a GM plant, closed in September. Not a reaction to the crisis - this had been announced for years. There were plans on the table to level it and install a new urbanist shopping/living/working type setup. I suspect those plans are on hold given the economic crisis. Same thing with developments downtown. Apparently 66 new condos were sold during the second half of 08 and they recently auctioned off a bunch of nice downtown condos at half their original asking prices. Whatever demographic inversion was going on has absolutely ground to a halt and in my view there is way too much high end housing coming on the market. There are numerous buildings in construction around the city that feature million dollar condos - a Ritz Carlton residence in Buckhead, a Trump Tower, and 1010 Midtown where most of the units are around $600,000. I honestly think this represents some sort of spreadsheet fantasy where the numbers look better if you assume all the customers are rich. The actual market is looking for something completely different. What is going to happen to those buildings? How can demographic inversion continue in light of the housing market? The presumption is that the wealthy are the drivers. People have to be able to sell their suburban house, and still be financially solvent enough to move to the city and raise housing prices there. Developers have to be able to borrow money to turn urban areas with boarded up old buildings into exciting places to live, and they have to be able to sell those places so they can pay back their loans. All of that activity seemed rooted in bubble lending, bubble pricing, and bubble business models. The idea that the its going to continue apace seems odd. My inclination is that this is a big game of musical chairs, and the music just stopped, and where ever people are - thats where they are going to be for a while, as long as they can afford the mortgage. The great demographic shift may involve upper middle class foreclosees who bought more house than they could afford and are now attempting to rent with a shattered credit rating. Where will those people end up - they'll end up where ever they can, and I suspect they'll be miserable for 7 years while they wait for their credit ratings to clear so they can buy a house again. * Apparently there was not a significant housing price bubble in this town. Those places are just that expensive. And everyone drives really expensive cars. This is what I live around. Paul Graham asks what living in your city tells you. Living in the north Perimeter area for 6 odd years now has told me that everybody makes way, way more money than I do. Its not inspiring so much as it makes you sympathize with class warfare. RE: Trading Places: The Demographic Inversion of the American City | 
