The wealthy are walling themselves off in cities segregated by economics

[mahatmakanejeeves]

The wealthy are walling themselves off in cities segregated by economics

Wonkblog
By Emily Badger February 23 at 3:43 PM
@emilymbadger

Concentrated poverty is one of the biggest problems facing cities today, as more of the urban poor become isolated in neighborhoods where the people around them are poor, too. Growing economic segregation across cities, though, is also shaped by a parallel, even stronger force: concentrated wealth.

A new analysis from Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander at the University of Toronto's Martin Prosperity Institute, which identifies the most and least economically segregated metropolitan areas in the United States, makes clear that economic segregation today is heavily shaped by the choices of people at the top: "It is not so much the size of the gap between the rich and poor that drives segregation," they write, "as the ability of the super-wealthy to isolate and wall themselves off from the less well-to-do."

Florida and Mellander created an index of economic segregation that takes into account how we're divided across metro areas by income, but also by occupation and education, two other pillars of what we often think of as socioeconomic status. Among the largest metros in the country, Austin ranks as the place where wealthy, college-educated professionals and less-educated, blue-collar workers are least likely to share the same neighborhoods:



Florida and Mellander

Notably, that top-10 list has four Texas metros. The Washington metro area comes in just behind these big cities, as the 26th most economically segregated in the country, out of 359 U.S. metros. Orlando, Portland, Ore., and Minneapolis, meanwhile, are the least economically segregated among the metros with at least a million people.



Florida and Mellander

[muntrv]

1. I am surprised Detroit is not in the top 10 of most segregated areas.