Neighborhood Revitalization and Displacement A Review of the Evidence

Abstract Abstract Few issues have presented as great a challenge to urban policymakers and planners as the decline of the central city. As middle- and upper-income families migrated from the city to the suburban ring, they often left behind a decaying core increasingly populated by low-income and minority families. Despite evidence that these trends are continuing, numerous instances of spontaneous neighborhood revitalization have been occurring recently. While this new dynamic suggests that central cities may be staging a resurgence, it has also created concern that low-income city residents are being displaced from their neighborhoods as they find themselves unable to compete in the inflated housing market. The displacement phenomenon has received widespread attention in the popular press and has become a concern of many neighborhood groups and local planners. This paper reviews the evidence of displacement in revitalizing neighborhoods to determine if available data support the conventional wisdom. The conclusion is that, while displacement may be a serious problem in some neighborhoods, there is little support for the notion that a substantial trend is occurring or that in the aggregate large numbers of poor households are being affected.