My buddy Joe (and earlier, Tom Hanchett) shared a fascinating, though lengthy article in The New Republic by Alan Ehrenhalt about urban “inversion” — not the kind where hot polluted air settles over a city — but a demographic shift.
His point is that Chicago and other cities are seeing more middle- and upper-income people moving to the center, and low-income families and immigrants moving out to the far suburbs. He attributes it to several factors: de-industrializaton, less crime, young people eager for urban life, and traffic.
It includes several mentions of Charlotte, which is experiencing the kind of inversion he writes about. Here’s one:
In downtown Charlotte, a luxury condominium is scheduled for construction this year that will allow residents to drive their cars into a garage elevator, ride up to the floor they live on, and park right next to their front door. I have a hard time figuring out whether that is a triumph for urbanism or a defeat.
In Atlanta, he says, “the middle-class return to the city is occurring with more suddenness than perhaps anywhere in the United States,” and most people say it’s due to traffic and gas prices.