Photo: USA/Paul Brown/Rex.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland released a report today on the gentrification of the 55 largest cities in America. While gentrification can be a difficult thing to quantify, author Daniel Hartley uses changing neighborhood home values as an indicator, because they can give good insight into the economic health of a given neighborhood. His report defines a gentrifying neighborhood if it is "located in the central city of a metropolitan area, and it goes from being in the bottom half of the distribution of home prices in the metropolitan area to the top half between 2000 and 2007." This means, quite simply, that if a poor area quickly became sought-after and rents were raised, it would be classified as gentrified.
So, how did the cities stack up? Boston came out on top, with 61% of its low-price tracks having gentrified. Seattle (55%), New York (46%), and San Francisco (42%) follow it, with a much small proportion for the other cities listed, which aren't developing as rapidly. You can check out the full report here, and Business Insider even has a handy map to help you visualize change across the country. Interesting, but difficult to grasp. (Business Insider)