

Markers of Gentrification: Mapping Rent as a Share of Income - stathack
http://blog.kwelia.com/2014/01/16/markers-of-gentrification-mapping-rent-as-a-share-of-income/

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exelius
Not sure that these are markers of gentrifying neighborhoods -- just as an
example, the big red area on your Austin map next to the University of Texas
is largely student housing, and has always been this way: students have little
to no income, often have roommates, and the parking policies of the university
ensure that many students have few options other than to live near campus.

Likewise, the map of Philadelphia misses most of south Philadelphia, an area
that is gentrifying extremely quickly with several hundred million dollar
condo developments set to go up in the middle of the ghetto.

Interesting statistics, but I don't know that the conclusions that the authors
are trying to draw are valid.

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tthomas48
Actually UT heavily distorts the rental market, since while the students are
poor, their housing is being paid for via loans or parents. So rents usually
run higher than market rates near universities. This is why Universities
frequently have expensive housing, but are unable to keep nearby stores in
business.

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kilroy123
All the images on this page aren't loading for me...

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aliston
Google Cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.kwelia.com%2F2014%2F01%2F16%2Fmarkers-
of-gentrification-mapping-rent-as-a-share-of-
income%2F&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS554US554&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.kwelia.com%2F2014%2F01%2F16%2Fmarkers-
of-gentrification-mapping-rent-as-a-share-of-
income%2F&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1604j0j4&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8)

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tthomas48
I think you're actually mapping areas where the market is being prevented from
providing enough rental units for one reason or another.

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dougmccune
or just where the data's bad. One of the highest ratios of median rent to
median income (what they're trying to call their gentrification ratio) in the
map of SF is shown in SOMA near 4th and Folsom. I used to live on that block,
the median income is most certainly not $16k. It's just not. Half of that
block group is non-residential, either Yerba Buena or office buildings, so
maybe that's doing something weird to the data, but overall I think this
attempt at a "gentrification" measure doesn't at all work.

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munificent
Take a look at Seattle:
[https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract?cbsa=Seattle-
Tacom...](https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract?cbsa=Seattle-Tacoma-
Bellevue,%20WA)

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gphil
Looks like something is wrong with our median income data in Seattle. We're
taking a look at it now.

Edit: we were missing the median income data for Washington state and a few
other states. It's fixed now.

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jdmichal
The Tampa Bay data has a weird outlier that it making the map kind of useless:

[https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract?cbsa=Tampa-
St.%20P...](https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract?cbsa=Tampa-
St.%20Petersburg-Clearwater,%20FL#)

Notice the one red spot at the top level, and everything else falling within
the first 3 levels, which are 30% each. If the data is correct, perhaps the
algorithm to pick the scaling factors could be improved to ignore outliers at
the top and bottom?

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sarah2079
These maps are really interesting, although I agree that whether they are
actually measuring gentrification is debateable.

I would have found the site a lot easier to use if there were a big map view
of the whole country where you could select from the supported regions. I was
trying to see Mountain View, and finding the right setting in the drop down
menu took a while (Mountain View and Los Altos are lumped in with "San Jose-
Sunnyvale-Santa Clara" if anyone else is looking).

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epmatsw
These maps don't work in Firefox :(

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lambdasquirrel
They aren't working in Chrome either. Is there some plugin that needs to be
installed?

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epmatsw
They worked in Chrome Canary for me. The pictures did not load correctly, but
the actual maps that are linked to worked.

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lightblade
Another sign of gentrification: I'm seeing all these ad signs that they're
buying cheap houses. These ads are getting more and more now. I say this is a
sign because there are poor people that wants to move out, and others sees it
as opportunity to flip the house for profit.

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quomopete
American Community Survey data is practically valueless. There, I said it.
Symbolically, it may be interesting. When applied to cases like this, the
conclusions one can draw are largely untenable.

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healthblerd
Try the links- they work for me.

