[Marxism] Gentrification Changing Face of New Atlanta

["Michael Hoover" <hooverm@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The New York Times
March 11, 2006
Gentrification Changing Face of New Atlanta
By SHAILA DEWAN

ATLANTA, March 8 * In-town living. Live-work-play. Mixed income. The buzzwords 
of soft-core urbanism are everywhere these days in this eternally optimistic 
city, used in real estate advertisements and mayoral boasts to lure money from 
the suburbs and to keep young people from leaving.

Loft apartments roll onto the market every week, the public housing authority 
is a nationally recognized pioneer in redevelopment and the newest shopping 
plaza has one Target and three Starbucks outlets.

But although gentrification has expanded the city's tax base and weeded out 
blight, it has had an unintended effect on Atlanta, long a lure to 
African-Americans and a symbol of black success. For the first time since the 
1920's, the black share of the city's population is declining and the white 
percentage is on the rise.

The change has introduced an element of uncertainty into local politics, which 
has been dominated by blacks since 1973, when Atlanta became the first major 
Southern city to elect a black mayor.

Some, like Mayor Shirley Franklin, who is serving her second and final term, 
play down the significance of the change, saying that the city * now 54 percent 
black * will remain progressive and that voters here do not strictly adhere to 
racial lines. Others warn of the dilution, if not the demise, of black power.

"It's certainly affecting local politics," said Billy Linville, a political 
consultant who has worked for Ms. Franklin. "More white politicians are 
focusing on possibly becoming mayor and positioning themselves accordingly, 
whereas in the past they would not have. The next mayor of Atlanta, I believe, 
will be African-American, but after that it may get very interesting."

The changes do not mean that Atlanta has lost its magnetism for blacks. 
Twenty-year projections show the percentage of African-Americans continuing to 
inch upward in the 10-county metropolitan area. Blacks already hold the 
majority on the Clayton County commission, and they are gaining footholds in 
counties like Cobb and Gwinnett.

But the city itself, a small splotch of fewer than half a million residents in 
a galaxy of sprawl, is now attracting the affluent, who are mostly white, in 
part because they want to avoid gear-grinding commutes that are among the 
nation's longest.

In that sense, demographers say, the shift is driven by class rather than race. 
In 1990, the per capita income in the city of Atlanta was below that of the 
metropolitan area as a whole, but in 2004 it was 28 percent higher, the largest 
such shift in the country, according to a University of Virginia urban planning 
study.

So rapid is the explosion of wealth that Ms. Franklin recently tried to impose 
a moratorium on McMansions, new houses bloated far beyond the size of their 
older neighbors.

According to census figures, non-Hispanic blacks went from a high of 66.8 
percent of Atlanta's population in 1990 to 61 percent in 2000 and to 54 percent 
in 2004. In the same time period, non-Hispanic whites went from 30.3 percent to 
35 percent. The 2004 figures are estimates.

Even the Old Fourth Ward, the once elegant black neighborhood where Martin 
Luther King Jr. was born, is now less than 75 percent black, down from 94 
percent in 1990, as houses have skyrocketed in value and low-rent apartments 
have been replaced by new developments.

"There could be a time in the not-too-distant future when the black population 
is below half of the city population, if this trend continues," said William 
Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington research group.

Atlanta's upward shift in its white population is atypical, Mr. Frey said. 
Although many other cities have embarked on revitalization programs, only 
Washington is seeing a similar, if less stark, racial trend as Atlanta. More 
often, blacks and whites both are losing ground to a surging Latino population. 
Even in Atlanta, the Latino population rose to 26,100 in 2004 from 18,700 in 
2000.

Most mayors would see a physical revitalization like Atlanta's as an 
accomplishment. The city has led the country, rivaled only by Chicago, in the 
race to replace public housing projects with mixed-income developments.

Housing has also mushroomed in places where it had not previously existed. The 
most ambitious project, Atlantic Station, a shopping and residential district 
on the site of a former steel mill near downtown, will have more than 2,000 
units. Loft prices start at $160,000.

But critics say Mayor Franklin and her predecessor, Bill Campbell, betrayed 
their voter base by not doing enough to keep Atlanta affordable for poor blacks 
as property taxes increase and landlords sell out to developers.

"It's clear as the nose on your face who it's going to impact the most," said 
Joe Beasley, the human resources director at an Atlanta church and a member of 
the city's Gentrification Task Force, now defunct, which studied ways to ease 
the effects of rising property taxes and housing prices. "Bill Campbell was 
cutting his own throat, and Shirley Franklin is continuing to cut her own 
throat."

Ms. Franklin counters that many new developments, including Atlantic Station, 
have set aside areas for low-income or affordable housing. She says one of her 
major accomplishments, financing a badly needed overhaul of the sewage and 
water system without a large increase in rates, has kept city living 
affordable. But the bottom line, in the mayor's view, is that the city must try 
to mold development where it can.

"We're constantly seeking a balance in what we support," Ms. Franklin said last 
week in a telephone interview.

David Bositis, a senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and 
Economic Studies, a Washington group that studies black issues, said he viewed 
the change as largely positive. "I don't know that it ever was a good thing 
when you had cities that were becoming viewed as black cities," Mr. Bositis 
said.

He added, "People said, 'This is our city now,' but half the time you looked at 
what was there and you said, 'Who cares?' "

Race is not the only factor in the political equation.

"We're talking about an era in which you see a conservative trend among certain 
sectors of the black community," said William Boone, a political science 
professor at Clark Atlanta University, a predominantly African-American 
institution. "That's going to have some impact on who's offered for mayor."

Power in Atlanta has always involved coalitions of blacks and other groups, 
said Ms. Franklin, who has received high marks for restoring credibility to 
city government and who was re-elected in 2005 with 91 percent of the vote.

"This whole notion that the sky is falling, I don't see it," Ms. Franklin said. 
"To me the question is, Will Atlanta be a progressive city, given that it's the 
home of the civil rights movement, the home of the historically black colleges? 
Will that continue with the demographic shifts? And my answer is yes."

Already, the change has had unpredictable effects. Kwanza Hall is a young black 
politician from the rapidly gentrifying Old Fourth Ward, a neighborhood that is 
part of a mostly white City Council district that includes affluent areas like 
Inman Park. But in the last election, Mr. Hall, who ran his campaign from a 
year-old coffee shop next to a soon-to-open men's spa, defeated two whites for 
an open seat.

To Joe Stewardson, who owns the coffee shop building and was the first white 
president of the ward's community development corporation, the question was not 
Mr. Hall's race but his ability to forge relationships outside a neighborhood 
whose boundary was, not too long ago, what Mr. Stewardson called "an iron 
curtain."

"You would not have seen that," Mr. Stewardson said, "if this neighborhood had 
not changed so much."




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