In recent years, the blocks around Oakland’s Fruitvale Transit Village have seen many changes that are typical of urban neighborhoods around the United States. Housing prices are on the rise, and the population has grown wealthier and more educated. But Fruitvale’s transformation is unusual in one key way: It hasn’t gotten whiter.
Between 2000 and 2015, homeownership, median household income, and educational attainment all increased in the majority-Latino neighborhood. The gains were on par with Uptown Oakland, which posted the Bay Area’s largest increase in white share of the population in the same timeframe. Unlike Uptown, however, Fruitvale saw these outcomes without an exodus of people of color.
How did Fruitvale manage to maintain its cultural identity while showing all of the economic indicators of gentrification? Researchers from UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative believe the transformation can be attributed, at least in part, to the transit village itself; a community-planned project that provided the neighborhood with much-needed social services, and an inviting urban design that stimulated commerce and street life.
[For more on this story by BENJAMIN SCHNEIDER, go to https://www.citylab.com/equity...displacement/556373/]
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