The first aspect is population. Recent growth data shows that the suburbs- long the site of outward sprawl- are now gaining residents at a slower pace than the inner city, reflecting a new inward growth. The metro area's latest growth figures demonstrate the reversal. While the suburbs of the Twin Cities accounted for 90% of the population growth in the metro area a decade ago, they have fallen to just 40% today, as the growth of the core cities has expanded. St. Paul's population grew from 1,299, to 286,367 between 2010 and 2011, while Minneapolis gained 5,295 residents, bringing its population to 387,873, and thousands of living spaces in the inner cities are currently being planned and developed. This is despite both cities having lost population from 2000 to 2010- 169 for Minneapolis and over 1,800 for St. Paul. Meanwhile, though the fastest-growing suburbs of Woodbury and Blaine gained over 1,100 residents each this last year, some suburbs such Belle Plaine, formerly a growth hot spot, saw an overall population loss.
The Twin Cities is not an isolated case- the shift in the urban core is taking place across the country, with Chicago's central neighborhoods becoming both more populous and more white, and cadres of artists, bohemians, and yuppies flocking the Rust Belt to take advantage of foreclosure prices and cheap housing in long depopulated blighted areas. This could be more than a crisis-driven momentary migration, however. Alan Erenhalt, author of the book 'The Great Inversion', writes that "We are living at a moment in which the massive outward migration of the affluent that characterized the second half of the twentieth century is coming to an end."
Although suburbs have existed on the periphery of large cities since antiquity, the suburbanization of the American middle class did not take off until the years after the Second World War. This was driven by a number of factors. In response to the housing shortage that faced homecoming GIs, investors like William Levitt revolutionized the housing sector with mass-produced developments on cheap land at the edge of the city, creating the modern middle class suburb. The developments were attractive to many middle-class families. The movement of many African-American workers to the North during the war to work in the war industries (continued in the post-war years), further fed the suburbs as many Caucasian families left the cities in the process of 'white flight'. All of this took place at a time when the proportion of the US population living in rural areas declined as the industrialization of agriculture saw the general abolition of sharecropping in the post-war years. This industrialization, with its high capital costs and economies of scale, combined with the dismantling of farm policies meant to keep small farms afloat and a new 'get big or get out' attitude, also drove the loss of those small farms, culminating in the 1980s farm crisis. Now, only around 18% of Americans live in rural areas (and much fewer on farms). All said, a shift of population to the cities and a shift of population within the cities to the suburbs saw the suburban population, which had been 7% in 1910, grow to 32% by 1960.
As the suburbanization process progressed, urban decay hit the nation. Communities of color, kept in the inner cities by poverty, low rent, and (until it was made illegal) housing discrimination, found their neighborhoods crumbling around them. Part of this was from redlining by both government programs and private institutions that denied loans to potential homeowners and businesses in those neighborhoods. The loss of the industrial base to outsourcing and the formation of the Rust Belt did not help matters. After core neighborhoods succumbed to blight, the process of gentrification, as well as its more planned counterpart in urban renewal, overcame some locales, replacing lower-income residents with first artists and young professionals and then with middle-class residences. Rising rents force poorer residents out just as new businesses and services come to the neighborhood. Regardless of such small 'reclamations' of space by the middle strata, however, the social-geographical layout of cities has remained generally the same for decades: Affluent and growing suburbs, and poorer, dwindling inner cities.
Something has changed, however, and that long-standing order of things is being upturned. The suburbs, while still more expensive than an apartment in many inner city neighborhoods, have lost some of their prestige and wealth. In 2008, suburbs were the site of the fastest growth in the population below the poverty line, and with poverty rates in suburbs climbing at five times the rate of increase in the (admittedly already generally poor) inner city, around 55% of the nation's poor households are now suburban. The de facto racial segregation that long kept northern inner cities predominantly black is changing as well. A New Great Migration bringing many African-American families back to the South, where some of the Midwest's manufacturing jobs have gone, and other black families moving to the suburbs as these areas become cheaper and long-standing discrimination policies have been made illegal. The proportion of black residents in the core city populations of all 20 of the nation's largest metropolitan areas has fallen in the last decade. In the Twin Cities, some suburbs such as Eden Prairie and Shakopee have become enclaves of immigrant populations, with the foreign-born population in those areas rising from 113,000 in 2000 to 308,000 in 2010. Downtown St. Paul, meanwhile, has gone from 49.3% to 73.3% white in the same time period.
Fixing up a newly-sold house in North Minneapolis
Meanwhile, the loss of manufacturing- once the cause of blight- may be becoming a driver of post-industrial renewal, as inner cities find themselves free of the smog and rumble of production that once plagued them. Violent crime reduction also can make formerly dangerous streets more appealing to affluent urban settlers. The new American city is less segregated, less industrial, less violent, and alluring to rural and suburban youth alike seeking a life in the exciting, culture-rich neighborhoods near downtown.
But what does this mean for the working class people who are left behind in the inner city in the most hipster state in the country? In North Minneapolis, it may mean that those who have not left willingly will be forced out by gentrification. The Near Northside Master Plan, passed in 1998, aims to cultivate "an attractive and sustainable urban neighborhood in the Near Northside…to rebuild a mixed-income, mixed-density, culturally diverse, amenity-rich neighborhood.” Property values there are already rising as office buildings and more expensive housing take root, with the renewal sped along by the rebuilding process following the recent tornado damage. Commissioner Mike Opat call it a 'clean-up effort', though local activist Bill English maintains that "The goal seems to be, to get rid of the poor people, to regentrify the community". Fears of displacement have been raised in St. Paul, as well, regarding fears that the light rail system could bring higher rent and taxes, driving working class people (ironically, the most in need of such public transportation) away from the central corridor, where around 45% of residents already spend a third or more of their income on housing.
The developing new urban landscape raises questions for the future. How will it affect the racial and class politics of the country? With green transportation solutions needed for a lower-carbon economy, will those solutions include adequate service to poorer suburbs? What will the future of school districts look like as the cityscape shifts? What will become of the culture and identity of the Twin Cities' core? The answers to these and other questions await, as the coming decades remake the metropolis.
Image sources: Photobucket and the Star Tribune
