Next City, May 19, 2025, In the Past 50 Years, We’ve Lost More Than 150 Majority-Black Neighborhoods
While gentrification is still relatively uncommon, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition’s new “Displaced By Design” report concludes, its harms can be intense and lasting – namely displacement of disinvested communities.
From 1980 to 2020, gentrification impacted more than 1,800 downtown census tracts in major metro areas, with Washington, DC, New York City, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Atlanta and the San Francisco Bay area topping the list.
The list includes more than 500 mostly-Black neighborhoods affected by gentrification, researchers found. Nearly half of mostly-Black neighborhoods that experienced gentrification in 1980 were no longer mostly-Black by 2020; of those, about 29% saw a full racial turnover and became mostly white or Hispanic neighborhoods, and about 23% became racially-mixed.
