The Most Gentrified Cities In America
The Cleveland Fed today released a study of gentrification patterns and the effect of gentrification on residents' financial health.
Daniel Hartley, the author of the study, defines a neighborhood as gentrifying "if it is located in the central city of a metropolitan area and it goes from being in the bottom half of the distribution of home prices in the metropolitan area to the top half between 2000 and 2007", noting that housing prices are a good overall reflection of the economic health of a neighborhood.
"Though all cities experienced some gentrification, most saw less than a third of neighborhoods with the potential to gentrify do so," wrote Hartley.
"Four cities saw significant shares of the neighborhoods that could gentrify, do so: Boston (61 percent), Seattle (55 percent), New York (46 percent), and San Francisco (42 percent). In Boston, the gentrifying neighborhoods represented about a fourth of the entire city's population. In other cities, the proportion was much smaller."
Below is a list of U.S. metros in order of percentage of a city's low-price tracts that gentrified (third column).
| Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) | Proportion of low-price census tracts in the city (those with below-median MSA home value), percent | Proportion of the city's low-price tracts that gentrified, percent | Proportion of the city's total number of tracts that gentrified, percent |
| Boston | 43 | 61 | 26 |
| Seattle | 17 | 55 | 9 |
| New York City | 40 | 46 | 18 |
| San Francisco | 31 | 42 | 13 |
| Washington, DC | 55 | 35 | 19 |
| Atlanta | 59 | 31 | 18 |
| Chicago | 57 | 28 | 16 |
| Portland | 48 | 28 | 13 |
| Tampa | 73 | 24 | 18 |
| Los Angeles | 51 | 23 | 12 |
| Denver | 52 | 23 | 12 |
| Virginia Beach | 31 | 23 | 7 |
| Minneapolis | 71 | 22 | 16 |
| New Orleans | 59 | 20 | 12 |
| Austin | 51 | 19 | 10 |
| Jacksonville | 61 | 17 | 10 |
| Nashville | 58 | 16 | 9 |
| St. Louis | 84 | 16 | 13 |
| Anchorage | 50 | 15 | 7 |
| Honolulu | 28 | 15 | 4 |
| Las Vegas | 53 | 15 | 8 |
| Colorado Springs | 48 | 14 | 7 |
| Philadelphia | 81 | 14 | 11 |
| Albuquerque | 47 | 13 | 6 |
| Houston | 55 | 13 | 7 |
| Miami | 62 | 12 | 8 |
| Cincinnati | 72 | 12 | 9 |
| Fresno | 57 | 11 | 6 |
| Tucson | 67 | 11 | 7 |
| Charlotte | 40 | 11 | 4 |
| Phoenix | 64 | 10 | 7 |
| San Diego | 46 | 10 | 5 |
| Columbus | 65 | 9 | 6 |
| Indianapolis | 60 | 8 | 5 |
| Kansas City | 68 | 8 | 6 |
| Corpus Christi | 45 | 8 | 4 |
| Sacramento | 64 | 8 | 5 |
| Milwaukee | 83 | 7 | 6 |
| Pittsburgh | 73 | 7 | 5 |
| Dallas | 52 | 7 | 4 |
| Memphis | 62 | 7 | 4 |
| San Antonio | 58 | 7 | 4 |
| Lexington | 52 | 7 | 3 |
| Cleveland | 93 | 7 | 6 |
| Oklahoma City | 55 | 7 | 4 |
| Buffalo | 78 | 6 | 5 |
| El Paso | 46 | 6 | 3 |
| Omaha | 54 | 6 | 3 |
| Raleigh | 35 | 4 | 2 |
| Toledo | 72 | 4 | 3 |
| Wichita | 57 | 4 | 2 |
| Oakland | 83 | 3 | 3 |
| Baltimore | 95 | 3 | 3 |
| Tulsa | 53 | 3 | 2 |
| Detroit | 94 | 3 | 2 |
The following map, based on the data in the study, shows the cities with the largest percentage of their gentrifiable neighborhoods actually gentrifying:
