Recent City Talk columns have touched upon issues related to the changing demographics and identities of neighborhoods in the greater downtown area.
From day to day, even from year to year, neighborhoods can seem static, but there’s a constant ebb and flow.
Right now, I’m especially concerned about the rapid demographic changes in the neighborhood south of Forsyth Park and the likelihood that those changes will accelerate if the city of Savannah follows through on its plan to demolish 36 historic cottages that have been occupied for more than a century by working-class black residents.
That portion of Meldrim Row, which the city has chosen as the new location for the Central Precinct, lies along the border of two U.S. Census tracts — 113 and 114.
Viewed together, those two tracts are more or less bounded by Park Avenue, Habersham Street, Victory Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
Census tract 113 in the northern half of that big box saw a healthy population increase of 12.5 percent between 2000 and 2010, while tract 114 saw a population decline of 10.6 percent.
Those are significant changes, but the demographic breakdown reveals even more extreme volatility.
Tract 114, which extends from 34th Street to Victory Drive, lost half its black population between 2000 and 2010, according to census estimates. That’s a loss of almost 800 black residents.
Over the same decade, tract 114 added about 500 white residents. According to the most recent estimates, the tract was 52 percent white by 2012.
Most of the site for the proposed police precinct lies in census tract 113, which was 48 percent black and 44 percent white according to the 2010 census. Between 2000 and 2010, that tract lost about 600 black residents and gained almost 700 white residents. The most recent estimates suggest the trend is accelerating.
It’s been a long time since I’ve written in detail about the loaded term “gentrification,” but I’d argue that the dynamics of this population shift are much more nuanced than that term connotes.
This is not simply a case of wealthier white buyers displacing poorer black residents although you could find examples of that.
Longtime residents of the area, which has been plagued for decades by street-level crime and decaying housing stock, see little reason to stay. They see a neighborhood in decline.
By contrast, newer white residents focus on the historic architecture, affordable real estate, cultural diversity and excellent proximity to downtown. They see a neighborhood on the rise.
It seems clear that razing three dozen homes long occupied by African-Americans will cause this historic demographic shift to accelerate. In Sunday’s column, I will expand upon that proposition and explore other matters.
City Talk appears every Sunday and Tuesday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net. Send mail to 10 E. 32nd St., Savannah, GA 31401.
