Gentrification is an inherently geographical population phenomenon in that it occurs within the spatial context of neighborhoods over time. Academics and planners spend a lot of time and resources studying patterns and trends in gentrification and the consequences suffered by lower-income people who are pushed out of their neighborhoods as wealthier, better-educated individuals move into the area. Building on previous research into the factors driving gentrification, this analysis seeks to identify gentrifying neighborhoods comprised of census tracts in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Lost Angeles and Seattle using cluster analysis to group places with similar trends in these variables.
A few of the clusters in this analysis are characterized by trends that define gentrification, though none of them isolates only gentrifying tracts. Overall this work reveals that gentrification is a complicated population phenomenon that manifests in many ways. Though this cluster analysis did not produce concrete results about the location of gentrified tracts, it did narrow the number of places to look and categorized them in terms of some similar trends. The cluster analysis also revealed other interesting population trends that have not been emphasized as much in recent scholarship. After identifying potentially gentrifying tracts, deeper exploration into the variables used in the cluster analysis can yield a deeper understanding of the meaning of the clusters in the context of gentrification.
(Fore more information about the data and methods used in this research, see Appendix)