Segregating the Rich

A new study indicates that cities are segregating the rich from everyone else.

[C]ities have always had rich and poor neighborhoods. What's shrinking out of existence today are mixed neighborhoods that include people from different class and cultural backgrounds. And that's a problem, say economists who have done longitudinal studies of kids who grow up in income segregated cities. Kids who grow up in neighborhoods where everyone is poor tend to stay poor, while kids in mixed neighborhoods enjoy the kind of class mobility that the US prides itself on fostering.

It's not that the poor are becoming more isolated as income inequality increases. The isolation of wealthy neighborhoods is becoming more pronounced. The walls are invisible. Public spaces structure themselves around the affluent residents of the immediate neighborhood.