Can an old neighborhood stay middle class?

[LivingInThePast 364]

You know, in Real Cities™, it seems like old neighborhoods (say, from the 1950s) built as middle class never stay that way. Either it falls into disrepair and is not a place you want to be around at night, or it gentrifies/appreciates in value so only those very well-off can live there. Not exorbitantly rich, but not exactly a "first home" for raising a family, either.

Do you know any real examples that break this trend?

[Kifflom112 355]

Really, I think differently because i've been through several old neighborhoods in San Antonio and Charlotte and they are well and still middle class. Only cities with a bad economy or high crime rate have a lot of r$$ to r$ neighborhoods. It depends on the region or economy. Maybe like Detroit or LA or any place that is having an economic problem or had a big one in the past.

  Edited August 26, 2011 by Zulu2065  

[Jamesrules90 133]

Well in Newcastle my father lives in an old Victorian house here and that is a middle class area.

Although examples in England may be slightly different and since it is right next to the great north road, high street and metro station may affect it slightly.

  Edited August 26, 2011 by Jamesrules90  

[xbfernandez 3]

I think the Manila area can give pretty good examples of all the possible scenarios that can happen with old master-planned middle class neighborhoods.

Quezon City has a population of more than a million people, and most of them are middle-class and work in the government or for the universities nearby. The Projects (as I like to call them because they have very creative names like Project 1, Project 2, Project 3...) were planned to be middle-class, and they have remained so up until the present day. However, some projects, especially the ones near the Diliman area, became more upper-middle class, while the projects near the red light districts in Cubao, well, you get the idea.

Whereas, in the area where I live (in the adjacent province of Rizal), the gated communities that were designed to be middle class pretty much stayed that way up until now. The western part of the province is filled to the brim with middle-class families who send their kids to private schools (but not the really exclusive ones) and work in professional jobs: doctors, lawyers, engineers, office workers, and, because we are in the Philippines, call center agents .

Also, for an example that might be closer to home, New York has massive swaths of middle-class neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens that apparently have stayed that way for a very long time, judging from what I observed when I was there.

[LivingInThePast 364]

Really, I think differently because i've been through several old neighborhoods in San Antonio and Charlotte and they are well and still middle class. Only cities with a bad economy or high crime rate have a lot of r$$ to r$ neighborhoods. It depends on the region or economy. Maybe like Detroit or LA or any place that is having an economic problem or had a big one in the past.

Well, see, but are they affordable now as they were then? I mean, take Houston for example: many of the wards fell into disrepair, while other areas, like The Heights and Montrose only appreciated in value. Arguably, you could say that Montrose and The Heights DID maintain themselves, as they were both streetcar suburbs, but other neighborhoods did not do so well: Sharpstown went downhill. Greenspoint was originally a fancy edge city and fell apart. Sugar Land was originally a small blue-collar sugar mill town but as new subdivisions were added, the land value skyrocketed.

[Cob92 360]

For Houston, you could also use Clear Lake City as a counterexample. The original 1960s parts of Clear Lake remain steadily middle class; it's the newer parts of the neighborhood that were built in the 1990s that have brought wealthier residents in. I think the big problem that destroys middle class suburbs is the flight of middle class jobs from the area, which causes mass sell offs, causing land value to drop, attracting poorer residents. These residents cannot support the local school system as well, so land values drop farther and before long you not only have the poor, but you also have some quite unsavory types taking up residence in the area. Once a neighborhood begins to go downhill, it's pretty much a vicious cycle of dilapidation scaring away the very residents that would have maintained the neighborhood in a decent state.