Cityhood: The Latest Expression of Preserving Advantage
Today's urbanists might believe segregation is a conquered problem of the past. But the policy methods that support segregation can -- and do -- morph over time.
Source: stgeorgelouisiana.com
I admire the conviction with which today’s urbanists take on take on the challenges of the day. YIMBYism has made great strides nationally as urbanists push to increase housing units to reduce housing costs. Transit urbanists tout the merits of transit-oriented development to make cities more efficient – and livable – in our climate change impacted world. The 15-minute city and Vision Zero concepts provide new interpretations of how cities can be organized. And they’re fantastic ideas. Or ideals.
However, there’s a disconnect that I can’t get past. I see many urbanists focusing their efforts on housing, transit and infrastructure because there’s a sense that the social problems that plagued cities in the latter half of the 20th century have been solved. In essences, it’s as if the urban comeback of the 2000s and 2010s is used to prove their point: redlining became illegal, destroying urban neighborhoods in favor of highways is a thing of the past, suburbs are more diverse than ever, new investment and people returned to cities. Now let’s make cities physically better.
Yet one thing I’ve realized in my career is that the work to improve American cities is not finished. It’s not ever finished.
The issues that plagued cities a half century ago have never gone away. Challenges like inequality, segregation, crime, poor schools and declining tax bases were never solved, only buried. The cities that rebounded most were the ones best aligned to thrive under the global economic trends they would later lean their way. But I’d argue that American cities have never overcome the societal stigma placed on them since our nation’s founding.
Every so often, however, situations arise that demonstrate that we still have far to go, socially, to create the cities we want.
Last week the State of Louisiana Supreme Court voted 4-3 in favor of the creation of the state's newest city, St. George, after a nearly 10-year-long campaign. St. George is comprised of several previously unincorporated areas southeast of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s second largest city. Previously St. George was governed by the combined government of the City of Baton Rouge and East Baton Rouge Parish. With nearly 90,000 residents, St. George will become the state’s sixth largest city.
I’ll quote the New York Times to explain how St. George got here:
“The original plan was to start a school district. That didn’t work. So a group of residents in a sprawling unincorporated suburb of Baton Rouge, La., expanded their idea: Create a city of their own, called St. George.
In 2015, they collected signatures to bring their proposal up for a vote, but didn’t get enough. In 2019, they tried again. This time, they made it to a ballot and won the election, only to be stalled by a lengthy court battle.
But the Louisiana Supreme Court cleared the way on Friday for the formation of St. George, a city of nearly 100,000 people that joins the ranks of the state’s largest cities, falling between Lafayette and Lake Charles in population. It is the first city to be incorporated in Louisiana in nearly two decades.
A majority of justices found that lower courts had erred in blocking the city’s creation over concerns of its financial viability.”
St. George’s victory is another one for the cityhood movement, a movement witnessed mostly in the Atlanta metro area. In short, the cityhood movement seems to be a response to rapidly diversifying unincorporated areas in suburban counties. As an influx of Black residents begins to alter the demographic, political and economic makeup of the counties, majority-White areas are drawing new boundaries that allow them to exert greater local control. In doing so the new communities often include the wealthiest residential and commercial areas within their boundaries. This sets up the new local government for future fiscal success – but at the expense of other unincorporated areas within the county.
It appears that Atlanta’s contribution to the cityhood movement began with the creation of Sandy Springs. The area just north of Atlanta fought a 55-year battle rebuffing the city’s annexation efforts before incorporation in 2005. According to Wikipedia, Sandy Springs’ incorporation was followed by ten more incorporations over the next 17 years: Johns Creek (2006), Milton (2006), Chattahoochee Hills (2007), Dunwoody (2008), Peachtree Corners (2012), Brookhaven (2012), Tucker (2016), Stonecrest (2016), South Fulton (2017), and Mableton (2022).
However, the cityhood movement took a step back in 2022. In addition to Mableton, three other unincorporated areas in metro Atlanta’s Cobb County, East Cobb, Lost Mountain and Vinings, vied to become Georgia’s newest municipalities. The campaigns failed in all three communities, but cityhood remains a hot topic throughout the metro area. Cityhood proponents rallied supporters around housing density, saying that the County had plans to implement zoning changes that would propose smaller single-family home lots and more multi-family development to alleviate the region’s affordable housing problem. But Dora Locklear, a resident of the proposed Lost Mountain community who worked against the measure, said:
“Cityhood proponents “are using these things as a dog whistle to scare voters into thinking that mass transit and HUD housing is coming,” says Locklear. “In these last few days, they’ve really upped the ante with dog-whistle terms like ‘liberal agenda,’ saying that Joe Biden is paying [the county] to bring apartment complexes and high-density housing to west Cobb.””
St. George’s cityhood efforts appear to be motivated by the same concerns that drove those in metro Atlanta – a desire to exert local control over an area to maintain racial and economic exclusivity. I’ve never been to Louisiana, let alone Baton Rouge. But one look at racial composition table of East Baton Rouge Parish tells a revealing story:
This is 2020 U.S. Census data for East Baton Rouge Parish. My takeaway? The incorporation of St. George, coupled with the incorporation of Central, the last Louisiana community to incorporate back in 2005, means that 90% of White residents will live in incorporated East Baton Rouge Parish communities, 41% in Baton Rouge alone. Meanwhile, 75% of Black residents will live in incorporated communities, 59% in Baton Rouge.
This might seem innocuous. But when you compare that information against a residential segregation map of East Baton Rouge, another picture emerges:
The concentration of Whites is highest in northeast and southeast portions of the parish, where Central and St. George are located. Whites are least concentrated (and conversely, Blacks most concentrated) in the northern sections of the city of Baton Rouge. In fact, the concentration of Whites in the parish drops off dramatically north of Florida Boulevard and south of the communities of Baker and Central, which are adjacent to Baton Rouge. But it appears as if the real “front line” in the political and economic battle for the control of the city and parish is in the southern third of East Baton Rouge. The Atlanta and Baton Rouge cityhood battles demonstrate what Southern cities have learned from their Northern, especially Midwestern, cohorts. Name a major Midwestern metro area, and it’s likely within the top 20 of the most segregated metro areas in the nation. How did they accomplish that? Cityhood of a different sort.
Suburban sprawl and white flight in Midwestern cities usually followed a particular pattern. Whites would stake a political claim to one area of a city (Chicago’s North Side, Cleveland’s West Side, the south sides of Milwaukee and St. Louis come to mind), often part of or adjacent to the economic “favored quarter” of a metro area. The strongest and wealthiest suburban development flowed outward from that base. The earliest efforts at urban revitalization (aka gentrification) started there as well.
Detroit is an interesting outlier that I believe plays a prominent role in its perception of collapse. In the post that kicked off my writing 12 years ago, I noted that Detroit’s 1918 Progressive Era reform of electing City Council members citywide rather than in wards or districts made the political and economic battle over the city into the ultimate zero-sum game. A new city charter approved in 2013 got rid of the citywide City Council representation and created seven new districts. But this had an outsized impact on Detroit:
“(Citywide council representation was) a double-edged sword for Detroit. While it may have kept a lid on some of the possible corruption that could have happened, it likely created greater distance between residents and city government. I believe this led to two significant impacts. First, it allowed the influence of the auto industry to travel unfettered within local government through the first two-thirds of the 20th century, without the countervailing influence of local residents. Second, without representation and support, neighborhoods were unable to mature in Detroit as they had in other major cities. They never had champions at the local government level, as elected officials had to view the city in its entirety and abstractly, and not represent and develop a unique part of the city.”
Emphasis added.
Segregation patterns figure prominently in perceptions of urban revitalization. Metro areas that are no less segregated than Midwestern metros, yet segregated in more fragmented ways (New York, San Francisco/Oakland, Los Angeles, for example), appear to have “solved” segregation and focus on the problems of affluence. Metros that have historically had lower numbers of people of color, particularly Blacks (Seattle, San Diego, Denver) have been able to transform themselves without any real metro-wide segregationist interventions. Then there are other metros, like Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Washington, DC and Boston, that have entrenched yet unrecognized segregation patterns that mimic Atlanta and Baton Rouge; they may be going or have gone through similar cityhood transitions without the notoriety.
In Detroit’s case, instead of Whites staking claim to a part of the city and building from it, they withdrew altogether.
Bottom line, the mechanisms to create and preserve advantage may change, but the intent never goes away.