The dangers of using averages

instead of looking at the whole histogram: The bifurcated city. The planners want "people like us--hip and affluent." I don't think this sort of "screw the peons" was deliberate (though there've been rumors that some city planners pushed blacks out of central neighborhoods intentionally); I think that large chunks of the population are just not on the planner's radar at all. That's probably one of the reasons Trump won--besides Hillary not listening to advice.

At its best, gentrification is primarily an organic process, part of the narrative of urban improvement. Its contemporary urban version, however, has too often been driven by targeted policy interventions, such as tax-increment financing, subsidized arts districts, sports stadiums, or urban-renewal projects, as in Portland, which typically depend on the exercise of eminent domain. Policies such as these can crowd out scarce public funds that could be spent more wisely elsewhere and have something to do with the high costs of housing (among other goods) that make it so hard for middle-class families to afford living in urban cores.

Bus service, critical to poor and working-class residents, has often been reduced, even as rail service, intended to serve more affluent riders, expands. (Some cities have invested in passenger rail lines in an effort to reduce auto use, but transit market share has either stagnated or declined, a fact that rarely gets mentioned in reportage.) Public infrastructure spending on rail or on urban-containment policies does succeed in driving up the price of land, increasing economic pressure on lower-income residents. Many cities have emphasized the construction of high-density housing, which is largely funded by foreign investors, who often don’t occupy their units, creating expensive housing that sits empty. Nationwide, as much as 80 percent to 90 percent of new housing product is luxury-oriented.

In my town, most new housing is lawyer-mansions. I get it that it can be more lucrative to build and sell palaces than the equivalent value of moderate-sized houses. Still, some cities tend to put their thumbs on the scale. "The average income went up!" doesn't mean a thing without the context. Zuckerberg chased everybody else out of town?