Defensible Space

I've been learning that in lots of major cities, it has been largely the gay population who are to be thanked for "taking back" run down parts of inner city and making them into hip areas where everyone wants to move back in. Since they are a community who have to make their own welcome, they will often risk the crime and seclusion, and end up years later with a safe, beautiful community to offer. I know several sections of Atlanta where this is true. While the Christians move out to the suburbs...

Yes, Ruth, there is a book by a man called Will Fellows (I think) and it is called
A Passion to Preserve: Gay Men as Keepers of Culture
It discusses this phenomenon.

Have you read, by chance, anything by Jane Jacobs? I highly recommend her Death and Life of Great American Cities, which is considered a classic and one of the most important pieces of nonfiction from the last century. It makes my top six favorite books ever.

As for gays helping rejuvenate blighted areas - keep in mind that gays do not have children usually. This means things like the quality of public schools, and even crime to some degree, may weigh less on their hearts and minds when deciding where to live. Christians - and specifically Christian families - should not be merely condemned for moving to suburbs, and gays lauded for staying, when in fact Christian household heads have to manage the lives of people beyond merely themselves.

While other factors are at play, rarely do I hear critics of suburbia recognize how things like this can affect segregation and housing decisions.

Also, consider that homosexuals are by and large a well-educated, professional demographic. The higher housing prices in the city, combined with no children to look after, no doubt has a significant role in these decisions.

In other words, I am skeptical of criticism of Christian heterosexual families who move to the suburbs, while gays stay in the city, since the two face such different time horizons, budget constrains and household-related objectives. Neither may have any real intereset in "saving the city" and the outcome could look very much the same as what we currently see.

Scott,

if you check some of the other posts I've made on the subject, you'll see I talk about how I'm currently reading through Death and Life of Great American Cities. I'm finding the book mind-blowing. Its even more amazing to me that she's from Scranton, PA a town I grew up 10 miles from, and was a total hole.

On the gays vs. Christian White Flight, you make a good point. Although of late I don't feel like we're anywhere near giving Christians too hard of a time for things.

Well, if the criticisms are incorrect or even insensitive to the specific context, then how can you make the criticisms? I mean, you're someone I typically take to be sensitive to context and willing to give the benefit of the doubt. So shouldn't we of all people be striving for accuracy, first - particularly when talking about people of the same faith?

My problem with lauding gays but criticizing Christians for fleeing to the suburbs is also partly due to being a parent. Once we had Miles, our lives chances. I worry about things I never worried about even when it was just Paige and me. When she and I first got married, we moved to uptown New Orleans to help plant a church for the PCA and twice saw types of crime right outside our apartment that we'd never seen before. Both involved African-Americans sticking up people with guns and firing upon them. The top 50 worst schools in the state of Louisiana were told, to me, as being in the city of New Orleans.

So not only do you have really high housing prices in the city, you also have higher incidence of crime (thus greater risk) and you have really shitty schools. When you have to care for your family, I think it's unfair to use as an example a demographic like gays who have high incomes but with fewer budgetary constraints like the need to spend on children. They also don't have children. There's nothing particualrly altruistic to stay in the city - they can afford it, along numerous dimensions, in ways that families cannot.

From my experience, I think Christians get slammed far too much and are rarely given the same kind of benefit-of-the-doubt that are afforded to other groups. I continually see evangelicals written off as nonthinking, racist, sexist, individualists to the point of caricature, and it just seems wholly ignorance and laziness driving the criticism, not true thoughtfulness.

Didn't know you were reading Jacobs book, but it doesn't surprise me that you are having your mind blown as much. I tried reading Economy of Cities, but never got through it. That other book, though, was unbelievable. I had never had the city become so accessible before that. It definitely never seemed like something that could be scrutinized and studied in a scientific way like she did. Reason has a great interview with her which I'll try and dig up and post, if you ahven't read it.

Scott, you're absolutely right on the accuracy. My apologies, I was flat-out wrong. if I can offer on little thing in my defense: I had just gotten done working out, and I'm still not thinking properly, my brain feels like jello right now. Just had lunch so the nutrients are slowly seeping back into my system. Oh the joys of hypoglycemia (or borderline).

Scott, I also don't think its fair to make blanket statements about cities universally having high housing prices with greater crime with shitty schools. Its all about what city, and what neighborhood, with what schools. Currently in Chatty you can score a fairly sweet house or townhome in the southside at an incredibly competative rate (relatively) for around 150K and be 2 blocks from an inredible elementary school. The Southside is also an incredibly diverse neighborhood (ethnically and economically). Oh, and you can also walk to an OK OPC church if you're so inclined.

Anyways, my point is that there's exceptions in every city. I think its our responsibility (and I say this though in the context of being DINKS) to jump into those kind of neighborhoods and be Christ there.

I'm still thinking it all through though. When are you gonna get your butt up to Chattanooga? I swear, after you get your Ph.D if Covenant doesn't hire you I'm gonna be ticked. Dr. Fikkert is a neighbor of mine and if I have to I'll pound on his door to talk with him about it.

the question of homosexuals and gentrification is an interesting one - there is a great PBS P.O.V entitled Flag Wars that explores this very issue with a pretty evenhanded approach if I remember, its been a while since I've seen it but it would be worth buying if your local library doesn't have it. Anecdotal comment: I've got an acquaintance who is a real estate agent in Seattle and it is pretty common for single females both with and without children to ask to see homes in areas with large populations of homosexual men because they tend to be either safer or moving in the direction of becoming safer . . . . interesting.

I'm not trying to make a blanket statement about cities, but I think it is a statistical feature of them that they have higher crime rates. There is obviously considerable variance in those rates, though, but I think it is the case that relative to a city's suburban components, the urban component almost always has a higher crime rate. This is, I believe, empirically the case, though I'd have to dig around to find out.

As for the public schools - I think the same argument holds. The public schools inside the cities usually have are worse. The spending per student is lower, the student to teacher ratio is higher, and the quality of peers is lower.

But my main point in this is purely this - do not begin the analysis of white flight by assuming the worst. So much of the time, analysis begins with condescension about the people and phenomenon we're studying. I think you can explain a lot about these patterns by assuming, ex ante, by looking at the bundle of prices each person faces, as well as the income constraints they operate from within.

Now as to whether it is our responsibility to be in these places - don't you think this will probably differ by person? I mean, is there any one single application of the incarnation? This goes back to my earlier point. After living in New Orleans for three years, how can I say with such certainty that it's every Christians responsibility to move there, even at the expense of their children? You can dismiss that as paranoia, but I think it's a very legitimate question. There are constraints that parents face which singles and nonparent couples (gay or straight) never face, and thus are don't have to deal with the difficult calculus. Families are making choices subject to real constraints and trying to pursue various goals.

That's where I'm coming from. White flight happens for a lot of reasons, but I seriously doubt that any of them are because of sin (I'm dead serious). That doesn't mean that the segregated outcomes we witness are not tragic, or even need to be corrected. I actually suspect that if you really do want to correct these segregated outcomes, it's going to take a lot more than merely appealing to people's good will. It's going to take government intervention and creative policy solutions.

For instance, there's a few excellent articles on how publiclly financed public schools can lead to income segregation, which here means racial segregation. People who face liquidity constraints are forced to stay in the city, while those who can afford to do so will exercise "school choice" by moving to areas with better school systems and average students. This leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Vouchers, in these articles, basically break that cycle, because they break the link between schools and the housing market. One of the things that can be very effective at dealing with the neighborhood dynamics you observe, ironically, is a robust voucher system. People who want to live in the city will be able to do so, since their residence will no longer determine where they can send their kid to school. This is not to mention the gains that poorer families in the city gain from having access to better schools, or even how increased competition will improve the city schools. It's actually, ironically, the suburban residents who lose most from vouchers, since they in these model see capital losses as demand for suburban housing falls due to decreased demand for suburban housing.

There's an extensive academic literature in economics on spatial segregation which I think can be very helpful in evaluating these kinds of things, and none of them rely on making the non-falsifiable assumption that these segregation outcomes we see are due to poor ethics on the part of the people. (Sorry this was so long).

Van - I have a friend who renovates houses in Atlanta, and he said he and his colleagues all are very cognizant of the relationship between gay migration and gentrification. I swear he actually said that he and his colleagues try to 'follow the gays' when speculating about future land values. Those words exactly.

I have no doubt there is a relationship, in other words.

And I may take you up on that offer to strongarm Fikkert for a job. Ask if they're hiring any economists who specialize in sex and the family! ;)

I have to disagree with you:
"This means things like the quality of public schools, and even crime to some degree, may weigh less on their hearts and minds when deciding where to live"

I know quite a few glbt who do not have children who are more involved in the quality of public schools than some people with children. This is because 1) we have the time and 2) it is in our best interest to live in a community with well educated children who have learned to think for themselves. I will add that more and more homeschooled children are in Christian households than any other demographic in Tennessee.
And also we are very concerned with crime, afterall we all know lists of people who have been bashed or killed for being gay. Personally, I have lost two aquaintances to such and know of five friends who have been attacked. Granted I am not "criticizing Christians" for running to the suburbs, merely commenting on your points.

Scott, the ethical "call" is there, but who and where and when is a wisdom issue, and up to particular people in a particular community. The problem is that (like most things) we use the argument "well, not everyone has to ____" as an excuse to ignore the problem and not do anything at all (or even care).

I also respect your horizon of analysis (economic in broader sense), but I don't think that's tells the full story of human motivations (even if economics has the machinery and terminology to explain most of the story, in its own terms). Quite simply, how do you explain fear as a factor in determining where one lives? I know people who are "afraid" of living in St. Elmo, yet the odds of them being victimized by a crime (at the worst a robbery) is no greater (or only marginally greater) than anywhere else in the city. Yet that perception and the subsequent fear 'causes people to live elsewhere on occasion.

I think, to be honest, that's an important element in "white flight" that can't be ignored. I don't think that every white person that moved out of the city left for purely economic reasons. Heck, its cheaper to buy homes in many urban areas than it is to buy a home in the new suburbs. Yet folks do it anyways. Its at that point that I think some really important discussions can occur.

I would argue that your experience, despite very real, is the exception and not the rule. Families (whether gay or straight) have an interest in their own child outcomes which is a strong incentive to involve themselves in schools. Singles or couples with no children do not have the same incentives.

And my point about crime is not that glbt do not care about crime. My point is that they may, at the margin, be less sensitive to some of aspects of crime relative to families (regardless of that family's sexual preferences). For instance, singles and couples with no children will be less sensitive to living into a community with a known pedophile.

I know from my own experience that my life changed dramatically when we had a child. It also changed when I became married. As I added to the family people under my care, I became sensitive to various levels of risk that previously I'd been willing to undertake. It's entirely plausible (to me anyway) that people tend to become more conservative (not socially or politically, but rather averse to danger) when they are oveseeing others than when they are simply overseeing their own safety.

Hate crimes are a separate class of criminal activity. They are not necessarily correlated with other forms of property and violent crime. I'm mainly talking about blighted areas with the latter. Hate crime is obviously a unique subset of criminal activity that would obviously affect a gay person in a way it would not affect a heterosexual family, and I would expect gay persons to respond to that risk appropriately. But I think what I'm describing above, notwithstanding your experiences, is in aggregate true.

Fear fits into the analysis by thinking about probabilities of various states of the world occuring. Like, for instance, the probability of some bad outcome like beating robbed. This is simply another price that a person faces.

Sure, "housing prices" may be cheaper, but are we talking about the same houses? My sense is that one has to sacrifice on space and other amenities to live in the city. There are tradeoffs, in other words, in the kinds of dwellings.

And note, I didn't say that it was just housing prices. Rather, I've been saying there is a bundle of seen and unseen prices that affect people's housing decisions.

And yes, I appreciate the incarnational call to move into the city. But it is part of a larger call of discipleship, and discipleship may not necessarily mean at the individual level for each person to move into the city. It may very well mean moving into the suburbs.

I'm ending this abruptly, as I'm heading to an inn to celebrate my anniversary with Paige. My silence is because she's making me leave the laptop at home.

Scott you think "fear" is the exception to the rule? I don't quite get it, because you say its the exception to the rule but then in your third paragraph you reiterate, well, fear for your family as a motivational factor for where you live.

I also wonder how much of that fear is rational? I wonder how much of our same thinking about not hiding the world from our kids when it comes to movies and music should be applied to where we live (with wisdom, of course).

But don't get me wrong, if I walk through the projects, I'd likely be afraid of getting mugged. But I want to be balanced in how I think about where I live, and I don't want to let fear be the primary motivational category for where I live.

Further, as to the "cities having more crime" thing. I'd be interested in setting aside geography and simply going by population chunks in seeing crime rates in different areas. I don't mean to say that say, in an entire county in rural GA you WONT be less likely to be exposed to crime, I'd just be that say, 1 milliion folks in rural GA probably have far closer crime rates to 1 million folks in a given section of Atlanta than we think. I'd just be interested in seeing the numbers. I bet they'd be closer than just the "1.34 for every 1000" that we usually see.

Hey - that email was to the other guy, not you. Sorry about the confusion. I didn't see your email until after I posted, so it probably looks like all of that was written in response to your email.

"Families (whether gay or straight) have an interest in their own child outcomes which is a strong incentive to involve themselves in schools. Singles or couples with no children do not have the same incentives. "

This is funny because not only have I been involved in the campaign of School Board officials but also I attended the Hamilton County Commission Meeting this week in support of "Stand for Children" another organization I am involved in. There are several other GLBT people involved in this campaign who also have no children.

"For instance, singles and couples with no children will be less sensitive to living into a community with a known pedophile. "

As a female, just last week I checked out the Tennessee Registered sex offenders list. I also used to live across the street from a pedophile and let our other neighbors know when they let their children play with him. To my surprise one couple told me to "mind my own business" and continued to let their three children over to his house. Of course, they were three sheets to the wind half the time and probably just happy to have them out of their hair, but whatever.

"Hate crimes are a separate class of criminal activity. "

But all crimes happen more often in neglected areas that are poorly lit, not well patroled by police or other neighbors etc., living in an environment where people are not "connected". Crime is crime. My last neighborhood watch was started by a man who was attacked. He has been successful in ensuring the police regularly patrol. He also has ensured that two lamp posts were added to a poorly lit area.

Hey, I was wondering If I could get a look at your index/archive template because I was wanting to do something similar with the boxes floating on a fixed image.

Thanks in advance.

Akijikan: That's a CSS thing. Go here to view Josiah's style sheet.

Well, I've been looking at the css file and there's some things different about the index template because if I just apply the style sheet to my index then it doesn't work the same.

Josiah, I'm enjoying reading your blog as you talk about St. Elmo and city/neighborhood issues. It's interesting to me because I'm reading "Death and Life of Great American Cities" right now (and am truly fascinated by it) and am discussing these types of issues as they relate to DC with a number of friends. Keep up the commentary (and try to get a better street name than 'butthole').

This is funny because not only have I been involved in the campaign of School Board officials but also I attended the Hamilton County Commission Meeting this week in support of "Stand for Children" another organization I am involved in. There are several other GLBT people involved in this campaign who also have no children.

Ask those you know how important the quality of the public schools in their district when they were deciding a place to live. When people do not have personal investments in child outcomes, I expect that the quality of public schools in a school district to weigh less on the housing decision than those who do. Your witnessing GLBT persons involved in public schools is not evidence to the contrary.

As a female, just last week I checked out the Tennessee Registered sex offenders list. I also used to live across the street from a pedophile and let our other neighbors know when they let their children play with him. To my surprise one couple told me to "mind my own business" and continued to let their three children over to his house. Of course, they were three sheets to the wind half the time and probably just happy to have them out of their hair, but whatever.

I'm not sure what exactly your point is. My point is that heterosexual families with children will most likely be sensitive to a range of risk which singles and GLBT persons are not. In aggregate, I imagine GLBT are, at the margin, going to weigh the costs and benefits of living near a known pedophile differently than a parent. This is not to say that they will discount it completely.

But all crimes happen more often in neglected areas that are poorly lit, not well patroled by police or other neighbors etc., living in an environment where people are not "connected". Crime is crime. My last neighborhood watch was started by a man who was attacked. He has been successful in ensuring the police regularly patrol. He also has ensured that two lamp posts were added to a poorly lit area.

Again, I'm not saying that they never happen. Hate crimes constitute a small portion of crimes committed annually, and those hate crimes motivated by opposition to a person's sexual preference constitute a minority of all hate crimes. In 2003, approximately 9100 people were victims of hate-crimes (Table 1). Of those 9100, 1479 were victims due to their sexual preferences.

Contrast this to the number of violent crimes, more generally, that occured in that same year - 1.4 million violent offenses reported. This is to downplay the tragic nature of hate crimes, but crimes against a person based on sexual preference constitute a fraction of violent crimes. Hence it is not unreasonable for me to say that the local crime in a neighborhood will weigh differently in the decisions of a GLBT person vs. a heterosexual parent.

My point being is that we want the same things from our community and surroundings. We have the same fears and hopes.

I've not questioned that childless GLBT persons have many of the same goals and priorities as parents. My point is that childless GLBT face a unique set of prices, constraints and risks which affects their housing decisions. They have no children, which means they can "afford" to live in parts of cities that families cannot. They very much do respond to risks, but a family of three has to care for not only the head's safety, but also the spouse and the children. They also must consider local amenities, such as schools. A childless GLBT does not want the same things as a parent (regardless of sexual preference), just as a cohabitating heterosexual couple do not want the same thing as a GLBT parent.

This is why I think we ought to not criticize families so harshly for exiting the city. I have no doubt that racism motivated many of those who left the city, but I cannot say that it necessarily did since there are also very real tradeoffs a family must make when choosing to live in the city - tradeoffs which affect more than merely their pocketbook. Until you become a parent, I don't know if you can quite understand how sensitive a parent is to a variety of risks which, in another life, they were ignorant of or simply were dismissive of. That is my main point.

Gays aren't heroes for living in cities. They can afford to do so because they have more disposable income. See Dan Black, Gary Gates, Seth Sanders and Lowell Taylow's 2002 Journal of Urban Economics article "Why Do Gay Men Live in San Francisco?" for more on the residential choices of GLBT. I think my analysis here is not far off what these authors say.

Nautimous -- just curious as to what (if anything) you are implying with your comment about homeschooling.

My URL is getting flagged for having "tblog" in it -- what's up with that?

That perhaps Christian households are not as concerned with public schools when buying a house because many of them homeschool and another big portion send their children to a private christian school.

Yup, that'd be me. We live in a crappy school district but it doesn't matter to us. Our master plan includes moving into a rundown neighborhood and fixing up a house when our kids get older.

Scott and Josiah, I've enjoyed reading this discussion and as someone who thinks almost obsessively about both city planning/urbanism and Christian ethics, it's been good to find other people discussing it. While I think "white flight" accurately describes the movement of affluent whites away from the percieved dangers of the city (plus it's catchy!), it is perhaps an over-generalization and certainly carries a negative connotation that shouldn't be assumed in a balanced discussion.

However, the whole phenomenon is a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the very fear that drives people away reinforces the conditions that escalate that fear. As middle-class respectibility goes out the window (or just moves to the suburbs), the inner city suffers. As those who cannot afford the shiny new automobiles and hefty gas bills associated with suburban living are left to themselves in the inner city, a certain amount of hopelessness can easily arise. Not to mention the horrors of Modernist city planning: giant highways running through the city center, cutting communities apart and making them much less desirable as well as isolating the urban poor in giant housing projects such as the late Pruett-Igoe (sp?) projects in St. Louis. If you grow up in a place where everyone you know is poor, it's hard to envision yourself as anything different. And besides, success would mean moving away from your home and the people you love.

In terms of statistics, I would be interested in seeing how the inner city ranks versus the suburbs, and by what methodology those statistics were gathered. I personally believe that the suburbs are as "dangerous" to children, if not more so, than the inner city, if only in terms of shielding those children from some of the uglier realities of life. It seems to me that most suburban crime would not show up statistically either because suburbanites know better lawyers and can afford to escape punishment for their own errors or because so much suburban crime is never discovered.

That said, in terms of ethics Christians should be everywhere. But this Christian will be staying the hell out of the suburbs for the time being. The social costs are too high, even if only from an environmental perspective.

As for the gay thing, I'll throw a pithy comment out there since I don't have time to respond intelligently: They just have better taste than "breeders". Ha! Take that as a joke people. Cheers!

Marky Mark & The North Chatt Bunch,

I'm with you on the fear thing, but for awhile (at least), I'm loath to level too many critiques against white Christian fear of urban living as I don't have children, and its all to easy (and rather understandable), for one to respond to my concerns with "well, you'll understand when you have children".

It might not be a thoughtful response, it may be evasive, and heck, it may be an excuse, but its not a response I can answer at this stage in my life. Maybe when I'm 40 and have "walked the walk" a little I can be more "authoritatively" encouraging to "the Church" to set aside their fear and to truly live by Faith and engage the poor, the weak, and the needy.

Until then, sadly, I'm left to attend affluent white churches who are content to remain as such. Mebbe if I could shake my bizarre love affair with the Reformed world *better* options might present itself. Of course, said affair has become quite the love-hate relationship.

Anyways, I'm with you on the social costs. The suburbs are a recipe for mediocrity and bladness, for the most part.