In cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and Portland, Oregon, the number of black residents

has been falling fast.

Why are so many blacks fleeing places with liberal politics and expansive municipal social welfare programs, and where are they going?

Hello, I'm City Journal editor Brian Anderson. Thanks for joining us for the 10 Blocks podcast featuring urban policy and cultural commentary

with City Journal editors, contributors, and special guests.

Today I'm joined by Aaron Wren.

Aaron is a City Journal contributing editor, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and an economic development columnist for Governing Magazine. He has written a

provocative article for the new issue of City Journal. It's called Black Residence Matter,

and it's currently available on our website. Thanks for joining me, Er. Thank you.

African Americans are leaving the liberal northern cities in large numbers. What's going on?

Why? Well, they're really leaving two kinds of those northern cities. One are these more

West Coast cities that have been economically prosperous,

but they've had very restrictive housing development policies that have sent prices through the

roof. So places like Portland or Seattle. Yeah, right. Portland, Seattle, San Francisco.

The second one are Midwestern and Northeastern Rust Belt cities with very limited or poor

economic prospects or inclusive economies, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, et cetera. So those are really

the two categories of cities. And then they've been, blacks have been, again, as we've seen

in the press, returning to the south to a great extent, booming in places like Atlanta,

Charlotte, Dallas, Houston.

You've lived in Illinois and spent quite a bit of time there.

What's going on in Chicago in this context that would spur this flight, which is going on in Chicago, just as it is

in Detroit and other places.

...