Why American cities are getting Whiter
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
Many American cities are being gentrified — and getting Whiter. Today on “Post Reports,” we go to Denver to see how the city has changed and what longtime residents are doing about it.
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As the United States is getting more diverse, the opposite has been happening in American cities over the past decade. In some cities, local governments have invested more money in public infrastructure such as parks and transportation to attract residents as developers have built new upscale apartment buildings. Based on an analysis of census data by The Post, Marissa Lang and her colleagues took a closer look at four U.S. cities to understand the different ways that gentrification is changing life for residents.
One of these cities was Denver, where Marissa spent time with politicians and residents who are fighting to prevent displacement and heard about what it’s been like to see their city change rapidly in shape and demographics.
Don’t miss a chance to experience “Post Reports” live! “Post Reports” senior host Martine Powers will be in conversation with author Curtis Sittenfeld at Sixth & I in D.C. at 7 p.m. on April 13. Get tickets here.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right. Well, this is your neighborhood. So where are we going? |
| 0:07.8 | So this is sort of the stretch that we had talked about. |
| 0:11.2 | And I figured this is North High School. |
| 0:13.6 | Oh, it is. Okay. I was wondering. That's why we started. |
| 0:17.0 | That's Marissa Lang. She's a gentrification reporter for the post. |
| 0:21.1 | And she was visiting with Melissa Mahia. |
| 0:23.7 | Melissa is a longtime resident of Denver, Colorado. |
| 0:27.3 | And last fall, the two of them went on a tour of the neighborhood. |
| 0:30.7 | Geography. There's like Chebys' is right there, which everybody goes to like late at night. |
| 0:34.7 | Yeah. |
| 0:36.8 | That is like Mexican food that will give you a hard burn. |
| 0:39.9 | But like people are die hard about it here. |
| 0:45.8 | So there's like enough around there. |
| 0:49.6 | But the neighborhood is different. |
| 0:51.5 | But it is not to the level like La Almalingham Park is |
| 0:54.9 | fully-judged-fired. |
| 0:56.8 | Like, all right. Well, let's continue on our little, our depressing tour. |
| 1:01.0 | Yeah. It's funny. It's fun to talk about. |
| 1:04.1 | It's like it's, you know, I'm talking about your life. |
| 1:06.0 | But it's also really, really sad. |
| 1:13.3 | On Melissa's tour of her neighborhood, you can clearly see the effects of gentrification. |
| 1:18.5 | There used to be a whole stretch of Mexican-American businesses. |
... |
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