A Look at Lawrenceville

Lawrenceville: A Quick History

Lawrenceville is a neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA that, today, is a very trendy spot but it wasn't always that way. Up until 2009, Lawrenceville was a simple blue-collar neighborhood. Then UPMC's Children's Hospital was built on Penn, spurring a new wave of interest and investment in the area.
Property values rose with the number of lively bars, restaurants and art galleries, and it is generally understood that, as of 2017, Lawrenceville was officially gentrified. It was even featured in Pittsburgh's Post Gazette.

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What is Gentrification, Anyway?

Gentrification is characterized as a low-income area conforming to middle-class tastes, like replacing charming mom-and-pop shops with national chains or more expensive restaurants. While gentrification is not inherently bad, most people know gentrification as the force that pushes families and long-time residents out of neighborhoods to make way for middle-class (typically white) families to take their place. With the proper policies in place, gentrification can bring reinvestment and economic development without displacement, but this is either rare or rarely makes it into the news.

While it is undeniable that Lawrenceville has been gentrified, was it done poorly? If so, there should be a measurable effect on the neighborhood: increased home values, significant demographic changes, and increased incomes.

By looking at census data from before and after 2009, we can see if there is a significant difference between Lawrenceville before and after gentrification.

_{Photo Credit; Kraynick's Bike Shop Inc.; Artisan}

Data

Using census data for zip code 15201 (Lawrenceville) from American Fact Finder, I was able to look at demographic, income and housing data from 2000, 2010 and 2017 5 year estimates. Using all three years I was able to see the lasting impact that gentrification may have had on Lawrenceville.
More about the planning and preparation that went into this presentation, including initial data sketches and responses to interviews about those sketches, can be found here.

Findings

Population and Demographics
The first metrics I looked at were demographics and population. Gentrification is known to decrease the amount of diversity in an area and even decrease the capacity of a neighborhood (the number of people who can live in a space). The bar chart to the right shows a large decrease in population from 2000 to 2010 and a slight increase from 2010 to 2017.

Demographically, 2010 was Lawrenceville's most diverse year, with 30% non-white residents, but that decreased in 2017 to 22% non-white.

This alone does not prove that Lawrenceville was harmed by gentrification but the reduced population suggests that families did have to move out of the neighborhood. Next we will look at homes' values to see if increased property taxes could have been what pushed people out of the area.

Household Incomes

As home values increased and people moved out of the neighborhood they were replaced by people who could afford to live in Lawrenceville. Take a look at the distributions below and see just how the population of the neighborhood has changed.

The median income in 2000 was $27,031. In 2010 the median household income is $39,635 and then it jumps to $56,897. If you toggle through the years you can see the distribution also shifts from the left to the right, meaning that as a whole household incomes have increased.

Conclusion

Because of the decreased capacity, increased home values, and increased median incomes, we can definitely say that gentrification changed Lawrenceville, more for worse than for good. The decrease in population makes it clear that people left the neighborhood, and increased home values means that low income families likely had to move further out of the city. The drastic change in the household income distribution suggests that different people have moved into Lawrenceville.

This might have been avoided had some policies been in place to better protect citizens from the anticipated increase in property values. Some tactics that cities have used are land banking, enacting rent controls, and creating tax breaks for affected communities. Any policy that helps to combat displacement would be a good measure to explore for neighborhoods facing disruption from gentrification.

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