FEBRUARY 2020 422business.com and 422bizmag.com ROUTE 422 BUSINESS ADVISOR45

SPATIAL SEPARATIONAS A WAY OF MAINTAINING HOUSING VALUE

PART 1DOWNTOWNMARKETING & DEVELOPMENTBy Barry Cassidy

In recent weeks I have devoted a little more time to addressing issues relating to gentrification in Coatesville.It appeared to me to be where somehow many of theblack people in Chester County ended up in one place.

There is a spatial separation of minorities in Chester County. Minoritiesare not evenly distributed throughout the county.

As plans for the new train station moveforward, a potential wave of gentrificationwill result. I am going door to door inCoatesville, attempting to help people, be-cause I wouldn’t say I like the strategy ofthe current revitalization. Although I putmy head down and tried to ignore someof the things that have been done to thwartmy effort, I felt that I needed to gain a bet-ter understanding before I responded.

One thing I have found is that, in manycases, there are not traditional mortgagesbut instead notes that had been given topeople to transfer the property. There aremany tangled titles, and wild financingmechanisms used to finance homes inCoatesville. It isn’t straightforward tomake heads or tails of any situation. Be-cause I am a government finance special-ist, I tried to ferret my way through onexisting knowledge. Still, some of thestuff was so out of the ordinary I had tosecure a reference base as to racial/spatialsegregation, in general, to understandwhat made these finance mechanismsnecessary.

I went back to review some of the booksI purchased for my London School of Economics MSc in Cities as recommendedreadings. It was a big list, and although I bought all the books, I did not read many of them because I cannot read thatfast. One book that I did not read was titled American Apartheid by Massey andDenton from 1993 (I have the 10th print-ing, 2003). It is information I gleaned fromthat book that this column is based on.

The historical record of spatial separa-tion has been practiced over the last centurythroughout American cities as a way ofmaintaining value in housing, and maybebecause Chester County started with gen-tlemen farmers, all of the minorities were inthe more urban areas like Coatesville andPhoenixville. When farms were preservedfor open space, there was an area that con-centrated development so the gentlemenfarmer could get his money when hewanted to sell, and in order to makeChester County remain to look the same asit always had by maintaining the views.

(Continued on page 46)

FEBRUARY 2020 ROUTE 422 BUSINESS ADVISOR 422business.com and 422bizmag.com 46

The spatial separations of the races inthe 19th century showed that blacks andwhites lived side by side as they were scat-tered about cities like Philadelphia, De-troit, and Chicago. In the south anotherpattern developed with white people onthe main streets and black people living inthe allies behind those homes, but for pur-poses of the is column we will deal withracial spatial separation in the north. Al-though 80 percent of the black Americansliving in the south in 1870 were exploitedas sharecroppers, by 1970 80 percent ofblack Americans lived in urban areas.

In the 19th century, most of the dis-crimination was centered around job op-portunities and not about housing.During this time, land use was not highlyspecialized, and socially distinctiveneighborhoods were yet to emerge. Den-sities were low because the building tech-nology had not yet developed to makethem structurally sound. Because therewas discrimination in job opportunities,there was less ability to garner enoughdollars to afford proper housing. Blockrations for black residences rarely ex-ceeded 30 percent, and there were manyharmonious mixed neighborhoods.Many of the professional blacks, includ-

ing physicians, lawyers, and clergy, reliedon white support for their economic en-terprises and political support.

The period between 1900 and 1940 sawrapid industrialization and the creation ofmany jobs which happened concurrentlywith a movement of blacks from thefarms to the cities to enable them to takeadvantage of the newly created jobs. Upto those times, most goods producedwere what would be considered today ar-tisan type goods, produced in the homeor in a small shop. Artisans produced gar-ments, foodstuffs, and the like to serve theneeds of the local community. After 1900industrial labor needs were met by an in-flux of people from the south and fromeastern Europe. Housing density was in-creased and clustered near the industrialfacilities to provide a workforce.

While southern blacks migrated to fillsome of the industrial positions, therewere far more immigrants whose originwas from eastern Europe, and duringboom times in Europe, when the immi-gration slowed, the slack was filled byblacks from the south. So black migrationhad a symbiotic relationship with the Eu-ropean economy.

(Continued on page 48)

DOWNTOWN MARKETING & DEVELOPMENT(Continued from page 45)

FEBRUARY 2020 ROUTE 422 BUSINESS ADVISOR 422business.com and 422bizmag.com 48

There was another use for black mi-grants in the early industrial times, asthey served as strikebreakers. Theywere transported by special trains di-rectly to the factories by the capitalistfactory owners with little understand-ing of their role in the labor dispute. Asinsect infestation and weather condi-tions changed, and the southern planta-tion owners moved from cotton tofoodstuffs, resulting in a vast amount ofworkers who became jobless.

The size of the black population burgeoned in the urban centers duringthis time. Northern newspapers increas-ingly ran stories concerning black crime,vice and general uncouthness of theblack community. Whites becamealarmed, and public school integrationwas a victim as white parents increasingdid not want their child associating withblack youth. Prosperous professionalblacks lost their white clientele.

The increasing black migrationsparked race riots New York, EvansvilleIndiana, Springfield, Illinois, andChicago, where individual blacks weretaken from public transit and beaten,

outlying homes of blacks were ran-sacked or burned. Although the aggres-sors were white, most of the victims andthose arrested for rioting were black.

The steady rise of black-white segre-gation continued from 1900 for approx-imately 60 years.

Part two of this column will deal withthe increased efforts of white Americato segregate themselves from the black population at large as they moved to theurban centers for work. I will describemethods and tactics which created situations all over America that are sim-ilar to those in Coatesville. I will explainhow the financing mechanism or lackthereof has led to the disbandment andloss of generational wealth through finance mechanisms employed to promote segregation.

I look at this project in Coatesville asone of the most important things I willever do in my life, and I am amused bythe Micky Mouse tactics being used to attempt to thwart my effort.Barry Cassidy is a freelance grant and economicdevelopment consultant. He can be reached at barrycassidy@comcast.net.

DOWNTOWN MARKETING & DEVELOPMENT(Continued from page 46)