Working Paper
Immigrants and Suburbs: Growth and Distribution in Greater Philadelphia, 1970-2000: A Tract-Level Analysis
The late twentieth century witnessed a dramatic shift in the historic pattern of immigrant settlement within the United States. Since the nineteenth century, most European immigrants - with the important exception of farmers - had settled first in a small number of gateway cities where many rearticleed while a sizeable number fanned out to smaller cities along the coasts or to cities and large towns in the interior. After World War II, with the opening of suburbs huge numbers of these first generation European immigrants and their children, fresh with new prosperity, moved out of central cities. Following the 1965 lifting of nationality-based quotas, immigrants entered the United States in numbers that matched the great immigrant wave of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries... READ COMPLETE PAPER
Title: Suburban gridlock / Robert Cervero.
Publisher: New Brunswick, N.J. : Center for Urban Policy Research, c1986.
Description: Book
248 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Location: Fine Arts Library
Call Number: HE355.3.C64 C47 1986
Status: Available, check location
If you can afford it. The condos cost about $700 a square foot, meaning a nice two-bedroom condo -- with windows on two sides and great views -- runs about $1 million.
A few evenings later, I found myself in the cramped living room of a single-family home in a suburb of Ventura, one of about 180 houses built a decade ago for buyers with annual incomes of about $50,000. Because the original development was federally subsidized, the homeowners can sell their house only at a restricted sales price of $300,000 to $400,000, which is 20% to 40% below the market price.
The cap on the selling price, the homeowners told me, has brought some changes to their neighborhood. It allows the working poor to afford these houses by teaming up to buy them. Realtors say four, five, even six people are listed on mortgage titles to qualify for financing. Seven, eight, nine cars are parked in the driveways and on the streets in front of the houses.
What's going on here? For a century, people in Southern California moved to the suburbs as they got richer, leaving the more "urban" parts of town to poor people. Now that pattern has reversed itself. Affluent people are leaving the suburbs to live in the city, while the working poor -- people who have jobs but don't earn enough to exceed the poverty line -- are doubling and tripling up in the suburbs to buy houses.
The migration of the affluent to the inner city has gradually increased in the last three years. According to a study by the Downtown Center Business Improvement District, the household median income of downtown residents with a least one earner was about $99,600 a year in 2006, roughly $28,000 higher than that of Beverly Hills. Nearly half of those surveyed reported annual income of $100,000 to above $250,000.
from wiki
The Mercer Museum was completed in 1916 to house Henry Chapman Mercer's vast collection of early American everday objects. The Mercer Museum is a National Historic Landmark and is made out of poured-in-place concrete. It cointains displays the furnishings of early America, plus a whaleboat, carriages and antique fire engines. It also houses the Spruance Library on its third floor.The Mercer Museum is located in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia.


