A Google Street View analysis of gentrification: a case study of one census tract in Northside, Cincinnati, USA.

Since the 1990s, the gentrification process in the U.S. has diffused down the urban hierarchy and to neighborhoods further from downtown. This paper focuses on one census tract in the inner-ring suburbs of one mid-sized city in the U.S. undergoing gentrification between 2000 and 2016. While the use of census data to measure gentrification has been around for decades, a new tool, Google Street View, can now supplement the measurement of gentrification. Using census data, Google Street View imagery, and Hwang's (Gentrification, race, and immigration in the changing American city, Harvard University, Cambridge, 2015) gentrification index, I document change in the built environment of the neighborhood of Northside (Tract 74) in the city of Cincinnati. This tract's accessible location to downtown Cincinnati and the University of Cincinnati/Hospital Complex as well as the availability of high-quality, low-cost housing made it a focal point for individual, corporate, and government investment after 2000. By 2014/16, that investment had transformed the built environment of Tract 74. There is no evidence that the Great Recession slowed the gentrification process as Tract 74 transitioned from disinvested in 2011 to early stage gentrification by 2014/16. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]