The fastest-gentrifying neighborhoods in the United States

The fastest-gentrifying neighborhoods in the United States: For the past several years I’ve been obsessed with the issue of gentrification. Mostly that’s because of a book I’ve been writing about diverse public schools. What’s clear is that gentrification—for all of its downsides—is providing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to integrate some of our schools—at least if we don’t let it go to waste.

So I was curious: Which communities in the U.S. are witnessing the greatest amount of gentrification? I started poking around Census Bureau data (with the assistance of some colleagues and the Census Bureau’s excellent help line) and here’s what I found. I looked at zip codes (which isn’t perfect, because boundaries can change) and places with a large increase in the white share of the population (which isn’t perfect, because you’d really want to look at changes in income levels, but those data aren’t available yet for 2010).