Business Insider recently took a look at how cities are divided by class, focusing particularly on New York. A Pew Research Center report found that residential segregation between upper and lower-income households was up in 27 of the country’s 30 largest metro areas. And the number of middle-income neighborhoods had declined. New York, like many cities, has seen a loss of middle-income manufacturing jobs while low-paying service jobs and highly paid knowledge, professional and creative jobs have grown. The result is a city more divided by class than in previous decades.

On the map above (unfortunately there is no way to zoom in further), the areas in purple are occupied by creative and knowledge workers who earn an average of $87,625. Though they account for only 36 percent of workers in the metro area, they made up over 80 percent of those in Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill–some of the highest concentrations in region. Some of the area’s highest percentages of service workers were also in Brooklyn in Sheepshead Bay, Manhattan Beach, Carnasie as well as what it calls Bedford/Clinton Hill and several parts of East New York. Service workers earned an average of $34,241. Working class employees made up 16 percent of the region’s workforce but none of the top locations were in Brooklyn. In fact they were all in New Jersey. Said the author: “While our cities may be increasingly diverse in terms of nationality, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, they are becoming ever-more divided by class. These mounting divides threaten both their underlying economic dynamism and potentially their social and political stability as well.” What do you think? How important is class diversity to the health of Brooklyn?

 


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