Of course it is a matter of demographics. That is what the article is all about. The middle class is leaving the city because they can't afford to live there and because the quality of the public schools is declining. The gap between rich and poor seems to mimic a third world country.
Michael Barone"s article, The Realignment of America: The native-born are leaving "hip" cities for the heartland. goes into some detail on the demographics of what is happening.
"This is something few would have predicted 20 years ago. Americans are now moving out of, not into, coastal California and South Florida, and in very large numbers they're moving out of our largest metro areas. They're fleeing hip Boston and San Francisco, and after eight decades of moving to Washington they're moving out. The domestic outflow from these metro areas is 3.9 million people, 650,000 a year. High housing costs, high taxes, a distaste in some cases for the burgeoning immigrant populations--these are driving many Americans elsewhere."
"The result is that these Coastal Megalopolises are increasingly a two-tiered society, with large affluent populations happily contemplating (at least until recently) their rapidly rising housing values, and a large, mostly immigrant working class working at low wages and struggling to move up the economic ladder. The economic divide in New York and Los Angeles is starting to look like the economic divide in Mexico City and São Paulo."
No, it isn't at all, and your comments:
That is what the article is all about. The middle class is leaving the city because they can't afford to live there and because the quality of the public schools is declining.
Don't prove your assertion.
The middle class cannot afford to live there not because their income is low (it is quite high), but because state and municipal taxes are shockingly high.
That is a matter of policy, not of demographics.
The public schools are of poor quality because of forced busing (a policy intiative) and enormous waste of taxpayer money on programs run by employees who have no accountability (another policy matter).
The ethnic makeup and the economic makeup of Boston are not the source of the problems: the destructive policies of Boston politicians are the source of the problems.
Another thought on hitching your hopes to the influx of wealthy gays. Gays are fickle and love to be on the forefront of whatever is cool and hip. That is not a recipe for stability. Right now they want to live in the expensive downtown neighborhods, what happens when those ‘hoods’ are no longer “the” place to be? You are then left with the poor who can’t move and a lot of expensive empty buildings that no one who can afford wants to live in and those who might want to can’t afford.