The first is the annual household gasoline expenditure for 2000. (Click to enlarge.)
In this map, only people who live in Tipton County are spending more than $3,800 on gas. People who live near Millington, Arlingon, and Tunica are spending anywhere from $2,400 to $3,000 but the majority of the metro area is spending less than $1,600 a year.
The second is the annual household gasoline expenditure for 2008.
In this map, it looks like they need to add some more colors and some higher numbers. The people in all the outlying areas are now spending more than $3,800 and only the people in the core city are spending less than $3,000 a year.
And it looks like, based on other Center for Neighborhood Technology data, that that figure is about 20 to 28 percent or greater of income each month.
3 comments:
I'm in the process of changing some of ideas. I thought with rising energy costs, people would move into the city. Now i'm not so sure. So many employers have shifted their location east, that commute times for people in Whitehaven and Frayser has increased since 1990. Can it be that so many of our employers are on the Germantown Parkway corridor, that people will gravitate there rather than back to the urban core?
I don't think you can discount it. When downtown started going through its more recent residential boom, I remember Carol Coletta saying that people were choosing to live downtown even thought it meant reverse commuting.
Maybe they'll be rethinking that.
Edge Cities ... a great sociological/urban development book from the 90s talks about this.
Used to be, edge cities developed out of convenience as corporate headquarters followed residential boomlets. (Goodlett Farms Pkway in Memphis, Franklin south of Nashville, Riverchase area south of Birmingham, etc.). Cheap real estate and tax breaks on development moved them there.
Most of the executives live nearby as these headquarters typically go into high rent areas. Remember, it's always for the C-suite. Well, the middle management and regular employees typically had to drive in from outlying cheaper areas.
No big deal when gas was 2 bucks ... now ... the least able to afford it are the ones getting screwed.
I suspect some of the faltering neighborhoods around Cordova start getting second looks now from people currently living in Oakland and the far reaches of (used to be) cheap Fayette County.
Problem is ... who is going to buy a 125k house in Oakland they bought for 140k and now is really worth only 100k???
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