“I Thought This Was a Ghost Neighborhood”: How Youth Respond to Neighborhood Change

Abstract

Relatively little scholarship centers the experiences of Black youth to understand how young people interact with their neighborhood contexts, evaluate the differences between neighborhoods, and adapt to new neighborhoods. Using interviews with 120 Black youth whose families moved from high-poverty central city neighborhoods into lower-poverty, more racially diverse suburban neighborhoods with the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program, we find that Black youth describe tradeoffs that come with living in both city and suburban neighborhoods. While youth viewed their suburban neighborhoods as safer, the young people encountered new repertoires of socializing and space use after moving to the suburbs, with fewer opportunities to spontaneously hang out with peers. This made it challenging to establish new social ties. In response, youth adopted varied strategies, some aligned with new patterns of socializing, others stayed inside, and some returned to the city to reconnect with friends, even if this involved returning to neighborhoods they perceived as less safe. Our work underscores the idea that neighborhoods do not impose culture on youth in enduring or inflexible ways; rather they offer strategies of action that youth can decide to take up. How youth perceive the qualities of their neighborhoods shapes where and how they choose to spend their time.