Theme: Geographic mobility, class, and gentrification.
Subject Article: "Why Are Americans Staying Put?"
Other Links: 1. "New York City's Perpetual Gentrification."
2. "A Pilgrimage to the Vanishing Streets of My Grandmother’s Lower East Side."
3. "The Freegan Establishment."
4. "What drives human migration?"
Postscript: Does not a post make, but good food for thought here:
1917—The Great Jazz Migration begins when noted musician Joe “King” Oliver leaves New Orleans, La., and settles in Chicago, Ill. He is soon joined by other early Jazz greats. Their presence in Chicago laid the foundation for the Southern Black music genre (with heavy sexual overtones) to become a national obsession. Actually, the “migration” may not have been quite so romantic. Instead of being forced by the closing of the New Orleans Storyville district, Jazz greats probably left New Orleans for Chicago for the same reason other Blacks left the South–failing crops forced the disappearance of jobs while Northern factories recruited Blacks for work to produce arms and other goods for World War I. Nevertheless, many historians view Oliver’s relocation to Chicago as the start of New Orleans Jazz migrating to the rest of the nation.
I've read many people framing the Great Migration as forces of politics and culture pushing African-Americans out of the South. First off, a large number of Blacks relocated within the South (rural-to-urban migration). Second, often glossed over is the importance of recruitment and publicity to paving the way for the move from rural South to urban North. A similar migration folklore is confusing the debate about gentrification.