# UK Rise of 'white flight' - More Caucasians abandon urban areas



## rincon (Mar 21, 2007)

> In the extreme example of Barking and Dagenham, the research shows, a third of the white British population departed between 2001 and 2011. Since many lack the resources to move or are council tenants, this suggests that a majority of local white British who could leave may have done so.
> 
> The phenomenon has gone largely unnoticed until now because British city centres tend to have a fairly broad racial mix visible on the streets, in shops and restaurants and in many workplaces
> 
> ...



What do you think will happen to UK cities? Why don't White Families want to stay in an urban environment? Do they actually escape from minorities? Will they become like some USA cities where the White families abandon the cities for the suburbs and leave the city with most minorities and a few urban white singles dwellers and hipsters in the centers? Do you see any city in the UK that will go to an extreme like Detroit? Is there a rise in suburban type of housing construction like the USA?


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## rincon (Mar 21, 2007)

Some charts from the article....


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

^^ Colour obsessed statistics. The funniest thing is "white - British" vs "white - others"...


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## nicdel (May 13, 2011)

^^

I find these statistics to be quite accurate from an objective, statistical perspective as compared to e.g. the German way of categorizing minorities or ethnic groups (distinction between Germans without migrant background, Germans with migrant background and foreign residents).


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## Aaronj09 (Jan 7, 2009)

People aren't moving out of cities due to ethnic minorities, they are moving due to congestion, pollution, perceived overcrowding, crime, and in the case of London, high prices. The UK isn't too dissimilar to the US in the fact that most Brits strive to own their own home in the suburbs or the country, where they can enjoy the job market of cities, the amenities of cities, the good transport connections of cities, without actually having to live there and dealing with the apparent issues of big city life.

In my city, for example, areas such as Harehills, which have high ethnic populations, are also very poor, with high crime, which isn't the fault of the ethnic minorities, and people from Pakistan who move to Leeds may decide to live here due to family ties, or simply for having a reputation as a diverse area, whereas a wealthy 'native' family will choose to live in the suburbs where housing is larger, crime is lower and schools are better. In many cases, people send their children to schools miles away in small towns because suburban schools are becoming overrun with troublesome children from the inner-city, so they might as well move to these small towns and villages.
'
Now statistics can be very misleading. The ethnic group 'White British' appears to be in decline simply because the amount of ethnic minorities has risen so fast, while the birth rates amongst native Brits remains pretty low. Wealthy suburbs are attracting immigrants too, especially from India, and as the number of immigrants continues to soar, the number of 'White Brits' as a percentage of the population will steadily decrease.

At the end of the day, it's all about quality of life. Most large British cities have inner-city deprivation and suburban prosperity. People do not want to live in the inner-city simply because they will not get the quality of life that they desire. This is a trend that is becoming apparent among ethnic minorities too, as noted above.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

nicdel said:


> ^^
> 
> I find these statistics to be quite accurate from an objective, statistical perspective as compared to e.g. the German way of categorizing minorities or ethnic groups (distinction between Germans without migrant background, Germans with migrant background and foreign residents).


I never questioned their accuracy. I questioned the meaningfulness of the chosen categorization. To my knowledge, no one in Germany is categorized based on his skin colour. Culture is something that changes over generations, skin colour is like blood someting that you simply have, no matter how you are raised. Ethnic profiling might be problematic but using skin colour is racist profiling which is substantially worse.


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## nicdel (May 13, 2011)

Slartibartfas said:


> I never questioned their accuracy. I questioned the meaningfulness of the chosen categorization. To my knowledge, no one in Germany is categorized based on his skin colour. Culture is something that changes over generations, skin colour is like blood someting that you simply have, no matter how you are raised. Ethnic profiling might be problematic but using skin colour is racist profiling which is substantially worse.


I agree with you that it's a bit questionable to use skin colour rather than cultural background, however, it isn't used in a directly negative way. I doubt that the term "Black British", "White British" or "Asian British" is discriminating and derogative against any of those groups. They are all "British" then anyway. Also, "Anglos" tend to have a totally different and objective perspective regarding "race" or "ethnicity" than e.g. Germans (or Austrians) due to the history.


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## alexandru.mircea (May 18, 2011)

Slartibartfas said:


> I never questioned their accuracy. I questioned the meaningfulness of the chosen categorization. To my knowledge, no one in Germany is categorized based on his skin colour. Culture is something that changes over generations, skin colour is like blood someting that you simply have, no matter how you are raised. Ethnic profiling might be problematic but using skin colour is racist profiling which is substantially worse.


It is also frowned upon on in France. The police, for example, doesn't have the right to collect data of the of background of the people they deal with (race, ethnicity, religion, etc.). [Which doesn't mean they weren't doing it, especially after years and years of conservative government.]


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

British-born people have been leaving london for a long time, in fact I think the British-born population of the city has now fallen below 5m, which would be the first time since the 1880s that it has been below that figure.

The city remains attractive to migrants from abroad for various reasons but the very high cost of housing, sometimes weak public services compared to elsewhere and the general hassles of big city life are enough to make many more established residents think of leaving.

I don't think it's much to do with race per se, though that might be an issue for a few people. It's not just white people who are moving, but they make up a larger proportion of the long established population while non-white people make up a larger proportion of the new migrants that are drawn to the cities, especially London.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

nicdel said:


> I agree with you that it's a bit questionable to use skin colour rather than cultural background, however, it isn't used in a directly negative way. I doubt that the term "Black British", "White British" or "Asian British" is discriminating and derogative against any of those groups. They are all "British" then anyway. Also, "Anglos" tend to have a totally different and objective perspective regarding "race" or "ethnicity" than e.g. Germans (or Austrians) due to the history.


It's just one variable in the census data, as well as the self-declared ethnicity we are talking about here there are also breakdowns by nationality, language, religion, place of birth, occupation etc. None tell the whole story on their own but they are all useful in their own way and when put together provide a more detailed picture.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

As for the specific point in the OP about whether there has been a rise in suburban type construction I'd say no, it was more common in the previous decades but in the past 10-15 years the focus of residential construction has been much more on apartments and other relatively dense developments.


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## Mornnb (Dec 26, 2010)

Aaronj09 said:


> At the end of the day, it's all about quality of life. Most large British cities have inner-city deprivation and suburban prosperity. People do not want to live in the inner-city simply because they will not get the quality of life that they desire. This is a trend that is becoming apparent among ethnic minorities too, as noted above.


It's the opposite in Sydney, we have 4.6 million spread over about the same area as London and hence many suburbs. People are getting sick of the quality of life problems of suburbs, long commute times, bad traffic in car centric lifestyles, poor amenities and limited cultural facilities. There is a trend towards higher density apartment living and living closer to the city. The inner areas are the most expensive and are highly regarded, there is a white and asian flight towards the city leaving the suburbs for other minorities.
In Sydney detached housing construction has dramatically dropped. At the moment, 80% of all new development is apartments. And 41% of people now live in apartments. This is leading the country, most other Australian cities have only 20% living in apartments. Melbourne, the second biggest city, is at 29%.


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## Pennypacker (Mar 23, 2010)

Slartibartfas said:


> ^^ Colour obsessed statistics. The funniest thing is "white - British" vs "white - others"...


Why is that funny?


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## Aachener Mädelstraße (Dec 3, 2011)

The extreme political correctness in the UK is unbelievable. It's ruining the country in time. Positive immigration is not a problem, but it's idiotic to want to be the social welfare system for half the world, certainly when your own population needs it. Mass immigration has always brought problems and it always will, you only have to wait on the consequences, and if they're being ignored because some people think it's 'offending' or something like that, it will only get worse.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

Mornnb said:


> At the moment, 80% of all new development is apartments. And 41% of people now live in apartments. This is leading the country, most other Australian cities have only 20% living in apartments. Melbourne, the second biggest city, is at 29%.


You sure about that? Where are those figures from?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has much lower numbers.










http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]~2012~Main Features~Types of Dwellings~127


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

Aachener Mädelstraße said:


> The extreme political correctness in the UK is unbelievable. It's ruining the country in time. Positive immigration is not a problem, but it's idiotic to want to be the social welfare system for half the world.


I think that's a bit hysterical, in what way is migration 'ruining' the country?


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## alexandru.mircea (May 18, 2011)

Jonesy55 said:


> I think that's a bit hysterical, in what way is migration 'ruining' the country?


I think he says that political correctness is ruining the country. Spot on, what can one say. Economic crisis, bad government, war... They come nowhere near political corectness.


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## Aaronj09 (Jan 7, 2009)

Mornnb said:


> It's the opposite in Sydney, we have 4.6 million spread over about the same area as London and hence many suburbs. People are getting sick of the quality of life problems of suburbs, long commute times, bad traffic in car centric lifestyles, poor amenities and limited cultural facilities. There is a trend towards higher density apartment living and living closer to the city. The inner areas are the most expensive and are highly regarded, there is a white and asian flight towards the city leaving the suburbs for other minorities.
> In Sydney detached housing construction has dramatically dropped. At the moment, 80% of all new development is apartments. And 41% of people now live in apartments. This is leading the country, most other Australian cities have only 20% living in apartments. Melbourne, the second biggest city, is at 29%.


These are problems in many parts of the UK too, but in the case of cities like London and Manchester, you can easily get to the centre of the city from the suburbs on the underground, train or tram, with many schemes in place to dramatically reduce the cost. Suburban areas in the UK are more dense than their Australian counterparts too, houses here are closer together and smaller than your average Australian jumbo house.

Central London is ridiculously expensive, so that is one reason why many people are leaving, they cannot afford it, an influx of property investors (very wealthy Russians and Arabians especially) means that house prices are just out of control. Want to own property in Kensington? Forget it.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

alexandru.mircea said:


> I think he says that political correctness is ruining the country. Spot on, what can one say. Economic crisis, bad government, war... They come nowhere near political corectness.


I don't see it really, most of the supposed extremes of 'political correctness' are tabloid newspaper myths that bear little relation to reality, and I can't see any genuine major negative effects of it for the day to day lives of the vast majority of people. The vote yesterday to legalise gay marriage will be called 'political correctness going mad' by reactionaries but in 20 years time nobody will think it controversial and society won't have collapsed because of it.

Unless you really want to discriminate against muslims or gipsies or black people and find yourself unable to do so because of 'political correctness' legislation then measures to reduce social inequalities make little difference. I certainly wouldn't say it 'ruins the country', frankly i'd rather live here now than at virtually any time in the past, it definitely wasn't a better place to live when I was growing up in the 1980s.


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## TheMoses (Aug 15, 2007)

alexandru.mircea said:


> It is also frowned upon on in France. The police, for example, doesn't have the right to collect data of the of background of the people they deal with (race, ethnicity, religion, etc.). [Which doesn't mean they weren't doing it, especially after years and years of conservative government.]


Surely the danger of this is that the police are racist but nobody can find out because there is no record of the race of those they have stopped?


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## TheMoses (Aug 15, 2007)

Slartibartfas said:


> I never questioned their accuracy. I questioned the meaningfulness of the chosen categorization. To my knowledge, no one in Germany is categorized based on his skin colour. Culture is something that changes over generations, skin colour is like blood someting that you simply have, no matter how you are raised. Ethnic profiling might be problematic but using skin colour is racist profiling which is substantially worse.


I agree that in a perfect world you wouldn't bother recording people's race. But sadly we live in a world where there is still racism both overt and covert. If you don't record people's race you might never realise certain groups are being discriminated against based on their skin colour.

As an aside these groups are self defined. So you can pick whatever group you want to be in.


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## TheMoses (Aug 15, 2007)

alexandru.mircea said:


> I think he says that political correctness is ruining the country. Spot on, what can one say. Economic crisis, bad government, war... They come nowhere near political corectness.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYx4Bc6_eE


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## jonnyboy (Aug 14, 2006)

Jonesy55 said:


> I think that's a bit hysterical, in what way is migration 'ruining' the country?


come and ask the people in leicester. i hear it every day. its actually not "white flight" that i see. its non muslims getting out as quick as they can from muslim areas... so white folk, hindus, sikhs etc all movin out. areas that were mixed just 5 or so years ago are quickly turning into muslim only areas. this ,im my opinion, is ruining all the good work leicester has done in the last 50 years getting everyone to live together and mix together. this has been caused by unchecked mass migration and that group is now so large it does not feel the need to mix .


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## geoking66 (Jun 27, 2006)

It's not that white British people are moving out, it's that the population has increased and they comprise a lower % of the total population due to immigration and lower birth rates.


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## jonnyboy (Aug 14, 2006)

geoking66 said:


> It's not that white British people are moving out, it's that the population has increased and they comprise a lower % of the total population due to immigration and lower birth rates.


totally disagree in respect to what i said. hno:


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## Mornnb (Dec 26, 2010)

Jonesy55 said:


> You sure about that? Where are those figures from?
> 
> The Australian Bureau of Statistics has much lower numbers.


Article in the SMH. Perhaps the ABS counts townhouses and rowhouses as separate houses.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/crowded-houses-changing-face-of-the-australian-dream-20121019-27wzj.html

*Crowded houses: changing face of the Australian dream*

ONLY one in five new households being formed in Sydney are opting for a traditional detached home that once defined the Australian dream, as high housing costs and changing preferences reshape how the city lives....

Detached housing made up 69 per cent of all new dwellings occupied in Sydney between 1986 and 1991. That dropped to 35 per cent between 1996 and 2001 and then to just 19 per cent in the five years to 2011.

Sydney's proportion of flats and medium density housing differentiates it from other Australian cities. The census showed only 58.9 per cent of Sydney's dwellings were detached houses. The national average is almost 74 per cent; in Perth and Brisbane it is more than 76 per cent; in Melbourne 71 per cent.



Aaronj09 said:


> Central London is ridiculously expensive, so that is one reason why many people are leaving, they cannot afford it, an influx of property investors (very wealthy Russians and Arabians especially) means that house prices are just out of control. Want to own property in Kensington? Forget it.


Sydney is actually comparably expensive to London. You will need about $2000 to $4000 a month for rent for a 2 bedroom place in central Sydney and other inner areas. You won't find a studio below $1200 a month. And houses in areas with a reasonable commute time of say 30 minutes, are going for about $1m. Most people can't afford that. The choice is between new sprawl or apartments. Most people are going with the apartment, there's just no appeal in living an hour from the city. In Sydney the problem is... the best existing suburbs are unaffordable, central Sydney is unaffordable. But apartments in existing inner suburbs are affordable.
Sydney has also been leaking a lot of people to cheaper Queensland as a result of the high real estate costs.



Slartibartfas said:


> I never questioned their accuracy. I questioned the meaningfulness of the chosen categorization. To my knowledge, no one in Germany is categorized based on his skin colour. Culture is something that changes over generations, skin colour is like blood someting that you simply have, no matter how you are raised. Ethnic profiling might be problematic but using skin colour is racist profiling which is substantially worse.


Yes, here they categorise nationality, country of birth, language and religion and infer race from these statistics.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

TheMoses said:


> I agree that in a perfect world you wouldn't bother recording people's race. But sadly we live in a world where there is still racism both overt and covert. If you don't record people's race you might never realise certain groups are being discriminated against based on their skin colour.
> 
> As an aside these groups are self defined. So you can pick whatever group you want to be in.


No, not in an ideal world, in this world. The Race category is meaningless. What matters is if people are poor, middle class or wealthy, if they are educated or not and how much and in what. These categories matter, it is these categories that determine if a neighbourhood is going don the drain or not.

But you are right. Racism is a self fulfilling prophecy. People just want it, maybe its because by being racist and point their finger at some scapegoat they can feel a little bit better themselves. I don't know.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

Ah, ok, flats and 'medium density housing', so including rowhomes, semi-detached houses etc.

40% of Sydneysiders don't live in detached houses.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

jonnyboy said:


> totally disagree in respect to what i said. hno:


Leicester is a pretty unique case among mid-sized cities in the UK for having such a low proportion of 'white-British' inhabitants. And even there I suspect that hindu and sikh populations are as common as muslim people so it isn't a mono-religious ghetto but a city with a diverse spread of inhabitants.

The UK has never had 'unrestricted migration' anyway as you claim, if we had then you would probably see many millions of migrants each year rather than a few hundred thousand as has been the case in recent years.

I'm not going to argue that migration doesn't pose challenges for some localities, but that is a long way from 'ruining the country', and a constantly declining, ageing population with no migration to counteract that certainly wouldn't be any less challenging...


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

Slartibartfas said:


> No, not in an ideal world, in this world. The Race category is meaningless. What matters is if people are poor, middle class or wealthy, if they are educated or not and how much and in what. These categories matter, it is these categories that determine if a neighbourhood is going don the drain or not.


Then look at the other census variables if you think that they are more irrelevant.

But if there are correlations between self-declared ethnicity and poverty for example then I think that is something that should be looked at, not ignored or swept under the carpet. Without the data then we cannot know if that is the reality or not.


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## jonnyboy (Aug 14, 2006)

Jonesy55 said:


> Leicester is a pretty unique case among mid-sized cities in the UK for having such a low proportion of 'white-British' inhabitants. And even there I suspect that hindu and sikh populations are as common as muslim people so it isn't a mono-religious ghetto but a city with a diverse spread of inhabitants.
> 
> The UK has never had 'unrestricted migration' anyway as you claim, if we had then you would probably see many millions of migrants each year rather than a few hundred thousand as has been the case in recent years.
> 
> I'm not going to argue that migration doesn't pose challenges for some localities, but that is a long way from 'ruining the country', and a constantly declining, ageing population with no migration to counteract that certainly wouldn't be any less challenging...


the white population who can are getting out as fast as they can. i think 5 million migrants in 10 yrs is pretty drastic, and leicester is 50% ruined so far....i drive thru and feel sad at the loss of the city i knew ten yrs ago. places i used to hang out less than a decade ago i would not go to now! that is ruined in my book. also in the county we now face 10s of thousands of extra houses being built on open fields ,part ageing pop and single home owners, but the 100k migrants in the last ten years need housing. THAT is ruining the country!


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## jonnyboy (Aug 14, 2006)

Jonesy55 said:


> Leicester is a pretty unique case among mid-sized cities in the UK for having such a low proportion of 'white-British' inhabitants. And even there I suspect that hindu and sikh populations are as common as muslim people so it isn't a mono-religious ghetto but a city with a diverse spread of inhabitants.
> 
> The UK has never had 'unrestricted migration' anyway as you claim, if we had then you would probably see many millions of migrants each year rather than a few hundred thousand as has been the case in recent years.
> 
> I'm not going to argue that migration doesn't pose challenges for some localities, but that is a long way from 'ruining the country', and a constantly declining, ageing population with no migration to counteract that certainly wouldn't be any less challenging...


i really take exception to your casual use of the term"a few hundred thousand" to describe 5 million! come over to the front line here or in boston or kings lynn or peterborough and tell the people there a "few hundred thousand" migrants are good for them.


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## zaphod (Dec 8, 2005)

Weird

It seems its the other way in the US, as if white flight has peaked. DC used to be heavily black, now gentrification is making whiter. Same with Atlanta. All the immigrants are going to affordable older suburbs where you can live the "American Dream", the era of urban ethnic neighborhoods is a thing of the past. Suburban Chinatowns are the thing now.

Detroit of all places has a huge Muslim immigrant population, and it's all very suburban(perhaps thats obvious, who'd want to live in that city). Also we don't seem to have the problems with people from those places like you do for some reason.

I guess British cities were healthy enough that until recently there were still a lot of old-school lower middle class densely population white neighborhoods? Here, those places emptied out and turned into bulldozed wastes a long time ago, so some statistically a few thousand upscale condos in a gentrified area counts as growth and you see the percentage of whites growing rapidly(again, relatively). While Chicago bleeds a lot of non-whites from bad neighborhoods downtown and the north side keep growing a bit.


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## jonnyboy (Aug 14, 2006)

Jonesy55 said:


> Leicester is a pretty unique case among mid-sized cities in the UK for having such a low proportion of 'white-British' inhabitants. And even there I suspect that hindu and sikh populations are as common as muslim people so it isn't a mono-religious ghetto but a city with a diverse spread of inhabitants.
> 
> The UK has never had 'unrestricted migration' anyway as you claim, if we had then you would probably see many millions of migrants each year rather than a few hundred thousand as has been the case in recent years.
> 
> I'm not going to argue that migration doesn't pose challenges for some localities, but that is a long way from 'ruining the country', and a constantly declining, ageing population with no migration to counteract that certainly wouldn't be any less challenging...


lol and one last thing! yes big parts of the city ARE becoming a mono religious ghetto ! anyway.....we are lucky the sikhs and hindus are good at mixing and spreading out of the city into the outlying towns .....hence our fantastic curry houses even in some villages now!


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

jonnyboy said:


> i really take exception to your casual use of the term"a few hundred thousand" to describe 5 million! come over to the front line here or in boston or kings lynn or peterborough and tell the people there a "few hundred thousand" migrants are good for them.


I very clearly said a few hundred thousand per year, which is the truth. Or are you claiming that there has been net migration of 5m in any particular year?


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## alexandru.mircea (May 18, 2011)

TheMoses said:


> Surely the danger of this is that the police are racist but nobody can find out because there is no record of the race of those they have stopped?


Ideally the more information you have the better you are prepared to identify the problem and find solutions. However, in reality, you need to remember that government bodies such as police or immigration offices can reflect the nastiest parts of the society. You never know what they're going to do with the knowledge; power corrupts. For example, in France, the conservative president and former interiour minister Sarkozy had a very strong influence in these matters and on his former subordinates, so when he became desperate on the political front to regain the votes that the extreme right wing had taken from him, he pushed strongly a public agenda of exclusion and under the carpet he also instigated the profiling of Rroma gypsy immigrants for mass deportation (something designed as a signal fitting like a glove the anxieties of the more conservative / chauvinistic layers of society). Something you wouldn't have thought can happen in the 21st century...


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

jonnyboy said:


> leicester is 50% ruined so far....i drive thru and feel sad at the loss of the city i knew ten yrs ago. places i used to hang out less than a decade ago i would not go to now! that is ruined in my book.


That's life I'm afraid, there are hundreds of cities all over the world where various districts are very different than they were 10 or 20 years ago. People move, tastes change, demographics alter. Expecting stuff to just stay as it was in your childhood forever is a recipe for disappointment, it isn't going to happen.

You either choose to see that as being 'ruined' and become bitter or you work with it, but you won't stop it.


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## jonnyboy (Aug 14, 2006)

Jonesy55 said:


> That's life I'm afraid, there are hundreds of cities all over the world where various districts are very different than they were 10 or 20 years ago. People move, tastes change, demographics alter. Expecting stuff to just stay as it was in your childhood forever is a recipe for disappointment, it isn't going to happen.
> 
> You either choose to see that as being 'ruined' and become bitter or you work with it, but you won't stop it.


people move? from somalia, not from another town. and its not 10/20 yrs its 5!!! this is totally controllable!this is RUINING the country. these people have no thought of mixing unlike our previous migrants to leicester! u have no idea what im on about mate . i have no problem with controlled migration, but this is out of control and dangerous.we had a good thing in leicester, but even the migrants that came 30 /50 years ago are frightened by whats happening. come to leicester and see, then be patronising to me and say "thats life im afraid"!!!!!


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## 437.001 (Mar 27, 2009)

rincon said:


> UK Rise of 'white flight' - More Caucasians abandon urban areas


Is it just me, or after reading "Caucasians" on a post related to the UK, you also thought about people from Azerbaidjan, Armenia and former USSR Georgia? :?

Does the word "Caucasian" (applied to white people, like in the US) have this meaning in any European country?


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## Aaronj09 (Jan 7, 2009)

I've never heard the word Caucasian used in everyday conversation before.


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

zaphod said:


> Weird
> 
> It seems its the other way in the US, as if white flight has peaked. DC used to be heavily black, now gentrification is making whiter. Same with Atlanta. All the immigrants are going to affordable older suburbs where you can live the "American Dream", the era of urban ethnic neighborhoods is a thing of the past. Suburban Chinatowns are the thing now.
> 
> ...


In the US, there's still white flight & growing black populations in cities that were late in attracting blacks (including Afro-Caribbean & African immigrants) Boston, Rochester, Milwaukee, & Minneapolis for example. 

Elsewhere, African Americans have been leaving northern cities in droves for New South Meccas, Atlanta being the biggest destination, & also Houston, Dallas-Ft Worth, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, & Nashville, etc.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

I took a close look at the census figures on religion for the city of Leicester as it is an interesting case.

At the most detailed level the city is split into 969 neighbourhood areas known as 'Output Areas' with a few hundred residents in each, the big majority range from 300-500 people so we can see in detail whether different religions are generally mixing with each other or living apart.

Of those 969 OAs there were 21 (2.1%) that were highly dominated by people of one religion with over 80% of residents being of that religion. 8 of these neighbourhoods were dominated by Hindus, 13 by Muslims.

There were another 74 (7.6%) neighbourhoods that were not quite so dominated but where 65-80% of residents were of the majority religion. 3 of these areas were dominated by Christians, 28 by Hindus and 43 by Muslims.

Then there were also a further 222 neighbourhoods (22.9%) showing some signs of being dominated by one religious group, with between 50% and 65% being of the same religion. 142 of these were areas in which Christians were the majority, 42 had Hindu majorities and 38 had Muslim majorities.

In the other 655 neighbourhoods (67.6%), no more than 50% of residents declared themselves as followers of any one religion.

The highest concentration in any OA of the other major religious group in the city, Sikhs, was 33%, they didn't make up the majority in any neighbourhood


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

It's not so much white flight but suburban calling. This has been happening for generations, people come to the city or grow up there, work their way up, then on having children of their own or retirement, move out to more spacious, leafy suburbia -hence why the white population of SE England has gone up, and why the older people have gone down in the city. London has more 25-34 year olds than anywhere else in the country, and its median age is artificially low at 36.

*This surburban retirement - unlike other countries - is not confined to a white phenomenon but more a middle class one - it's just there are alot of Whites ageing and becoming middle class. This also aligns with the large amount of middle class South Asians, East Asians and newly minted Caribbeans who have all moved out.* In turn a percentage of their children, white or non-white alike, will move back to the big city following opportunity.

It also seems the white population is diminishing in percentages - this is true. But not because theyre moving out because London's too ethnic, it's that their traditional replacements are increasingly from abroad rather than being born in the city. Likewise see the change among other ethnic minorities as they get richer - the Caribbeans that dominated the Black population since the 1950s have sold on and been replaced by West and East Africans, the traditionally Cantonese-speaking Chinese are now more represented in the city by Mandarin speakers, and new arrivals of ethnic Chinese from Malaysia speaking Hakka, Hainanese and Hokkien. The Indian community made up largely of Hindu Gujaratis and ethnic Indians expelled from East Africa have now been replaced by Sikhs and Bengalis.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

In short its middle class white 'flight' + middle class South Asian 'flight' + middle class Black Caribbean 'flight' + middle class East Asian 'flight' into the comforts of retiree-and-child-friendly, suburban metroland.


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## charlottetonne (Aug 14, 2012)

why is it that in America race and skin color is such an important thing to dwell on?

As far as "white flight" an American term that DOES NOT really fit with what is happening in the UK, people are moving outta the cities looking for more space rather than escaping people of different complexions.

Most UK cities are still over 90% white....


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## Cherguevara (Apr 13, 2005)

Barking and Dagenham is a dreadful example. It's dominated by a huge public housing estate where thanks to "right to buy" the retiring white working class population have been able to buy their houses cheaply and sell them on to private landlords at a profit. Since ex-local authority properties are generally held to be less desirable they will be rented out to recent immigrants who need to find somewhere cheap to live close to London. 

This is less 'white flight' and more 'cashing in'.


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## charlottetonne (Aug 14, 2012)

Cherguevara said:


> Barking and Dagenham is a dreadful example. It's dominated by a huge public housing estate where thanks to "right to buy" the retiring white working class population have been able to buy their houses cheaply and sell them on to private landlords at a profit. Since ex-local authority properties are generally held to be less desirable they will be rented out to recent immigrants who need to find somewhere cheap to live close to London.
> 
> This is less 'white flight' and more 'cashing in'.


Agree, Barking and Dagenham is like Compton and the Watts.... no one wants to live there....

I pray the UK doesn't turn into a suburban wasteland (I think we love our cities too much)


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

Likewise at the opposite end of the spectrum is Notting Hill, once one of the poorest areas and the epicentre of the local Trinidadian community. As it gentrified they sold on their bedsits and flats to the millionaires for large profits and moved out of London, to a life of swanky retirement. It's now dominated by the children of old money aristocracy and newly minted Russians, Chinese, French and Italians. This transpiration of events could just as misleadingly be dubbed 'black flight'. Though noone would go about yelling that in the papers would they? Likewise witness the gentrification of Whitechapel's Bengali community - once the second poorest community a decade ago, now overtaking native Brits - as the hipsters move in and the old hands sell on. The same can be seen increasingly in Turkish/ Kurdish Dalston and Caribbean Peckham. Brixton's next.


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## Rascar (Mar 13, 2012)

The outright decline in the number of Caribbean Londoners is interesting, either there is a separate "Black or Black British" category that didnt show up on the graph on page 1, or pehaps many of their offspring are now mixed race, given that they are the group most likely to intermarry.


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## LtBk (Jul 27, 2004)

Questions:
1.Is there a strong back to the city movement in the UK?
2.Are more adults staying in the central cities after having kids?


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

There has been strong population growth in many city centres over the past 10-15 years but still most urban areas would have lost population if it wasn't for immigration boating the numbers.

However, even smaller places have generally been getting more 'urban' style housing patterns, the planning laws here are very strict in terms of sprawl so many of the commuter towns and regional centres that people have moved to from the bigger cities have been expanding through becoming denser rather than spreading out with sprawl.

This is how the housing stock of England and Wales changed between the 2001 and 2011 censuses.



In 2001 there were:

Detached houses 5,131,189 (22.8%)
Semi-detached houses 7,117,662 (31.7%)
Terraced houses 5,869,878 (26.1%)
Purpose-built apartments 3,069,566 (13.7%)
Converted apartments 918,160 (4.1%)
Apartments in commercial buildings 258,303 (1.2%)
Caravans/temporary structures 93,844 (0.4%)
Total 22,459,232

By 2011 that had changed to:

Detached houses 5,310,357 (22.8%)
Semi-detached houses (31.4%)
Terraced houses 5,757,140 (24.7%)
Purpose-built apartments 3,747,939 (16.1%)
Converted apartments 860,207 (3.7%)
Apartment in commercial building 221,179 (0.9%)
Caravan/temporary structure 84,966 (0.4%)
Total 23,286,109

Increase from 2001 to 2011

Purpose-built apartments +678,373 (+22.1%)
Semi-detached houses +186,659 (+2.6%)
Detached houses +178,538 (+3.5%)
Caravans/temporary structures -8,878 (-9.5%)
Apartments in commercial buildings -37,124 (-14.4%)
Converted apartments -57,953 (-6.3%)
Terraced houses -112,738 (-1.9%)
Total +826,877 (+3.7%)

So apartments contributed around 70% to the increase in housing stock, houses around 30%


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

charlottetonne said:


> why is it that in America race and skin color is such an important thing to dwell on?
> 
> As far as "white flight" an American term that DOES NOT really fit with what is happening in the UK, people are moving outta the cities looking for more space rather than escaping people of different complexions.
> 
> Most UK cities are still over 90% white....


'

You've answered your own question. 

There are very few cities of any size in the US these days that are anywhere close to being 90% white. Thus more focus on color, etc.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

Basically the pattern is that people live in the cities for jobs and while theyre young etc. Then they decamp to the burbs when they can, on having kids or retiring. But their children in turn will gravitate back to the city when grown up, and the process starts again. Of course many people still choose to stay with their kids in the inner city, but the upwardly mobile of a certain age tend to head to the suburbs, regardless of race.

In the postwar years London went down from a peak of 9 million in 1939 to 6.5 million by the 80's as people moved out into the metro. Then it started rising again, now at 8.2 million and booming.

London and metro stats compared - high immigration from abroad aswell as the rest of the country, plus a national baby boom:










the boom compared with other cities:


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

the spliff fairy said:


> Likewise at the opposite end of the spectrum is Notting Hill, once one of the poorest areas and the epicentre of the local Trinidadian community. As it gentrified they sold on their bedsits and flats to the millionaires for large profits and moved out of London, to a life of swanky retirement. It's now dominated by the children of old money aristocracy and newly minted Russians, Chinese, French and Italians. This transpiration of events could just as misleadingly be dubbed 'black flight'. Though noone would go about yelling that in the papers would they? Likewise witness the gentrification of Whitechapel's Bengali community - once the second poorest community a decade ago, now overtaking native Brits - as the hipsters move in and the old hands sell on. The same can be seen increasingly in Turkish/ Kurdish Dalston and Caribbean Peckham. Brixton's next.


Consider though how wise & lucky the Brixton Trinis were to be able to make a big profit selling to new Euro & Asian millionaires, and scatter to better venues. Hopefully the folks in Brixton will also capitalize on the central location and value of their housing & neighborhood. In many US cities like Detroit there's no demand for excess building, even well-constructed ones. 

In the US, many of the Afro-Caribbean immigrants who came to NYC in big numbers in recent decades, have joined the southward migration to places like Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, & other New South Meccas.


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

Rascar said:


> The outright decline in the number of Caribbean Londoners is interesting, either there is a separate "Black or Black British" category that didnt show up on the graph on page 1, or pehaps many of their offspring are now mixed race, given that they are the group most likely to intermarry.


All those factors figure in. Also you can bet that many of the Caribbean immigrants who came up to the UK in the 1950s/60s & retired with good pensions went back to their islands, where they can enjoy a less hectic lifestyle and a nicer climate in their golden years!


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

yep Caribbeans are now an 'endangered' minority despite their large numbers as the majority of them marry out rather than within the community. This increasingly applies to almost all the major minorities, such as continental Europeans, East Asians, Latinos and the new West African communities. Even South Asians who traditionally get arranged marriages have one third in mixed relationships (though for the question of marriage it's alot lower).

This isn't a new phenomenon, the city was as cosmpolitan in the medieval days as it is today. After there were huge Jewish, French and Irish communities whom the majority of native Londoners have ancestry (as much as a half for Huguenot French, one third with Irish). There were 20,000 Black Africans by the 18th Century, mostly who had arrived as slaves and servants or were the descendants of them - but with a history stretching as far back as Roman times, and making up parts of the gentry well into the Dark Ages, hence why the modern day TV series of Merlin has a Black British character- Guinevere- based on a find of the grave of a rich upper class Angle burial, whom happened to be a mixed race Black woman. Also 19th Century Chinatowns infamous for their opium dens and Indian lascar (sailor) communities counting 70,000 by the end of the Victorian era. 

- But what happened to them all? They intermarried(or not at all) and diluted away their physical differences. By the early 1930s UK and London was as 'native White British' as it ever was, just before the refugees started arriving from WWII.


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## Ulpia-Serdica (Oct 24, 2011)

^^
This is a pretty interesting overview. Thanks for sharing :cheers:


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## Rascar (Mar 13, 2012)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21511904
Article about this very topic from the BBC today. Touches on issues mentioned above of old East Enders selling up Council Houses and moving further East to the Essex coast. Mark Easton portrays the changes as social climbing by working class whites, I'm not sure this tells the whole story of such a large demographic shift in 10 years, though it is no doubt part of the picture.

Judging by the comments section many are not wholely convinced!


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

the spliff fairy said:


> yep Caribbeans are now an 'endangered' minority despite their large numbers as the majority of them marry out rather than within the community. This increasingly applies to almost all the major minorities, such as continental Europeans, East Asians, Latinos and the new West African communities. Even South Asians who traditionally get arranged marriages have one third in mixed relationships (though for the question of marriage it's alot lower).


A BIG differeance between the UK and US is the lack of a Sunbelt in the former. Thus, in the UK minorities of color have few better, warmer, more prosperous, places to go. In the US, we've seen a HUGE southward migration into the Sunbelt by African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other minorities. 

Atlanta has been a mecca for Blacks, Caribbeans, and Africans for decades. Likewise, Orlando and Miami have become big meccas for Puerto Ricans and Cubans, respectively, along with other immigrants and other minorities. Likewise, many Asians who might start-out on the East Coast, move to the West Coast, or at least their children do. 

Minorities in the UK don't have the degree of re-location options as those in the US have, aside from returning to their homelands, or their parents homelands etc.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

Oh we have a 'sunbelt' all right. The twee coastal towns south of London such as Eastbourne and Bournemouth, which attract the aged in droves in little bus trips, aka God's Waiting Room. 

Except not much sun. So er, really more of a 'Belt' for old people.

Oh yep, there's also SPAIN. Benidorm is like Birmingham with sun and slightly more bingo.


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