Concentrated Affluence: The Spatial Segregation of High-Income Households across Richmond, VA

Researchers examining issues of inequality focus overwhelmingly on racially segregated neighborhoods, concentrated poverty, and spatial isolation. Such focus is appropriate, given that spatial concentration amplifies the harms of poverty. But this overemphasis has driven policymakers to prioritize mitigating concentration, as evidenced by numerous dispersal policies. In contrast, scholars pay far less attention to the opposite extreme: the concentration of affluent households. The spatial concentration of affluence enables advantaged households to hoard opportunity, skew resource distribution, limit access to public amenities, and consolidate political power. Across public discourse, concentrated affluence is routinely treated as neutral, and policymakers rarely pursue strategies to confront this consequential component of segregation. This study focuses on the segregation of affluence, examining changes in the concentration of high-income households since 1990. Using Richmond, Virginia, as a case study, findings demonstrate that affluent households are the most unevenly distributed group, rapidly segregating in the city and growing more concentrated in the suburbs. This paper makes two contributions: First, it captures changes in the geography of poverty and affluence by tracking low- and high-income households. Second, it provides an intraurban analysis of segregation, detailing household sorting across urban and suburban spaces. Growing spatial segregation of affluent households reveals a planning system that privileges the advantaged, and a focus on concentrated affluence is essential for urban policy to address spatial inequality.