The transformation of Greenville over the past three decades is visible to anyone who has walked Main Street, crossed the Liberty Bridge, or watched a new development rise where a vacant lot used to be. It is a genuine success story. But measured from the neighborhoods that have long been home to Greenville’s Black community like the West End, Haynie-Sirrine, Nicholtown, Southernside—the view is more complicated. Full analysis.
Thirty Years of Change
The numbers are stark. Over the past 30 years, Greenville’s 13 historically Black Special Emphasis Neighborhoods have seen a 53% decline in Black residents. Over the same period, the white population in those same neighborhoods has nearly doubled. In Haynie-Sirrine, one of Greenville’s oldest Black neighborhoods, the Black population has fallen by 85%. Within a one-mile radius of Unity Park (the city’s signature 60-acre public investment) there are 47% fewer Black residents. The Brookings Institution defines gentrification as “racial integration without economic integration”—wealthier households moving into neighborhoods they once avoided, pushing up property values and rents beyond what long-time residents can afford. The income data from Greenville bear this out. While overall household incomes in the Special Emphasis Neighborhoods have risen, breaking those numbers down by race tells a different story: Black residents’ incomes have remained largely stagnant even as an influx of wealthier white households lifts the aggregate. Revitalization has happened. Who it has benefited is a harder question.
Seeing the City Block by Block
Measuring this change accurately requires looking at the right scale. Standard reporting on population change typically uses census tracts. These geographic units can encompass thousands of residents and often cut across multiple neighborhoods at once. The Shi Institute’s applied research team, working with Dr. Ken Kolb of Furman’s sociology department, used census block-level data instead, a geography that often corresponds to individual city blocks. This allowed them to fit population data precisely to the actual boundaries of each Special Emphasis Neighborhood, honoring the local definition of neighborhoods rather than boundaries defined at the federal level.
The Special Emphasis Neighborhood designation was created specifically to give Greenville’s historic Black communities a voice in how their neighborhoods would develop. The research reveals a difficult irony: the most significant racial displacement in Greenville is occurring in the very neighborhoods the city set out to protect. Market forces—rising property values, an influx of wealthier residents—have moved faster than the protections were designed to handle.
The full findings, with interactive maps and neighborhood-by-neighborhood data, are published at communitygvl.org. The Greenville News’ coverage of the research won the Hillman Foundation’s Sidney Award—a national recognition for journalism that addresses the root causes of poverty and social injustice. The Shi Institute partners with communities across the region to put precise, trustworthy data in the hands of those working to ensure that growth doesn’t leave longtime residents behind.
Research by Dr. Ken Kolb, Furman University, and the Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities applied research team.