It's more like white flight was a specific moment in history as much as it is a continuing phenomenon and, likewise, gentrification is a more recent moment in history but has forerunners further back. They're not exactly isolated and opposing one another. Gentrification isn't post-white-flight people moving back to the conditions for which they (or the parents/grandparents) left. It's getting rid of the former areas that were used as a reason for white flight. Tearing them down and remaking them into white-friendly areas. Because land value decreased enough and suburbs/rural areas became expensive enough to do that. It's still a form of white flight except instead of white people moving out, they just bulldoze everything and turn it into 5-over-1s.
The cities were forced into the mode that triggered white flight by industrial culture and cities are forced into gentrification because of post-industrial forces. Industry needed a large pool of cheap labor at the center of major trade routes, hence cities and urbanization. Then that triggered the development of suburbs by land developers because the nobles got to live in sky scrapers and the bourgeois didn't want to live on the ground with the poors. Hence the racism part because race and wealth intersect. Then industry peaked and started to be exported to the global south. Industrial centers shut down. Now you have massive amounts of cheaper land poor people that are the result of generations of racism and exclusion. It's easy to just invest in these areas and by invest I mean develop expensive real estate and who buys that?
It's more like white flight was a specific moment in history as much as it is a continuing phenomenon and, likewise, gentrification is a more recent moment in history but has forerunners further back. They're not exactly isolated and opposing one another. Gentrification isn't post-white-flight people moving back to the conditions for which they (or the parents/grandparents) left. It's getting rid of the former areas that were used as a reason for white flight. Tearing them down and remaking them into white-friendly areas. Because land value decreased enough and suburbs/rural areas became expensive enough to do that. It's still a form of white flight except instead of white people moving out, they just bulldoze everything and turn it into 5-over-1s.
The cities were forced into the mode that triggered white flight by industrial culture and cities are forced into gentrification because of post-industrial forces. Industry needed a large pool of cheap labor at the center of major trade routes, hence cities and urbanization. Then that triggered the development of suburbs by land developers because the nobles got to live in sky scrapers and the bourgeois didn't want to live on the ground with the poors. Hence the racism part because race and wealth intersect. Then industry peaked and started to be exported to the global south. Industrial centers shut down. Now you have massive amounts of cheaper land poor people that are the result of generations of racism and exclusion. It's easy to just invest in these areas and by invest I mean develop expensive real estate and who buys that?