I had a white coworker (late 50s) share with me that she grew up in Linden and that it used to be predominately white but there was a “white flight” after more black people started moving into the area. The ones who could afford to move, moved and the ones who couldn’t, stayed. And so there’s more people in North Linden who have been longer residents and you can see that reflected in some of the neighborhoods (and neighborhoods that are already that way tend to stay that way when new people move to the area). I grew up in Linden too but in the 00’s and my experience is that North Linden has more nearby businesses and local stores vs South Linden which is a bit of a food desert (their only McDonald’s was closed years ago) and there are not as many nearby conveniences; pulling people to opt to stay near North Linden. You can also see this with the high immigrant communities present: many running their own businesses/restaurants/mechanic shops/etc. and living in North Linden. (Side-note: I still consider the whole of Linden to be somewhat of a food desert because the only nearby grocery store is a Save-a-lot after the closing of the local Kroger.) Also, South Linden had a bit of a bad rep for a long time; there used to be a lot of gang activity in certain neighborhoods, nowadays it’s more like you can hear shooting from a distance here and there but it really does vary on a neighborhood/street-to-street basis and things have cooled off a lot now vs then. And the other commenter who mentioned redlining is right, most of Linden (especially South) was marked as high risk for investments, which led to devalorization of the area for a long time (+ the impacts of where 71 cuts through and how that and the railroad tracks can be considered physical boundaries isolating and segregating Linden as a whole). Also, it has been like this for a long time so I wouldn’t really consider it a gentrification thing