CHOCOLATE CITY, VANILLA SUBURBS REVISITED

Despite the long history of racial hostility, African Americans after 1990 began moving from the city of Detroit to the surrounding suburbs in large numbers. After World War II, metropolitan Detroit ranked with Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee for having the highest levels of racial residential segregation in the United States. Detroit’s suburbs apparently led the country in their strident opposition to integration. Today, segregation scores are moderate to low for Detroit’s entire suburban ring and for the larger suburbs. Suburban public schools are not highly segregated by race. This essay describes how this change has occurred and seeks to explain why there is a trend toward residential integration in the nation’s quintessential American Apartheid metropolis.

Racial and Ethnic Group Spatial Assimilation in Inner and Outer Suburban Rings

The present study examines inner and outer suburban ring attainment outcomes among racial and ethnic groups that reside in the nation’s metropolitan areas. The main objective is to evaluate the extent to which the relationship between racial and ethnic group’s socioeconomic status characteristics and residence between inner and outer suburban rings conforms to the tenets of the spatial assimilation model. Using micro-level data from the five-year 2012–2016 American Community Survey, the author calculates multinomial logistic regression models to determine the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) and other relevant predictors on residence within the nation’s metropolitan area’s suburban inner and outer rings. The results both confirm and contradict the main tenets of the spatial assimilation model. To the extent that income, education, and homeownership are positively related to residence in both suburban rings, the findings also suggest that access to inner and outer rings is hierarchically stratified by race and ethnicity.

Racial and Ethnic Group Spatial Assimilation in Inner and Outer Suburban Rings

The present study examines inner and outer suburban ring attainment outcomes among racial and ethnic groups residing in the nation’s metropolitan areas. The main objective is to evaluate the extent to which the relationship between racial and ethnic group’s socioeconomic status characteristics and residence between inner and outer suburban rings conforms to the tenets of the spatial assimilation model. Using micro-level data from the 5-year 2012-2016 American Community Survey, the author calculates multinomial logistic regression models to determine the effects of SES and other relevant predictors on residence within the nation’s metropolitan area’s suburban inner and outer rings. The results both confirm and contradict the main tenets of the spatial assimilation model. To the extent that income, education, and homeownership are positively related to residence in both suburban rings, the findings also suggest that access to inner and outer rings is hierarchically stratified by race and ethnicity.

Urbanization in American Economic History, 1800–2000

This chapter explores the economic forces that led the United States to become an urban nation. The urban wage premium in the United States was remarkably stable over the past two centuries, ranging between 15 and 40 percent. The wage premium rose through the mid-nineteenth century as new manufacturing technologies enhanced urban productivity, then fell from 1880 to 1940 (especially through 1915) as investments in public health infrastructure improved the urban quality of life, and finally rose sharply after 1980, coinciding with the skill- (and apparently also urban-) biased technological change of the computer revolution. Over the twentieth century, households and employment have relocated from the central city to the suburban ring. Rising incomes and falling commuting costs can explain much of this pattern, while urban crime and racial diversity also played a role.

Energy-Price Effects on Metropolitan Spatial Structure and Form

This paper is concerned with possible changes in the metropolitan structure and form under conditions of energy-conservation efforts by households and firms. Across-the-board increases in energy prices, combined with the on-going process of employment relocation from the central city to the suburban ring of metropolitan areas, could lead to major, and potentially more energy-conserving spatial reorganizations. By use of a utility analysis of the residential location decision by households, this reorganization is shown to take the form of a multinucleated urban system with a number of strong urban nuclei playing rhe role of employment centers for the suburban residential area surrounding them.