Race, Uneven Development and the Geography of Opportunity in Urban America (original) (raw)
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Privileged Places: Race, Uneven Development and the Geography of Opportunity in Urban America
David Rusk, former Mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico, has observed that "bad neighborhoods defeat good programs". This paper identifies the underlying causes of bad neighbourhoods along with their costs to local residents and residents throughout the region. It is a critical essay that traces recent patterns of uneven metropolitan development, the social forces generating these patterns, their many costs and potential remedies. It demonstrates how the interrelated processes of sprawl, concentration of poverty and racial segregation shape the opportunity structure facing diverse segments of the nation's urban and metropolitan population. In so doing, it draws on recent scholarly literature from various disciplines, government data and documents, research institute reports and the mass media. Topics addressed include income and wealth disparities, employment opportunities, housing patterns, access to health care and exposure to crime. While recognising the role of individual choice and human capital, the paper focuses on public policy decisions and related private-sector activities in determining how place and race shape the opportunity structure of metropolitan areas. Finally, the paper explores various policy options to sever the linkages among place, race and privilege in the nation's urban communities.
2007
BACKGROUND: American metropolitan areas exhibit an uneven geography of opportunity; minorities are more likely to live in worse quality neighborhoods, affecting their opportunities and life outcomes. Our objective was to broaden the conceptualization of US neighborhood poverty beyond "the average" to illustrate the non-overlap of entire distributions of neighborhood poverty by race, and to highlight the differences in poverty/race distributions across different U.S. metropolitan areas. METHODS: We employed Census 2000 tract-level data for 100 largest Metropolitan Areas (MAs) (n=38,855 tracts). We analyzed proportions of total tract population in poverty, then, to examine race-specific neighborhood-poverty distributions, we applied weights based on tractlevel counts for each of the 3 largest racial-ethnic groups (NH-Blacks, NH-Whites, Hispanics). We calculated exposure measures of mean and quartiles of the neighborhood-poverty distribution by MSA, and present a new statisti...
American Journal of Sociology, 2001
In some inquiries, racism is a given, a fundamental assumption and fact that is known to shape economic and social and spatial inequalities. In such inquiries, from the empirical studies of W. E. B. Du Bois to the social thought of Patricia Williams, the world is believed to be racialized "always already": the task of the researcher, then, is to probe the roots of racism in particular cases, and to liberate (or compensate) the people who are oppressed by its institutional manifestations. Other inquiries-guided by a methodology of rational choice-do not assume racism to be a given. For example, in mainstream economics after Gary Becker, race is a possible "factor," one vector of a matrix, whose strength and direction of force on earnings or housing differences is to be examined in a regression equation once all other factors have been held constant. Indeed, some economists after Becker argue that racism cannot explain differences in earnings or in opportunities because if the marginal product of labor (or the bid on a house) of a person of color exceeds that of the white competition, the argument goes, then no profit-maximizing employer or seller would deny the offer of the person of color. And since all employers and households are assumed to be profit-maximizers, the color of one's skin will have no economic significance at all. If it were possible to bring together these two ways of thinking about race-the racialized "always already" and the rational choice-the authors could claim to unify styles of inquiry now widely and mutually seen to be either methodologically exclusive or scientifically retarded. Urban Inequality, the seventh volume in a series of books by the Russell Sage Foundation, does not achieve such unity. But the book is so directed (pp. 6, 10, 13)-it is a collection of articles by both mature and younger scholars (many of them women and men of color [p. 7]) and in ten different disciplines-and does achieve a good deal. The central purpose of the book is to explain "economic, spatial, and racial divisions" in four cities and to afford "a comprehensive and systematic look at the roots of inequality in labor markets, residential segregation, and racial attitudes" (p. 2). The eleven studies are based upon three sources of original survey data. The "Household Survey" (1992-1994) was administered in person to over 8,900 adults in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Boston, and Detroit. During the same period of time, 3,510 employers were interviewed by telephone, and then 365 managers at 174 of those firms were interviewed in person. The Household Survey oversampled low-income and impoverished households "to allow a detailed analysis of these groups" (p. 14). The surveys are not altogether current: Atlanta gained over 1.2 million people between interviews and date of publication. Still, these supply-and demandside data will be of value for years to come. "Stereotyping and Urban Inequality," by Lawrence C. Bobo and Michael P. Massagli, illustrates the richness of the data. They defend a pragmatic notion of stereotype developed in the 1920s by Walter Lippman, and substantiated by social psychologists: essentially, they argue that if people hold a stereotype then they will act as though they do (pp. 93, 95, 98). The data allow them "to compare out-group perceptions of non-Hispanic white and black respondents across the four cities" (p.
The Racially Fragmented City? Neighborhood Racial Segregation and Diversity Jointly Considered
This article reflects on the racial configuration of urban space. Previous research tends to posit racial segregation and diversity as either endpoints on a continuum of racial dominance or mirror images of one another. We argue that segregation and diversity must be jointly understood; they are necessarily related, although not inevitably as binary opposites. Our view is that the neighborhood geographies of U.S. metropolitan areas are simultaneously and increasingly marked by both racial segregation and racial diversity. We offer an approach that classifies neighborhoods based jointly on their compositional diversity and their racial dominance, illustrated by an examination of the neighborhood racial structure of several large metropolitan areas for 1990 and 2000. Compositional diversity increased in all metropolitan areas in ways rendered visible by our approach, including a sharp reduction in the number of highly segregated white neighborhoods, transitioning mostly into moderately diverse yet still white-dominated neighborhoods, and a fourfold increase in the number of highly diverse neighborhoods. Even so, many highly segregated spaces remain, especially for whites and blacks. Latino-dominated spaces show a mix of persistence and emergence. Although compositional diversity is increasing, highly diverse neighborhoods are still rare and are the least persistent of all racial configurations. Our approach clearly demonstrates the “both/and”-ness of segregation and diversity.
City Observatory, 2014
A close look at population change in our poorest urban neighborhoods over the past four decades shows that the concentration of poverty is growing and that gentrification is rare. While media attention often focuses on those few places that are witnessing a transformation, there are two more potent and less mentioned storylines. The first is the persistence of chronic poverty. Three-quarters of 1970 high-poverty urban neighborhoods in the U.S. are still poor today. The second is the spread of concentrated poverty: three times as many urban neighborhoods have poverty rates exceeding 30 percent as was true in 1970 and the number of poor people living in these neighborhoods has doubled. The result of these trends is that the poor in the nation’s metropolitan areas are increasingly segregated into neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. In 1970, 28 percent of the urban poor lived in a neighborhood with a poverty rate of 30 percent or more; by 2010, 39 percent of the urban poor lived in such high-poverty neighborhoods.
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2019
How entrenched is the spatial structure of inequality in cities? Although recent discussions provide conflicting answers to this question, the absence of long-term, longitudinal neighborhood data curtails direct examination of the issue. Focusing on the city of Denver, we develop a new strategy for analyzing neighborhood dynamics from 1940 to the present day. Our analysis of these data reveals surprising persistence in the income rank of neighborhoods between 1940 and 2016, which appears to be driven by the enduring position of white, upper-income places at the top of the neighborhood hierarchy. When lowincome neighborhoods do rise in income rank, we find that change tends to be spatially concentrated in specific areas of the city and accelerates during broader historical episodes of urban change. We conclude that neighborhood inequality in Denver has endured over long periods of time and through substantial shifts in the wider urban landscape.
Journal of Urban Affairs, 2012
A wealth of data drawn from cities and their nearby suburbs show that, consistent with place stratification theory, African Americans live in poorer quality communities than similarly affluent members of other racial groups. Yet, few have examined whether these trends are playing out in the rapidly growing exurbs, places that emerged in the post-Civil Rights era. Through a case study of African American migration to Los Angeles's exurban Inland Empire, this article tests the applicability of place stratification theory by triangulating evidence from interviews with 70 movers with U.S. Census and American Community Survey data. Both sources reveal that the gap in neighborhood conditions among similar income racial groups is much narrower in the exurbs than inner city Los Angeles or its nearby suburbs, an outcome that participants attributed to the region's rapid housing construction, relative lack of a history of who lives where, and resulting neighborhood diversity.
Journal of Urban Affairs, 2004
County governments have been a key feature of American politics since before the creation of the United States, but they do not get much respect from political scientists. Dismissed as ''the sleeping giant,'' ''the dark continent of American government,'' and ''the backward institution,'' the 3,043 county governments across the nation are often treated as an afterthought even by those scholars who specialize in the study of local government. In Counties as Service Delivery Agents, J. Edwin Benton argues that such attitudes have blinded scholars to the emerging prominence of county governments in the American federal system. Created to serve as administrative arms of states, county governments were the traditional means for providing welfare, health care, transportation, judicial administration, and tax assessment services. In recent decades the service responsibilities of county governments have expanded to such an extent that counties are now seen by many as an acceptable replacement for municipal governments and a primary agent of regional services. Indeed, in 1997, 39% of all local government spending was done through counties. After a solid introduction to county governments, Benton makes an ambitious effort to understand the factors behind the changing obligations of counties. Unfortunately, most of his analysis is descriptive, which frustrates any attempt to sort through the many conflicting variables. Benton begins by tracing the historical development of county governments from their establishment in Virginia in 1634. Regional differences quickly became evident as a system of strong county governments was instituted across the South, a combination of strong municipalities and weak counties developed in New England, and counties with somewhat mixed powers flourished throughout the mid-Atlantic. Although the states experimented with various forms of county government structure and powers in the early years of the nation, by the Civil War it was generally accepted that county governments existed primarily to administer policies established by state governments. This subordination was alleviated somewhat during the Progressive Era as the elected county leadership was professionalized and county home rule became an option in many states. However, the basic form of county governments remained remarkably static well into the twentieth century. After World War II suburbanization transformed local government across the nation, forcing a reconfiguration of service responsibilities among municipalities, counties, townships, and special districts. Initially, county governments were unprepared for the rapid transfer of people from center cities to the unincorporated areas. As a result, many newly suburbanized areas found more immediate relief for their service needs by
People Versus Place, People and Place, or More? New Directions for Housing Policy
Housing Policy Debate
Virtually all aspects of socioeconomic inequality in the United States are organized in space (Sampson, 2012). The spatial organization of inequality is, in part, simply a manifestation of inequality occurring at the levels of individuals, families, and groups that is mapped onto spaces through market processes. However, spatial inequality also is due to intentional efforts to organize physical space through state action in ways that maintain or reinforce inequality (Dreier, Mollenkopf, & Swanstrom, 2004). As a result of both sets of processes, there is tremendous variation in economic status, education and labor-market opportunities, institutions, environmental hazards, and social networks across city blocks, neighborhoods, municipalities, metropolitan areas, and regions. Well-documented trends in rising household income and wealth inequality are mirrored by trends in the degree to which low-and high-income families live apart from each other, as measured by economic segregation (Bischoff & Reardon, 2014). Although the growth of isolated affluent neighborhoods is an important contributor to the rise of economic segregation (Reardon & Bischoff, 2011), much of the concern about the issue stems from the long-term rise of concentrated poverty. Jargowsky (1996, 2003, 2015) has documented, in a series of reports, trends in the proportion of all Americans and poor Americans living in neighborhoods with a poverty rate of 40% or greater, showing substantial growth in concentrated poverty from 1970 to 1990, a decline in the 1990s, and a subsequent increase from 2000 to the most recent years in which data were available (2009-2013). Since 2000, the number of extreme-poverty neighborhoods has risen by over 75%, and the number of Americans living in such neighborhoods has risen by more than 90%, from 7.2 million to 13.8 million (Jargowsky, 2015). Many studies have measured the connections between an individual child or adult's exposure to concentrated poverty and a wide variety of subsequent negative outcomes (for recent reviews see Galster & Sharkey, in press; Sharkey & Faber, 2014). This literature increasingly supports the understanding that robust child development and adult opportunities for U.S. low-income households will be compromised in numerous aspects by the comprehensively deprived residential environments that they typically confront. For recent studies that provide plausibly causal estimates of the negative effects of neighborhood deprivation on many child and adult outcomes in the United States, see Chetty, Hendren,
The Geography of Exclusion: Race, Segregation, and Concentrated Poverty
The late 2000s Great Recession brought rising neighborhood poverty in the midst of affluence, and the reemergence of a racial and ethnic “underclass” living in inner-city neighborhoods. Our approach redirects attention to a level of geography–cities, suburbs, and small rural towns–where local political and economic decisions effectively exclude the poor and minority populations. It uses newly released poverty data from the 2005–2009 American Community Survey to provide evidence of changing macro patterns of spatially concentrated poverty. We show that roughly one in four U.S. places had poverty rates exceeding 20 percent in 2005 through 2009, up 31 percent since 2000. Roughly 30 percent of America's poor reside in poor places, and concentrated poverty is especially high among poor African Americans. Overall increases in place-based poverty nonetheless were muted over the decade by declines in concentrated poverty among poor Hispanics (a pattern that reflects spatial diffusion to new destinations). We also show that America's poor were sorted unevenly from place-to-place within local labor markets (i.e., counties); poor-nonpoor segregation rates between places increased from 12.6 to 18.4 between 1990 and the 2005–2009 period. Segregation was especially high among disadvantaged blacks and Hispanics. Our empirical results make a case for more scholarly attention on newly emerging patterns of concentrated poverty at the place level.