Search

This study examines 1990 residential segregation levels and 1980-1990 changes in segregation for Latinos, Asians, and blacks in U.S. metropolitan areas. It also evaluates the effect of emerging multiethnic metropolitan area contexts for these segregation patterns. While black segregation levels are still well above those for Latinos and Asians, there is some trend toward convergence over the decade. More than half of the areas increased their Latino segregation levels over the 1980s, and almost three-fourths increased their Asian segregation levels. In contrast, black segregation levels decreased in 88% of metropolitan areas. Multiethnic metropolitan area context is shown to be important for internal segregation dynamics. Black segregation levels are lower, and were more likely to decline in multiethnic metropolitan areas and when other minority groups grew faster than blacks. Latino segregation was also more likely to decline in such areas, and declines in both Latino and Asian segregation were greater when other minority groups were growing. These findings point up the potential for greater mixed-race and mixed-ethnicity coresidence in the neighborhoods of multiethnic metropolitan areas.

This paper introduces an analytic framework that can be used to assess the relationships between individual movement differentials and place characteristics, on the one hand, and aggregate mobility levels and city-suburb population change (in size or composition), on the other. Application of this framework using census data for individual metropolitan areas allows the analyst to decompose population changes due to net migration into contributing mobility streams and their component rates which are subject to unique community and individual influences. The paper provides both theoretical and empirical rationale for the framework, illustrates its use with 1970 census data, and discusses its implications for empirical research on city-suburb population redistribution.

Urban scholars and planners look to evidence of recent gains in the number of nontraditional households as a potential source of increase to the population sizes and tax bases of declining central cities. While it is now well established that substantial gains in the numbers of small, nontraditional households have occurred since the 1950s, it has not been demonstrated that: (a) these households are more likely to relocate in the city than traditional family households (husband-wife with children under 18); or (b) their cityward relocation patterns will significantly alter trends toward smaller city household populations. This paper addresses these questions by examining changes in city-suburb migration stream rates by household type over periods 1955-60, 1965-70 and 1970-75 for large metropolitan areas, and assesses their implications for potential changes in the aggregate sizes of city household populations.

Increased migration to the sunbelt and the metropolitan-nonmetropolitan "turnaround" represent departures from long-standing redistribution trends. Although these patterns have been examined from a number of perspectives, their consequences for individual metropolitan areas have not yet been brought to light. In the present study, stream-disaggregated data for the late 1950s and late 1960s are employed to assess the impact of recent migration on the sizes and compositions of white populations in thirty-one large metropolitan areas. Most large northern SMSAs have been experiencing the "new" migration patterns since the late 1950s. They have incurred net out-movements of whites to both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. In their exchanges with nonmetropolitan areas, however, they have managed to retain greater numbers of college graduates and professional workers. Southern and western SMSAs did not sustain losses to nonmetropolitan areas during either period. They did appear to gain both total and high status population as a result of interregional metropolitan redistribution.