Summary. This paper critically evaluates the traditional metropolitan model of an urban core and a homogeneous suburban ring. Using place data from the US Bureau of the Census from 1980 to 2000, it examines 1639 suburbs from a sample of 13 metropolitan areas in the US. Poor, manufacturing, Black and immigrant suburbs are identified to show that metropolitan areas are less a simple dichotomous structure and more a mosaic of very diverse suburban places. The results suggest the need for more subtle frameworks in order better to understand the structure of contemporary metropolitan areas.
Inner‐ring suburbs initially built in the postwar period and before have evolved into places with varied characteristics, assets, and problems. Analyzing a sample of 1,742 inner‐ring suburbs nationwide, this article identifies five different types: “vulnerable;”“ethnic;”“lower income and mixed;”“old;” and “middle class.” This typology indicates that inner‐ring suburbs, often perceived as homogenous entities, are in fact places largely differentiated by issues of class, race, and ethnicity. As this article demonstrates, the identification of these different types of inner‐ring suburbs reveals much about suburban transformation, stability, and decline in the United States.
In this article, we critically examine transformation and decline in US suburbs. We identify four distinct, chronological phases of development: suburban utopias, suburban conformity, suburban diversity, and suburban dichotomy. An element of this new suburban dichotomy is what we term suburban gothic. We theorize that the forces of an aging housing stock, land‐use planning, and deindustrialization contribute to the divergent realities of US suburbs.
This article develops an index of suburban decline for 3,428 U.S. suburbs. The results of this index were used to measure the prevalence and extent of decline for older, inner suburbs and newer suburbs across the nation and in different regions from 1980 to 2000. The general pattern is one of decline in selected older, inner suburbs, especially those with housing built between 1950 and 1969 and those with increasing minority populations.Regional analysis reveals that the South and the Midwest had the highest proportion of older, inner suburbs in crisis. Suburbs with housing built before 1939 emerged as areas of continuing affluence.
This article examines Megalopolis 50 years after Gottmann's seminal study of the most urbanized region of the US Eastern Seaboard. His study provides an invaluable datum point, and we use it as a benchmark for reexamining the socio-spatial transformations of a city region. After redefining Megalopolis and showing major aggregate trends since 1950, we analyze 39 selected variables for place level census data for 2,353 places to perform a principal components analysis (PCA). Our analysis shows that Megalopolis remains a significant center for the nation's population and economic activity. A half century of urban restructuring demonstrates that the forces of urban decentralization have made the region a more fully suburbanized agglomeration. We reveal a complex socioeconomic pattern of a vast urban area structured by class, education, housing tenure, housing age, and race and ethnicity. The cluster analysis reveals five distinct clusters of urban places identified by our PCA: 'affluent places', 'places of poverty', 'Black middle class places', 'immigrant gateway places' and 'middle America places'. Copyright (c) 2007 The Authors. Journal Compilation (c) 2007 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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