No abstract

This article documents a new macro-segregation, where the locus of racial differentiation resides increasingly in socio-spatial processes at the community or place level. The goal is to broaden the spatial lens for studying segregation, using decennial Census data on 222 metropolitan areas. Unlike previous neighborhood studies of racial change, we decompose metropolitan segregation into its within- and between-place components from 1990 to 2010. This is accomplished with the Theil index (H). Our decomposition of H reveals large post-1990 declines in metropolitan segregation. But, significantly, macro-segregation—the between-place component—has increased since 1990, offsetting declines in the within-place component. The macro component of segregation is also most pronounced and increasing most rapidly among blacks, accounting for roughly one-half of all metro segregation in the most segregated metropolitan areas of the United States. Macro-segregation is least evident among Asians, which suggests other members of these communities (i.e., middle-class or affluent ethnoburbs) have less resistance to Asians relocating there. These results on emerging patterns of macro-segregation are confirmed in fixed-effects models that control for unobserved heterogeneity across metropolitan areas. Unlike most previous studies focused on the uneven distribution of racial and ethnic groups across metropolitan neighborhoods, we show that racial residential segregation is increasingly shaped by the cities and suburban communities in which neighborhoods are embedded.

The objective of this paper is to provide, for the first time, comparative estimates of racial residential segregation of blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan places in 1990 and 2000. Analyses are based on block data from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. decennial censuses. The results reveal a singularly important and perhaps surprising central conclusion: levels and trends in recent patterns of racial segregation in America's small towns are remarkably similar to patterns observed in larger metropolitan cities. Like their big-city counterparts, nonmetropolitan blacks are America's most highly segregated racial minority--roughly 30% to 40% higher than the indices observed for Hispanics and Native Americans. Finally, baseline ecological models of spatial patterns of rural segregation reveal estimates that largely support the conclusions reached in previous metropolitan studies. Racial residential segregation in rural places increases with growing minority percentage shares and is typically lower in "new" places (as measured by growth in the housing stock), while racially selective annexation and the implied "racial threat" at the periphery exacerbate racial segregation in rural places. Our study reinforces the need to broaden the spatial scale of segregation beyond its traditional focus on metropolitan cities or suburban places, especially as America's population shifts down the urban hierarchy into exurban places and small towns.

No abstract

No abstract