“The contrast of the Midwest with Western suburbs is dramatic. Inner-ring Western suburbs grew and growth was largely fueled by an immigrant population.Certain cities and inner-ring suburbs hollowed out in many metropolitan areas of the Midwest between 1980 and 2000”.<\/span>
\nAnnexation in Sunbelt suburbs\u00a0didn’t stop Western and Southern suburbanization, however,\u00a0\u00a0 as Western and Southern suburbs grew by adding “eighteen million new residents between 1980 and 2000”. (P.59) Northeast and Midwestern suburban growth during this period was much more muted, but outer rung Sunbelt suburbs exploded, while Western and Northeastern inner-rung suburbs grew and Midwestern inner-ring suburbs lost population (population declined in 75% of Midwestern suburbs). \u00a0“The contrast of the Midwest with Western suburbs is dramatic. Inner-ring Western suburbs grew and growth was largely fueled by an immigrant population. (P.65) Certain cities and inner-ring suburbs hollowed out in many metropolitan areas of the Midwest between 1980 and 2000”. (P.60) Outer-ring suburbanization, however, did occur in the Midwest (but much less in the Northeast). In other words, the core negative narrative associated with sprawl and its physical, planning and environmental consequences\u00a0is most true of the Midwest and its intensity varies by region.<\/p>\nImmigrant population growth occurred in\u00a0each region, but for Hanlon this immigration was a double-edged sword. “Population growth among inner-ring suburbs across the nation was inextricably tied to immigration. Rather than seeing immigrants as a source of revitalization, however, many suburban communities struggle to accept the changing demographics”. (P.68) (aka social stratification model) Inner-ring immigrant populations, for Hanlon, were often a source of tension and controversy. While adding to a suburb’s population, immigrants often brought unwelcome diversity to suburb’s original residents\u00a0and threat, if not reality, of future economic and social decline.<\/p>\n
Suburbs In Crisis<\/h3>\n
Using relative income as her measurement variable, Hanlon identified 206 poor inner<\/span>-ring and 395 affluent suburbs\u00a0nation-wide in 1980; by 2000 the number of poor inner<\/span>-ring suburbs increased to 360 and affluent dropped by one to 394. Also, the number of poor outer<\/span>-ring suburbs was constant between 1980 and 2000 (377), but the number of affluent outer<\/span>-suburbs increased from 367 to 488. (P.83) Inner-ring suburbs become poorer versus outer-ring suburbs became more affluent<\/span>. This is the suburban dichotomy for which she has named the last and still current period of suburbanization.<\/p>\nInner-ring suburbs become poorer versus outer-ring suburbs became more affluent<\/span>. This is the suburban dichotomy for which she has named the current period of suburbanization.<\/p>\nTo understand this dichotomy better, Hanlon constructs an index\u00a0to identify those suburbs which are “in crisis”. Not only are these suburbs\u00a0declining in population and income, but increasing racial and immigrant populations\u00a0makes them\u00a0candidates for fiscal strain and fiscal strain’s antidote, declining services. As we commented earlier, this methodology (and index) relies upon analyzing three deciles of her sample to support her conclusion–we are not convinced this methodology and index helps her present her case, and for us at least it confuses her main argument. In any case, her index confirms her position that nation-wide many suburbs are in crisis and disproportionately more of those in crisis\u00a0are inner<\/span>-ring (approximately 15% of all inner-ring suburbs are in crisis); 15% of outer<\/span>-ring suburbs “experienced tremendous progress” in the 1980-2000 period. (P. 109)<\/p>\nThe regional story, however, is more complex–and, for the Curmudgeon, more interesting.<\/p>\n
In the Midwest especially, but\u00a0Northeast as well, poor<\/span> inner<\/span>-ring suburbs increased and in the Midwest, affluent outer-ring<\/span> suburbs also increased BUT while inner-ring suburban poverty increased<\/span> in South and West, affluent outer-ring suburbs declined also<\/span>. In addition, the Northeast increased the proportion of affluent, inner-ring suburbs<\/span>-unique among all the regions. (Did the reader follow all that?)\u00a0These regional distinctions make for a difficult and subtle\u00a0reading, but a conclusion that logically follows is somewhat obvious: Suburbs vary, and the pattern of\u00a0variation differs\u00a0among the nation’s regions.<\/span> Overall nation-wide, inner-ring suburbs are becoming poorer and outer-ring more affluent; the picture, however, is more fuzzy at the regional level. It would seem there are regional disparities and regional dynamics which need some explanation.<\/p>\nSo far we have learned that both inner and outer-ring suburbs in Northeast and Midwest are different, and both are different than the suburban pattern found in the West and South.\u00a0Each region exhibits\u00a0its own suburban pattern. Immigration is key to understanding the Western pattern of higher poverty in both inner and outer-ring suburbs; non-white exodus to the inner-ring\u00a0suburbs is crucial to the South, and secondarily immigration. De-industrialization devastated the Midwest\u00a0which has many affluent outer-ring suburbs,\u00a0and to a lesser extent the Northeast which, being more service center driven, has more affluent inner and outer-ring suburbs than any other region.<\/p>\n
That was easy!<\/p>\n
BRINGING SOME KIND OF ORDER TO THIS CACAPHONY: A TYPOLOGY<\/h3>\n
Just what the reader is looking for–\u00a0 yet another Hanlon\u00a0typology that supposedly\u00a0brings order to all this diversity and subtlety.<\/p>\n
Hanlon concludes by constructing a typology of four different types of suburbs which are prevalent today: elite, middle class, vulnerable, and ethnic. (P.114) Elite suburbs (Llewellyn\u00a0Park, NJ, Scarsdale, Glencoe, Highland Park (Dallas), Chevy Chase, Piedmont or Olmos Park)\u00a0(about 12% of the total, disproportionately in Northeast and Midwest. Western elite suburbs are slightly more diverse (Asian), are more affluent, and, in many cases have surprisingly old housing.<\/p>\n
Aged housing is supposed to be a bad thing, obsolescence, income filtering, poor upkeep and all that–but apparently some suburbs escape that fate. Hanlon, in an earlier chapter, talks about the “suburban persistence” model which posits that suburbs, established as long as a hundred years ago, can be perceived and perceive themselves as of a certain character and composition such as upper class or middle class. Through the dreaded exclusionary zoning mechanisms,\u00a0these suburbs maintain that character, preserve their schools, pastoral setting, and property values,\u00a0despite all the changes unleashed by time. In these elite communities, income levels, and sound, but aged,\u00a0housing are maintained.<\/p>\n
Middle class suburbs (35% of the total) are more diverse, but\u00a0still stable communities. Income is high to moderate and poverty rates are low. The Northeast and South\u00a0hold disproportionately more middle class suburbs than the other regions–the Midwest proportionately the least. Northeast and Midwest middle class suburbs are more likely to be white, but in the West and South forty per cent of their residents were Hispanic,\u00a0Asian\u00a0or Black.<\/p>\n
Most of the Southern black middle class inner-ring suburbs were in the Washington DC and Atlanta areas, and of course, Hispanic suburbs in the South were adjacent to Miami and West Palm Beach. Typically, these middle class suburbs were formerly elite suburbs in the days of yore (street car suburbs). But now their housing is aged-but usually well maintained- and enjoying high property values. Middle class suburbs are also deemed to be potentially vulnerable and to maintain their status\u00a0ought to\u00a0be expected to launch new programs, especially in housing, and if necessary in economic development, if their desirable current status is to continue.<\/p>\n
The third type of inner-ring suburb is the Ethnic suburb. Constituting about 7% of all\u00a0suburbs, these ethnic enclaves “are struggling postwar suburbs that are typically poorer than other suburbs” (P.129). About one in four residents were foreign born in 2000…. almost two-thirds of the population were Hispanic (mostly Los Angeles suburbs), and another 10% were non-Hispanic black. Only 23% of the residents are white. The poverty rate in 2000 averaged 18% for ethnic suburbs, but the median value of housing was only slightly less than middle class suburbs. The West has most of these ethnic suburbs and the Midwest the least. Housing age and quality is the major vulnerability of ethnic suburbs and the chief culprit is their “throwaway architecture” built during the immediate postwar period.<\/p>\n
Nationally almost 50% of all inner-ring suburbs do not come close to matching the traditional monolithic suburban image\/ paradigm. This is a concern for Hanlon in that their real life demographic composition and often desperate fiscal and housing needs can be ignored or depreciated by the powers that be.<\/span><\/p>\nThe final category, vulnerable suburbs, are Hanlon’s chief concern. About 47% of all suburbs,\u00a0“vulnerable suburbs”\u00a0are predominately working class, often ravaged by deindustrialization, and in decline. Most noticeably they are disproportionately Midwestern (60% of inner-ring Midwestern suburbs) and Southern (50%). The West (28%)\u00a0has the fewest vulnerable suburbs (despite all those bankruptcies we hear about these days). The suburban crisis appears to exhibit regional disparities.<\/p>\n
Usually vulnerable suburbs have experienced “more racial and ethnic transition” (P.122)\u00a0than middle class or even ethnic suburbs in that only “seven out of every ten residents were non-Hispanic white in 2000”) and on average were 16% black. Vulnerable suburbs can exhibit racial tensions and increasing racial transition (Cleveland Heights). Fair housing and potential racial segregation can be very real issues in vulnerable suburbs as can the fiscal implications of working-class community in racial transition–property values struggle and taxes cannot keep up with the increased need for services and modernization.\u00a0The fragility of these communities, especially in the Midwest, owes its heritage to deindustrialization and the aging in place of their blue collar residents. Characterized by scattered brownfields, “the aftermath of deindustrialization is a major challenge” (P.124) to vulnerable suburbs.<\/p>\n
Nationally almost\u00a050% of all inner-ring suburbs do not come close to\u00a0matching the traditional monolithic suburban image\/ paradigm. This is a concern for Hanlon in that their real life demographic composition and often desperate fiscal and housing needs can be ignored or depreciated by the powers that be. The false perception of our suburbs potentially can cripple or render still-born any larger effort to overcome their difficulties. These vulnerable communities may be the chief casualties of an ideological war against the suburbs–because they reside outside the central cities, they receive little earmarked assistance or attention, but their needs and opportunities are just as great.<\/p>\n
Critique, Conclusions and Orfield & Luce’s America’s Racially Diverse Suburbs<\/h3>\n
But before we introduce it, a word to the wise. It is clear to the Curmudgeon, and hopefully to the reader, that clinging to the old, post-World War II motif of sprawling, identical, white flight-federal government supported suburbs is in need of some update. In fact, if the Curmudgeon may suggest–throw it in the trash can. That all-too traditional stereotype never really existed, except perhaps for the Northeast and Midwest for a relatively brief period certainly ending by the 1960’s. Even then more perceptive commentators such as Jane Jacobs (who hated suburbs) allegedly commented that a suburb was simply an intermediate stage in density, which\u00a0would over time come to resemble core cities. This position, even if apocryphal, was prescient.<\/p>\n
Hanlon was also prescient and wrote her book previous to the release of the 2010 census findings. Gingerly at times, Hanlon deserves considerable credit, and some reward for her academic courage, to cross with the paradigmatic treatment of suburbs exhibited by many professionals and academics. Yet, the reality of her data vividly demonstrates that as early as the late 1970’s, the suburbs were diversifying and rapidly departing from the homogeneity of the fifties and sixties. Her description of the suburban variation among region, the variation in inner and outer-ring suburbs, and the more precise demarcation of the patterns of migration and the varying causes of suburban differentiation (especially immigration and deindustrialization) should be a wonderful start to a greater appreciation by economic developers and advocates of regionalism that suburbs have legitimate needs and that there is no single strategy with which to deal with their revitalization or maintain their progress.<\/p>\n
It is remarkable when one reviews the data since the 1980’s that so many folk refused to deal with the changes and the obvious suburban diversity. For some reason, unknown to the Curmudgeon, the 2010 census seems to have upset the apple cart (has anyone ever seen an apple cart–in 65 years on earth the Curmudgeon has not!). In any case, suburbs should not simply be judged solely\u00a0in context of their relationship to their regional\u00a0central city, but also as viable, and in many cases threatened, communities meriting both respect and attention.<\/p>\n
With the census release, commentators on suburban diversity have emerged in some number. Three reports seem potentially impactful and should be reviewed by the reader at her leisure. The first, by William H. Frey, “Melting Pot Cities and Suburbs: Racial and Ethnic Change in Metro America in the 2000s<\/strong>” (Brookings, Metropolitan Policy Program, May 2011), and the previously mentioned most recent Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce, “America’s Racially Diverse Suburbs: Opportunities and Challenges<\/strong>“, (Institute of Metropolitan Opportunity, University of Minnesota, July 20, 2012). Our last must read is the Pew Research Center’s, “The Rise of Residential Segregation by Income<\/strong>, by Richard Fry and Paul Taylor, August 1, 2012. The Curmudgeon, kinda feels these three reports would be an excellent follow-up to this article and he\u00a0has placed them on his calendar. You’ve been warned!<\/p>\nBut in the meantime, the next Curmudgeon review, due out before the end of the summer, explains as well as possible the fundamentals of innovation economics.\u00a0Explaining Romer and Krugman et al and putting them in some sort of context is not a task for the faint at heart. But a gentleman named Warsh did it and the Curmudgeon will inflict his summary and review upon those gluttons for pain that\u00a0peruse this web site. Bless you all, and to all a good August.<\/p>\n
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The Methodology (for those who care)<\/strong><\/p>\nOnce an American Dream has constructed a sample of almost 3500 suburbs from the 100 largest metro areas. This is a pre-2010 census book, so she uses ACS 2000 data for her key variables which include: population, poverty, race, income, age of housing, manufacturing employment, and ethnicity. She briefly reviews some literature in order to provide background for her definitions and findings, and while it is apparent Hanlon is borrowing upon past research, she is consciously attempting to pave new ground and arrive at more useful and comprehensive definitions suitable to describe the suburban reality. The specific methodological techniques, which another reviewer describes as “interesting”, are actually fairly conventional shift share, location quotients, correlation analysis, and a ton of percentage-based tables. While the tables, definitions and methodological explanations consume many pages (the book itself is less than 200 pages), the data presented is quite understandable and should present little problem for the general reader.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/dt>\n- Cheektowaga, New York, Wikipedia<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
There is one numbers-related problem which lends to a wee bit of confusion in understanding the author. Hanlon presents data which describes the suburbs nation-wide–uncontrolled for census regions. She also, in fact as we shall comment shortly, provides considerable data based on each of the census regions (Northeast, Midwest, South and West). These sub-national patterns are each quite distinctive and depart, at least to a considerable degree, from the national pattern.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Unfortunately the national pattern (all the 3500+ suburbs in her sample) do not reconcile very well with the patterns found in each of the census regions and given that she frequently intermixes this nation-wide pattern of suburbanization with sub-patterns of regional suburbanization it can be very hard to sometimes keep each separate.\u00a0 Both can be in the same paragraph and the chapters intermingle them freely. The reader does have to pay attention and the findings will come fast and furious–to the point one almost has to write them down to keep track of them. Hanlon does provide some good summary tables of these findings, but by the time you get to them, the reader may be a bit off-centered.<\/p>\n
The Curmudgeon has never claimed to be a methodologist; he has been trained in it more than he likes to admit, but….\u00a0 the training obviously “didn’t take”. To be honest, as a very old Curmudgeon, he is a bit uncertain as to how far one can push these methodologies in the social sciences. Sometimes, he feels, certainly without any justification, that academic writing has become more methodological than substantive. Hanlon has a lot to say, but she seems more interested in wrapping her observations in methodology than expressing them in simple English.<\/p>\n
In any case, there is one methodological point which, he feels, ought be brought to the reader’s attention. Hanlon seeks to better understand the fiscal crisis and decline which characterizes substantial portions of suburbia. So she\u00a0constructs an “index”. This index is built upon key variables such as: changes in population (both absolute and relative), median household income, people in poverty, 1980-2000. From these variables she culls a sub-sample of three “deciles” from her overall sample and cobbles together a typology of suburbs.<\/p>\n
The findings of her last, crucial chapter, are based on this index and sub-sample. Both her index and the sample are carefully explained in an Appendix, if one is so inclined. The problem is that the index and the sample\u00a0are not especially convincing. The Curmudgeon is so unclear why a sample was used at all. The index he can understand, the need to study deciles of the database and then project them through some formula-estimation to the overall database is an unnecessary weakening of what is otherwise well-supported research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WHO STOLE MY LILY WHITE RICH SUBURBS???
\nHardly anyone talks about economic development and the suburbs. Why should they-they are all the same: rich, white pillagers of central cities and purveyors of sprawl. In a world composed of mega cities, SMSAs, and multi-county economic regions, does anyone care what is going on in the suburbs? Saint that he is, the Curmudgeon does! In this review, he discusses Bernadette Hanlon’s Once the American Dream: Inner-Ring Suburbs of the Metropolitan United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3549,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions\/3549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1510"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=1510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/800px-Crofton_Parkway_spring.jpg\" "\\"800px-Crofton_Parkway_spring\\"")
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