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Regional and metropolitan growth and decline in the United States
| Author: |
Frey, William H.; Speare, Alden, Jr. |
| Date: |
[1988] |
| Periodical: |
The Population of the United States in the 1980s: A Census Monograph Series. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation |
| Abstract: |
The present volume affords us the opportunity to take a more in depth view of the post-1970 redistribution changes as they affect population shifts across the nation's regions and metropolitan areas, as well as between the central cities and suburbs of the nation's largest metropolitan areas. In so doing, we are able to take advantage of the full complement of area-based 1980 census data, along with data from the 1950, 1960, and 1970 censuses, and the more limited area population estimates that have become available since the 1980 census was taken. Our main objective is to interpret the redistribution patterns of the 1970s and early 1980s in light of the changing social and economic contexts for redistribution that emerged during this period, taking cognizance of the major explanations and theories that have been offered to account for these new patterns. We conclude in the volume's final chapter that the 1970s can be regarded as a transition decade in the recent history of United States population redistribution. This conclusion is based on the collective results of the monograph's individual chapters, which review various aspects of the new redistribution tendencies. Our evaluation of United States redistribution patterns divides logically into two distinct parts. Part One, comprising Chapters 3 through 6, pertains to redistribution across regions and metropolitan areas. This portion of the monograph provides an overview of the new regional and metropolitan area redistribution patterns by evaluating the pervasiveness of the post-1970 redistribution reversals, as well as shifts in the demographic components of change that underlie them. It seeks to explain post-1970 shifts through empirical analyses which incorporate elements of theories that have been proposed to account for the new redistribution patterns. Finally, this part of the monograph examines the impact of 1970-1980 growth and decline on population and household subgroups in various areas, and undertakes a separate examination of redistribution patterns, determinants, and consequences for the nation's black population. Part Two of this monograph, consisting of Chapters 7 through 11, evaluates post-1970 shifts in central city-suburban redistribution within the nation's largest 39 metropolitan areas. This part of the study also documents aggregate population changes for central cities and suburbs along with their underlying demographic components. However, it devotes most attention to shifts in the racial and socioeconomic selectivities that have become associated with post-1970 suburbanization, and their impacts on the central city. Most of the 1970s city revival literature emphasized the significance of black suburbanization, a white central city "gentrification," and the general slowing down of the strong race- and class-selective suburbanization that generated the city-suburb disparities of the late 1960s. This portion of the monograph provides a careful evaluation of selective post-1970 city-suburb redistribution tendencies with the aid of rich area-based summary data from the 1970 and 1980 decennial censuses. It evaluates the extent to which the 1970s' shifts in racial segregation, the decline of full-family households, and the rise of the so-called service city have effected beneficial demographic changes in large central cities. It also examines to what degree the metropolitan area's less select population subgroups have become less city-concentrated during this period. The final chapter of this volume ties together this study's major results and underlying perspectives. In it we review what appear to be the most important influences on redistribution in the post-1970 period and go on to speculate about future redistribution tendencies that could emerge across the nation's regions, metropolitan areas, and large central cities. The remainder of the present chapter introduces topics and issues that are taken up in each of the two major sections of this study. This is followed, in Chapter 2, by a discussion of the metropolitan area and central city units that are employed in the analyses, and the concepts and definitions upon which they are based. Finally, in, this chapter we provide a list of previous census monographs and other significant studies of population redistribution within the United States which serve as references for earlier periods. |
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