Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 25.3
Suburbanization and central city decline in the USA
America is now very much a 'suburban' nation, with its
1990 Census showing almost half (46.2 per cent) of total
population living in non-central parts of metropolitan areas
and less than one third (31.3 per cent) remaining in central
cities. Over the previous decade, America's suburbs had
increased their number of residents by 1.4 per cent a year,
while the central cities had grown annually by only 0.6 per
cent—and this almost entirely due to the contribution of
the southern and western states. In the northeast, central
cities were already in decline in the 1960s and lost over
10 per cent of their population in the 1970s before
recovering to close to a zero growth balance in the 1980s.
Central cities in the mid-west recorded a 9 per cent loss in
the 1970s, as the USA's former manufacturing heartland
switched to 'rust belt', and were still declining overall in the
1980s.
The impacts on the central cities have been huge.
Alarm bells began ringing in the 1960s when several city
authorities, notably New York, became effectively
bankrupt as a result of borrowing money to finance
current expenditure on services. Rising local taxes and
deteriorating local services merely served to accelerate
the flight of better-off residents and more footloose firms
into the burgeoning suburbs, leaving behind the less
dynamic economic sectors and least wealthy people,
notably blacks and recent overseas immigrants. Even in
the more stable 1980s, when New York City's population
grew by 3.5 per cent, its white, non-Hispanic population
fell by 11.5 per cent and the proportion of its total
residents accounting for the 'minority population' rose to
over 60 per cent in 1990. Similar patterns of white
population loss and high minority shares were recorded
by a number of other cities (Table 25.2). Meanwhile,
across America in 1990 the central cities accounted for
three-quarters of people living in 'extreme poverty
neighbourhoods' and 91 per cent of the nation's
population living in 'underclass neighbourhoods' (Downs
1994).
Though intervening in these market-forces outcomes
is considered un-American by many people, a variety of
strategies have been experimented with over the years.
The most basic need is for extra public funds to
compensate for the shrinking tax base, which can be
achieved either by directly redistributing local tax revenues
from wealthy suburban municipalities to central cities or
more commonly by funding regeneration programmes
through state and federal governments. Beyond this, in a
review of American urban policy, Downs
(ibid.)
identifies
four key problems facing deprived inner-city
neighbourhoods: crime and insecurity, children raised in
poverty, poor education and poor worker integration into
the mainstream labour force. These can best be tackled
through four types of strategy: area development
(addressed particularly at policing, education and job
creation); personal development (focusing on parents
and children at home and in schools); household
mobility (especially facilitating the migration of poorer
families into better-off areas); and worker mobility (via
better childcare facilities and easier commuting to
suburban jobs).
Sources:
1990 US Census; Fainstein
et al
. 1992; Downs 1994.
impressive achievements have occurred where
policies have sought to channel or moderate the
main trends rather than reverse them. The new
towns programme was one of the great success
stories of postwar planning in Britain, although it
proved inadequate at coping with the total
