The New Suburb: Multiethnic Racial Residential Integration in the United States

• In Event: 4461 - Space and Place Across the Urban-Rural Axis

Abstract

This article documents stable racially-integrated suburbs in the United States, their racial and ethnic composition, and the structural features that they share. The goal is to understand where racially-integrated communities are located and the conditions that shape residential integration’s persistence as the US grows increasingly diverse. Using the information theory index (H) and cutoffs of racial and ethnic composition, I identify multiethnic integrated cities and suburbs that are stable across the 2000 and 2010 censuses. Integrated places largely cluster in highly-diverse, coastal metropolitan areas like DC, Los Angeles, and Miami. Through multilevel regression analysis, I find that residential integration almost entirely occurs within the suburbs and is strongly patterned along racial lines. Reflecting the anti-Black nature of segregation, rates of Black-white integration remain remarkably low (10.5%), but in multiethnic communities with Asians and Latinxs, this probability nearly quadruples (40.1%). Several critical ecological factors of place are positively associated with integration: military, public sector, and university employment; new housing stock; and metropolitan political fragmentation. While prior studies often focus on urban neighborhoods as multiethnic spaces, this study shows the suburbs as the leading edge of American diversification and integration. Further, in an era of public racial animus, this study illuminates the co-existence of contrary realities where American society transgresses many persistent forms of racial discrimination and provides evidence that integration can be durable across time.

Author

• Ankit Rastogi, University of Wisconsin-Madison