Beyond the City: Exploring the Suburban and Rural Landscapes of Racial Residential Integration Across the United States

Abstract

In recent decades, racial and ethnic diversity has expanded from the city into the suburbs, the rural-urban interface, and remote rural places across all regions in the United States. This study examines how these population trends shape the possibility of racial residential integration across the American rural-urban continuum and regions. Using the information theory index (H) and racial and ethnic composition thresholds, we identify integrated cities, suburbs, and rural towns and villages that are stably integrated between the 2000 and 2010 censuses. This study shows a substantial number of diverse places where people of different races and ethnicities live near each other. Further, the largest clusters of integration locate in suburbs, followed by rural places, while central cities show the lowest rates of integration. In addition, the West typically hosts larger numbers of integrated communities compared to other regions. Findings suggest that to better understand shifting patterns of American racial inequality, research must look outside the city and toward the West to investigate residential integration as a new form of 21 st -century race relations.

Spatio-Temporal Evolution and Influencing Factors of Integrated Urban–Rural Development in Northeast China under the Background of Population Shrinkage

“…They propose concepts such as urban-rural spatial production and dynamic suburban development. Their research methodology combines qualitative and quantitative analysis and aims to explore various aspects of the urban-rural relationship [16], such as industrial development [17], spatial layout [18], interactions [19], integration [20], social cohesion [21], governance networks [22], and political coordination [23]. On the other hand, Chinese scholars approach the topic of urban-rural integration differently [24].…”

Ethnoracial Diversity Across Nonmetropolitan and Metropolitan America: Urbanization, Multiracial Growth, and Uneven Exposure to Diversity

“…Inner-ring suburbs also became more diverse during the 1990s, as Black, Hispanic, and Asian families moved-in to these traditionally White Locales, however subsequent White flight to the suburban fringe eventually led to decreased diversity and increased segregation in these new so-called "ethno-burbs" (Nevarez and Simons 2020;Parisi et al 2015). The extent to which these competing dynamics have played out in the three rural America is less explored (Lichter et al 2018;Rastogi and Curtis 2020). In an era of White depopulation in many rural counites, it is unclear whether growing racial diversity is mostly a product of White population decline or, instead, a result of new growth from populations such as Hispanics and Asians.…”

A culture of whiteness: How integration failed in cities, suburbs, and small towns

“…Though suburbs still occupy a white, middle class place in the American collective imagination, a recent "diversity explosion" (Frey, 2018) belies this monolithic conceptual model (Lacy, 2016). Today, the suburbs are home to majorities of individuals from racialized minority and immigrant groups (J. H. Wilson & Singer, 2011), and have desegregated at higher rates than both urban and rural spaces (Rastogi & Curtis, 2020). This diversification is due in part to the post-Civil Rights emergence of a stable Black middle class and their return migration to the "New South" (Frey, 2004;Lacy, 2004), and also the increasing attractiveness of suburbs as destinations for new immigrants of a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds (Farrell, 2016;Li, 2009;Wen et al, 2009).…”