Predicting neighborhood racial change in large US metropolitan areas, 1990–2010

Abstract

Neighborhoods in US metropolitan areas experienced dramatic changes in racial composition during the 1990s and again during the 2000s. We ask to what extent does the recent period of neighborhood racial change reflect an extension of the local processes operative in the 1990s, processes characteristic of large metropolitan areas or the nation more generally, or reflect new dynamics. After classifying neighborhoods in US metropolitan areas into different types based on their racial composition and having harmonized a set of tracts to consistent boundaries, we use metropolitan-scale tract transition matrices from the 1990s to predict changes in neighborhood racial mix between 2000 and 2010. To capture scale effects, we repeat this using a set of pooled metropolitan-scale tract transition matrices and again using a national tract transition matrix. We show that the main dynamic at work across the metropolitan system is the underprediction of moderately diverse white majority tracts: i.e., in the 2000s, the rate of increase in the racial diversity of white majority tracts that transitioned from being predominantly white to moderately diverse was much higher than expected based on 1990s trends. In some metropolitan areas, shares of moderately diverse white tracts in 2010 are anticipated by their 1990s neighborhood dynamics, suggesting temporal stability and a locational specificity in these processes. Others experience a temporal rupture in these dynamics, and their moderately diverse white tract share is better anticipated by pooling transition information. The study also invites us to think about the nature of residential change currently taking place that we can capture in 2020 census data.

Population Grids for Analysing Long-Term Change in Ethnic Diversity and Segregation

“…Thus, grids offer some exciting possibilities for understanding the changing geographies of diversity, which may be spreading outside of metropolitan areas (for example, see Catney 2016a ), and they provide a powerful complement to analyses based on standard zonal systems. There is an extensive literature on the spatial scales of residential segregation, and their changes over time (e.g., Reardon et al 2009 ; Fowler 2016 ; Johnston et al 2016 ), albeit less so for diversity (exceptions include Wright et al 2014 ; Ellis et al 2018 ). Despite this, the unique opportunities offered by population grids for analyses of long-term change have been overlooked.…”

“…Analyses of neighbourhood change are often subject to compromises around the size of spatial units and temporal inconsistencies in their boundaries (Martin et al 2002). These limitations are particularly significant in ethnic and racial studies, where spatial patterns, and alterations to them, may be highly localized (e.g., Reardon et al 2008;Östh et al 2015;Johnston et al 2016;Barros and Feitosa 2018;Catney 2018;Ellis et al 2018;Yao et al 2019;Lan et al 2020;Catney et al 2020). Administrative changes in the size and shape of spatial units (zones) used to report data from Censuses are implemented to respond to local-level population growth or decline.…”

“…The RDI maps reveal a 'spreading out' of diversity from urban areas with relatively high levels of diversity at all time points, and growth in some suburban and rural locales. The trends observed reflect the changing spatial scales of diversity, which, with important exceptions (e.g., Wright et al 2014;Ellis et al 2018) has received considerably less attention than have the scales of residential segregation (see, for example Reardon et al 2009;Fowler 2016;Johnston et al 2016). These scales can be quantified using one of a number of 'structure functions', including the variogram (see Webster and Oliver 2007).…”

The evolution and stability of multi‐ethnic residential neighbourhoods in England

“…As the schema provides an absolute, rather than relative, measure of diversity, small areas can be compared, providing insight into ethnic geographies across the whole country, and over time. This research team has applied the technique nationally, at state level, across large metropolitan areas and in neighbourhoods ( Wright et al, 2014 ), exploring the shifting nature of White space ( Ellis et al, 2018a ; Ellis, et al, 2018b ) and the instability of highly diverse neighbourhoods ( Wright et al, 2020a ).…”

Forecasting racial dynamics at the neighborhood scale using Density-functional Fluctuation Theory

“…While there is a rich and detailed history of methods aimed at quantifying neighborhood-scale segregation and understanding its causes, these methods typically reduce segregation trends to simple scalar indices [27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35]. Impressively, such indices have provided important tools for understanding how segregation differs across cities, how it has changed over time, how it correlates with social and economic outcomes, and how drivers of segregation are likely to change into the future [36]. However, using a single index to describe population distributions is problematic since a single index cannot distinguish between segregation scenarios that can lead to drastically different changes in neighborhood populations (See supplementary figure 1).…”