Reordering Occupation, Race, and Place in Metropolitan New York

Abstract

The New York metropolitan area is one of the oldest, largest, and perhaps most complex urban region in the United States (U.S.). Its 23.7 million residents live across four states, produce a GDP of more than $1.7 trillion, are governed by a fragmented political system, and experience persistently high degrees of geographic and racial/ethnic inequality and segregation. This chapter investigates the evolving spatial organization of occupation and race across the metropolitan area. While white professionals have traditionally lived in an outer ring of suburbs and blue-collar immigrant and minority groups have lived closer to the city center, our research shows that the forces of gentrification and minority and immigrant suburbanization have been turning the metropolitan area inside out. Specifically, young, usually white, professionals are increasingly located in and around the central city whereas many working-class minorities have shifted away from it. At the heart of this spatial reordering lie the diminishing plurality of native-born whites within the region and the increasing share of immigrant minority groups, especially for foreign-born Hispanics and Asians. This trend has lessened the share of white males in better occupations even as the region’s occupational structure slowly but inexorably tilts toward managerial and professional occupations. Technology is transforming white-collar work as blue-collar work continues to disappear. Dramatic shifts are thus afoot, yet inequality and segregation remain high. We argue that these changes in the spatial organization of the metropolitan area challenge us to see these inequalities from a new vantage point. As elites are now more likely to live among less advantaged groups, this may provide the social basis for new thinking.

New Frontiers of Integration: Convergent Pathways of Neighborhood Diversification in Metropolitan New York

“…Relative to coethnics in cities, immigrants in suburbs (except Caribbeans) also report lower levels of segregation from the majority group (Farrell 2016). Moreover, recent diversification has also led to suburban shifts in school compositions and occupational structures, redistributing opportunities and generating tensions over suburban resources between established residents and recent immigrants (Warikoo 2020;Zapatka, Mollenkopf, and Romalewski 2021). Although neighborhoods have become diversified and integrated over time (Logan and Zhang 2010;Parisi, Lichter, and Taquino 2019;Kim and White 2010;Hwang 2015;Ellen 2000;Maly 2005;Iceland 2009), such geographical proximity does not necessarily lead to social integration.…”

Small-Scale Socio-Economic Conditions and Residential Segregation: Evidence from the Municipalities Across the Metropolitan Region of Attica

“…However, it is important to further investigate the local conditions in each case, as different patterns arising from the structure of cities may lead to diverse outcomes (Quillian & Lagrange, 2016). For example, in cities like London and New York, high-income groups tend to concentrate around the city centre (Manley, 2021;Zapatka et al, 2021), whilst cases like Cairo and Cape Town are characterized by degraded inner areas (Mohamed & Stanek, 2021;Turok et al, 2021).…”