Race and Space in American Cities
Race and Space What Race and Ethnicity Mean These Days How Race Matters Consequences for Minorities Consequences for Whites.
Race and Space Wonderful things can happen when large numbers of people gather together, and they can coordinate their actions. The gains from trade are greatest when traders are most different.
Race and Space Innovation is spurred when differing traditions and ways of looking at the world encounter each other.
Race and Space Yet markets work poorly if their participants fear, distrust, or dislike each other. –People lose out on advantages of city life that they could have had if race or ethnicity mattered less.
Race and Space The cost of racial and ethnic discord is that it can keep people –from taking advantage of the increasing returns to scale –from enjoying the cultural and technological dynamism that diversity fuels.
Race and Space To the extent that minority presence makes non- minorities People lose out on advantages of city life that they could have had if race or ethnicity mattered less. –eschew cities in general, –or certain parts of cities, –or public transportation, –or public pools –or schools, –or hiring certain types of job applicants,
Race and Space The same result occurs when minorities find themselves losing out Race matters –on jobs, –mortgages, –health care, –or houses in some neighborhoods, an awful lot.
What Race and Ethnicity Mean The federal government's official division of people in this country is two dimensional: – people are classified based on what their "race" is, –and on whether they are Hispanic or not.
What Race and Ethnicity Mean Everyone is supposed to fit into one of the following twelve boxes based on these two dimensions: Hispanic or Not Hispanic. –White (Hispanic or Not Hispanic) –Black or African American (Hispanic or Not Hispanic) –Native American or Aleut (Hispanic or Not Hispanic) –Asian (Hispanic or Not Hispanic) –Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (Hispanic or Not Hispanic) –Other (Hispanic or Not Hispanic) Silly though they may be, are these distinctions are important? –This is an empirical proposition.
Segregation Segregation means that different races live mainly separately, in different neighborhoods. –By itself, there may be nothing wrong with segregation. How Race Matters Common interests and common tastes may draw similar people together.
Segregation But segregation might reflect coercive efforts to keep some people from living where they want to live How Race Matters Segregation, then, may be a symptom of a problem.
Segregation is measured in two different ways. 1.The index of dissimilarity. –Starts with the idea of perfect integration, or no segregation. –If a city is perfectly integrated, then every neighborhood has the same proportion of minorities as every other neighborhood. –If a city is perfectly segregated, every neighborhood is entirely one race. The index of dissimilarity ranges between zero and one, with larger values indicating greater segregation. How Race Matters
Segregation is measured in two different ways. 2.The index of isolation. –Equals the proportion of minorities who live in the neighborhood that the average minority group member lives in; the probability that a neighbor of a minority group member is also a member of that minority group. –With perfect segregation the index equals one every minority group member lives in an all minority neighborhood. –Once again, higher values indicate greater segregation. How Race Matters
How much segregation is there? African Americans –The average index of dissimilarity for major U.S. metropolitan areas was.65 in 2000, How Race Matters A lot –Two-thirds of blacks would have to move to achieve perfect integration. Children were even more segregated
Cities with very high dissimilarity Detroit New York Chicago Milwaukee Even the least segregated cities had dissimilarity indexes far from zero Los Angeles Riverside Orange County San Diego
How much segregation is there? Isolation indexes were large, too. How Race Matters A lot African Americans –In 2000, the average African American lived in a neighborhood where 51 percent of the neighbors were African American –The average African American child was growing up in a neighborhood where 56 percent of the children were African American.
How much segregation is there? Hispanics were also segregated, but not quite so highly. –The average index of dissimilarity for Hispanics was.52, How Race Matters A lot –Most Latinos would also have to move to achieve perfect integration. Hispanic children were also more segregated than Hispanic adults Asians are less segregated than African Americans and Hispanics, with an average index of dissimilarity.42.
Los Angeles Milwaukee Chicago Riverside Sacramento
Is segregation by class, not by race? How Race Matters Not really –Income explains only a small portion of observed racial segregation we. –And poor blacks are not integrated with poor whites –Rich blacks are not really integrated with rich whites.
Is segregation by class, not by race? Sethi and Somanathan (2001) calculated the index of dissimilarity would be if income were all that mattered in determining where people lived. How Race Matters –Most cities would have indexes ranging from.08 to.18, about one-fifth of the actual dissimilarity indexes.
Centrality Minorities also have a high propensity to live in neighborhoods that are close to historic central business districts of cities How Race Matters The measurement of centrality is similar to measurement of segregation. –what proportion of minorities would have to move if minorities were to have the same distribution of residences by distance from the CBD as whites have.
Centrality How Race Matters –The index of centrality for African Americans is high in most metropolitan areas. In 1980, for the eighteen northern cities with the largest black populations, it averaged.88; for the twelve biggest southern cities it averaged.75 Minorities also have a high propensity to live in neighborhoods that are close to historic central business districts of cities
Centrality I How Race Matters Income doesn't explain much about why minority housing is so centrally located. If people lined up perfectly in order of income, with the poorest households closest to the CBD, then the index of minority centrality would be around.24 not.88.
Centrality I How Race Matters Income doesn't explain much about why minority housing is so centrally located. In fact, income is not well correlated with distance from the CBD -in many old cities some of the wealthiest neighborhoods are adjacent to the CBD.
Centrality I How Race Matters Income doesn't explain much about why minority housing is so centrally located. Income is not able to explain more than a third of why blacks live so much closer to CBDs than whites do.
Commuting Time You would expect that because they live so close to CBDs, minorities have shorter commuting times than whites do. How Race Matters It turns out, though, that minorities have longer commuting times, not shorter.
Commuting Time On average, the commutes of African Americans who live in central cities are longer than those of any group that lives in the suburbs. How Race Matters
Commuting Time How Race Matters
Commuting Time Gabriel and Rosenthal (1996) find that blacks have 23-percent longer commutes and Asians have 25-percent longer commutes than whites. How Race Matters Even after holding earnings, age, gender, education, and family composition constant
Homeownership and Housing Quality Minorities are less likely than whites to be homeowners, and more likely to live in low- quality housing than whites with comparable incomes, families, and background. In 2000, 73.7 percent of white non-Hispanic households lived in houses they owned, as opposed –to 46.7 percent of black households and –45.4 percent of Hispanic households. How Race Matters Part of this difference, stems from minorities' lower incomes, and slightly younger ages, but not all of it
Homeownership and Housing Quality Race does not seem to matter much for the price an individual pays, given the composition of a neighborhood. If "comparable housing" means "comparable structure" then most of the literature indicates that minorities have paid less for housing than whites How Race Matters Housing in minority neighborhoods is cheaper than housing of the same (structural) quality in white neighborhoods
Homeownership and Housing Quality Do minorities pay more than whites do for comparable housing? No –Blacks in white neighborhoods pay about what whites do; –Whites in black neighborhoods pay about what blacks do How Race Matters But whites rarely move into minority neighborhoods, thus for most whites the lower prices in minority neighborhoods are still too high
Summary: Race matters Minorities disproportionately live in segregated neighborhoods close to the CBD. Income explains little of this centralization and segregation. Blacks commute longer distances. Everything else being equal, minorities are considerably –less likely to own their own homes –or cars –or to live in neighborhoods with successful schools –and low crime rates.
Consequences Sorting where people live by skin color is a stupid way to organize a city Locating large numbers of people who don't work in the central business district seems near there is also a not a good idea.
Consequences for Minorities Business –If segregation promotes minority business, segregation should have turned African Americans into the most successful group of entrepreneurs the world has ever seen. But it has not. –Bates (1997) finds that minority businesses that are located in minority neighborhoods and serve mainly minority customers are less successful than those businesses that operate in a wider world.
Consequences for Minorities Jobs We have already seen that minorities have longer commutes than whites, not shorter ones. –Blacks and Hispanics also are less likely to be employed than whites are, at every age and education level.
Consequences for Minorities Jobs Would the employment situation be even worse if minority neighborhoods were not so centralized? –This question has been studied intensively and the overwhelming consensus answer is no. –This is called the spatial mismatch hypothesis. –In this view, CBD jobs mainly require high levels of education, while the low-skill jobs that minorities need have mostly moved to distant reaches of the suburbs.
Consequences for Minorities Politics –May give minorities more control than they would otherwise have over governments that can help them. –Some evidence supports this view. Black mayors are much more likely to be elected in jurisdictions where the majority of voters are black than in other jurisdictions, and black-owned businesses do much better in metropolitan areas where the mayor of the largest city is black.
Consequences for Whites 1. Child Development and Education –Young white adults in more segregated metropolitan areas have slightly better outcomes but the effect of segregation is tiny and often in the opposite direction when other characteristics are held constant. –Angrist and Lang (2004) find that busing in black students from Boston did not reduce the test scores of white students in suburban schools outside of that city. –Contact with blacks doesn't appear to harm white kids.
Consequences for Whites 1. Child Development and Education Although they don't gain anything in test scores from avoiding contact with minorities, white kids could quite possibly lose out morally and culturally from their isolation. Hispanic and African American cultures are among the most vibrant in the world, and African Americans are the most religious group of people in the developed world.
Consequences for Whites 2. Commuting –If centralization makes minorities commute more, does it let whites commute less? The answer is probably no; on average, whites probably commute more than they would if black residences were more integrated and less centralized.
Consequences for Whites 2. Commuting The reasoning is fairly simple. Many whites live in the suburbs and work in the CBD. Their commute requires them to pass through minority neighborhoods. If minority neighborhoods were concentrated on the outskirts of metropolitan areas rather than in their centers, many whites would have shorter commutes.
Consequences for Whites 3. Cheaper Labor –Spatial mismatch implies that the CBD is surrounded by large numbers of minority workers who don't have good job alternatives elsewhere. This should lower wages in the CBD, drive up minority employment, and increase land values. CBD landowners should be the big winners from spatial mismatch. But the centralization of minority residences cuts both ways for CBD landowners. The more minority people there are living close to the CBD, the fewer white people there are… –The value of land that white people occupy is constrained from falling too far by the wages offered by suburban employers, and so the wages that CBD employers must offer white workers are greater the longer they must commute…. –Centralization thus raises the wage CBD employers have to pay whites, even while it reduces the wage they have to pay minorities. Which effect is stronger? Mills and Price (1984) and Mills (1985) looked at this question and concluded that centralization of minority residences hurts the CBD. Moving whites away was worse than moving minorities near.
Consequences for Whites 4. Open Space and Sprawl –Whites might gain if segregation and centralization force minorities to occupy less land than they would otherwise occupy. Reducing segregation might induce minorities to buy more land, increase the size of metropolitan areas,.
Consequences for Whites 4. Open Space and Sprawl The relationship between sprawl and segregation, however, is by no means so simple. First suppose that job locations are held constant as minority residences decentralize. \ The places minorities now live in would most likely be taken over by whites who work in the CBD. the result would be a net decrease in the land used in the metropolitan area. Moreover, the neighborhoods near the CBD would have a higher concentration of CBD workers … this concentration might permit more frequent and cheaper mass transit.
Consequences for Whites 5. Togetherness and Culture –Another possible benefit that whites could derive from their segregation is the warm comfort of being among their own kind. –White Americans, like any other group, might need a place to call their own. Notice that this is an argument for segregation, not for the centralization of minorities. –This argument, however, has some serious weaknesses. First, isolation from minorities is not something most white Americans say they want. Second, white Americans are quite numerous and are the richest people in the world. –Does their culture really need the meager protection that residential segregation provides?
Consequences for Whites 7. Summary of Consequences for Whites –The review of the consequences for whites of segregation and the centralization of minorities has necessarily been much sketchier … –. Social scientists have devoted amazingly little effort to trying to find out how segregation and centralization affect the largest and most powerful group in U.S. society.
Conclusion The current pattern doesn't seem to help white kids in the aggregate, reduce sprawl, or cut commuting times; in fact, it may hurt. On the other hand, some whites place great value on avoiding minority neighborhoods and protecting the neighborhoods they know. Given current patterns, segregation and centralization are the best way they know of, working independently, to achieve those goals. –That's where the large benefits of segregation for whites come from –But there seem to be alternative arrangements of metropolitan residences that, combined with some education, would allow whites to realize most of their goals. –No small group of white people, acting alone, however, could make the changes necessary to effectuate these alternative arrangements. –Like drivers stuck in a traffic jam, anyone who acts differently alone will be worse off, but everyone would be better off if everyone acted differently. Diversity should make living in cities more productive and more interesting. –But in the United States today, the way people live doesn't allow enough of the advantages of diversity to be realized. The costs of current racial patterns are significant.