Part One: The State of America's Cities

Many factors explain middle-class flight and poverty and racial concentration, from job growth on the suburban fringe to persistent housing discrimination, from the resource and quality advantages of suburban schools to the greater incidence of crime (and greater fear of crime) in the cities. These long-run trends call for concerted action now, while the economy is strong, from leaders in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors working together.

The City Share of Metropolitan Population Continues To Decline

Although most central cities continue to grow slowly, only 11 of the 30 largest cities in 1970 have more people in them than two decades ago. Population losses were particularly severe in St. Louis, which lost 40 percent of its population, and in Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo, each of which lost approximately one-third of its population. Other cities posting significant population loses since 1980 include Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Some cities such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orlando, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and San Antonio are growing rapidly, yet even in these metropolitan areas, suburban areas are growing faster still. The shift of population to the suburbs not only reduces the tax base of central cities but diverts limited resources away from much needed urban revitalization projects.

Outmigration from cities continues in the 1990s. Despite well-documented examples of central city revitalization, for the period 1990 to 1997, the rate of population growth for the Nation's suburbs was twice that of central cities. In 1996 alone, 2.7 million people moved from a central city to a suburban area -- compared with only 800,000 people who moved from suburbs to the city.

Immigrants bolster central city populations. Since foreign immigrants tend to settle first in central city neighborhoods, selected high-density central cities have been spared even more significant population losses. During the 1980s, the vast majority of immigrants settled in just 11 metropolitan areas -- led by Los Angeles (with 2.1 million immigrants), New York (1.5 million), San Francisco (598,000) and Miami (463,000), as well as Chicago, Washington, D.C., Houston, San Diego, Boston, Dallas, and Philadelphia.

Because of the rapid influx of immigrants -- particularly immigrants from Latin America and Asia -- minorities today comprise 33 percent of the urban population, compared with only 22 percent in the suburbs.¹⁶ Cities such as Los Angeles and Miami have been transformed over the past 30 years from majority-white to minority-dominated cities; others will join them in the years to come.

Some cities are experiencing the dynamism -- and the strains -- associated with a new wave of immigrants. Although immigration provides a net boost to the Nation's economy as a whole -- estimated to be between $1 billion and $10 billion per year -- and has little impact on wages or the job market, it can impose significant net fiscal burdens in the short run on the relatively few "gateway" areas where the tide of immigration is concentrated.

Minorities are also moving to the suburbs. While discriminatory practices still limit the residential choices of many minorities, minority households are now moving in record numbers to the suburbs. During the first half of the 1990s, the share of minority households living in the suburbs of metropolitan areas with populations over 1 million rose from 27.0 percent to 29.3 percent. Even immigrants are joining the move away from the central city. Of the 2 million foreign born households that have arrived in the United States since 1990, almost 35 percent now reside in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas.

In 1970, the income profile of central cities was almost identical to the Nation as a whole. Persistent long-term outmigration -- particularly of middle-class families -- has fundamentally changed the income distribution of central cities. With the portion of high- and middle-income families decreasing, city incomes have fallen relative to suburban incomes.

While the number of families in America's suburban areas increased by 9.5 percent between 1990 and 1997, the number in central cities grew but 6 percent.¹⁷ The long-run trend is more stark -- a 60-percent jump in the number of suburban families between 1970 and 1997 versus the modest 12-percent increase for cities over that period.

More families of every income level move out of cities than move in, but the disparity is particularly stark among middle- and upper-income families. From 1970 to 1997, nearly 6 million middle-income and affluent families have left the cities. At the same time, between 1985 and 1995, the number of high-income families -- with 150 percent or more of area median income -- living in suburbs grew by 16 percent, compared with just 2 percent for central cities. When families are asked why they leave cities, the two most common answers are the poor quality of city schools and the higher rates of crime in cities as compared with suburbs.

As families with the resources to do so move to suburban areas in search of better housing, good schools, and safer neighborhoods, income growth in the city lags suburban income growth. In the Northeast and Midwest, the 1996 median household income in the suburbs was 67 percent higher than in central cities, up from the 58- percent gap reported in 1989. City/suburb income disparities were less in the South and the West. Even so, in 1996 suburban incomes were 31 percent higher than central city incomes, up sharply from the 1989 figure of 22 percent.

Poverty Is More Frequent and Affects More Minorities in Cities

While cities contain 30 percent of metropolitan America's population, they are home to half of all low-income families in metropolitan areas.¹⁸ This concentration of poverty in cities persists even as overall poverty declines. Poverty rates in central cities rose steadily from 1970 to 1993, increasing by 50 percent. Even with the drop in central city poverty rates since 1993, 1 in every 5 city families lived in poverty in 1996, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 suburban families. And there is a growing dichotomy in rates of minority poverty. While the rate of African-American poverty is at its lowest level in history, poverty in cities disproportionately affects minority populations -- 72 percent of the poor in cities are minority.

High poverty rates impose a heavy burden on cities. In 1990, the poverty rate exceeded 30 percent in Detroit, New Orleans, and Miami. The poverty rate surpassed 40 percent for African-Americans in Miami, Milwaukee, New Orleans, and Pittsburgh and for Hispanics in Buffalo, Cleveland, Hartford, and Philadelphia.

Poverty Remains Highly Concentrated in Selected Neighborhoods

Lack of affordable housing opportunities in the suburbs combined with persistent housing market discrimination adds to the concentration of poor families in central city neighborhoods. More than 10 percent of all city residents live in neighborhoods where the U.S. Bureau of the Census reports that 40 percent or more of the households are living below the poverty line, doubling the concentration in 1970. In many of these places, intense and long-standing poverty and welfare dependency occur simultaneously with alarmingly high rates of crime, drug abuse, single parenthood, high school drop out rates, and other social problems.

Tracts with high poverty rates are almost exclusively inhabited by minorities. Indeed, minority families are far more likely than whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods even if they are not poor themselves. Almost one in four black and Hispanic residents of central cities live in census tracts where more than 40 percent of their neighbors are poor, while just 3 percent of white urban families live in such areas.