Urban mosaics: Multiracial diversity and segregation in the American metropolis

Racial segregation in housing is a familiar feature of the urban landscape and continues to play a key role in race relations, urban politics, and economic and educational inequality. Past investigations of residential segregation have typically focused on black-white dichotomies that exclude rapidly growing Latino and Asian metropolitan populations. Moreover, most urban segregation research examines metropolitan areas but fails to look at how community (i.e., city and suburb) differences within larger metropolitan areas contribute to overall neighborhood segregation. This study presents theoretical and methodological approaches that incorporate a more representative mosaic of racial/ethnic groups and account for the multi-layered geographic structure of contemporary segregation. Using census data from 1990 and 2000 for the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, I employ measures of multi-group diversity and segregation at multiple geographic levels to address contemporary racial segregation.; This research reveals a number of important patterns and trends: (1) suburban communities are experiencing pervasive gains in multiracial diversity but remain bifurcated along white/nonwhite, inner-ring outer-ring lines; (2) most metropolitan areas experienced declines in multiracial segregation during the 1990s; (3) central city neighborhoods desegregated rapidly during this period, accounting for most of the overall declines in metropolitan segregation; (4) racial differences between suburban communities contributed to an increasing share of metropolitan segregation in 2000 compared to 1990, especially in the western region; (5) most white metropolitan residents now have some exposure to multiracial diversity in their neighborhoods, though neighborhoods with high rates of white homeownership are particularly resistant to change; (6) the number of homogenous black, Latino, and Asian neighborhoods has increased but most minority residents live in more diverse areas; (7) immigration is associated with higher levels of multiracial diversity in communities and neighborhoods.; These findings illustrate that the decade of the 1990s was characterized by increasing multiracial diversity in metropolitan neighborhoods and communities, a movement toward greater racial residential integration. However, much of this movement has been incremental and many metropolitan areas remain bifurcated along white/nonwhite lines. Rather than resulting in a fragmented checkerboard of spatial niches and enclaves, immigration fuels multiracial diversity at the local level.