America’s Unequal Metropolitan Geography

This chapter examines temporal trends and geographic patterns of class segregation and class isolation using a consistently defined dataset of 287 metropolitan areas for 1970-2010. We document changes in class distribution and class segregation over time and demonstrate the increasing spatial isolation of the affluent within neighborhoods of metropolitan areas that are embedded in the global economy and the spatial isolation of the poor in neighborhoods in those bypassed by globalization. The residential isolation of affluent whites and Asians and their spatial segregation from the poor are intensified by the persistence of racial segregation, which simultaneously exacerbates the concentration of poverty experienced by African Americans and Hispanics while increasing the concentration of affluence for whites and Asians. Our analysis suggests the current polarization of politics and well-being in the United States are grounded in America’s entrenched ecology of racial and class segregation.