Full Citation
Title: Changing Social Ecologies of U.S. Suburban Areas, 1960-2000
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2012
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI:
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: The traditional social ecology of the stereotypical American metropolis the sectors and zones of Murdies famous model (1969) of factorial ecology has long disappeared. In this article, we explore high-resolution changes to the spatial structure of socioeconomic development in U.S. suburban areas for a long panel of post-war data. We build an evolving social ecological description of modern American suburbanism and systematically evaluate the trajectory and extent of changes that took place in post-Fordist suburbia based on an analysis of decennial census tract data between 1960 and 2000 for every metropolitan region in the United States. Specifically, this article makes a number of contributions to the literature: We identify an intuitive set of six clusters that characterize the principal suburban social ecologies of the post-war metropolitan United States. We describe the changing social ecologies of suburban areas in term of our clusters, paying particular attention to regional differences in the relationship between sitcom suburbs and the process of suburbanization of at the level of metropolitan areas. We identify a number of stylized facts: First, the decline of sitcom suburbs is not simply the symmetrical analog of their rise. Second, the duration of the sitcom cycle is characterized by large amounts of local heterogeneity in terms of its intensity and in terms of its duration. Third, there is a close connection between change in the social ecologies of U.S. suburbs and the joint processes of urban growth and suburbanization.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Knox, Paul L.; Bieri, David S.; Wei, Fang
Publisher: University of Michigan
Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Family and Marriage, Housing and Segregation, Migration and Immigration
Countries: