The Fate of Residential Integration in American Cities

ABSTRACT:

Census data from 58 large central cities were used to measure 1970–1980 shifts in the racial composition of 2,259 neighborhoods (census tracts) that were nominally integrated (neither all white nor all black) at the start of the decade. The findings show the patterns and dynamics of racial change to be more complex than expected. One-fourth of all tracts in the sample exhibited relative stability in their black-nonblack proportions. However, the major population losses experienced by these compositionally stable tracts, and the volatile character of mixed neighborhoods generally, preclude too optimistic a conclusion about the future of integration.