Poverty, Prosperity, and Place: The Shape of Class Segregation in the Age of Extremes

Abstract

Rising economic disparities in the United States at the end of the twentieth century make understanding the severity and determinants of residential segregation between the affluent and poor increasingly important. Existing studies are limited, however, by little attention to the spatial configuration of class segregation. Segregation occurs along multiple spatial dimensions-the affluent and poor may be split not only between different neighborhoods, but concentrated over more or less land, more or less centralized, and clustered near or far from other similar neighborhoods. Each dimension affects the amount of contact and shared resources between groups differently, and overlaps between them produce particularly severe social isolation. Theories conflict over the spatial form of class segregation, with the concentric zone model expecting the affluent to be clustered in large-lot developments on the metropolitan fringe and critics proposing alternative spatial forms in a more patchwork pattern. I use U.S. Census summary data for all metropolitan areas in 2000 to test competing theories of the patterns and determinants of the spatial form of affluent-poor segregation using cluster and regression analysis. I identify two dominant spatial forms of affluent-poor segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas in 2000, and find that racial diversity and segregation are key determinants of which spatial form characterizes a metropolitan area. The links between poverty, prosperity, and place were therefore crucially shaped by race as well as economic disparities in the age of extremes.