Reexamining Contemporary Urbanism in the United States: Convenient Mix of the Old and New

Abstract

This paper introduces a unique approach for characterizing contemporary urban dynamics in US cities and metropolitan areas. The proposed approach utilizes a socially and spatially integrated framework, and combines the traditional factorial ecology analysis with a novel spatial interpolation technique. The approach is demonstrated on a mid-size, decentralized metropolitan area in the US. It is found that agglomeration, sprawl, gentrification, and poverty concentration coexist in the study region, and that, despite the physical proximity, gentrified areas are largely isolated from deprived areas. The findings, although not surprising when placed in the broader urbanism literature, are not explainable by any single ‘school’ of urbanism. Researchers are recommended to adjudicate among the old and new models of urbanism and focus on integrated knowledge such as the growing threats of geographic inequity and spatial injustice in contemporary metropolitan areas.