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9
METROPOLITAN PROBLEMS
Racism, Poverty, Crime, Housing, and Fiscal Crisis
ntil recently, urban problems were city problems. That is no longer the case as the
issues once associated with the large, compact settlement form have spread out, like
the metropolitan population and its economic activities, to characterize the entire urban
region. In the late 1960s and 1970s, especially during President Johnson’s Great
Society, urban problems were defined almost exclusively as those involving racial segregation,
poverty, violent crime, and drugs. Now, in the first decade of the twenty-first
century, poverty, unemployment, foreclosures, and homelessness, as well as the severe
economic recession itself, are particular issues of concern. As the attention of the federal
government in Washington, D.C., focuses on the major issues of the economy
and health care, the nation’s state governments seem to be ignored. Consequently,
adding to our other urban ills, we currently face more intense fiscal crises and their
impact on local public services and infrastructure.
Was there ever a baseline in America against which the problems of today can be
measured? As in the other industrialized capitalist countries of Europe, the quality of
urban life with the advent of capitalism in the 1800s was severe for all but the
wealthy. Early photographic images of American cities at the turn of the last century
feature overcrowding: immense traffic jams of primitive Model-T automobiles mixed
in with horse-drawn carts, tenements teeming with immigrants, and crowds of children
swarming across city streets. Until after World War II, city life in the United
States was plagued by frequent public health crises such as cholera outbreaks, high infant
mortality rates, alcoholism, domestic violence, street gang activity, and crime. For
much of our history, then, city life has been virtually synonymous with social problems.
Yet we know now that these same problems—crime, disease, family breakup—
are experienced everywhere.
The sociologists of the early Chicago School, in the 1920s and 1930s, believed that
the move to the city was accompanied by social disorganization. While subsequent research
showed that this perception was inaccurate, people in the United States still
rank small and middle-size cities or suburbs as providing the highest quality of life and
209
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remain overwhelmingly interested in living in suburbs, especially for couples with
small children. The negative perception of the large city provides the basis for varying
mental images of place. Yet we have also seen that there are many positive aspects of urban
living and that the early belief in the loss of community among migrants to the
city was unfounded.
In previous chapters, we have tried to show that problems that appear to afflict
individuals are caused in part by factors that we cannot readily see. Consequently, an
explanation for the social disorganization often viewed in an individual’s fate lies in
the particular combination of adverse life decisions, personal circumstances, and more
structural social factors, such as lack of adequate education, racism, poverty, and the
specific effects of spatial segregation and uneven development. This chapter applies
the sociospatial approach to metropolitan problems. One purpose of our discussion is
to explore whether or not large cities in particular and metropolitan regions in general
possess unique features that might propagate specifically “urban” problems.
T H E S O C I O S P A T I A L A P P R O A C H
T O S O C I A L P R O B L E M S
Social problems are ubiquitous across the metropolitan areas of the United States.
Cities do not have an exclusive hold on divorce or domestic violence, and suburbs are
now almost as likely as cities to be afflicted with family disorganization, deviant subcultures,
drug use, and gang activity (Barbanel, 1992). Many suburban areas have
crime rates comparable to those of the central city. As the suburban settlement spaces
have matured, differences in poverty levels, crime rates, and other measures of social
disorganization have become less. If it appears clear that urbanism by itself is not a
generator of social problems, it is also clear that cultural approaches can no longer
identify unique differences between city life and life in other developed places.
We know from our earlier explorations of the sociospatial approach that the spatial
environment plays an important role in human interaction. The social background
factors associated with population groups are also important. The variety of lifestyles
found across urban and suburban settlement spaces result from social factors such as
race, class, and gender. Social problems in particular are caused by poverty, racial exclusion,
gender differences, and the severe patterns of uneven development within settlement
space that results in differential access to resources and determines a person’s
life chances. On the other hand, spatial forms still matter. Environments intensify or
dissipate these compositional effects of uneven development. In short, ways of life result
from an interaction between social factors and spatial organization.
Cities are not unique in having acute social problems, but the spatial nature of
large cities and densely populated suburbs makes the uneven development resulting
from the inequities of race, class, gender, and age particularly severe. According to the
sociospatial approach, the following factors are the most significant.
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First, the principal effect of the city as a built environment is that it concentrates
people and resources (Lefebvre, 1991; Engels, 1973). Thus, social problems such as
drugs and poverty have a greater impact in large central cities and densely populated
suburbs than in less dense areas. In confined urban space under the jurisdiction of a
single municipal government, it is the sheer numbers, such as the frequency of murders
and rapes or the number of “crack babies,” that turn social problems into grave
concerns.
Second, over the years urban populations have been disproportionately affected
by the internationalization of the capitalist economies. For example, large metropolitan
regions such as Los Angeles or New York are the destinations of choice for most
immigrants from poorer nations who have left their countries in search of a better
life. With the flow of immigrants comes specific problems, such as the need for bilingual
education, that affect these areas more than other places.
Changes in the global cycles of economic investment also affect metropolitan regions
because of the scale of activities in the largest places. For example, after Wall
Street stocks plunged in October 1987, more than 100,000 trained professionals were
laid off from brokerage and financial service firms in Manhattan, and throughout the
1990s, staggering job losses occurred in many areas as U.S. companies sought to increase
their profits and earnings. Job loss on this scale presents a particularly acute
problem for cities.
Finally, social problems are caused by the allocation of resources, which may be accentuated
in dense, built environments. For example, large cities are major centers of
the global economy. Extreme wealth is created within their boundaries, and the signs
of that money are highly visible in the city, such as expensive restaurants, upscale department
stores, luxury housing, and limousines. Close by, in the concentrated space
of the city, are people who suffer the most terrible consequences of abject poverty, such
as homelessness, malnutrition, and chronic unemployment. Because this contrast is so
visible, the issue of uneven development is particularly oppressive to inhabitants.
In summary, social problems that can be considered uniquely urban derive from
the concentrated nature of metropolitan space and the scale of changes in compositional
factors. In this chapter, we consider a number of problems often associated
with urban life, including racism and poverty, crime and drugs, fiscal problems such
as declines in educational quality and infrastructure problems, and, finally, housing
inequities and homelessness.
R A C I S M A N D P O V E R T Y
Racism
The most extreme and continuing effects of racism have been felt by African Americans,
who have been systematically discriminated against in employment and in the
R A C I S M A N D P O V E R T Y 211
housing market. As a consequence, their social mobility has been severely constrained.
The most powerful indicator of continuing institutional racism in the
United States is population segregation. In Chapters 10 and 11, when discussing
cities around the globe, we will also encounter the phenomenon of population segregation.
But nowhere is the racial nature of this sociospatial effect as clear as in metropolitan
areas across the United States.
The classic study of segregation is by the Taeubers (1965). They compiled statistics
on American cities with regard to the relative locations of whites and blacks. To
measure segregation, they constructed a very useful concept, an “index of segregation.”
If a city had a 30 percent African American population as a whole, they expected,
in the absence of segregation, that the black population would be evenly
distributed across space. The index of segregation refers to the percentage of African
Americans who would have to move in order for all neighborhoods to reflect the 30
percent black composition of the entire city. If a neighborhood were 90 percent
black, 67 percent of the black population would have to move, resulting in an index
of .67.
On the basis of the Taeubers’ study, all U.S. cities were discovered to be highly
segregated, that is, with indexes above .50 for African Americans. The Taeubers
replicated their study in the 1970s and found little change in the degree of black
population clustering. Some of the most segregated cities during the 1970s were Detroit;
Chicago; Buffalo, New York; Cleveland; and Birmingham, Alabama.
Some have argued that not all of the segregation observed in American cities is the
consequence of involuntary segregation; the spatial cluster of population groups can
also be voluntary. In the case of African Americans, however, we know that the urban
ghettos were created by a form of racism and violence designed to prevent blacks from
moving into “white” settlement spaces, federal housing policies that concentrated
public housing in the inner city while subsidizing “white flight” to the suburbs
through construction of the interstate highway system and home mortgage loans, and
other factors. Bullard and Feagin (1991), for example, discuss various techniques used
by housing-related institutions to prevent blacks from locating where they prefer,
thereby fostering involuntary segregation. This is an example of institutional racism.
Rental and real estate agents also use a variety of methods to prevent blacks from
locating in white-owned areas. One mechanism is called steering. When an African
American couple comes to a rental or real estate agent, the agent will steer the couple
to areas of the city populated by blacks. Agents may also simply refuse to divulge the
existence of housing opportunities in white areas. Despite gains in family income
earnings by a growing number of middle-class blacks, racial segregation remains a
fact of life for the majority of African Americans.
The sociospatial effects of racism on African Americans are also illustrated by
comparing their position with that of other minorities. In metropolitan areas where
minorities were at least 20 percent of the population—that is, where they were pres-
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ent in sufficient numbers to perhaps overcome prejudice—Hispanic Americans were
highly segregated in only two of the thirty-three metropolitan areas. In contrast,
“blacks are highly segregated in 31—two-thirds—of the 47 metro areas where they
make up at least 20 percent of residents, including Detroit, Chicago, Miami, Bir -
mingham, Ala.” (USA Today, “Segregation: Walls Between Us,” 1991:A-2).
Since the time of the Taeubers’ study, researchers of spatial segregation have developed
more precise measures of population clustering. The most sophisticated of these
studies combine several different measures to arrive at overall estimates of segregation.
They found that black people not only continue to be segregated in significant numbers
within central cities, but their exclusion is now extreme. Those that remain ghettoized
are extremely isolated because for decades all Americans—black, white,
Hispanic—with the means and opportunity to move away from such areas have done
so. Consequently, rather than social conditions improving for poor Afri can Americans,
their extreme segregation in our nation’s cities is now described as “hypersegregation.”
Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton (1993), for example, used five different
measures of population clustering in their study of the causes and consequences of
racial segregation in Chicago and other cities while discovering the deteriorating conditions
of hypersegregation.
1. Unevenness: African Americans may be distributed so that they are overrepresented
in some areas and underrepresented in other areas.
2. Isolation: African Americans may be distributed so that they have little interaction
with other groups.
3. Clustered: Black neighborhoods may be tightly clustered to form one contiguous
enclave, or they may be scattered about in checkerboard fashion.
4. Concentrated: Black neighborhoods may be concentrated within a very small
area, or they may be settled sparsely throughout the urban environment.
5. Centralized: Black neighborhoods may be spatially centralized around the urban
core or spread out along the periphery.
These five dimensions define geographic traits that social scientists think of when
they consider segregation. A high score on any single dimension is serious because it
removes blacks from full participation in urban society and limits their access to benefits.
As segregation accumulates across multiple dimensions, however, its effects intensify.
The indices of unevenness and isolation we have discussed so far cannot
capture this multidimensional layering of segregation and therefore understate its
severity in American society. Not only are blacks more segregated than other groups
on any single dimension of segregation, but they are also more segregated on all dimensions
simultaneously; and in an important subset of U.S. metropolitan areas,
African Americans are highly segregated on at least four of the five dimensions at
once, an extreme isolating pattern that they call hypersegregation.
R A C I S M A N D P O V E R T Y 213
Thus one-third of all African Americans in the United States live under conditions
of intense racial segregation. They are unambiguously among the nation’s most spatially
isolated and geographically secluded people, suffering extreme segregation
across multiple dimensions simultaneously. Black Americans in these metropolitan
areas live within large, contiguous settlements of densely inhabited neighborhoods
that are packed tightly around the urban core. In plain terms, they live in ghettos.
Typical inhabitants of these ghettos are not only unlikely to come into contact
with whites within the particular neighborhood where they live; even if they traveled
to the adjacent neighborhood they would still be unlikely to see a white face;
and if they went to the next neighborhood, no whites would be there either. No
other group in the contemporary United States comes close to this level of isolation
within urban society. U.S. Hispanics, for example, are never highly segregated
on more than three dimensions simultaneously, and in 45 of the 60 metropolitan
areas examined, they were highly segregated on only one dimension. Moreover,
the large Hispanic community in Miami (the third largest in the country) is not
highly segregated on any dimension at all. Despite their immigrant origins, Spanish
language, and high poverty rates, Hispanics are considerably more integrated
in American society than are blacks. (Massey and Denton, 1993:74–77)
The negative effects of hypersegregation were amply illustrated when Hurricane
Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Hundreds of thousands of poor black people were
living in that city in strict isolation. Their neighborhoods were also the site of the
lowlands and landfills that were below sea level and protected only by a series of
dikes and channels from being underwater. This area is poor land, a poor person’s
hyperghetto, and a very risky place to live. Hurricane Katrina devastated this area
when the dikes broke, leading to death and dispersal on an unprecedented scale in
this country. The total failure of the federal government under former president
George W. Bush to deal adequately with this crisis is a frightening example of how
little our society cares for poor minorities and the neighborhoods in which they live.
Box 9.1 summarizes the tragedy of Katrina and its indictment of our society.
From the information presented in these and other studies, it is clear that the
major determinant of racial segregation is not a person’s income, social class, or
length of time spent in the United States (as suggested by the assimilation model)
but rather racial background. African Americans confront the highest levels of segregation
while Asian Americans have the lowest levels. Racial background is also important
in determining segregation for various ethnic groups within these categories:
Puerto Ricans are more segregated than Mexicans, for example. Cultural factors such
as language and religion are associated with the level of segregation for particular
ethnic groups. For example, Asian Indian and Filipino immigrants are likely to speak
English and are familiar with American schools and government and consequently
encounter much less segregation than other Asian American populations.
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R A C I S M A N D P O V E R T Y 215
Hurricane Katrina
Formed on August 23, 2005, and hitting New Orleans on Monday, August 29,
Hur ricane Katrina was the largest natural disaster in U.S. history with estimated
damages at more than $100 billion, and one of the five deadliest. “The federal
flood protection system in New Orleans failed at more than fifty places. Nearly
every levee in metro New Orleans was breached as Hurricane Katrina passed just
east of the city limits. Eventually 80% of the city became flooded and also large
tracts of neighboring parishes, and the floodwaters lingered for weeks. At least
1,836 people lost their lives in the actual hurricane and in the subsequent floods.”
Initially, hundreds of thousands of residents were displaced, with many having to
start new lives in other cities. Four years later, thousands of former residents continued
to live in makeshift trailers, some of which were discovered to be giving off
toxic fumes. Reports and several books have blasted the Bush administration’s handling
of this massive disaster along with the dubious choice of former president
Bush’s appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA,
Michael D. Brown.
“In a September 26, 2005, hearing, former FEMA chief Michael Brown testified
before a U.S. House subcommittee about FEMA’s response. During that hearing,
Representative Steven Boyer (R-IN) inquired as to why President Bush’s declaration
of state of emergency of August 27 had not included the coastal parishes of Orleans,
Jefferson, and Plaquemines. (In fact, the declaration did not include any of Louisiana’s
coastal parishes, whereas the coastal counties were included in the declarations
for Mississippi and Alabama.) Brown testified that this was because Louisiana governor
Blanco had not included those parishes in her initial request for aid, a decision
that he found “shocking.” After the hearing, Blanco released a copy of her letter,
which showed she had requested assistance for “all the southeastern parishes [but
not by name], including the New Orleans metropolitan area and the mid-state Interstate
I-49 corridor and northern parishes along the I-20 corridor that are accepting
[evacuated citizens].” “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of job!” is now the famous
quote by an oblivious George Bush that captures the incompetence of his administration’s
response to the great human tragedy.
The disaster response to Katrina redistributed over 1 million people from the central
Gulf Coast elsewhere across the United States—the largest diaspora in the history
of the United States. Houston, Texas, had an increase of 35,000 people; Mobile, Alabama,
gained over 24,000; Baton Rouge, Louisiana, over 15,000; and Hammon,
Louisiana, received over 10,000, nearly doubling its size. Chicago received over
6,000 people, the most of any non-southern city. By late January 2006, about
Box 9.1
continues
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200,000 people were once again living in New Orleans, less than half of the prestorm
population.
Two years after the disaster, criticism of the U.S. government’s response to the
massive destruction of mostly African-American neighborhoods with their modestly
priced homes still reverberates to the detriment of America’s reputation. The
clear pattern has been to keep displaced poor people from returning by failing to
rebuild low-income housing. According to the Association of City Mayors: “Despite
Hurricane Katrina causing the worst affordable housing crisis since the American
Civil War, HUD is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down over
4,600 public-housing subsidized apartments and replace them with 744 similarly
subsidized units—an 82 percent reduction. . . . HUD plans to build an additional
1,000 market rate and tax credit units—which will still result in a net loss of 2,700
apartments to New Orleans—the remaining new apartments will cost an average of
over $400,000 each!”
The removal of poor and black people from New Orleans by an opportunistic
government seems to have been for the benefit of real estate interests initially. Private
market entrepreneurs have been allowed to operate by constructing nonsubsidized
dwellings at a profit, and this past summer New Orleans was reported to be
the fastest growing city in the country.
The case study of Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing failure of the federal government
to provide adequately for the victims can inspire extreme cynicism, especially
in regard to former president George W. Bush’s administration. However, it
also has important heuristic value. It demonstrates society’s lack of commitment to
help the less affluent with low-income and affordable housing; it shows how powerful
interests in real estate influence the actions, if not the policies of the federal government;
and it clearly indicates that when natural disasters strike, it is the poor
whose needs are neglected and it is the poor who suffer most. All of these conclusions
can be derived from our sociospatial approach. It is not surprising that capital
is now flowing back into New Orleans at a substantial rate and that the poor and
the black have been replaced by more affluent Americans due to hurricane recovery
policies of housing and urban renewal.
In August 2009, the Associated Press ran an article updating the situation in
New Orleans. Among its observations, it reported:
By one estimate, 36 percent of New Orleans’ housing is empty, and . . . there is no
clear indication when or whether it will be rebuilt. While grace periods for many
mortgage holders after the storm helped New Orleans avoid the high foreclosure
rates other cities have seen, many homeowners haven’t yet decided whether to re-
Box 9.1 continued
continues
217
The relationship between racial background and segregation is brought out
clearly by research on housing discrimination in suburban communities. Government
regulations and real estate agents prevent African Americans from moving outside
the large city even if they can afford to do so. Most often this is the result of a
kind of racism that is called “exclusionary zoning.” Such measures have been confirmed
as the cause of segregation by a long research tradition.
According to a report published in 2004:
Much has been written in recent years on continuing high levels of racial segregation
and growing income segregation within urban areas in the U.S. Black and Hispanic
households tend to live in different neighborhoods than whites, while within these
groups high-and low-income households are also spatially separated. Among the factors
that contribute to segregated housing patterns are local land-use regulations that
tend to exclude lower-income households from suburban communities. The specific
regulations that are most often criticized as exclusionary are those that specify a
minimum lot size for single-family homes. Large lots artificially inflate the cost of
R A C I S M A N D P O V E R T Y
build or, in some cases, don’t have the money to finish the work. . . . New Orleans
has regained about 75 percent of its pre-storm population, though a recent report by
the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and Greater New Orleans
Community Data Center said slowing of school enrollment suggests those moving
in are single or childless couples. . . . By one recent estimate, less than 20 percent of
the Lower 9th’s pre-storm population is back. A pocket of new, built-to-last houses
in another part of the neighborhood—spearheaded by Hollywood star Brad Pitt and
slated to expand—is like a hamlet surrounded by open, vivid-green land.
Overgrown lots and homes that have scarcely been touched since Katrina spill
from the cluster of Pitt homes, creating a virtual wilderness. On a recent afternoon,
feral chickens scurried across a road that attracted little notice before Katrina but
has become a landmark since.” The city is recovering but growth is clearly uneven
with large areas of the poorest sections comparatively abandoned. Overall, one indicator
of recovery is revealing: Prior to the hurricane in the prosperous year the
total number of residential addresses actively receiving mail was 188,251. Now, in
June of 2009, that number is 154,592 up by slightly more than 8,000 since immediately
after the storm. Recovery is happening but, obviously, at a slow pace.
SOURCES: “Four Years After Katrina: The State of New Orleans,” AP/Huffington Post, August 28,
2009; Dan D. Swenson and Bob Marshall, “Flash Flood: Hurricane Katrina’s Inundation of New
Orleans.” Times-Picayune, May 14, 2005; Jed Horne, Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the
Near Death of a Great American City (New York: Random House, 2008).
owner-occupied housing within suburban communities, making it difficult for lowand
moderate-income households to buy into these communities. In addition to
large lot zoning, there are a myriad of other zoning and building regulations that
raise home prices and apartment rents within America’s suburbs. (Ihlanfeldt, 255)
As a result, there is a scarcity of affordable housing within many communities,
and region-wide racial segregation is compounded by poverty. Ihlanfeldt goes on to
say, “There are some hard facts obtained by people doing research on exclusionary
zoning. It has been found that neighborhood median income increases property
value while racial diversity reduces property value. The evidence provided demonstrates
that there is a cash payoff to suburban property owners from excluding from
their community low-income and minority households.”
Recent research on segregation shows that the forces of isolation and discrimination
afflicting the black and the poor have deconcentrated just as minority populations
have spread out unevenly across the metro region. As a result, an overall
locational pattern has emerged with minority communities fragmenting into irregular
enclaves throughout the area rather than being confined to specific ghettos. This
is even more so for poor Hispanics who have been more successful in overcoming the
barriers of exclusionary zoning in suburbia. While affordable housing and mixed
communities are not increasingly present, strict ghettoization is giving way to a more
dispersed, regional array. Thus research shows that there is an exclusionary and discriminatory
dynamic operating at the multicentered metro regional scale rather than
the simple dichotomy of city vs. suburb that characterized earlier perspectives on
race and income segregation. These results confirm in a different way the emergence
of the new form of multicentered regional space than earlier arguments in this text.
In a 2008 study, the author looked at nine metro areas: Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit,
Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. He
compared segregation in these regions within suburban communities, between suburban
communities, between the urban poor and the suburban region, and within the
principal cities. In all the regions tested, there was significant segregation within the
core cities, between the urban core and the suburban rings in the region, and between
suburban communities in the region. Atlanta had most of its segregation within and
between suburban communities. Chicago had a large component of segregation within
its core area. Detroit possessed a large component of segregation between and within
its suburban communities but also within the central city. Segregation in Houston was
dominated by its presence in the core central city. Miami’s picture was the reverse:
Most of the segregation was between and within suburban communities. New York,
among the entire sample, had most of its segregation within the principal cities of the
region. San Francisco was equally balanced between segregation in the city and in the
suburban area of the region, while Washington, D.C., like many of the other cities,
was dominated by segregation in the suburban region (Farrell, 2008).
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Most metropolitan areas became less segregated during the 1990s, but this effect
obscures the more complex and fragmented nature of segregation involving multigroups
and differences in community segregation patterns within the larger metropolitan
region. Another reason there is not more fragmentation of minority and poor
neighborhoods, especially in the central city, is because of gentrification. In the large
cities like New York, young adults are moving into former ghetto areas that were once
predominantly black or Hispanic. The same is true in many other large cities; however,
it is probably not the case in the smaller cities where there is still room for affordable
housing close to the city but located in suburban regions, or in the cities of the
south which still maintain racial barriers to locational mobility, such as in New Orleans.
We shall discuss gentrification below. Farrell’s comparative analysis clearly demonstrates
the way discrimination operates to produce variable patterns of settlement
for the poor and minorities because of the way those populations have filtered out
from central cities according to the different limitations imposed on them by exclusionary
practices in the different cities.
At the end of the last century, a growing number of black people have returned to
the South, thereby reversing decades of movement north. According to a report by the
Brookings Institution (2005), the South outscored net gains of black migrants from
all three of the other regions of the United States during the late 1990s, reversing a
thirty-five-year trend. Of the ten states that suffered the greatest net loss of blacks
between 1965 and 1970, five ranked among the top ten states for attracting blacks between
1995 and 2000. Southern metropolitan areas, particularly Atlanta, led the way
in attracting black migrants in the late 1990s. In contrast, the major metropolitan
areas of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco experienced the greatest
out-migration of blacks during the same period. Among all ethnic-racial groups,
blacks were more likely than any other to move to the South. Both Atlanta and Washington,
D.C., were the major recipients of black migrants. Most importantly, collegeeducated
individuals led the new black immigration into the South. Georgia, Texas,
and Maryland attracted the most black college graduates from 1995 to 2000, while
New York suffered the largest net loss. There was also a large out-migration of African
Americans from California. They moved to the “spillover” states of Arizona and Nevada
as well as back to the South. Due to the higher level of education and income
characteristic of these return southerners, inner-city hyperghettos continue to lose
their more affluent residents, assuming, as in the case of New Orleans, there are any
left at all.
One effect on U.S. culture of significant segregation is that increasingly whites
learn about blacks and blacks learn about whites only from the mass media because
they have little direct contact with each other. Styles of dress and language among
teenagers, in particular, are highly influenced by the media and the mass-marketing of
youth-related fashions in clothing, cinema, and music. In the 1990s, an urban style of
ghetto dress among black teenagers that is associated with rap music and inner-city
R A C I S M A N D P O V E R T Y 219
dance styles was marketed nationwide. Many youths in suburbia copy the style that is
marketed to them through television and films. At the same time, suburban fashions
associated with active leisure wear, especially influenced by Southern California, such
as skateboarding and beachwear, are also marketed through the media nationwide.
Teenage culture represents a battleground of these and other spatially generated
lifestyles that are diffused across the country by the mass media (Chambers, 1986),
and it is here, in popular culture, that urban African American culture has had its
greatest impact on whites.
Poverty
The issue of poverty is not confined to urban settlement space alone. People through -
out the metropolitan region suffer its effects. Poverty is caused by the uneven development
of the economy. In the 1950s, despite growing affluence, large numbers of
Americans were poor, with some living in appalling conditions (Harrington, 1962).
At the time, it was recognized that there were poor people in rural areas as well as urban
places. As a result of government antipoverty programs such as the War on
Poverty, the poverty rate declined to about 12.1 percent in the 1960s. In the 1970s
and 1980s, however, the rate rose again and reached levels comparable to Depressionera
statistics; roughly 20 percent of the total population was living at or below the
poverty line in the 1980s (Wilson, 1987). Today, as a consequence of our current economic
meltdown, unemployment and poverty have hit unprecedented levels and the
problem remains our most serious domestic issue.
In 2008 the federal government issued guidelines that defined poverty for a family
of four as $21,200 in yearly income for the contiguous United States, with Alaska and
Hawaii slightly higher at $26,500 and $24,380, respectively (U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, 2009). It is difficult to figure how a family of four can
manage on this budget, particularly for those living in urban areas with high rents and
food costs. Today there are many more people living at or below this rate than in
2008; over 40 million, or about 14 percent of the population, in fact. Another indicator
of poverty is whether people possess health insurance. In 2007, before the economic
crisis hit, almost 16 percent of Americans had none.
Poverty can be considered an urban problem because of its concentration in large
city neighborhoods, as the sociospatial perspective suggests, although the range of
poverty rates for all cities in the United States is quite broad. Cleveland and Detroit,
for example, had rates above 30 percent in 2007, while the rates in their surrounding
suburban areas were much less. In general, the city as a spatial form concentrates the
poor in record numbers, and that is precisely the sociospatial effect that makes poverty
an urban problem. As William J. Wilson has observed, “To say that poverty has become
increasingly urbanized is to note a remarkable change in the concentration of
poor people in the United States in only slightly more than a decade” (1987:172).
220 9 : M E T R O P O L I TA N P R O B L E M S
Furthermore, the demographic profile of the poor is cause for alarm. In 2005,
17.6 percent of all children under eighteen years old were living in poverty. This
high figure is astounding for a developed country like the United States. During that
same year, a higher proportion of black (34.5 percent) and Hispanic (28.3 percent)
children under age eighteen were poor than were their non-Hispanic white counterparts
(10.0 percent) (http://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa07/popchar/pages/103cp.html).
Because the minority population of the United States is overwhelmingly urban,
these figures imply a concentration of poor minority group members, especially children,
in the large central cities and represents a major problem for the entire society,
not just for those living in central cities.
The spatial effects of concentrating the poor in a few neighborhoods contribute
to urban problems. For example, ghetto areas are the sites of the most violent criminal
and drug-related activities, so the urban poor are the most likely to be crime victims
and suffer the most from crime (Taylor, 1991). In addition, ghetto areas have
worse medical care than other parts of the city. A study of infant mortality rates in
New York found that the rate was almost twice as high in central Harlem and Bedford-
Stuyvesant (23.4 and 21 per 1,000, respectively), both well-known black communities,
compared to the city average of 13.3 per 1,000 (the national average was
10 in 1,000 in 1990).
I N C R E A S I N G I N C O M E I N E Q U A L I T Y,
U N E M P L O Y M E N T, A N D P O V E R T Y
The current economic crisis has had a number of troubling effects by increasing the
problem of poverty in the United States. Because of uneven development, however,
the burden of the crisis has fallen most heavily on the working class, not on corporate
executives or fully employed professionals. Consequently, as a recent report shows, the
income inequality gap has widened considerably. In fact, “Income inequality in the
United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression”
(Saez, “Income Inequality is at an All Time High,” New York Times, 2009).
Since 2000, the top 1 percent of American wage earners have doubled their share of
wages. The top 10 percent of employed people pulled in almost 50 percent of all
earned wages in 2007, a “level that is higher than any other year since 1917.”
As our economic crisis persists, unemployment remains high (it was close to 10
percent in July 2009). According to a federal government report in June:
Unemployment rates were higher in June than a year earlier in all 372 metropolitan
areas, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported
today. Eighteen areas recorded jobless rates of at least 15.0 percent, while
9 areas registered rates below 5.0 percent. The national unemployment rate in
June was 9.7 percent, not seasonally adjusted, up from 5.7 percent a year earlier.
I N C R E A S I N G I N C O M E I N E Q U A L I T Y , U N E M P L O Y M E N T , A N D P O V E R T Y 221
Among the 369 metropolitan areas for which nonfarm payroll data were available,
352 areas reported over-the-year declines in employment, 16 reported increases,
and 1 had no change. (Hall, 2009)
Furthermore, statistics on job loss indicate that the phenomenon is greater in
many of our largest multicentered metropolitan regions (not just cities). Thus the
economic crisis concentrates the poor and the unemployed in these areas.
Of the 49 metropolitan areas with a Census 2000 population of 1 million or
more, Detroit-Warren-Livonia, Mich., reported the highest unemployment rate
in June, 17.1 percent. The large areas with the next highest rates were Riverside–
San Bernardino–Ontario, Calif., 13.7 percent; Charlotte–Gastonia–Concord,
N.C.–S.C., 12.4 percent; Las Vegas–Paradise, Nev., 12.3 percent; and Providence–
Fall River–Warwick, R.I., 12.1 percent. Eighteen additional large areas
posted rates of 10.0 percent or more. . . . All 49 large areas registered over-theyear
unemployment rate increases of at least 2.0 percentage points. (U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics, 2009)
Loss of a job has negative ripple effects on the economy that bring other jobs into
jeopardy. Proposed employment creation to combat this problem so far has not materialized,
giving people cause for substantial worry that the economic recovery will
take considerable time. Another negative effect of increasing poverty and unemployment
is that it impacts the housing market. In fact, because the United States has
failed to provide an adequate supply of affordable housing, the banks that provided
loans to people who could ill afford them helped pave the way for the present economic
crisis. Consequently, the issues of poverty, income inequality, and unemployment
are compounded and mixed in with the country’s equally large housing crisis.
T H E H O U S I N G C R I S I S A N D S O C I E T Y ’ S F A I L U R E
T O P R O V I D E A D E Q U A T E A F F O R D A B L E H O U S I N G
As pointed out in our discussion of community in Chapter 8, family well-being in the
United States depends to a great extent on where one’s home is located. Differences in
wealth and the location of the family home determine the opportunities available to individuals.
Where one lives determines the quality of the school one attends, as we have
already discussed, but it also determines the safety of the local streets and how much
one’s property will increase in value. Over the years, the cost of well-situated housing,
either owned or rented, has increased substantially as a percentage of income. Consequently,
attractive neighborhoods have become beyond the reach of many people.
Since 1965, the cost of housing has risen more rapidly than income. As a result,
millions of people either could not afford single-family homeownership or were forced
222 9 : M E T R O P O L I TA N P R O B L E M S
to devote a major part of their income to housing. In 2008 the uneven development of
America’s market-oriented approach to real estate investment in housing and loans resulted
in an economic meltdown with no immediate relief in sight (see below). Yet the
present global crisis is only the inevitable outcome of decades of misguided housing
policy sacrificed for maximum profit. In the mid-1950s, an average thirty-year-old
worker could purchase a median-priced house for just 14 percent of his or her gross
earnings. Thirty years later, it would take fully 44 percent of that worker’s income to
purchase the same house (Levy, 1977). Shannon, Kleiniewski, and Cross (1991) illustrated
the rapid increase in housing prices. In 1970, the median monthly rent in the
United States was $108; by 1985, it was three times as high ($350). The median sales
price of new homes increased by a factor of four, from $23,000 in 1970 to more than
$92,000 in 1986. Price increases were most rapid on both the East and West Coasts,
becoming almost prohibitively high in places such as Orange County, California, and
Nassau County, New York.
Today we are in the midst of a full-blown economic crisis that grew out of our
housing dilemma with its lack of affordability and its obsessive emphasis on putting
people into single-family suburban tract homes or inner-city high-end condominiums.
Since the 1980s, real estate and banking interests in the United States pushed
development of housing for the affluent to unprecedented levels. Although little affordable
housing was constructed, banks found new ways of placing people into
units when they could not afford the expensive housing that was being built. Subprime
and adjustable rate mortgages were the principal tools used to keep profits up
by tapping into a new market consisting of poorer people who could not afford new
housing. Eventually, a speculative and artificially inflated “bubble” of investment
and debt was created that came crashing down on the heads of Americans at the end
of 2008. However, the warning signs were already there over a decade ago, when
bank mortgage lending was deregulated by the federal government and all the
watchdogs of land and bank investing somehow went to sleep while mega-profits
and mega-bonuses were being made and paid in these industries.
As Lefebvre has argued, the second circuit of investing, namely real estate, is as
likely to go through boom-and-bust cycles as any other aspect of capitalism. For several
decades, until 2007, average citizens forgot about the dangers of the speculative
bubble and focused on the monthly and yearly gains in the value of housing and the
steady profit taking it allowed. More significantly for the current economic crisis today,
investment banks, which until the Clinton era deregulation, were forbidden from
investing in housing at all, cleverly engineered entirely new ways of packaging risky
home loans into “assets” that were bought and sold on the global market. The value
of these “subprime” derivatives was assured only for as long as the prices of housing
continued to rise. It seems astounding now that no one in authority, in either the
United States or other industrialized countries, exercised their power to offset such
speculation. It is even more astounding that no effective oversight was initiated when
T H E H O U S I N G C R I S I S A N D S O C I E T Y ’ S F A I L U R E 223
224 9 : M E T R O P O L I TA N P R O B L E M S
not long ago the United States, under President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s, lost
billions of dollars in a similar real estate speculation known as the “savings and loan”
scandal. That is exactly what happened as a consequence of the deregulation of investment
banking activities under President Clinton in the 1990s. In brief, then, the
United States has always had an affordable housing crisis because the country has persisted
in relying on the private market to supply most of its housing needs.
When the speculative bubble—the nation’s housing market—began to burst in
2007, there was ample time for a suitable correction if the government under President
George W. Bush had paid any attention. But it didn’t. Now the American economy
is in the throes of a major, long-lasting plunge. It is extremely important to note
that the crisis derives from the government’s failure to provide for affordable housing
rather than blaming a more complex, less understandable feature of global capital investment
and business dynamics. For example, according to an authoritative report,
housing markets contracted for a second straight year in 2007.
Then, the national median single-family home price fell in nominal terms for the
first time in 40 years of recordkeeping, leaving several million homeowners with
properties worth less than their mortgages. With the economy softening and many
home loans resetting to higher rates, an increasing number of owners had difficulty
keeping current on their payments. Mortgage performance—especially on
subprime loans with adjustable rates—eroded badly. Lenders responded by tightening
underwriting standards and demanding a higher risk premium, accelerating
the ongoing slide in sales and starts. (Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2008)
By the end of 2008, the foreclosure rate and the drop in stock prices were both
equally astronomic and equally painful. The country was well underway into a national
banking, employment, and stock depression that people were still suffering
from in late 2009.
A recent assessment concluded that a recovery remained unsure and the economic
decline was deeply troubling:
While deep construction cutbacks have begun to pare down the supply of unsold
new homes, the numbers of vacant homes for sale or held off the market remain
high. Reducing this excess will take some combination of additional declines in
prices, a slow-down in foreclosures, further cuts in mortgage interest rates, and a
pickup in job and income growth. Until the inventory of vacant homes is worked
off, the pressure on prices will persist. Further price declines will not only increase
the probability that mortgage defaults end in foreclosure, but also put a tighter
squeeze on consumer spending. (Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2008)
Compounding this problem of excess supply, current foreclosure rates are so high
that banks still retain excess liabilities (called “toxic assets”) and remain in crisis. Con-
225
tinuing high unemployment rates are the major culprit. When people lose their jobs,
they often lose their homes as well. According to a recent report, “Economists estimate
that 1.8 million borrowers will lose their homes this year [2009], up from 1.4
million last year [2008] . . . and the government, which has already committed billions
of dollars to foreclosure-prevention efforts, has found it far more difficult to help
people who have lost their paychecks than those whose mortgage payments become
unaffordable because of an interest-rate increase” (Merle, Washington Post, 2009).
Lack of affordable housing and the irrational way the banking industry, aided by
our culture’s attachment to the American Dream, pushed the norm of a singlefamily
home, contributed to the bursting of the bubble that is at the heart of the current
U.S. economic crisis. By involving such large numbers of people who could
least afford homes through subprime loans, the crisis hit African Americans and Hispanic
populations particularly hard. Box 9.2 provides a report on the extent of this
involvement and the implications it has for an economic recovery.
T H E H O U S I N G C R I S I S A N D S O C I E T Y ’ S F A I L U R E
The Effect on Minority Populations of the Housing Crisis
Fastest Growing Populations Experiencing Decreasing Wealth
Washington, D.C.—The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC)
has said that the latest report from the U.S. Department of the Census Bureau casts
new light on the economic ramifications of the growing foreclosure crisis. The Census
report shows that in less than forty years, today’s minorities—the disproportionate
recipient of subprime loans—will be the majority population in America. This
has profound implications on the future of Americans’ economic mobility, homeownership
attainment, and the nation’s global competitiveness.
Hispanics are expected to experience the most dramatic increase in population,
according to the report, swelling from 15 percent of the population to 30 percent.
African Americans and Asians are projected to grow to 15 percent and 10 percent
of the population, respectively.
Disturbingly, Hispanics and African Americans have experienced the greatest
rates of subprime lending in recent years, and are being particularly hard hit by the
ongoing foreclosure crisis. And African Americans and Latinos already face severe
wealth disparities relative to non-Hispanic whites. In large part because of the critical
link between homeownership and wealth attainment, African Americans and
Hispanics, on average, hold only $10 and $12 of wealth for every $100 of savings of
the typical non-Hispanic white household, respectively.
A major driver of wealth disparities is the relatively lower rates of homeownership.
Today less than 50 percent of African Americans own their homes, compared
Box 9.2
continues
226 9 : M E T R O P O L I TA N P R O B L E M S
In sum, the current and serious economic recession has many intertwined causes.
However, at its root, there are just a few and they represent fundamental contradictions
of our capitalist system. One factor is the country’s inability to provide an adequate
supply of affordable housing to all workers. Like the proverbial butterfly that
flaps its wings in the equatorial tropics and triggers a world ecological crisis through
a series of globally linked events, the scarcity of affordable housing contributed to
the economic turmoil that we see today, when unregulated banks were allowed to
step in and provide subprime loans to people who then defaulted on them. Solving
the protracted recession in the United States is obviously a priority, but attacking the
root causes should be an equally important priority.
to 75 percent of whites. As minority populations grow, their level of wealth and
homeownership, as well as other economic opportunities, continue to lag behind
that of non-Hispanic whites.
The ongoing foreclosure crisis threatens to further increase this wealth gap by
wiping away billions of dollars in minority communities. According to the nonprofit
public policy organization United for a Fair Economy (UFE), the loss of home -
ownership could translate into a total loss of wealth among African American and
Latino households of between $164 billion to more than $200 billion.
Persistent and increasing wealth gaps among communities of color and the
broader population represent a problem for America. “Failing to ensure greater financial
inclusion of a significant and growing segment of the population is a problem
that should not be ignored,” said Jim Carr, chief operating officer of NCRC.
“As communities of color grow, their economic vitality will be increasingly critical
to America’s overall competitiveness.”
In addition to accessing sustainable homeownership, greater engagement of minority
households in the banking and financial system is critical. Nearly 10 million
U.S. households are unbanked. A recent report by the Center for Financial Services
Innovation estimates that there are 40 million households with limited and tenuous
access to the banking mainstream. A disproportionate share of these households is
minority. Yet this study showed a full 25 percent of those consumers had prime
credit, including 15 percent who had prime-plus or super-prime. These statistics
show more can and should be done to bring more consumers into the twenty-firstcentury
banking system.
SOURCE: National Community Reinvestment Coalition, August 20, 2008, http://www.ncrc.org/
index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=331&Itemid=75
Box 9.2 continued
227
H O M E L E S S N E S S
One of the first things visitors to a city notice are individuals walking on the street
carrying all their possessions. A New York Times poll over a decade ago found that
roughly 54 percent of Americans see homeless people in the community or on their
way to work (Applebome, 1991). While homelessness is related to the above issue of
affordable housing, it is not directly related and has multiple causes. To be sure, however,
with the current high rate of unemployment and foreclosures of housing,
homelessness as an urban phenomenon will increase.
We cannot say for sure how many homeless people there are at present. We do
know, however, that the latest numbers have not been seen since the Great Depression
of the 1930s (Blau, 1992). The homeless are not found in any single place; they are mobile.
Their condition also varies. Some days or nights they may be inside shelters, and
at other times they may have enough money for a room in a single-room-occupancy
(SRO) hotel. In the mid-1980s, one estimate said there were 350,000 homeless “on a
given night” (Peroff, 1987), but other estimates have run much higher, to 3 million or
more (Flanagan, 1990:320). In addition, the composition of the homeless population,
including married couples with children, is more representative of the entire crosssection
of U.S. society than during previous periods such as the Depression.
The current recession coupled with the 2009 housing crisis has produced an unprecedented
number of children belonging to families that are either homeless or in
temporary living arrangements because they have lost their homes. This terrible
plight has put an immense strain on school districts that struggle with a government
mandated requirement that all American children, whether living in a home or not,
are entitled to an education. In September 2009, 1 million American children were
left in distressed conditions due to loss of homes from the foreclosure crisis and the
attempts by school districts to comply with federal legislation requiring that young
children be given a public education (Eckholm, 2009).
Recent reports indicate that both homelessness and squatting, phenomena once
associated with cities in the developing world, have become increasingly common in
European as well as American metropolitan areas (Adams, 1986). There are several
reasons for homelessness (Flanagan, 1990; Leshner, 1992). Job loss since the 1970s
has taken a terrible toll on families. Economic restructuring, as we saw earlier in this
chapter, has caused job loss and community decline. In many cases, a loss of income
results in an inability to afford housing; for some families, even rental housing can be
hard to obtain with limited financial means. But declines in welfare funding have
been a principal cause of homelessness: Fiscal austerity and cutbacks in the federal
budget have limited the ability of local communities to support people in need.
Finally, homelessness is also caused by the housing problem and the inequities of
the second circuit of capital in the United States. Because the real estate market functions
both to drive up the cost of shelter and to foster speculation, units may either
H O M E L E S S N E S S
228 9 : M E T R O P O L I TA N P R O B L E M S
be too expensive to rent or own or simply be held vacant as a tax loss. The urbanist
Carolyn Adams terms this condition one of maladjustment rather than a shortage of
housing, because in the United States many housing units remain available. As she
suggests:
The term “maladjustment” is more accurate than “shortage” because in many
places the number of existing units is theoretically large enough to house the urban
population. Yet many households cannot find housing that is both affordable
and suitable for their needs. At the same time, large numbers of housing units
stand vacant, awaiting demolition or renovation. The presence of empty housing
in cities where large numbers of families and individuals need shelter is an invitation
to squatting, and that is precisely what has taken place. (1986:528)
But homelessness is not simply a question of social welfare; it is also a matter of
land-use issues connected with gentrification, displacement, and the cultural imaginings
of what the city should be. Talmadge Wright notes that the “problem” of homelessness
in American cities is especially challenging because the homeless, city officials, and other
groups have very different visions of how urban space should be used. For low-income
persons who cannot afford housing, vacant buildings may be seen as squatter properties.
But for most people—including public officials and developers—urban space does not
include a place for the homeless (Wright, 1998). This attitude has resulted in the “militarization”
of urban space, including such things as concertina wire around dumpsters
behind grocery stores and restaurants to prevent homeless persons from obtaining leftover
food; park benches specifically designed to prevent people from sleeping; and
sprinkler systems in public parks that are turned on during evening hours to prevent
homeless persons from sleeping on the ground (Davis, 1990). In Chicago, San Jose, and
other cities, homeless populations have mobilized to resist the displacement of their
communities, including protests of urban redevelopment projects, squatting activities,
and other forms of collective action (Wright, 1998).
Homelessness combines aspects of economic crisis, poverty, and the failures of
U.S. health and housing policies. Remedies for this problem require integrated plans
that address the root causes. It is clear that with the declining economy, poor people
have fewer opportunities to improve their lot, and their relative standing in society is
deteriorating. Above all else, it must be noted, not just once but repeatedly, that the
failure of the U.S. housing industry to provide affordable housing and the efforts by
the banking and investment industry to profit from this failure have been and remain
the root cause of the current and deep economic recession. In 2009, the U.S.
government provided trillions of dollars as a means of preventing the collapse of
these same industries, but when repeated appeals had been made to provide adequate
housing for all Americans over the years, the response was indifference. Can
such a contradiction in our society persist, even after the present crisis has passed?
229
No signs so far suggest that the matter is being addressed, and the fact that more
than 1 million children have been left in distressed conditions is hard evidence of the
consequences for the most innocent victims of the situation.
C R I M E
On the night of August 27, 2009, the following incident occurred in Detroit:
Betty McMahon expected her van to turn up either stripped or dumped from a
joyride after she saw someone steal it early today on Detroit’s east side. She never
expected to spot it with the body of a 22-year-old slumped over the wheel, shot a
block from her home, in front of Gleaners Community Food Bank. McMahon
heard someone start up her van at 4:20 a.m., and watched out the window as it
drove away. She was on her way home from reporting it stolen with her son and
daughter-in-law when they spotted the flashing lights of the Detroit Police . . . “I
said, ‘Go around the corner, let’s be nosey and see what all of that is,’” she said.
“When I got to the corner, I said, ‘Oh my god, that’s my van.’” Gleaners’ operations
manager arriving for work at 5:30 a.m. had called police after spotting the
green 1994 Plymouth Voyager in front of one of the food pantry’s truck bays.
“He saw the van sitting in the street and he saw the window was broken and
someone was in it, slumped in it, so he immediately called 911,” Gleaners vice
president . . . said this morning. McMahon, who had a van stolen and damaged
from a joyride about eight years ago, said she’s “tore up” about the violence involved
with this one. (Battaglia, 2009)
Tragic stories such as this one give the impression that crime is rampant in cities
and that cities are unsafe as human environments. When people speak of crime, they
usually mean violent crime, which includes murder, assault, rape, and robbery. However,
a large amount of property crime—burglary, larceny, and auto theft—occurs
every year in both cities and suburbs. White-collar criminals, for example, such as
insider traders on Wall Street and the bankers involved in the savings and loan scandal,
are responsible for the theft of billions of dollars. But these white-collar crimes
are not usually considered when people discuss criminal activity or describe dangerous
criminals. White-collar criminals rarely appear in the photographs of the most
wanted criminals in post offices or on America’s Most Wanted. For the most part, the
crimes associated with metropolitan areas are of the violent variety such as rape and
murder—the stuff of CSI and other television shows and movies that continue to
fascinate the American public. These crimes affect our view of public safety and the
safety of our homes.
Tables 9.1 to 9.3 report crime statistics for metropolitan areas, comparing rates
from 2000 to 2007 for property and violent crimes as well as the aggregate city/suburb
C R I M E
contrast. According to Table 9.1, rates per 100,000 people are consistently lower in the
suburban areas than in the central city of metropolitan areas with some violent crimes,
such as murder, robbery, and assault, occurring about three times more in cities than in
suburbs. The three property crimes tracked by national data—burglary, auto theft, and
larceny—show the same pattern but only auto theft reflects the same threefold difference.
In sum, when average people perceive that cities are, on the whole, more dangerous
than suburbs, they are correct and have been so for decades despite fluctuations in
the crime rate.
Overall rates of violent crimes—murder, rape, robbery, robbery with gun, assault,
and assault with gun reported in Table 9.1—did not change much during the period
from 2000 to 2007. Simple assault (without a gun) is the most common violent
crime, and the national rate per 100,000 people was 438.8 for cities and 214.6 for
suburbs in 2007. Among the three property crimes, larceny is the most common with
a rate of 2,954 for cities and 1,851 for suburbs in 2007. Overall, as has been suggested,
the United States is more crime-ridden than the societies of Western Europe,
Canada, and Japan. We also devote substantially more TV and film programming to
aspects of the criminal justice system than other countries. Hence in American culture
there is a distinct relationship between the crime that occurs and our apparent hunger
for consuming media programming dealing with crime, law, prisons, and the like.
Crime patterns can be examined in more detail for individual metro areas in Tables
9.2 and 9.3. The former reports property crimes. In the case of burglary, for example,
the rate ranges from a low of 402 per 100,000 people in 2007 for the Washington,
D.C., region to a high of 1,025 for the Dallas metro area.
230 9 : M E T R O P O L I TA N P R O B L E M S
TABLE 9 .1 Crime Rates in Central City and Suburbs, 2000–2007.
2000 2007
Central City Suburbs Metro Areas Central City Suburbs Metro Areas
Property Crime
Burglary 996.0 598.0 758.0 980.0 605.0 751.0
Auto theft 733.0 402.0 475.0 609.0 290.0 414.0
Larceny 3479.0 2053.0 2628.0 2954.0 1851.0 2280.0
Violent Crime
Murder 10.2 3.2 6.1 10.4 3.6 6.2
Rape 45.2 25.2 33.1 40.2 23.4 29.8
Robbery 313.5 78.4 173.0 302.5 92.0 174.0
Robbery with gun 118.2 32.2 67.3 129.3 38.4 71.4
Assault 519.8 237.2 351.0 438.8 214.6 301.9
Assault with gun 103.5 34.1 62.4 118.0 36.9 66.4
Cases known to police per 100,000 persons.
SOURCE: FBI, 2008 Crime in the United States, Table 2, Crime in the United States by Community Type
2008. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_02.html
231
TABLE 9 .2 Property Crime Rates for Largest Metropolitan Regions, 2000–2007.
2000 2007
Burglary Auto Larceny Burglary Auto Larceny
New York MSA 442 377 1656 291 188 1351
New York City 463 448 1744 254 161 1403
Suburbs 410 277 1548 310 172 1301
Los Angeles MSA 588 599 1686 523 531 1511
Los Angeles 661 803 2065 507 608 1506
Suburbs 555 488 1383 542 512 1447
Chicago MSA 877 857 3,301 784 528 2653
Chicago 978 1027 3665 876 659 2937
Suburbs 551 349 2498 563 274 2260
Dallas MSA 1003 651 3144 1025 462 2824
Dallas 1708 1509 4272 1814 1113 3850
Suburbs 667 309 2345 710 268 2167
Philadelphia MSA 523 491 2520 530 34 2023
Philadelphia 797 1064 3094 803 774 2728
Suburbs 387 237 1869 404 166 1751
Houston MSA 939 606 2703 1002 552 2556
Houston 1190 1017 3435 1339 897 3449
Suburbs 752 304 2076 791 337 1956
Miami MSA 1160 821 3828 997 543 3127
Miami 2015 1579 5202 1177 945 3042
Suburbs 1049 737 3452 948 503 3006
Washington, D.C., MSA 456 489 2267 402 494 1993
Washington 830 1154 3782 666 1245 2801
Suburbs 410 403 2031 380 421 1894
Atlanta MSA 8534 598 2953 990 550 2326
Atlanta 2223 1765 6550 1782 1412 4093
Suburbs 702 468 2548 906 460 2127
Detroit MSA 720 904 2262 811 729 1852
Detroit 1664 2722 3357 2063 2261 2431
Suburbs 410 355 1824 461 301 1620
Boston MSA 405 443 1595 472 217 1603
Boston 688 1234 2924 644 578 2932
Suburbs 355 330 1359 445 162 1372
San Francisco MSA 617 567 2408 688 861 2195
San Francisco 733 716 3144 692 804 3199
Suburbs 566 428 2068 609 663 1862
Phoenix MSA 1105 1005 3506 975 855 2832
Phoenix 1201 1474 3968 1246 1353 3227
Suburbs 1005 538 2615 856 536 2289
continues
Largest Metropolitan
Regions
In Table 9.3 we can see that the murder rate for New York City was 6 per 100,000
people in 2007, which is quite low for most cities. The rate for Los Angeles was 10.2;
Chicago, 15.7; Dallas, 16.1; and the two murder capitals of the United States in 2007
were Washington, D.C., with 30.8 and Detroit with 45.5. Rape for metro areas ranged
from a low of 9.8 for New York to a high of 36.8 for Seattle, which has significantly
lower rates for other violent crimes compared to metro areas nationwide. The most violent
cities for assault with a gun in 2007 were Detroit at 486.5 per 100,000 people,
Dallas at 208.9, Philadelphia at 200.8, Atlanta at 276.7, and Minneapolis at 138.7.
To understand the nature of urban crime, it is necessary to view it as a spatial as well
as a social phenomenon. The incidence of crimes varies within any given city by neighborhood.
Thus, while all cities have become more dangerous since World War II, there
are still places that are as safe as any other place in the country. Conversely, certain
neighborhoods are scenes of unremitting terror. Typically, criminal incidents follow the
lines of class and racial segregation: The most dangerous places are also the places where
the poorest urban residents live. For example, “The typical New York City murder victim
is a black man in his late teens or twenties, killed by an acquaintance of the same
race with a hand gun during a dispute—most likely over drug-dealing” (Greenberg,
1990:26). In all cities, racially segregated ghettos are the places where violent crimes are
committed the most. Furthermore, the majority of incarcerated felons are either black
or Hispanic, and virtually all are poor. They come from the ghetto areas of the city, and
their crimes usually were committed in those areas. And as the urban environment is
partitioned into areas of relative safety and terror, several extreme examples of violent
crimes, such as shootings in public schools, indicate that the islands of safety are shrinking
in size and availability.
232 9 : M E T R O P O L I TA N P R O B L E M S
TABLE 9 .2 (continued)
2000 2007
Burglary Auto Larceny Burglary Auto Larceny
Seattle MSA 889 870 3350 864 793 2787
Seattle 1093 1489 4690 1023 988 3793
Suburbs 783 594 2690 748 604 2162
Minneapolis MSA 557 344 2849 650 309 2553
Minneapolis 1180 989 3865 1660 856 3557
Suburbs 389 197 2507 480 192 2473
San Diego MSA 561 605 1701 570 832 1658
San Diego 549 774 1881 609 1049 1845
Suburbs 558 462 1554 537 675 1527
SOURCE: FBI, 2008 Crime in the United States, Table 6, Crime in the United States by Metropolitan
Statistical Area. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_06.html
233
TABLE 9 .3 Violent Crime Rates for Largest Metropolitan Regions, 2000–2007.
2000 2007
Robbery Assault Robbery Assault
Murder Rape Robbery Gun Assault Gun Murder Rape Robbery Gun Assault Gun
New York MSA 5.2 16.4 244.5 66.3 322.7 40.3 4.5 9.8 179.6 34.2 219.6 17.4
New York City 8.4 20.4 406.6 80.6 509.9 55.0 6.0 10.6 265.0 NA 332.0 NA
Suburbs 2.3 12.8 102.6 40.6 161.8 18.4 2.3 8.9 105.9 29.8 124.6 14.2
Los Angeles MSA 8.6 26.4 252.6 99.9 509.9 102.2 7.3 21.6 237.7 84.2 287.3 82.0
Los Angeles 14.9 39.5 420.2 158.2 885.2 176.6 10.2 25.9 348.3 126.8 334.0 117.5
Suburbs 5.6 21.1 169.9 73.9 377.4 64.8 5.7 19.3 187.1 65.7 273.9 64.3
Chicago MSA 18.6 25.2 518.5 40.5 733.4 32.7 13.7 22.8 397.6 38.1 468.8 20.3
Chicago 21.8 NA 668.0 NA 916.6 NA 15.7 NA 546.1 NA 616.9 NA
Suburbs 5.1 19.5 92.5 40.5 262.2 32.7 6.0 18.3 98.6 38.1 181.0 20.3
Dallas MSA 7.5 35.8 209.7 98.9 341.6 98 5.9 31.8 202.0 100.5 264.5 84.7
Dallas 19.4 53.3 592.8 305.0 684.2 268.1 16.1 41.2 582.8 307.2 48.9 208.9
Suburbs 2.6 27.0 52.8 22.1 187.2 26.5 2.3 24.3 68.8 31.5 178.9 33.4
Philadelphia MSA 7.6 29.1 262.3 119.2 355.6 90.1 9.5 30.0 265.5 116.4 325.7 76.3
Philadelphia 21.0 67.3 687.0 298.8 727.9 227.1 27.3 66.6 714.6 319.6 666.9 200.8
Suburbs 1.8 14.0 82.1 34.7 187.2 22.4 2.5 16.3 88.7 35.4 184.9 25.4
Houston MSA 7.2 35.8 222.2 114 413.1 91.1 4.0 30.5 77.4 36.7 265.6 42.9
Houston 11.8 41.6 422.6 220.9 624.1 158.7 16.2 32.0 529.1 272.4 555 170.8
Suburbs 4.0 30.5 77.4 36.7 265.6 42.9 4.0 27.8 103.2 58.3 257.5 47.5
234
TABLE 9 .3 (continued)
2000 2007
Robbery Assault Robbery Assault
Murder Rape Robbery Gun Assault Gun Murder Rape Robbery Gun Assault Gun
Miami MSA 6.6 41.1 288.6 87.7 582.1 87.2 7.9 29.3 294.0 134.6 472.9 98.2
Miami 18.2 32.6 848.9 N/A 1273.5 N/A 19.0 13.9 618.4 293.2 840.2 184.8
Suburbs 5.2 41.9 224.6 87.2 514.7 88.5 6.6 29.3 249.3 117.4 429.3 89.4
Washington, D.C., MSA 7.5 21.9 174.6 78.6 265.3 45.4 7.7 19.1 207 69.4 212.3 28.8
Washington 41.8 43.9 621.1 238.8 800.4 143.2 30.8 32.6 677.4 N/A 606.2 N/A
Suburbs 2.9 18.9 115.1 57.5 189.4 31.7 5.0 17.6 152.9 72.9 164.3 29.8
Atlanta, MSA 7.9 24.6 214.0 135.8 329.4 88.5 8.7 20.3 233.0 164.4 279.5 83.6
Atlanta 32.2 66.8 1037.8 582.8 1644.5 442.5 25.9 29.8 719.3 465.5 848.8 276.7
Suburbs 5.2 19.8 122.2 70.0 185.6 38.7 6.9 19.1 178.7 124.7 222.8 60.2
Detroit MSA 10.8 42.4 226.9 120.8 471.8 121.6 10.9 31.5 208.5 112.1 458.4 123.3
Detroit 41.6 85.3 827.1 476.7 1,370.50 449.3 45.5 38.9 762.7 452.4 1,439.80 486.5
Suburbs 2.3 29.3 52.9 18.5 172.9 25.6 2.0 28.3 58.5 21.5 188.3 27.2
Boston MSA 2.0 24.9 95.8 25.1 315.5 18.6 2.8 22.0 107.6 27.4 273.4 30.2
Boston 6.6 55.2 416 108.1 765 73.0 11.0 44.4 378.8 94.4 721.0 97.7
Suburbs 1.4 20.3 43.7 8.7 256.1 8.5 1.7 19.3 65.7 17.1 209.6 20.5
San Francisco MSA 5.8 29.7 215.3 60.2 313.5 29.0 8.8 25.2 310.9 117.3 298.9 65.3
San Francisco 7.6 29.5 444.9 77.0 354.7 24.3 13.6 17.0 513.9 123.3 329.5 37.9
Suburbs 3.8 22.9 118.3 38.5 261.0 26.9 5.9 19.8 180.4 70.1 214.9 50.4
continues
235
Crimes known to police per 100,000 persons.
N/A = Data not available because reporting by jurisdiction does not meet FBI Uniform Crime Report standard
SOURCE: FBI, 2008 Crime in the United States, Table 6, Crime in the United States by Metropolitan Statistical Area. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_06.html
TABLE 9 .3 (continued)
2000 2007
Robbery Assault Robbery Assault
Murder Rape Robbery Gun Assault Gun Murder Rape Robbery Gun Assault Gun
Phoenix MSA 7.1 29.4 168.7 79.6 352.3 96.7 8.2 28.4 178.5 95.3 276.9 80.3
Phoenix 11.5 31.9 284.9 137.4 410.1 152.7 13.8 33.0 320.6 173.8 356.4 131.0
Suburbs 3.8 23.8 74.9 32.7 275.6 48.4 5.3 22.5 79.7 37.2 219.6 45.6
Seattle MSA 3.4 49.1 138.5 36.7 256.9 37.4 3.1 36.8 132.0 35.1 214.0 42.5
Seattle 6.4 32.1 293.4 62.7 437.2 56.8 4.1 15.4 260.1 46.1 347.1 46.8
Suburbs 2.3 49.0 71.0 25.4 167.6 33.0 2.4 37.1 75.9 24.6 140.5 26.4
Minneapolis MSA 3.6 46.1 115.7 9.9 191.9 8.2 2.8 20.0 136.1 48.0 191.8 38.2
Minneapolis 13.1 110.3 509.1 N/A 518.5 N/A 12.7 121.8 678.8 230.0 689.9 138.7
Suburbs 1.6 31.9 32.0 10.2 101.4 8.4 1.3 0.8 42.9 13.1 91.8 10.4
San Diego MSA 3.4 28.5 118.9 29.9 337.7 39.5 3.6 24.0 149.5 35.7 288.6 42.4
San Diego 4.4 28.5 145.3 36.1 407.1 46.9 4.7 23.5 166.1 35.5 307.8 54.6
Suburbs 2.7 28.8 94.7 24.5 285.0 33.0 2.6 25.4 133.8 33.4 277.1 33.0
236 9 : M E T R O P O L I TA N P R O B L E M S
Drugs
According to studies of arrestees, many robberies and burglaries are committed in
connection with drug trafficking. In fact, statistics show a disturbing relationship between
violent crime and drug use. The National Institute of Justice surveyed arrestees
in the twenty largest American cities and found that at least half of them tested positive
for the use of illegal drugs. In New York City, as many as 83 percent of males
tested positive at the time of their arrest. The range for females was slightly lower but
not by much: a low of 44 percent tested positive in St. Louis and a high of 81 percent
in Detroit (National Institute of Justice, 1990).
According to this report, the extent of drug use among arrestees varies from city to
city, but the use of drugs by people who commit violent crimes is alarming. The most
common drug for both male and female arrestees is cocaine or crack. The lack of
safety in large cities results from a high crime rate that is compounded by illegal drug
use. When city streets are not considered safe, it is difficult for urban areas to attract
new residents and businesses. Consequently, the economic life of the city deteriorates
further. In addition, when the enjoyment of public space becomes impossible due to
crime and drugs, one of the primary enjoyments of urban culture is threatened with
extinction.
The Costs of Crime
What effect does crime have on everyday urban life? Perhaps the greatest effect has to
do with the use of city space. In less crime-ridden eras, public spaces such as parks,
plazas, and streets were enjoyed by everyone. Parks in particular were used by diverse
people at all hours of the day and evening; during summer heat waves, families would
sleep on the public beaches in Chicago and other cities. Today the use of public space
is limited: People are afraid to venture into parks without friends nearby, and children
must be supervised and kept away from strangers. The evening use of public spaces
and facilities, such as streets and mass transit systems, has also been negatively affected.
People leaving their offices late at night now take cabs or cars rather than public
transportation. A few years ago, a young woman out for a jog in Central Park was
brutally attacked by a group of teenagers. Raped and beaten within an inch of her life,
she miraculously survived, but the story of this urban Wall Street professional became
a national news story and a symbol of crime’s toll on the enjoyment of urban space.
Crime increases the security budgets of private companies as well as public expenditures
for security in schools and court buildings. The national criminal justice system
supports the largest prison population in the world with its immense costs to
taxpayers. Violent crime causes billions of dollars in unnecessary medical expenses. It
can also devastate property values. In areas of the city with high crime rates, the value
of property remains low and does not rise during times of prosperity (Taylor, 1991).
As a result, innocent households suffer doubly in crime-infested sections because they
are victims of crime and because the value of their housing declines. Poor areas remain
mired in poverty because high crime levels chase away prospective investment.
Finally, crime makes the city an unattractive place to live, especially for families
with small children. Crime repels families from the city, which compounds the problem
of population loss and the inability of the city to increase its tax base. This very
real cost to communities can be demonstrated by a visit to the “Moving & Relocation
Page” at the MSN House and Home website. In an article titled “Best and Worst
Cities for Crime,” the following blurb rests atop a listing of high- and low-crime cities:
Feeling safe and secure is especially important to Americans these days. Recent
events remind us that the safety of our loved ones and the security of our property
can’t be taken for granted. . . . So what are America’s best and worst cities for crime?
Are there certain cities with an especially high rate of violent crime? Where do car
thieves thrive? [We] have mined the recently released FBI Uniform Crime Reports to
identify those U.S. cities with the highest and lowest rates of crime during 2002.
There are terrible costs to society from white-collar crime as well—criminologists
maintain that the monetary cost of white-collar crime is many times that of other
crime—but it is not associated with the quality of urban life. Rather, it is violent
crime that scares people away from the city. In addition to murder, which usually is
committed among people who know one another, mugging is a particularly frightening
crime, especially when it involves armed robbery. The frequency of this type of
crime in the cities contributes greatly to the image of danger. It is possible to get a
sense of the extensive commission of white-collar crime in metropolitan regions by
examining Table 9.2 for larceny figures because it is far and away the most common
of all property crimes.
The enormous costs of maintaining and running the vast U.S. prison system is another
burden of our high societal crime rate. The figure currently is more than $32 billion
a year. Each year that an inmate spends in prison costs taxpayers some $22,000. An
individual sentenced to five years for a $300 theft costs the public over $100,000. Over
the last twenty years, the amount of money spent on prisons has increased by 570 percent
while funding for elementary and secondary education was increased by only 33
percent. In several states, more money is spent on prisons than on public universities.
The cost of criminal activity and drugs, which so often go together, can be measured
in other ways. In the 2000 presidential election, thousands of voters in Florida
were purged from the list of eligible voters because they had been identified (incorrectly)
as having a criminal record. A sidebar to the story is the fact that in the African
American community, an entire generation has been disenfranchised because of their
arrest for drug use and crimes associated with drug use. More than half of the prisoners
in the American penal system are incarcerated for these crimes. Denial of the
C R I M E 237
franchise—the right to vote—is a particularly sensitive issue for African Americans,
and the events associated with the 2000 presidential election have resulted in a national
movement to restore the voting rights of persons convicted of nonviolent
crimes. The criminalization of drugs that are legal in many other countries has resulted
in increased crime in metropolitan areas, in the breakup of families, and corruption
of law enforcement agencies, and it has drawn billions of dollars out of public
budgets that could be used to rebuild urban infrastructure, fund public schools, and
address many other important metropolitan issues.
The number of women incarcerated for drug offenses has increased 888 times
since 1986. More than 1 million women are currently in prison, in jail, or on parole.
In many cases, these women were not guilty of committing a crime themselves, but
they were caught in the expanding web of the drug war. The expansion of liability
laws like conspiracy, accomplice liability, constructive possession, and asset forfeiture
laws unfairly punish women for the actions of boyfriends, husbands, and other family
members who may be involved with drugs. Not only are families disrupted when
women are sent to prison; these women often lose custody of their children and the
family gets destroyed.
Caught in the Web: The Impact of Drug Policies on Families and Women, a report
from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law
(2005), documents the cases of 150 women found “guilty by association” because
their husbands or boyfriends were involved in the drug trade. According to Kirsten
Livingston, director of the Criminal Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice,
“This country can no longer ignore the devastation of families and communities
when record numbers of women and mothers are locked up for drug offenses. . . . It’s
time to promote drug policies that work, to stop wasting money, and to use our social
systems to help women, not hurt them.” Others are aware of the problem. When
Martha Stewart was released from the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in 2005, she
posted a letter on her website that encouraged American citizens “to ask for reforms,
both in sentencing guidelines, in length of incarceration for nonviolent first-time offenders,
and for those involved in drug-taking.”
Ultimately, the cost of crime is not borne simply by individuals, public budgets,
and private security expenditures. The cost of crime is borne by the larger society in
ways that are often hidden from view, even though they threaten the well-being of
our families and communities. Those costs are increasing with each passing decade.
Suburban Crime
Compared to crime in the large city, little research has been carried out on suburban
crime (see Stahura, Huff, and Smith, 1980; Gottdiener, 1982). Most reports on suburban
crimes identify the same factors that cause city crimes, that is, racism, poverty,
and class conflict. As in the case of urban areas, the rate of suburban crimes has increased
dramatically since the 1980s (Barbanel, 1992). However, crimes in the sub-
238 9 : M E T R O P O L I TA N P R O B L E M S
urbs differ from those in large cities. First, the property crimes of burglary, auto theft,
fraud, and larceny dominate suburban crime, although rape is as serious a problem in
suburbs as in cities. Thus, while experiencing violent crime in increasing proportion,
suburban areas have much less of it than do large cities. In contrast to the city, property
crimes are most troublesome.
Second, there is a distinct spatial component to suburban crime that differs from
crime in the city. In cities, high-crime areas are associated with urban ghettos. While
suburbs have ghettos, they are not all high-crime areas. Instead, according to one study
of a mature suburban region outside of Los Angeles (Gottdiener, 1982), police in
Orange County, California, associate high crime rates with apartment buildings. These
stand out because most residential dwellings in suburbia are single-family homes. In
large cities, this distinction would not be effective since most residences are in apartment
buildings. According to this study, police in suburbs pay particular attention to
apartment dwellings and monitor the activities of their residents. Because of the lower
density of suburban areas, surveillance of populations is an easier task than in the large
city (see Davis, 1990).
Aside from the above features, however, suburban crime seems very much like
crime in large cities, although perhaps not at the same per-capita rate. But given the
diversity of suburban communities, ranging from declining industrial suburbs to
communities with spillover from adjacent urban ghettos, it is likely that many suburban
communities are less safe than many city neighborhoods. While overall crime
rates in the United States decreased each year from 1993 to 1998, rates of violent
crime remained high, as did the public’s perception of and fear of crime. Violent
crime, drugs, burglary, rape, and street gang activity have become a significant factor
in daily life across the metropolitan region, affecting life in both urban and suburban
settlement spaces.
T H E F I S C A L C R I S I S A N D
P U B L I C S E R V I C E P R O B L E M S
Urban problems are difficult to solve when insufficient money is available to local
governments. A fiscal crisis starts when the revenues obtained by government fall
short of the expenses necessary to run a city. When this occurs, it is necessary to borrow
money and incur debt. Long-term debt involves borrowing to improve resources
and finance public works such as bridges. This form of borrowing is usually considered
healthy as long as the projects are well thought out. Long-term debt is viewed as
an investment in the city’s future; if it is successful, the city grows and its economy
improves, resulting in an increase in revenues.
In contrast, short-term debt involves borrowing to pay general operating expenses
that revenues and money transferred to the city from higher levels of government cannot
cover. Occasionally cities must borrow simply to cover operating expenses, such as
meeting a payroll, but this tends to happen only in an emergency. However, as a regular
T H E F I S C A L C R I S I S A N D P U B L I C S E R V I C E P R O B L E M S 239
practice it can ruin the health of a city by limiting the amount of money invested for future
needs.
Fiscal Crisis
The fiscal crisis of cities has two components. During the 1970s, many cities faced
budgetary shortfalls because of rising costs coupled with decreasing revenues caused
by the decline in manufacturing and the rapid deterioration of urban economies.
These cities were forced to resort to short-term borrowing to cover their costs. Compounding
the problem was the flight of middle-class families from the cities to the
suburbs (traveling on highways built with federal money to homes subsidized by federal
housing policies), taking with them potential tax revenue that the cities des -
perately needed. The lower-income and new immigrant communities in the cities
required relatively higher levels of health care, education programs, and housing services.
When New York and other cities appealed to higher levels of government for
financial relief, they were rebuked, and this precipitated the urban fiscal crisis. Cities
responded to this situation by cutting services and systematically laying off personnel.
New York City, for example, almost went bankrupt in 1976 and was placed in
the hands of a money management panel appointed by the state to bring expenditures
back in line with revenues and limit the amount of borrowing. As a result of
the changes caused by this fiscal crisis, New York is unable to offer a full range of services
to its residents. The closing of firehouses, reductions in the numbers of police
officers and the hours of policing, the shortening of library hours, and layoffs and
firings at city agencies are some of the austerity measures enacted in response to the
urban fiscal crisis.
In the 1980s, many cities, such as Cleveland, which had defaulted in 1978, and
New York, which was forced into austerity, regained their fiscal health. The banking
community renewed its faith in the obligations incurred by municipal governments.
Short-term borrowing was controlled, and many cities prospered. For a time, it appeared
that the urban fiscal crisis was resolved (Gottdiener, 1986). However, the problem
was simply transferred to higher levels of government. At present, many states face
a fiscal crisis; New York and California have been especially hard hit. These and other
states have had to cut back on budgets for social programs in education, health, and
other areas, with perceptible effects on the quality of life. Because state governments
can no longer aid cities, local jurisdictions must increase taxes or cut back services.
Hence, the effects of the state fiscal crisis have been especially troubling for local communities,
and there is no end in sight for the first decades of the twenty-first century.
The federal government has not been able to help, since it has acquired serious
debt problems of its own for the first time in U.S. history. In 1980 the federal deficit
was approximately $40 million, an unprecedented but still manageable number. During
the 1980s, it rose to more than $150 billion a year. The interest payments on this
massive debt made up 14 percent of gross national product (GNP), and the United
240 9 : M E T R O P O L I TA N P R O B L E M S
States became the world’s leading debtor nation. Although President Clinton made
deficit reduction of the federal budget a priority, little or no effort has been made to
restore either programs or funding cuts during the 1980s. In places such as New York
and California, governments at all levels are suffering cutbacks of services and programs
as a result of the fiscal crisis. The damaging effects of these cuts cannot be exaggerated.
In Los Angeles, the police department and the district attorney’s office blame
California’s Proposition 13, which froze property tax revenues, for cuts in social programs
that resulted in increased gang activity and led to Los Angeles becoming
known as the gang capital of the United States.
Now the national debt is beyond imagining at many trillions of dollars as a consequence
of President Obama’s “fiscal stimulation” policy, which aims to jump-start the
deep recession economy of 2009 through Keynesian measures of government spending.
All lower levels of government have been promised stimulation dollars from this
astounding accumulation of fiscal debt. As the fiscal crisis of cities has worked its way
up to the state level, California, in particular, has been hit so hard that it would have
declared bankruptcy if the massive and damaging cuts in social programs had not
been affected in 2008. Yet despite these measures, it still requires either massive help
or more massive cuts. As of July 2009, the Obama administration spending proposals
have not materialized to any extent, and although they are said to be “in the pipeline,”
all lower levels of government anxiously await financial relief.
In sum, declines in local government spending on public services can be catastrophic.
States as well as municipalities have been fighting fiscal crisis, and cuts—with
their damaging results—have become inevitable. One positive aspect of the current response
to our national economic crisis by the Obama administration is the promise
that critically needed money will be channeled to state and local governments. To
date, little of this deficit spending has trickled down to the local level, but there are indications
that it eventually will. In the meantime, large states, like California, remain
stressed and must continue to cut public resources in order to avoid the unprecedented
fiscal failure of bankruptcy. In fact, during the week of August 24, 2009, the
state of California ran a massive “garage sale,” where anyone could purchase government
equipment that was surplus or merely available for the event. The goal of this
sale was quite serious, namely to make as much money as possible by selling unwanted
items to the public in order to alleviate in a small way California’s astronomical fiscal
crisis and its need for draconian cuts in public services, employment, and programs.
S U M M A R Y
It often seems that each month brings new challenges to urban areas in the United
States. Part of the problem is that our society, with its ideology of privatism (see
Chapter 13), hangs its solutions of pressing social issues, like poverty, health care, and
affordable housing, on some variation of mixed private and public interventions.
There is no universal health care in our country, as there is in other Western developed
S U M M A R Y 241
societies. Our large demand for affordable housing, once dealt with inadequately by
public subsidization, was absorbed by profit-making capitalists in the 1990s as subprime
mortgage derivative investing and yielded cataclysmic results. Although some
violent crime has been reduced in our cities, the overall level remains abnormally high
compared to countries in Western Europe and Japan, and we seem to enjoy its media
representations because crime and law shows are so popular.
In this chapter we have seen that while many social problems are not typically “urban”
anymore, our metro regions play a role specific to their spatial attributes. Cities
concentrate people, so as a form of space, they also concentrate their problems. City
crime rates are higher than in the suburbs. There are more poor people and more concentrated
pockets of poverty and racial exclusion in central cities. Consequently, when
dealing with many social issues, cities remain important as places that need special
consideration from policy makers and municipal governments need resources from
higher levels of administration.
We have also seen in this chapter that when the current economic crisis hit, our
largest metro regions were affected by unemployment much more severely than
other places because of the industries located there. Yet economic downturns, like
the present housing crisis, have deep roots in our society’s inability to solve its basic
social dilemmas. Consequently, as we shall discuss in Chapter 13, public policy can
play an important role if it tackles the major issues, some of which, like health care
and adequate land-use planning, were resolved in favor of greater public power
scores of years ago by comparable countries in Western Europe.
K E Y C O N C E P T S
social disorganization
public vs. private intervention
racism
segregation and hypersegregation
poverty
unemployment
housing crisis
affordable housing
spatial effects of social problems
fiscal crisis
242 9 : M E T R O P O L I TA N P R O B L E M S
D I S C U S S I O N Q U E S T I O N S
1. What is social disorganization and how can it explain urban problems?
2. How can you compare the early Chicago School and the sociospatial approaches
to urban problems?
3. Why are racism and segregation problems?
4. Why is hypersegregation troubling and how does it relate to the case of Hurricane
Katrina?
5. What is the significance of the most recent figures on crime?
6. Why does the space of the city create more problems than the rest of the metro
region? Should this result justify an anti-urban attitude in choosing a place to live?
7. Why is unemployment especially worrisome today? How does it affect metro areas?
8. What is the link between the need for affordable housing and the current economic
crisis? Why hasn’t American society solved its affordable housing crisis?
9. What is meant by a fiscal crisis? What are the implications of a city fiscal crisis?
What happens when the fiscal crisis happens at the state level?
