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STATE OF THE NATION

URBAN LEGENDSWILLIAM RANKIN

T HE PHRASE "INNER CITY 1S TYPI-

cally used as a convenient way to

talk about racial ghettos without hav-ing to use words such as "poor" and

"black." It is a geographical euphemism,which relies on a shared image of anideal American city where race and

class are organized in concentric ringsaround a dense center. We might call

this the "donut model" of urban form;it blends class and race and reinforcessocial separation through physical

distance. And it defines middle-classwhite America as a place-legally au-

tonomous and miles removed-andnot just as a demographic category.As a result, failing "inner-city" schoolsand "inner-city" poverty immediately

become someone else's problems.But is this donut model accurate?

The maps on these pages show the dis-

tribution of race and income in threeAmerican cities. A quick glance seemsto confirm the basic premise of the in-

ner city: American cities are dramati-cally segregated by race and by class,

and, in general, non-white areas are

centrally located and drastically poor.The donut model works especially wellfor Detroit (below), where the city lim-

its almost perfectly divide white andblack, and successive rings of middle-

class and rich suburbs surround a des-titute urban core.

But as we look more closely atthese maps, the donut model appears

increasingly inadequate. First, racialsegregation tends not to be ring-like;instead, the two major patterns are

wedges and splotches. Houston is agood example of a wedge, and NewYork is splotchy (next page). (It should

be noted that the tendency toward

wedges doesn't depend on the age orcar-centrism of a city; what mattersis whether its transportation is or-ganized in a hub-and-spoke pattern.Most American cities are wedge-like.)Second, there are abundant exceptions

to the ideal of a poor, minority center

and richer, white suburbs: every cityhere has rich enclaves within its bor-

ders-not just in "revitalized" down-town areas-and several poor suburbs.And race and class are never perfectly

aligned: in every city there are middle-class black neighborhoods, poor whiteghettos, and relatively unstudied areas

of genuine diversity, which tend to belabeled-misleadingly "transitional."

Detroit is thus the exception rather

than the rule. But it is cities such as De-troit that have been most researchedby academics and have therefore most

informed our mental maps. Especially

important is the legacy of the ChicagoSchool of urban sociology, which first

described generic systems of rings andwedges in the 1920s. Its methods have

remained influential several schol-

arly generations later, and today mostacademic work on segregation still fo-cuses on donut-like cities in the RustBelt. Even the rise of the Los Angeles

School of urban geography since the

I- Deri:Icm Rcltnct

BOSTONREVIEW,NET

On all maps, 1 dot - 25 people.

For raoe/ethniolty:

* White 0 Black

* Asian * Hispanio/Latino

* Other (including multiracial)

For income, dot colors show the localmedian household income:

$24k $38k $48k $62k $9ok

Dashed lines are city limits (simplified). All maps showan area 50 niles squareM Data from U.& Census Bureau,2000. Hispanic Is exclusive of other categories.

NOV / DEC 2010 BR 5

FOUNDATIONS

198os has done little to challenge thedonut, since these analysts of sprawland edge cities have had relatively littleto say about the traditional problemsof racial and economic segregation.

The inner city, in other words, is anidea derived from the study of a smallhandful of cities as they were severaldecades ago. By now, not only have de-mographic trends rendered the binarybetween rich/white and poor/black

much more complex, but municipalboundaries are generally unchangedsince the early twentieth century, mak-ing the city/suburb divide problematicas well. Racial wedges are expandingbeyond city limits, and the ecology ofsplotches is likewise fully metropolitan.

If not "inner city," then what? Myown inclination is to talk directlyabout rich and poor, racial isolation,and the municipal tax base. Why not

shelve "inner-city schools" and talk

instead of underfunded schools withpredominantly poor and minority stu-dents? And instead of "suburbia," wewould be better served to distinguish

upper-class exurbs, middle-class whiteneighborhoods, and low-density im-migrant communities. Avoiding theconflation of race and class means notjust creating new social categories, butnew mental geographies as well. BR

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6 SR NOV / DEC 2010

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Rankin, William

State of the Nation: Urban Legends

Boston Rev 35 no6 N/D 2010 p. 5-6

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