How Place Matters

Abstract

Place Matters speaks eloquently of the shifts within and between US metropolitan areas, and the problems of growing racial and economic segregation. It’s argument is more compelling, however, in describing the “legacy” cities of the Northeast and Midwest than it is in illuminating the most pressing issues for Sunbelt cities. Sunbelt metropolitan areas continue to grow, but they exhibit different economic geographies and political dynamics. This article probes some of these differences and suggests future avenues for research.

Keywords

Sunbelt segregation development

Place Matters has served as key text and focal point of discussion for the field(s) of urban studies since its initial publication some 15 years ago. Earlier editions of the book attracted some (largely friendly) critical commentary (Imbroscio 2006; “Review Symposium” 2002). Some have criticized the authors for failing to champion a more full-throated critique of the capitalist practices that reproduce inequality. Some have questioned the book’s privileging economic over racial inequality and segregation. Reviewers have expressed doubt about the feasibility of suggested political and policy recommendations. Although I understand these assessments, however, I do not share them. I appreciate the book’s emphasis on class differences and its focus on agency. The authors’ message that urban activism can make a difference, and their willingness to lay out political and policy paths to improvement, make it an excellent volume for students and wider publics who are seeking to translate critique into action. Even if many of their recommendations are not likely to be adopted immediately, there is value in generating thoughtful policy approaches that may find receptive audiences should events create new policy windows (Kingdon 2003).

What I have noted, however, is that I sometimes need to translate concepts or seek supplementary material to help students in my sunbelt area university apply the book’s ideas to their lived experiences. Place Matters focuses on three metro areas, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and New York, that are the home bases of the three authors, and pulls from literature studying a range of U.S. urban practices. But the underlying assumptions—about the geographies of race and class, about urban problems and urban politics —are largely products of research focused on the northeastern-midwestern metropolitan areas. Sometimes called “legacy” cities, these regions have some commonalities, but many divergences from the “metropolitics” likely to be found in the rapidly growing cities of, say, Texas, Florida, or Arizona. Of course many of the book’s themes are broadly applicable. All cities experience, to some degree, segregation, concentrated poverty, sprawl, and regional dysfunction. In its overarching approach, however, it follows much American urban political economy literature that serves to essentialize the industrial city and, in so doing, marginalize sunbelt cities.

The core argument of the book can be condensed something like this: Our central social justice problem is not just poverty, but it is growing levels of inequality. And it is not just inequality; it is inequality that becomes spatially imprinted, most notably seen in central city–suburban differences, creating negative externalities that affect individuals and communities everywhere. The question addressed in this essay is, “Does the framework supplied by Place Matters shed light on Phoenix as well as it does on Chicago?” I would argue that there are differences, some subtle and some less subtle, between the social and economic geographies of sunbelt cities and of the “legacy” cities from which much of the research that informs this book is derived.

A strength of Place Matters is in telling a comprehensive story of urban America, and admittedly this would be lost were the authors to peel off each region for separate analysis. What follows is therefore more a rumination on, than a critique of Place Matters, suggesting ways in which sunbelt cities may pose particular challenges for urban policy analysis and urban political activism.

Defining the Sunbelt

First, it is useful to define the area comprising the Sunbelt. Many scholars define this region as the mainland U.S. territory below the 37th parallel, which includes all or parts of North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, Nevada, and Southern California (see Figure 1). Other scholars have defined the Sunbelt by its weather (Gober 1984); still others have focused on regional characteristics (Abbott 1987; Gober 1984). Bernard and Rice (1983) note with some bemusement that both the popular press and academic studies have been less than precise in delineating what constitutes the Sunbelt. Efforts to arrive at a common definition (and to gather aggregated data) are further frustrated by the fact that the Census does not recognize the Sunbelt as an official region. Even where there is consensus around the geographic definition, there is acknowledgment that some of what is meant by “Sunbelt” is a collection of urban characteristics that may not necessarily apply to all cities located south of the 37th parallel. “Sunbelt” generally evinces an image of cities with high rates of growth, low-density development, important aerospace as well as tourism and second-home economies, characteristics that ably describe a subset of the Sunbelt sometimes called the “sand states” (some have desert, some have beaches; Olesiuk and Kalser 2009) of Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and California, as well as Texas. Deep south cities in Alabama, Mississippi, or South Carolina, however, do not always follow that trajectory, and yet they are aggregated into the sunbelt category. Although there is no question that the Sunbelt as an analytical concept is imperfect, there are sufficient common threads found in the urban development trends in this region to make a discussion of its distinctive development trajectory valuable.

Figure 1.

Sunbelt map.

Second, it is important to underscore the intensive pace and scale of growth in sunbelt metro areas, as the shift in American population toward the Sunbelt remains one of the main demographic stories of the last few decades. The three most populous U.S. states are in the Sunbelt and they are home to 90 million people. Approximately half of the top 20 metro areas by population are in the Sunbelt, and they continue to grow rapidly, in part through immigration but largely by gaining residents moving from other U.S. regions. The Great Recession represented a small blip in this trajectory, as documented in Justin Hollander’s (2011) book Sunburnt Cities, which portrays foreclosure-ravaged neighborhoods grappling with decline. But recent demographic data suggest that prerecession population growth has returned. Since 2010, Texas, Florida, and Arizona are among the top 10 fastest growing states; the only sunbelt states whose growth has been slower than the national average are Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and New Mexico. The Census’ list of population growth for places of 50,000 or more from 2010 to 2014 shows that nearly all the fastest growing places are in the Sunbelt, with Texas experiencing especially dynamic growth (Frohlich 2015). Neither drought in California nor the threat of sea level rise in coastal Florida has slowed this momentum.

Given these population shifts, sunbelt cities are no longer a peculiar deviation from the typical urban morphology. Our sprawling Orlandos, Scottdales, and Irvines are the typical American city, both because they house a growing percentage of the U.S. urban population, and because the characteristics of the Sunbelt seem to be increasingly common across the country. As Matthew Lassiter (2006, 11) has noted, “In the second half of the twentieth century, the single-family suburban neighborhood and the postindustrial Sunbelt economy emerged as the dominant methods of social organization, the primary focus of land-use planning, and the clear fulcrums of political power.” It is therefore important to understand and normalize the urban form and practices of these areas in our analysis of urban America.

Beyond Concentric Zones: Segregation Looks Different in the Sunbelt

Although my reading of Los Angeles School theorists should have prepared me, I will confess that my first real understanding of the differences in the sunbelt geography of race and class grew out of personal experience after moving to a sunbelt city. A lifetime resident of the Northeast, I could easily get my bearings when exploring new parts of “legacy” cities, being able to intuit—from the housing stock, types of businesses, proximity to amenities or disamenities—the socioeconomic status of a neighborhood. But my new home defied my efforts to generate mental maps as I routinely got lost on drives to new places. Here along the road were modest homes, maybe even some mobile homes on cinder blocks. Just as I have determined I am in a lower-income neighborhood, I see the pretentious statuary, lush landscaping, and large but tasteful sign pointing the way to “Harbour Ridge Pointe,” a “golf community” of 4,000 square foot “villas.” I barely have time to shift my thinking when I am driving by a massive collection of big box retailers. Was I driving through an inner ring suburb? An affluent exurb? A commercial hub? Thanks to lax planning, rapid growth, and the absence of traditional employment centers or transit, these regions challenge the logic of central place theory, and upend the traditional drivers of real estate investment. As a result, the spatial organization of the industrial city, with delineated (if mutable) class and racial/ethnic enclaves, is blurred, or vanishes entirely, in sunbelt built environments (Dear and Dahmann 2011).

More rigorous analyses of sunbelt settlement patterns support my personal observations. Researchers using dissimilarity indexes have long noted lower levels of racial segregation in the South and Southwest. Table 1 shows the 10 most segregated metro areas for both Black–White segregation, and Table 2 shows Hispanic–White segregation based on 2010 Census data. Sunbelt cities do not figure prominently on these lists, with the exception of Los Angeles. In some “sand state” metro areas, this is reflective of smaller African-American populations, but even Hispanic–White dissimilarity rates tend to be higher among rustbelt than sunbelt cities. Even in the southern states with large African-American populations, metro area segregation has been statistically lower than in industrial cities (Massey and Denton 1993). Lower levels of racial segregation are associated with higher percentage of new housing stock, and could be indicative of places that were built up more recently and therefore lack traditional enclaves, “ghettoes,” or working class districts (Iceland, Sharp, and Timberlake 2013). The comparatively high levels of residential racial diversity have even been noted as appealing characteristics of sunbelt metro areas for people of color (El Nasser 2014). Table 3 displays dissimilarity indexes (as well as other characteristics) for three sunbelt and three legacy cities.

Table 1.

Black–White Dissimilarity Index by Metro Area, 1990–2010.

		1990	2000	2010
1	Milwaukee–Waukesha–West Allis, WI	82.8	83.3	81.5
2	New York–Northern New Jersey–Long Island, NY–NJ–PA	80.9	80.2	78.0
3	Chicago–Naperville–Joliet, IL–IN–WI	84.4	81.2	76.4
4	Detroit–Warren–Livonia, MI	87.6	85.7	75.3
5	Cleveland–Elyria–Mentor, OH	82.8	78.2	74.1
6	Buffalo–Niagara Falls, NY	80.1	78.0	73.2
7	St. Louis, MO–IL	77.2	74.1	72.3
8	Cincinnati–Middletown, OH–KY–IN	75.9	73.7	69.4
9	Philadelphia–Camden–Wilmington, PA–NJ–DE–MD	75.2	71.0	68.4
10	Los Angeles–Long Beach–Santa Ana, CA	72.7	70.0	67.8

Source. http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/census/segregation2010.html.

Table 2.

Hispanic–White Dissimilarity Index by Metro Area, 1990–2010.

		1990	2000	2010
1	Springfield, MA	64.3	64.1	63.4
2	Los Angeles–Long Beach–Santa Ana, CA	60.3	62.5	62.2
3	New York–Northern New Jersey–Long Island, NY–NJ–PA	66.2	65.6	62.0
4	Providence–New Bedford–Fall River, RI–MA	57.9	64.5	60.1
5	Boston–Cambridge–Quincy, MA–NH	59.3	62.5	59.6
6	Bridgeport–Stamford–Norwalk, CT	60.3	61.5	59.2
7	Hartford–West Hartford–East Hartford, CT	66.3	63.4	58.4
8	Miami–Fort Lauderdale–Pompano Beach, FL	32.5	59.0	57.4
9	Milwaukee–Waukesha–West Allis, WI	56.4	59.5	57.0
10	Chicago–Naperville–Joliet, IL–IN–WI	61.4	60.7	56.3

Source. http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/census/segregation2010.html.

Table 3.

Selected Characteristics of Selected Sunbelt and Rustbelt Cities.

	Baltimore	Cleveland	Philadelphia	Houston	Phoenix	Tampa
Homeownership rate (1)	48.3	44.9	53.3	45.5	55.5	50.9
% No-car households (2)	31	24.6	32.6	10	8.5	13
Black/White dissimilarity index (3)	65.4	74.1	68.4	61.4	43.6	56.2
Hispanic/White dissimilarity index (3)	39.8	52.3	55.1	52.5	49.3	40.7
Median household income, city (1)	40,803	26,217	37,011	44,648	47,866	43,514
Median household income, metro area(1)	66,970	62,627	58,735	57,426	54,022	46,606
City income as % metro area income	61	42	63	78	88	93

Source. (1) U.S. Census (n.d.)/American Community Survey, 2009-2013. (2) University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute 2012, cited in Young (2014). (3) http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/census/segregation2010.html.

More recent research has used similar methods to study economic segregation. Florida and Mellander (2015) find that the large metros in which the poor are most segregated, and in which segregation by income is most pronounced, are almost all in the Northeast and Midwest, whereas seven of the 10 large metros in which the poor are least segregated are in the Sunbelt. However, their findings are a little blurry, as that report also finds several sunbelt cities that have higher than average segregation of the wealthy, perhaps because these regions have fewer households that meet their high-income criteria. They find segregation of poverty to be positively associated with high levels of wealth, and strong presence of knowledge and “creative” class workers, characteristics not commonly associated with sunbelt cities. Admittedly, these data do not suggest dramatic differences—the regional differences in economic segregation are not striking, and the most noteworthy findings are of across-the-board decreases in Black–White dissimilarity from 1990 to 2010. But together, they suggest somewhat different geographies of inequality in sunbelt metro regions.

A key concern in Place Matters is the stark contrast between wealthy, exclusive suburban areas and central cities, and the fragmentation between these jurisdictions contributing to inequality of place. But here as well, sunbelt cities often deviate from the model. Research finds sunbelt metro regions to be less fragmented, with more examples of city-county consolidation as well (Abbott 1987). Perhaps as a result, one finds little difference between average incomes or poverty rates between cities and suburbs (Pack 2005). Indeed, an earlier edition of Place Matters includes a table of central city per capita incomes as a percentage of suburban incomes that makes clear the regional quality of this issue, with southern and western central city residents having per capita incomes equivalent to 90% or more of suburban incomes. A quick look at median household incomes in some metro areas today indicates that this is still the case (see Table 3). Place Matters has a discussion about changing city–suburban dynamics through which both the suburbanization of poverty and, in some cities, “back the city” investment by middle- and upper-class in-movers have reduced some of the suburb–city income gap. But this still assumes a logic of integration in which an inner ring of suburbs becomes increasingly poor and attracts larger African-American or Latino populations. Sunbelt cities, as Davis (1990), Dear (2003), and Dear and Dahmann (2011) have noted in the case of Los Angeles, are not as clearly organized around a center, as a result of which models of neighborhood change and racial succession that have strong descriptive power in some cities do not readily explain settlement patterns in this region. The relative balance between city and suburb is attributable to land-use and annexation policies rather than high levels of economic success. The lack of a clear city–suburban income differential is best explained by ongoing annexations in sunbelt areas, so that middle- and upper-middle-class subdivisions at the fringe get absorbed into the municipality. The outlying areas that may be considered “suburban” for census purposes may in fact have strong residual rural characteristics, including high rates of poverty.

The disparate experiences of sunbelt patterns of economic inequality do not suggest that sunbelt cities are better off. Poverty may simply look different in the Sunbelt. Whereas owning a home and a car may be indicators of middle-class status in some Northeastern cities, they signify much less about class in the South (see Table 3). Sunbelt cities and states are associated with lower levels of education, with a lower percentage of adults having college degrees, and school children falling below national averages by almost all measures of student achievement (Nation’s Report Card 2013). When Forbes, in 2009, analyzed personal indebtedness by metro area, nine of their 10 most indebted cities were in the Sunbelt, where families on average were found to owe credit card companies over 15% of their incomes. The disparate sunbelt and “sand state” impact of the foreclosure crisis has been well documented (Lucy 2010). According to most indicators of economic well-being and opportunity, sunbelt metro areas are on average worse off than other U.S. metro areas. Place Matters focuses largely on inequality but is a metro region better off if its residents are, for the most part, all similarly poor? I would argue that the inequality lens may not be the most useful for regions where low wages, lagging educational achievement, and financial instability are endemic. To be sure, many of the policy prescriptions endorsed by the authors call for measures to increase opportunity for all. But in part their perspective assumes the prevalence of regions that contain adequate resources that only need to be better distributed. In sunbelt regions, however, creating more opportunity for all may take precedence over attending to disparities within the region.

Red State Urbanism

Anyone who follows election night coverage is familiar with the typical presidential electoral map, in which the Sunbelt appears as an almost solid band of red, apart from Florida (which has supported Democratic presidential candidates in 2008 and 2012, but whose state-level politics remain Republican dominated), New Mexico, and California. The overall conservativism of the South and Southwest is well documented, back to Kevin Phillips (1969; who is thought to have coined the Sunbelt label in his discussion of the new Republican majority) and through the work of Matthew Lassiter, who has updated and refined an analysis of the South’s “silent majority.” Although central city voters in the Sunbelt are, like urban voters across the country, more Democratic leaning than those outside the city, sunbelt metro areas are still likely to be more conservative than those in most other states.

Apart from national voting trends, these areas are part of regional political cultures that are on the whole more conservative, more suspicious of government involvement (at any level), and less likely to accept higher taxes as a trade-off for better services and higher civic capacity. The tendency of sunbelt cities to be dominated by very business-friendly regimes has been demonstrated by seminal urban case studies (see Elkin 1987; Stone 1989) as well as newer explorations (Moehring 2000; Shermer 2013). More recently, the Sunbelt has been fertile ground for the Tea Party whose antitax, antigovernment crusade has had many local iterations, working to defeat transit and other public initiatives in Tampa/St. Petersburg (Perry 2014) and Atlanta (Frick 2013). Given the tradition of business-dominated government and low taxes, it is not surprising to observe that sunbelt cities are less likely to have activist city administrations and are therefore unlikely to be on the forefront of affordable housing or community development efforts. Parallel to the limited public-sector capacity, one notes a more limited nonprofit or civic-sector capacity, too. To be sure, there are noteworthy examples of activism in some cities. San Antonio’s Citizens Organized for Public Service (COPS) is one of the most successful local iterations of the Industrial Area Foundation’s Alinsky-influenced community organizing efforts. Bridges (2011) and Waldinger et al. (1998) have studied the success of the Justice for Janitors campaign in Los Angeles, where union organizing efforts dovetailed with a growing electoral mobilization of Latinos. But typically, sunbelt nonprofits and community development organizations in these cities are smaller, with lower funding levels and more limited missions. They are less likely to be well positioned to lead disadvantaged neighborhoods in pursuit of more holistic political empowerment or economic development efforts.

Metropolitics and metropolicies for such regions will therefore need to emerge within these constraints. There are few sunbelt regions, for example, where labor unions or Democratic party activists, two groups discussed in Place Matters as potential catalysts for cross-region mobilization around progressive issues, have had much success in creating sustained social and economic justice movements. However, in some cases, regionally focused business groups have pushed for mass transit, educational investments, and other generally progressive initiatives in recognition of the need for a mobile, educated workforce. There may be some other opportunities for “strange bedfellows” to join forces on key issues. For example, Tea Party–associated activists have recently joined with environmental groups to call for more opportunities to develop solar power in Florida. For the Tea Party, it is a question of deregulation; for the Sierra Club, it is a matter of environmental protection, but they are working together to lobby the state legislature (Penn 2014).

Place Matters effectively marshals decades of urban research to support an argument about the nature of U.S. urban political economies. If the particular trajectories of sunbelt cities are missing, it may be partly because sunbelt urban scholarship has lagged in recent years. Certainly there have been efforts, most notably the Los Angeles school (see Dear 2003 for a summary) to suggest that the growth of sunbelt cities requires new ways of thinking about urban space. This approach suggested a reframing of the relationship between core and periphery, both across the nation (as sunbelt cities have become more central to the economy) and within regions (challenging the Chicago school model of central business district surrounded by distinctive rings). But these writings, mostly from the 1990s, have a largely conceptual bent that does not necessarily promote the kinds of policy-focused analysis that is the strong suit of Place Matters. Some recent historical monographs on Las Vegas (Moehring 2000) and Phoenix (Shermer 2013) have documented the rise of these sunbelt growth machines, building on World War II investments and continuing to thrive through the actions of business and political leaders, providing context on which contemporary policy researchers could build. But it has been several decades since works like Bernard and Rice (1983) sought to identify common characteristics of this region and its cities, decades in which sunbelt cities individually and collectively have become even more important as population magnets, production centers, and political bellwethers. I can think of a few reasons for this. First, the very characteristics that are likely to distinguish sunbelt cities—low-capacity nonpartisan local governments run by weak mayors, culturally and architecturally uninspiring urban cores, weak civic and grassroots engagement—may not have tremendous appeal to those seeking new research projects. Second, sunbelt regions may not have the same robust infrastructure—the university-based research centers, the locally focused foundations—to nurture either innovative programming or research.

Perhaps, as new population figures make clear that sunbelt urban regions continue to function as the primary growth poles of the United States, a new generation of sunbelt urban scholars can emerge. These scholars can consider a host of questions relevant to the Place Matters narrative. How can we measure and study racial and economic unevenness that is not captured by measures like dissimilarity indexes? How can we theorize intraregional differentiation in areas where a city–suburban divide is not the most salient cleavage? Are there ways to frame key local policy initiatives so they can find appeal among conservative voters (or at least not push conservative buttons so they are less likely to confront a highly engaged opposition)? How can those institutions that are strongest in sunbelt cities—churches, businesses, home owners associations, school groups—be engaged in a policy agenda that addresses problems of poverty and inequality? Generating a policy-focused sunbelt urban research agenda would help inform both theoretical and applied scholarship while also highlighting opportunities to effect change in this region.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Strom, PhD, is an associate professor of public affairs in University of South Florida. Her research focuses on downtown development and the role of tourism, arts, and culture in urban revitalization, as well as mortgage foreclosure.

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