Thread by @whstancil

Suburbs get a tiny fraction of the attention that major cities do, but they're really becoming the hub of civil rights conflict in America

https://twitter.com/whstancil/status/1381482394700574720

The primary reason is the process of suburban demographic change, and the eventual resegregation that results. Most American suburbs are currently moving across a spectrum from fully white segregated to fully nonwhite segregated.

At present, many suburbs are in fact racially integrated, but it's not a stable state of affairs - the integration is a side effect of the demographic move towards nonwhite segregation, and will collapse eventually if steps are not taken to preserve it.

A variety of things are driving resegregation, but the major factors are base level demographic change in America, compounded by the tendency of racially diverse areas to become segregated through white flight and discrimination.

Segregation spreads like a wave, usually fastest in areas closest to central cities, particularly areas adjacent to nonwhite segregated central city neighborhoods. It's not unusual that Brooklyn Center, Minnesota's -most-resegregated community, is adjacent to north Minneapolis.

Resegregation is particularly devastating for suburban communities, arguably even more than for major cities. In part, that's because the white flight, disinvestment, and population loss that resegregation usually causes is debilitating for city fiscal capacity.

Major cities can offset those losses with growth in richer areas, and with their large base of industrial and commercial property. But most resegregated suburbs have little to no commercial or industrial tax base, and are too small to include large concentrations of wealth.

As a result, resegregation can put suburbs into a kind of institutional death spiral, where they can't afford basic city services. It also wreaks havoc on their schools. This in turn further accelerates flight from the suburb

The end result really is Ferguson: heavily black cities, where services have eroded to a kind of bare minimum, and are often administered by out-of-town white people, creating an abusive, extractive, almost colonial relationship, evocative of mid-century urban racial ghettos.

And these places are now replicating many of the problems that defined those mid-century ghettos, including severe poverty, housing instability, and police violence.

This is not a problem that can be solved within the communities themselves, because it is the result of forces far larger than any one suburb (or even one major city). It can only be solved by setting policy at the scale of the entire metropolitan region.

Cities could theoretically band together to do that, but more realistically responsibility for this metropolitan-level approach to civil rights is going to lie with state governments, and failing that, with the federal government.

But whoever implements it, the solution is the same: policies at the metropolitan level to ensure stable, integrated housing in all communities, and to ensure schools remain integrated and well-funded, combined with efforts to equalize currently existing gaps between communities.

Incidentally, one the best tools for starting this process, weirdly, is administered by the the US DOT (hello @PeteButtigieg, @brianschatz). A reformed Metropolitan Planning Organization system could serve as an excellent lever for regional fair housing and school planning.

It's also worth noting that WHITE-segregated suburbs still exist, too - although they're much rarer now. The key takeaway from this thread is that the full range of American racial living patterns now exists in the suburbs, where the vast majority of Americans live.