Explanations for growth beyond central city borders are examined. Presented is a general overview of the confrontation between conventional and critical urban theory. (Author/RM)

Migration data suggest an evolutionary process in which central cities attract high status migrants when cities are relatively small, attract migrants less as they grow, and then again become attractive. Large northern cities may currently be in the middle stage. (Author/MJL)

Current population trends represent a dramatic shift in wealth and educated people to the Sunbelt, creating a secondary effect in terms of growth, jobs, tax bases, and school enrollments. These trends will continue in the 1980s, intensifying the decline in economic conditions, the quality of social and educational services, and the quality of life…

The United States is a highly urbanized nation with space in abundance, yet large portions of its national territory are emptying out. The counterpart of this pervasive population decline is a highly selective pattern of growth, conferred by a national system of migration flows that has increasingly favored a certain few metropolitan areas. This…

Examines migration dynamics for metropolitan areas that suggest immigration and internal migration processes are leading to a greater demographic balkanization--a spatial segmentation of the population by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status across metropolitan areas. A brief overview of migration at the state level is also provided. (GR)

It is proposed in this document that the selectivity of migration, in terms of both people and places become a more imposing influence in urbanization as the role of natural increase as a source of urban growth diminishes. Recent U.S. growth policy proposals have frequently been marked by a simplistic view of how urban growth works, compounded by…

In this retrospective review of demographic aspects of race and the metropolis, presented as a basis from which to speculate about the 1970's, the period of mass migration of blacks out of the rural South is seen as drawing to a close. The U.S. black population is more urban and more metropolitan than the white population. The development of black…

Measures black segregation at four geographic levels: state, county, city, and neighborhood, from 1900 to 1990. Cross-references data from the decennial U.S. census with dissimilarity and isolation indices. Concludes that segregation patterns have consistently evolved to minimize white contact with blacks. (MJP)

The post-World War II American pattern of general urban growth, rapid suburbanization, and central city decline has now given way to reduced urban growth outside the Sunbelt, increased growth in nonmetropolitan areas, greater self-sufficiency for suburbs, and continuing depression in the central cities. Implications of these changes are discussed.…