Contemporary Society: An Introduction to Social Science by Perry John A Perry Erna K

Author:Perry, John A,Perry, Erna K
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-317-32896-4
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Suburbia and Social Class

Today, the heterogeneity of the city is also found in the suburbs. With increasing rates of divorce, single-parent homes are to be found in the suburbs as frequently as in the city. Thus, the generalizations that urban residents used to make about the suburbs have been largely proved wrong. In addition, whereas originally suburbanization was a movement of white persons of middle-class or upper-middle-class background, leading to a high degree of racial segregation, minorities have also flocked to the suburbs since the 1970s. It appears that suburbanization is solely a function of social class now: middle-class blacks are moving from cities to suburbs much as their white counterparts did a decade or two earlier. In fact, so many of the more affluent minorities are leaving urban centers that some sociologists fear that urban deterioration cannot help but increase because those who are leaving are predominantly the middle and solid working class (DeWitt, 1994, A12). Suburbanization has become a movement defined by social class primarily because of the problems that are perceived to exist in central cities: crime, poor schools, unsafe neighborhoods, and so on.

Social class has repercussions on suburbs in other ways, too. For a variety of reasons, including a downturn in the economy, more suburban households saw real declines in median household income from 1979 to 1989 and again from 2008 on, rather than income growth. The net result has been that working-class suburbs have suffered, much as central cities have, while affluent suburbs have grown and prospered. This income gap between suburbs adds to a situation in which people of different incomes live isolated from one another (Minerbrook, 1992).

At first, suburbs depended on the central city for shopping and for commercial, cultural, and recreational activities. Later, city and suburbs became interdependent, with the suburbs providing the labor force for business and industry that were still housed in the city. Increasingly, however, suburbs are independent of the city. Business and industry have relocated in the suburbs and are housed in large shopping malls and professional complexes. Both jobs and facilities are now locally available to the suburban resident. Suburbs have mushroomed at the expense of the central city, which lost an important tax base when people, commerce, and industry moved away. Without tax money, the city cannot provide important facilities, forcing more people, commerce, and industry to move out. The central city is then left with a run-down transportation system, outmoded physical facilities, inadequate police protection, and poor schools. Only those who cannot afford to move out remain.

This has been the history of suburbia until 2008, when the economic crisis began pushing some lower-income persons to buy or rent on the fringes of suburban areas, while the middle-class residents of these areas began to return to more urban centers. This process is called demographic inversion. Read more about this by googling the term and see also an article in Time Magazine based on a book entitled ‘The End of the Suburbs,” www.ideas.time.com/2013/07/31/the-end-of-the-suburbs/.

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