CHANGES IN RACIALLY-MIXED URBAN NEIGHBORHOODS, 1970-1980

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The purpose of the research is to document and explain changes occurring in racially-mixed urban neighborhoods from 1970 to 1980. Despite their theoretical and policy importance, racially-mixed areas have attracted only incidental interest from social scientists. This neglect can be traced to the belief--founded on concepts such as succession and "tipping"--that racial integration constitutes an infrequent, temporary phenomenon. Moreover, the evidence on mixed or integrated neighborhoods that does exist is out of date and methodologically limited. To better understand how and why racially-mixed neighborhoods change, a multi-stage, multi-level analysis is planned. In the first stage, census data on population by race will be collected for all tracts exhibiting mixed racial compositions in 1970 and located in the 60 U.S. central cities with 250,000 or more inhabitants in either 1970 or 1980. This population of tracts (N = 2500) will be used to address descriptive issues concerning the incidence of mixed neighborhoods in 1970 and the types of racial change experienced by them over the ensuing decade. The second stage of the analysis examines antecedents and concomitants of the patterns described in the first stage. After a systematic sample of 1000 cases has been drawn from the population of mixed tracts and more detailed data assembled, multi-variate techniques will be employed to test alternative hypotheses about the 1970 tract-level characteristics that predict the direction and magnitude of racial compositional change in these neighborhoods from 1970 to 1980. The other major task during this stage involves an assessment of the non-racial demographic and housing trends that accompany changes in neighborhood racial composition. In the last stage of the research, the role of the larger urban context will be explored in three ways. First, the tract-level analyses performed in prior stages will be repeated for subgroups of mixed neighborhoods categorized by selected urban structural characteristics. Second, the same structural characteristics will serve as predictors, along with tract variables, in a cross-level analysis of neighborhood change. Finally, aggregate-level regressions will be preformed to determine which dimensions of urban structure explain variation across cities (N = 60) in the proportions of mixed neighborhoods exhibiting different types of racial change and in the magnitude of such changes for the period 1970-80.