from Palen The Urban World 2005
Chapter 5: METRO AND EDGE GROWTH
Woe to them that join house to house.
Woe to them that lay field to field till there be no place.
Isaiah 5:8
Introduction
The United States has undergone profound changes in recent decades. In this chapter, three major transformations are emphasized. The first is the metropolitan area replacing the city as the major urban unit. Nine-tenths of the nation's growth (89 percent) now occurs in metropolitan areas. The second is the emergence of outer or edge cities as the major locus of metropolitan growth. While inner cities may struggle economically, edge cities are prospering. It twists the language, but edge cities are now the center of most urban economic activity. Note that figure 5-1 shows growth, often major growth, in metro areas outside central cities. By contrast, central cities are growing slower or even declining.
Finally, there has been a three-decades-long population and industry shift toward the sunbelt. Along with this move toward warmer climes has been a movement toward water, and particularly toward the nation's east and west coastlines (see figure 5.2). This sunbelt change, combined with the coastal in-movement, is the third transformation this chapter will discuss. Urban sprawl, which is the product of these changes, will receive major treatment in Chapter 12: Housing Patterns, Sprawl, and Smart Growth.
METROPOLITAN GROWTH
Let us begin by looking at the metropolitan areas where four out of five Americans live as of 2004.1 Metropolitan areas now house 235 million of the nation's 285 million population. Over half of all Americans live in the 37 largest "Metropolitan Statistical Areas" having a population of 1 million or more. The nine largest metropolitan areas, each with a population of more than 5 million, now hold almost a third of U.S. residents. The dominance of metropolitan areas is increasing. New Jersey is entirely covered by metropolitan areas, while in seven other states - California, Maryland, Conneticut, Rhode Island, Florida, Massachusetts, and New York - over 90 percent of the population lives in metropolitan areas. In Idaho, at the other extreme, only 20 percent of the population lives in metropolitan areas.
The 20th century was a period of dramatic metropolitan growth and ascendancy. A hundred years ago the era of the frontier was closed, and it was clear that future national growth would have a metropolitan nexus. People were moving off the farms and out of the small towns into the cities. Rural counties were being depopulated, while population in the central cities was rapidly increasing. The ecological and demographic pattern was one of population growth concentrating in ever-larger metropolitan areas. The census of 1910 recognized this centripetal (inward) population movement by establishing 44 ad hoc "metropolitan districts" whose boundaries extended beyond those of the central city. Just under a century ago, roughly one-third of the nation's population already resided in these newly defined metropolitan areas.
If changes in the definition of metropolitan areas are taken into account, virtually all the population growth during the 20th century occurred in metropolitan areas. The exceptions were a brief revival of nonmetropolitan growth during the 1970s and some rural rebound in the 1990s.2 However, while this rural rebound population is technically defined as living outside of metropolitan areas, it does not represent a return to farming or older rural ways of life. Rather, many of the new nonmetropolitan residents live rural but are employed urban. They are part of a metropolitan sprawl that extends metropolitan influence to virtually the entire population.
Metropolitan dominance had been foreseen by scholars as far back as the 1920s. The awareness that cities had become part of a larger urban complex was reflected in the pioneering works of perceptive writers such as Gras and McKenzie.3 They foresaw that the city per se was yielding its influence to a larger unit: the metropolitan area. This movement of 20th century population toward the largest urban concentrations (city and suburb) both depopulated rural counties and magnified urban problems. The consequence of the rural out-migration is reflected in the Bureau of Census figures (see Table 5-1 and Figure 5-1). In 1920, 30 percent of the America population still lived on farms; by the end of the century this figure had shrunk to under 2 percent.4 In the half century from 1920 to 1970, the net out-migration from farm to cities was 29 million.5 Today, fewer than 1 person in 50 lives on a farm. For the overwhelming majority of Americans, the family farm, which was so much a part of our national heritage, is history.
In-Movement: 1900 to 1950
In he first half of the 20th century, a massive population implosion or in-gathering of population into metro areas occurred. During this era the central city population often expanded beyond its legal bounds into suburbs, but the city clearly was dominant over its metro area. While the central city increasingly found its physical expansion contained by surrounding suburbs, the social and economic influence of the central city expanded. Once independent, outlying towns, villages, and crossroads markets found themselves engulfed in an urban network. The local bank became a branch of a large city bank; local papers were replaced by metropolitan dailies; and local dairies and breweries went under, unable to compete with metropolitan-based firms. Where once smaller towns were moderately self-sufficient, they now either declined in significance or began to perform specialized functions for the larger metropolitan area. Some previously independent communities became satellite towns, while others specialized as bedroom suburbs. The consequence was the emergence during the first half of the century of the era of the city-dominated metropolitan unit.
In the American city prior to the 1960s, industry was concentrated in an inner belt located between the central business district (CBD) and the better residential areas. As the factories prospered, the original space became more and more crowded. However, central city expansion was both difficult and expensive. Assembly lines or other factory operations had to be fitted into existing buildings, and even moving goods from floor to floor was a serious problem. At the same time, surrounding land was already occupied, which meant that whatever was already on land had to be bought and torn down before the factory could expand. Transportation was also an increasing problem. Trucks had to move down busy city streets before lining up to wait to get into inadequate loading docks. Parking space for workers' cars developed into another major headache. Nonetheless, factories stayed in the city because they needed access to rail lines to ship their goods, and most workers did not use private cars but rather came to work on public transportation.
Downtown, until the 1970s, was where all the major department stores and retail outlets were located. For major shopping one went downtown, usually by public transit. Since then, however, retail trade, service establishments, and manufacturing firms have increasingly followed the population to suburban areas. Not since the 1970s have downtowns accounted for over half the nation's sales. Suburban shopping malls - virtually nonexistent 35 years ago - now number over 45,000 and dominate retail sales. With over three-quarters of employed suburbanites working in suburbs, old commutation patterns (residents of suburbs commuting to the central city) have also broken down. The average commute since 1980 has not been from suburb to city but from suburb to suburb. Downtown is no longer the major metropolitan employment site. Contemporary American metro areas average less than 10 percent of their employment in downtown areas.6
Out-Movement: 1950 into the 21st Century
The last half of the 20th century saw a massive flow of urban business, manufacturing, housing, and retail trade from the center toward the periphery, a pattern that continues today. For a century, with annexation taken into account, the population of outer "suburban" areas has grown faster than that of central cities.7 Almost all metropolitan growth during the last century took place in the suburban ring beyond the central city. This redistribution of population first began in the larger and older metropolitan areas and then became general for cities of all sizes except the very newest. Today, over 60 percent of metropolitan-area population lives in the suburbs. (This suburban decentralization is further treated in Chapter 6: The Suburban Era.) Moreover, the highest rate of growth in nonmetropolitan counties has occurred in counties having metropolitan characteristics and/or experiencing overspill from metropolitan counties. The areas of overspill, or sprawl, simply confirm the patterns of metropolitan dominance.
COMMUTING AND COMMUNICATION
Technological breakthroughs in electrification, transportation, and communication made the 20th century outward flow of urban population possible. The 19th century city based on steam power was transformed into one dependent on petroleum and electricity. Widespread use of automobiles, trucks, telephones, the Internet, and electric power increased the movement of persons, goods, and ideas.
Research shows that the factor most closely related to a city's growth during the first half of the 20th century was its transportation network with other cities.8 Within metropolitan areas, transportation was also critical to growth. The automobile provided mobility to the average urban dweller and allowed - and even encouraged - rapid settlement of previously inaccessible areas on the periphery of the central city. Henry Ford's Model T changed the automobile from a toy of the rich to a middle-class necessity. Automobile registration in the United States increased from 2.5 million in 1915 to 9 million in 1920 and 26 million in 1930. Following World War II, car ownership became common in working-class as well as middle-class families. Currently, there is one auto for every two persons in the United States. The auto now spatially dominates American cities. Roughly one-third of all city land is devoted to the movement or storage of vehicles. Roads, garages, car dealerships, parking lots, and truck facilities define urban areas.
With the coming of the automobile, the maximum distance that workers could live from their place of employment and commute within an hour increased from a dozen miles to perhaps 25 miles or so. (Theoretically, the automobile more than doubled the commuting radius, but the practical realities of poor roads and traffic congestion set lower limits.) As f 1920 a Chicago study indicated that the average distance from home to workplace was 1.5 miles.9 (By the 1980s the distance had increased to 9.2 miles.) However, far more important today than the actual distance from work is the commuting time. The average commute is about a half hour; the longest average commute time of roughly 50 minutes is found in the Atlanta metro area.
What the automobile did for people, the truck did for goods. Prior to the 1920s there really was no alternative to the railroad for moving intercity goods. Beyond city lines no national road system existed. Following World War I the Army sent a convoy of trucks coast to coast to demonstrate the need for a national road. It took the Army convoy 62 difficult days to cross the country. One of the officers leading the 1919 Washington to San Francisco convoy was Captain Dwight Eisenhower. (Later, as president, Eisenhower signed the bill creating the national Interstate System, which now bears his name.)
Trucks were incomparably more flexible than railroads for short hauls, and their registrations therefore tripled during the 1920s, from 1 to 3.5 million. Trucks were free of fixed routes and fixed schedules, needed no elaborate terminal facilities on expensive inner-city land, and could make door-to-door pickups and deliveries. No longer was it necessary for the factory to be on the rail line. For all but the longest hauls, the speed of motor trucks was also superior. However, during the 1920s and 1930s, the major advantage of motor transport was its lower cost per mile within a 250-mile radius of the city.10 In train transport, on the other hand, the lowest cost per mile was for the longest trips. The motor truck, then, was by far the superior competitor for the short haul - an advantage that was increased considerably by the building of new public roads. The interstate expressway system, begun during the late 1950s, dramatically extended the truck's advantage. Today, virtually all short-haul goods are shipped by truck. When goods are needed overnight, they are increasingly shipped by air.
What the motor vehicle did for transportation, the telephone did for communication. Today when digital cell phones and PDAs are commonplace, it is useful to remember that not until 1920 did over half of all residences have telephones. Long-distance phoning was very expensive then. Rural electrification, sponsored by 1930s depression-era federal government legislation, created electric co-ops to bring electric lights and appliances to rural households. Today technology goes anywhere and geographical features such as mountains no longer mean isolation from the mainstream. There is more than a touch of truth in the joke that the West Virginia state flower is the satellite dish. Everywhere businesses and offices have been liberated from central-city locations. During the last two decades, widespread uses of air-delivery services such as FedEx and the universal use of computers for data transfer have further weakened the need for a central-city business location. The use of fax, e-mail, cell phones, and the Internet means a central location is no longer a requirement for adequate telecommuting. Business sprawl, as well as residential sprawl, are possible. Once physically inaccessible locations now have addresses on the information superhighway.
POSTINDUSTRIAL CENTRAL CITIES
The changes noted above have radically altered the relationship between central cities and their suburbs. Cities no longer dominate in either population or employment. During the last quarter of the 20th century the overall national population of central cities remained the same, but real change was taking place. Losses in northern cities were offset by growth and annexations in southern and western sunbelt cities. Suburbs, on the other hand, grew rapidly. There are now over three suburbanites for ever two central-city residents. Cities once known for their industrial products have lost most of their blue-collar manufacturing jobs. Pittsburgh, the Steel City, for example, hasn't had steel mills in decades. Cities have lost both well-paying union jobs and the entry-level jobs through which poor city dwellers traditionally entered the labor market. This is not a recent change. Twenty years ago there already was almost twice as many y persons employed in manufacturing in the suburbs as in the cities.
Decentralization of business and industry to fringe locations has been somewhat selective. Operations that require large plants and large amounts of ground space per worker have a high "nuisance factor" (that is, they create noise, pollution, odor, waste) and tend to be drawn increasingly toward the periphery. Obsolete central-city plants cannot compete economically with new, custom-designed single-story facilities. Intel, for instance, builds its factories around the prodoct. Automobile plants, chemical firms, steel mills, and petroleum refineries also require large areas of fringe land for their newer operations. The American auto plants of the last decades have been built not in Detroit but in rural Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi. In 2003 Nissan opened its largest U.S. plant in Clinton, Mississippi.
Generally, production and distribution have decentralized; and as markets have decentralized, wholesaling has as well, since wholesaling and warehousing require large spaces as well as access to markets. The use of trucks and air rather than railroads for transportation also argues for the more flexible outer locations. By locating businesses outside the congested city core near the interstate expressways and airports, businesses reduce transportation costs. Rapid transportation provides a form of storage en route.
On the other hand, finance, advertising, legal services, management, educational institutions, and government generally have shown less inclination to decentralize. While manufacturing, retail trade, and wholesaling typically have large space-per-employee requirements, most managerial, clerical, professional, and business functions are highly space-intensive. City offices can pack white-collar workers in cubicles, and then stack them floor upon floor, in high-rise office buildings.
Central cities are far from dead. While downtowns have clearly lost much of their retailing function, for decades CBDs have been experiencing new business construction. The last decade has witnessed a downtown office building boom in cities such as New York, Chicago, Phoenix, Atlanta, Houston, and Seattle. Boston, for example, has undergone a renaissance, moving from being a casualty of the manufacturing shutdown of the 1970s to becoming a model today of high-tech and service industries.11 Meanwhile, 21st century Chicago is in the midst of its biggest building boom since the 1920s; from 1998 to 2000, it lagged behind only Atlanta and Phoenix in the number of building permits issued.12
Management, finance, government, and law still remain at the center of the city because they do not require great amounts of space per worker and they need access to one another; a downtown location makes far more sense when services are oriented not to individuals but to other organizations. In the CBD, communications are easy and informal - business may be conducted over lunch, for example - and there are many services and economies available outside the firm itself. Outside specialists are readily accessible to cover areas such as advertising, legal services, accounting, tax information, and mailing. Firms located on the periphery must provide all sorts of services often not required of those in the center, such as parking lots, cafeterias, and medical services. Top management may also remain in the city so that it does not become isolated from from the informal information networks regarding competitors, government policy, and buying patterns that are always found when a number of firms in the same sort of business are located in the same area. Even in an era of e-mail and computer-based information systems, face-to-face contact remains important.
Downtowns also have become major tourist and convention sites. New downtown hotels and convention centers are common to midsized and large traditional tourist cities. As cities have dropped their crime rates their tourist business has soared. From 1970 t 1990 alone, the 38 largest urban areas added more than 300 downtown hotels, and more than a hundred cities have built convention centers.13 In New York's Lower Manhattan, for example, a 92-acre business, hotel, and entertainment complex named Battery Park City has been constructed at the cost of $1.5 billion.14 Even Harlem, which for years suffered disinvestment, is now showing major commercial investment in large retail businesses. Ex-President Clinton has his offices in Harlem. (See Chapter 11, Cities and Change, for more on gentrification in Harlem.)
Overall, however, the growth of urban-office white-collar employment has not been able to compensate fully for major blue-collar and retail trade losses. For example, between 1970 and 1986 Chicago lost 211,000 jobs that did not require a high school diploma. During the same period the city gained 112,000 jobs requiring a college degree.15 The 2000-2003 recession hit cities hard, but overall, cities are not in financial distress; instead, American cities have entered the 21st-century in reasonable financial condition.
Newer postautomobile cities are far more "suburban" and spread out than older preautomobile cities.16 Research by Guterbock indicates that older metropolitan areas have seen sharp decreases in density in their central cores, whereas post-World War II cities never had high-density apartment neighborhoods in their central cities.17 The result is a national pattern of moderate- to low-level density throughout metropolitan areas- in effect, the suburbanization of the central cities. This pattern of sprawling "suburban-like" cities is most evident in the newer cities of the South, Southwest, and West.
EDGE CITIES
The 21st century pattern is one of edge cities. The term edge cities was coined by Joel Garreau in 1991 to describe the pattern of the evolving new multiple urban cores increasingly found in the outer rings of metropolitan areas.18 Currently North America has approximately 250 edge cities, usually anchored by a mall or malls. While the boundaries of edge cities are often imprecisely defined, edge cities do have common characteristics.19 Edge cities generally are located well beyond the old downtowns, and usually they are found at the intersection of two major highways, one often being an interstate. In size they are much larger than any single mall, and while they sometimes include limited housing (sometimes in gated communities), edge cities are predominately retail and business centers. Edge cities commonly have more retail stores than found in old downtowns and, unlike downtown, are usually totally automobile dependent. According to Garreau's criteria, edge cities have to have at least 5 million square feet of leasable office space and at least 600,000 square feet of retail space (about the size of a large mall with three anchor stores and 80 to 100 smaller shops).
Edge cities are the culmination of three major suburban changes that have taken place in metro areas over the last 50 years. These changes represent three overlapping waves of out-movement from the central city. The first out-movement, in the 1950s, was the flow of young ex-GIs and their wives to new suburban homes. (The post-war suburban housing boom is fully discussed in Chapter 6: The Suburban Era, so we will only touch on it here.) It is enough to say here that this movement to the suburbs continues today and has transformed North America from an urban to a suburban continent.
The second wave, beginning in the 1960s, was the out-movement of retail trade, especially the out-movement of the large department stores that have anchored the new suburban shopping malls since the 1970s. The malling of the land continues to the present day and will be discussed later in this chapter.
The third wave became a major force in the 1970s and still continues today. This is the out-movement of businesses and manufacturing from inner-city factories and firms to suburban business or industrial parks. Most economic activity is now suburban used. The bulk of the nation's blue-collar as well as white-collar jobs are now located in the suburbs.
Edgeless and Private Edge Cities
Edge cities are difficult to define since they don't look like we think cities should look, nor are they politically organized like cities are. From earliest history cities had clearly defined boundaries, often demarcated by an enclosing wall. However, while edge cities have jobs, shopping, and entertainment, they usually lack any clearly definable borders. Unlike legally defined cities and suburbs, there are no signposts to tell you when you are entering or leaving. Edge cities do not have clearly defined legal edges.20 They lack municipal boundaries because they are not actually legal entities. Legally they often are nonplace spaces, having names but not legal status. Tysons Corner in Virginia outside of Washington, D.C., is one of the nation's largest edge cities, having more office space than Tucson and more major retailing than Washington, but Tysons Corner, even with its 100,000 jobs, doesn't appear as a municipality on Virginia state maps. Legally, Tysons Corner is just another part of Fairfax County.
Not being legal municipalities, edge cities have another strange characteristic for a place called a city: they have no civic order or elected government. Being private places they are not governed by municipal legislation, codes, or ordinances. They are private property governed not by elected representatives but by corporate policy. Tysons Corner - like Dallas's Las Colinas, Los Angeles's Marina Del Rey, and Boston's Burlington Mall - are, in effect, private cities unto themselves.
What makes these places a sharp break with the past is not that they are planned, newer, shinier, enclosed with air conditioning, or have more glass and marble but that they are private domains rather than incorporated, legally defined areas. The old downtowns, whether planned or unplanned, are public spaces open to all. The rules that govern public dress and behavior are ordinances passed by elected officials. Outer cities, for all their open courtyards and fountains, and all their calling themselves "town centers," are fundamentally different. Basic questions, such as who can be in an outer-city office park or shopping mall and what they can or cannot do while there, are determined not by civic ordinance but by private corporate policy. The new outer cities are administered by decree. They may be safe, but they are not democratic. They are privately managed city-states controlled and managed by a financial, rather than a municipal, corporation.
Remarkably, this major shift of our outer cities from public to private control has taken place almost completely without public notice, discussion, or debate. The once-public city has been privatized without discussion. Residential areas within edge cities are sometimes even walled off and "gated" with private security guards restricting entrance.
Suburban Business Growth
The building of the interstate expressway system over the last 45 years gave industry a genuine alternative to a central-city location. Goods could now be cheaply and rapidly moved by truck rather than rail. Outer suburban land was cheap, and the taxes were low. Importantly, the plant could be designed from the inside out. A common pattern was to lay out an assembly line all on one level and then simply build walls around the workspace. The size and the shape of the building could be determined by the needs of the factory rather than by the size and shape of a lot or an existing plant.
Thus, in the decades following World War II industry increasingly leapfrogged over intermediate city residential areas and moved directly from the inner city to suburban industrial parks. When a firm was serving only local markets, a central city location, with its ease of access to all parts of the city, made sense. Such a location was reasonable even if the main transport between cities was done by rail. Today, however, firms with national markets usually seek a location on or near an interstate expressway. The industrial park has supplanted the city factory, with twice as many manufacturing jobs now located in suburbs as in central cities. Not only manufacturing but also white-collar jobs have been suburbanized. The earlier suburbanization of population provided a suburban workforce, a workforce that now commutes to work by auto. In turn, the location of plants is suburbs encouraged even more workers to move to new suburban tract-type housing developments.
Now employment of all sorts is most likely to have a suburban zip code. Outer Dallas, for example, has three times the office space of the central business district, while suburban Atlanta has twice the office space of the center city. Even in the New York metropolitan area, northern New Jersey now has more office space than Manhattan. Nor are suburban offices simply back-office operations seeking low rentals; the executive suite has come to the suburbs. For example, Plano, Texas, north of Dallas, was a bedroom suburb two decades ago. Today it is the national headquarters for five major corporations: Frito-Lay, Electronic Data Systems, Murata Business Systems, Southland Life Insurance, and J.C. Penney. J.C. Penney moved its headquarters to Plano from New York City. The suburban economy is substantially service oriented, often with its marketplace patterns being nationally or internationally, rather than locally, focused.
Sear is an example of the suburban shift. In the 1970s Sears consolidated its operations in the world's tallest building, the new 110-story Sears Tower in downtown Chicago. However, as Sears was placing its head in the clouds, its network of urban-based stores increasingly lost touch with suburban customers. Now Sears has gone suburban. In 1992 Sears moved all of its 5,000 merchandise-group employees of Sears Tower to suburban Hoffman Estates, 35 miles northwest of Chicago. The new Sears headquarters, named Prairie Stone, occupies a former soybean filed and boasts 200 acres of reconstructed prairie and wetlands. The highest building is six stories high.
Growth of outer metropolitan-area private economies is increasingly driven by job growth in high-end service industries such as information technology, biomedical research, and business services. Suburban Fairfax County, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., now has some 2,000 high-tech firms.21 It also recently became the richest county in America with a median household income of $90,937. The major per capita location of Internet addresses is not New York City, Los Angeles, or Chicago. The places with the largest per capita number of .com, .net, and .org addresses are Herndon and Fairfax Counties in Virginia, both metro edge cities of Washington, D.C.
As suburbs have gone from being primarily residential areas to being the primary location of shopping, manufacturing, and office space, the old Burgess hypothesis of economic growth out from the CBD through a series of zones has become history. Business, retail trade, and homeowners have all leapfrogged to the outer ring of the metro area. Suburbs have become the new commercial and economic cores of metropolitan areas, and a result our spatial models of the metropolitan area have gone from core-periphery models to multi-nucleated or multi-centered models.
Malling of the Land
If the dominant urban symbol for the beginning of the 20th century was the skyscraper, the dominant symbol for the beginning of the 21st century is the shopping mall. As expressed by Kowinski, "More than locations for consumption, malls have become the signature structure of the age."22 Some, such as the economist Tyler Cowen, even praise the commercial culture of the mall as the best of all possible worlds.23 You may love the malls, or believe their consumerism values represent all that is wrong with the country, but it is impossible to discuss contemporary metropolitan life without discussing the role of the shopping mall. The larger malls have become social as well as retail centers. They have become America's town centers and main streets. Shopping centers from convenience centers to massive malls now account for over two-thirds of the nation's nonautomotive retail sales.
Shopping centers are actually a rather new development. The first shopping center, as we understand the term, was Country Club Plaza, developed in 1923 in Kansas City. At the end of World War II, there were only eight shopping centers in a;; of North America. The first of modern malls surrounded by parking places was Northgate, which opened on the edge of Seattle in 1950. The first enclosed mall, Southgate Center, designed by the architect Victor Gruen, did not open until 1956 outside Minneapolis. The now ubiquitous food courts were first introduced by the Rouse Company in the early 1970s.
Today the nation's 45,000 shopping malls are an integral part of the suburban landscape and range in size from small strip malls to the West Edmonton megamall, which is the size of 115 football fields and has 800 shops, 19 movie theatres, 110 places to eat, a 355-room hotel, the world's largest amusement park, a five-acre lake with the world's largest wave machine, and parking for over 200,000 cars. Malls sometimes become cities unto themselves. San Jose, California, has an enclosed air-conditioned center that includes 103 stores, 27 restaurants, and 9,000 parking spaces. Houston's Galleria, which set the pattern for the multiuse malls to follow, is modeled after a 19th-century gallery in Milan, Italy; it has three levels, and in addition to the usual department stores, restaurants, and shops, it also includes an athletic club with 10 air-conditioned tennis courts and a jogging track. (Some small college athletic departments would gladly exchange their facilities for those of the shopping mall.) It is connected to two high-rise office buildings and a 404-room hotel. Malls, with their fountains, film festivals, and wine-tastings, have come a long way from the mercantile stores of the last century.
The shopping mall is replacing Main Street as the core of the community. Increasingly, the malls service social as well as commercial functions. (Reflecting this, a shopping mall in this author's metro area changed its name from "Chesterfield Mall" to "Chesterfield Town Centre.") Malls, with their "mall rats" and "mall bunnies," provide a place for young adolescents to gather and socialize. At the other end of the age spectrum, the mall also provides a safe and weather-free place for seniors to walk and socialize.24 As downtowns have faded as centers of retail trade, dining, and entertainment, the shopping mall has become the contemporary version of the Greek agoras.
Malls and "Street Safety"
Malls are designed to exude an image of a comfortable, safe, and secure place. In good part this is done by excluding from the mall any persons or activities that might seem disruptive or disturbing. The strength of traditional downtowns is their ability to produce suprise and excitement, of not knowing what is around the corner. Malls, by contrast, emphasize total predictability. No street musicians, no Hare Krishnas, no one soliciting for charity, and no activities that might in any way disturb or offend its customers. For all their open courtyards and talk of "town centers," malls are rigorously private, and thus can ban from the property teenagers who are disruptive, panhandlers, and bag ladies. No one has the right to walk into a mall just because they feel like going there.
The mall police enforce the image of the mall as a secure place into which outside problems don't intrude. They walk inside beats and patrol parking lots in highly visible vehicles with revolving flash lights. However, while the mall security staff may wear the uniforms, badges, and even weapons of police, they usually are "rent a cop" private security officers dressed to look like police officers. Their role is basically public relations. In most states security guards lack police powers to arrest. They can only hold someone until the real police arrive. Similarly, the stop signs on mall roads, while looking official, are only advisory since the mall rights-of-way are not municipal or state roads. To maintain their image of safety, malls use their advertising clout to see that any crimes committed on mall property are not reported on local TV or in the local newspaper. Malls and their stores are major media advertisers. In reality malls have problems with car theft, robbery, and occasionally rape, but to acknowledge that malls have crimes other than shoplifting would damage the illusion that both mall operators and their patrons seek to maintain.
NONMETROPOLITAN GROWTH
Historically, metropolitan areas in the United States have grown faster than nonmetropolitan areas. The classical ecological model implicitly assumed continued movement of population from rural hinterlands to metropolitan areas. This clearly was the case for the first 70 years of the 20th century, when the nonmetropolitan sector - core or fringe - was growing while rural areas consistently lost population. However, during the 1970s, for the first time, rural counties not only stopped declining but increased in population. The fastest-growing counties from 1970 to 1980 were nonmetropolitan. As a result, some academics proclaimed that the pattern of increasing population concentration in metropolitan areas had come to a close.25 The pattern of metropolitan dominance was said to be challenged by an emerging pattern of increased dispersion and deconcentration. However, by the 1980s talk of a "rural renaissance" had largely faded since the 1980s was a decade of farm depression with metropolitan areas again growing considerably faster than nonmetropolitan areas. Then the 1990s saw some rural rebound, and by decade's end some 71 percent of rural counties were growing again.26 For example, between 1997 and 1998 metropolitan counties grew 1.3 percent, but outlying counties in the same population areas increased 2.6 percent, or twice as fast.27 This pattern continued into the early 21st century.
Diffuse Growth
What is causing this new rural growth? Is the growth of nonmetropolitan population a sign of a return to older and simpler rural ways? Are we about to experience a rural renaissance?
No. We are experiencing a transformation in spatial settlement patterns, but this does not represent a rebirth of rural ways of life. Rather, what we are witnessing is the out-movement of population into a new from of community that is more diffuse.28 Most of the rural rebound has been due to in-migration by previous urban residents rather than to natural increase. Rural growth is largely due to deconcentration of businesses (L.L. Bean operates from a small town in rural Maine, and Land's End from a town in rural Wisconsin) and because of the rural residence preferences of in-movers.
The most rapidly growing nonmetropolitan areas are those economically tied into the metropolitan nexus but legally beyond the metro area. Often these sprawl areas can't be sharply defined as suburb, small town, or rural countryside. Catchy phrases like "rural renaissance" or "rural rebound" tend to trap us in our own rhetoric. As already noted, both the proportion and the absolute number of persons engaged in agriculture continue to decrease. Farm population dropped about one-quarter during the last decade, and less than 2 percent of the U.S. population remains on farms. Clearly, any rural rebound does not mean a renaissance of the family farm or a return to agricultural pursuits.
Additionally, rural growth is now often related to proving recreational opportunities for metropolitan residents. Employment-oriented nonmetropolitan growth can be best seen not as something totally separate from urban areas but rather as an extension of the metropolitan area's influence beyond the daily commuting range. More than 50 years ago, Louis Wirth noted that urbanism - that is, urban behavior patterns - had become the American way of life. Today it is far more so. Even isolated towns in Montana boast drive-in gourmet coffee stands. As we continue to expand into a national metropolitan society, distinctions between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan become even more blurred. The number of MSAs and CMSAs is growing while the boundaries of existing metropolitan areas are progressively expanding. Growing nonmetropolitan areas don't look all that different.
National Society?
We are rapidly moving toward a national metropolitan system in which old differences cease to make a difference. The pattern of discrete metropolitan concentrations is being challenged by an emerging pattern of increased dispersion and metropolitan deconcentration. Metropolitan areas are no longer even semi-independent. Local banks run by local bankers who knew their customers have largely been replaced by a handful of national banks. National digital cell phone networks, e-mail, the Internet, and FedEx and its competitors have further reduced the friction of space. While at the turn of the century the commuter railroad and streetcar made it possible for a vanguard of businesspeople to move their residences from the city, commuter air travel now puts a premium on accessibility to an airport. In an era of air travel, the significant factor is no longer distance. Distance is measured not in miles or kilometers, but by time. Even with terrestrial travel, the question "How far is it?" commonly anticipates a temporal rather than spatial response: How long does it take to get there? Increased mobility of goods, persons, and ideas suggests that a new urban phase - a national urban system - is being created.
Air shuttles tie cities together: a commuter between New York and Chicago or Los Angeles and San Francisco is able to catch a flight in either direction almost every half hour from dawn to dusk. Ironically, shuttle flights linking San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco make it easier (and faster) to move between these cities than around Los Angeles itself. It is one of the peculiarities of modern life that the air shuttles from city to city offer better, more frequent, and even faster transportation than that often available within cities themselves. Increasingly, we don't even physically commute; rather, we telecommute. Physical distance is losing importance.
The emerging pattern of a national metropolitan society forces us to rethink traditional assumptions. In the 1950s, Otis Dudley Duncan suggested that the concept of a "rural-urban continuum" was losing empirical validity.29 Today, emerging nonmetropolitan growth patterns suggest that the concept of a metropolitan-nonmetropolitan continuum is also losing utility. New patterns contradict the old assumption that the social and economic factors of urbanization are a consequence of the distance from the point of population concentration. This change has yet to be fully reflected in federal policy or research.30 Contemporary distinctions between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan are becoming more blurred with each passing decade. In the contemporary information society, it is becoming more difficult to distinguish metropolitan and nonmetropolitan residents on the basis of occupations, consumer habits, and degree of sophistication.31 In many respects the metropolitan-nonmetropolitan differences have ceased to make a difference. Whether we live in a metropolitan area or not, we are all part of a metropolitan society.
THE RISE OF THE SUNBELT
Population and Economic Shifts
One of the most dramatic urban changes of the last 35 years has been the historic shift of population and power from the old industrial heartland of the Northeast and North-central regions to the metropolises of the West and the South (see Table 5-2). The growing southern rim, commonly known as the sunbelt, extends roughly from Virginia on the east through the states of the South and Southwest, up through California on the west. The rise of Houston from a steamy Texas town of little economic interest to its role as the oil capital of the world typifies the pattern of sunbelt growth.32 Houston is now the nation's fourth largest city, exceeded in size only by New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Without the technology of air conditioning this transformation would have been impossible.
A striking example of the growing sway of the sunbelt is that Peoria, Illinois - long touted by comedians, politicians, and marketers as the quintessential heartland city - has been passed in size by the lesser-known Peoria, Arizona. As of 2003 the sunbelt Arizona suburb of Peoria had gown to 123,319 residents while the Illinois rustbelt Peoria had declined to 112,670. The old question, "How will it play in Peoria?" takes on an entirely new meaning. Today, which Peoria provides the truer mirror of America?
Since the 1970s the population below the Mason-Dixon Line and west of the Rockies has outpaced that of the nation. Meanwhile, older economic areas of the Midwest and Northeast have been stagnant or declining. These latter northern areas are sometimes collectively referred to as the frostbelt, snowbelt, or rustbelt. The term rustbelt refers to the decline of the heavy industry cities. During much of the 19th and 20th centuries the northern industrial and manufacturing centers defined America's industrial might. However, by the 1970s the dominant northern cities were experiencing deindustrialization. The Census Bureau reports that during the last decade the fastest-growing one-fifth of U.S. counties were in the South (56 percent) and West (24 percent) while only 1 percent were in the Northeast.33 This pattern of sunbelt growth continues into the new century (see Table 5-2). Half the national population growth during the past decade occurred in the three sunbelt states of California, Florida, and Texas. Each of these states is expected to gain more than 6 million people by 2025, and Texas, California, and Florida will account for 45 percent of the United States net population change between now and 2025.34 Table 5-2 indicates that every one of the 12 fastest-growing metropolitan areas are in the West or South. In fact, all of the 40 fastest-growing metro areas are in the West or South.35
The sunbelt, long a virtually dependent colony of the industrial Northeast, has undergone an economic transformation. Older northern frostbelt cities have seen populations and businesses depart for the "boom" areas of the South and Southwest. Businesses are said to be attracted to such areas by a "good business climate," by which is meant lower wages, lower taxes, a lower rate of unionization, and lower land costs. The sunbelt as an energy-producing area also enjoys a cost advantage, particularly when oil costs are high. The milder climates require less energy for heat (this is only partially offset by higher air-conditioning costs). Quality-of-life factors such as warmer winters and the chance to engage in outdoor activities - such as playing golf most of the year - also play a role. Also, the racial climate has improved markedly.
Sunbelt cities commonly have been able to annex outlying areas as or before they develop. This means the cities are far less financially stressed because they can include within their city boundaries their new "suburban" development. By contrast, almost all northern cities have had to deal with fixed city boundaries since roughly the 1920s, or even earlier in the case of cities in the Northeast. During the last quarter of a century sunbelt cities such as Charlotte, Atlanta, Orlando, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, Albuquerque, Phoenix, and San Diego have all become world-class locations. Greater Los Angeles, in terms of economic activity and cultural influence, is now challenging New York. It is argued that Los Angeles will be the leading western-hemisphere city of the 21st century.
Regional Consequences
The result of interregional population shifts has been dramatic. The South, which historically always had migratory outflows of population, now is the fastest-growing region in the nation. Since the mid-1960s the South has also replaced the West as the major locus of new employment growth. During this same period, economically powerful industrial cities of the North have experienced decline in both population and economic influence. For example, the central city of St. Louis now has only as many people as it did in 1890; Cleveland now has as many as during World War I; and Detroit now has no more than it did in 1920.
This does not mean northern cities and metro areas are in economic decline; most are not. What it does mean, though, is that population is flowing southward and west, attracted by new jobs, a mild climate, a lower cost of living, and a lifestyle stressing outdoor living and informal entertaining. While the North and Midwest still have more corporate headquarters, there has been movement towards the South and West.36
The fastest-growing sunbelt industries are service industries such as real estate and tourism, plus the newer, highly skilled industries such as electronics, energy, and aircraft. These often have a preference for a location in the Southwest, particularly suburbs of major cities. Federal-level political decisions, such as locating the space agency in Houston and the national center for silicon research in Austin, have strongly reinforced growth trends. Even after base cutbacks, military budgets disproportionately directed monies and employment to areas with substantial military basing, i.e., the South.
Some even suggest that the advantage of the sunbelt is largely political in origin. Mollenkopf argues that the advantage comes not from lower wages or nonunionized work forces but from the comparative political advantages of sunbelt cities being able to push business-oriented growth policies: these cities’ governments have less need to placate the poor or minority groups, who exercise less influence than they do in northern cities.37 Sunbelt populations are more likely to vote conservative and are less likely to support liberal political candidates or policies – excepting firm support of Social Security by the retired elderly.
Although the population shift to the South and Southwest was long in coming, the consequences and implications for urban areas of the old industrial heartland were not immediately recognized. The Northeast had been long accustomed to viewing the South as an economic backwater and a cultural desert. Now those in the sunbelt view the old industrial cities as fighting inevitable decline. For almost two decades, California, Florida, and Texas have led the nation in building construction. Not only people, but the taxes as well, have been flowing southward. As a consequence of regional shifts, northern urban areas that have been the nation’s centers of population and power for a century or more are finding themselves on the defensive. In national politics the sunbelt is clearly gaining influence and power, as seen in Figure 5-3. As a result of Congressional reapportionment based on the 2000 census, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin all lost House seats.38
Newer cities of the sunbelt, because of the office-at-home phenomenon, also require less office space. Greater New York has some 27 feet of office space per person. In greater Los Angeles by comparison, the figure is a mere 15 square feet per person. Telecommuting is becoming more common, and the consultant subculture often works at home.
The impression is sometimes given that most sunbelt growth is a consequence of runaway northern industries that abandoned the industrial heartland to build low-wage nonunion plants in the South. This view is inaccurate.39 Steel mills and other heavy industry did not move south when they closed down in older industrial areas. Rather than attracting smokestack industries, the sunbelt states developed new economic activities. As summed up by Kirkpatrick Sale, the writer who first focused national attention on the changing nature of the sunbelt:
In broad terms there has been a shift from the traditional heavy manufacturing long associated with the industrial belt of the Northeast to the new technological industries that have grown up in the Southern Rim – aerospace, defense, electronics.40
Sunbelt Problems
However, the sunbelt is not all sunshine. The rise of the sunbelt has also produced problems. Breakneck growth has brought not only jobs but also massive urban sprawl, huge traffic congestion, overtaxed water and sewer systems, rising air pollution, and widespread environmental degradation. Environmental pollution has become a very serious concern. Houston, for example, as of 2001 had the worst air pollution in the nation. Additionally, auto congestion, water supplies, and sewage disposal problems are growing ever more severe.41
Cities such as Las Vegas, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Albuquerque, Phoenix, and San Diego have all had to cope with phenomenal growth, and the responses have not all been similar.42 Sunbelt cities are being pressured to expand educational opportunities, social services, housing stock, roadways, and waste management facilities. All these require financing. At the same time, citizen groups are lobbying for limits on taxes. Traditionally, cities of the sunbelt have had low taxes but also have provided lower-level serviced, especially for poorer residents. Today, city officials are caught newcomers having contradictory expectations of northern-level services and southern-level taxes. Some spending decisions are made at the state rather than local level, but how a state spends its resources helps determine the future of its cities. In the mid-1990s, for example, Texas voters approved issuing bonds to build new prisons but turned down issuing bonds for building new schools. Texas now has, proportionally, the world’s largest prison population. However, it is doubtful whether having a large number of new prisons is going to help attract new businesses to the state.
It should also be remembered that sunbelt cities are not automatically immune to the population declines that affected frostbelt cities. While 86 percent of the U.S. cities in the Northeast and 66 percent of those in the industrial Northcentral region lost population during the last decade, this was also true of 26 percent of the South’s cities and 12 percent of the West’s. A sunbelt location does not prevent people from moving out. After outpacing the rest of the nation’s rate of economic growth for three decades, some long-tern problems are emerging. Low wages once gave the sunbelt a competitive advantage. However, not only have sunbelt wages gone up, but in a global economy firms that once moved to Alabama or the Carolinas now move to Mexico or Southeast Asia. There is no guarantee that the collapse of property values that hit Houston in the late 1980s and southern California in the early 1990s will not repeat; as of 2004 both places are prosperous, but the high oil prices that support Houston’s boom as this is being written can go down as well as up.
Finally, in the application of a high-technology economy, some parts of the South still have the liability of an academics system that needs upgrading, particularly at the primary and secondary school levels. As a region, the South has been less willing to invest the necessary tax money in developing its human capital. Teachers are comparatively poorly paid and public school systems lad behind the rest of the nation. High-tech firms require well-educated workers. A condition Mercedes-Benz placed on opening its auto plant in Alabama was that the local school system be upgraded. Unless the South invests more in education it may again see itself outshone by northern and central regions with better-supported educational systems at the primary, secondary, and university levels.
With the initial southern advantage of lower wage scales, a nonunion business climate, and cheaper energy costs losing force, there is nothing necessarily permanent about the sunbelt boom. Increasingly, economic success depends not on geography nut on having an educated labor force. Businesses just seeking a cheap labor force move to China.
MOVEMENT TO THE COASTS
A major American migration trend of the early 21st century is toward the Atlantic and Gulf shores. More than 41 million Americans, one in seven persons, now lives in a county abutting the eastern or southern seaboard.43 And this figure does not include those with vacation homes on a shore. The shoreline strip is growing significantly faster than the rest of the country. All the way from Maine to Texas, seaside property is burgeoning. Wealth generated by a strong economy, and more flexible work arrangements such as telecommuting, are resulting in more and more people living permanently near the shore. Seasonal resort towns are turning into sprawling full-time communities. Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for example now has a year-round population of 225,000. The Outer Banks of North Carolina a decade ago were largely deserted after Labor Day; now even a Wal-Mart has been built on the sand banks.
Less mass movement to the beach has taken place on the West Coast. Especially in California the beaches and bluffs along the Pacific generally have state protections against private development. Also on the West Coast, the south-flowing California current keeps all but the most southern Californian beaches chilly, even in summer. Along the East Coast, on the other hand, the water is kept warm by the north-flowing Gulf Stream. However, Mother Nature is not always benign on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Since 1995 there has been a sharp rise in hurricanes, and the risk of a major killer hurricane is at an all-time high.
The costs of coastal living are not just paid by those living on the water’s edge. New populations at the beach mean that existing taxpayers have to subsidize new water, sewer, and road systems. Major state roads have to built so that when a dangerous storm hits, evacuation gridlock does not result. One of the reasons people are willing, literally, to build their castles on the sand in high-risk coastal areas is because they don’t have to pay many of the costs of building in these high-risk areas. Federal disaster and insurance programs help them out if a hurricane, storm, or even coastal erosion damages or wipes out their property.
This is known as the “moral hazard” problem. It occurs when existing federal programs, by protecting against loss, inadvertently create the very problem they were designed to prevent. Since government foots much of the bill for coastal disasters, people can afford to move to unstable coastal areas. Given these circumstances it is not surprising that we are rushing like lemmings toward the sea. The National Flood Insurance Act even provides up to $350,000 insurance for properties private insurances firms will not cover. Currently it covers some 4.2 million properties valued at $524 billion. The federal government even pays for most beach reconstruction, although the program has come under attack as being environmentally unsound. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers currently spends $80 million a year just to bring in sand and rebuild beaches. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) estimates that even without storms some 30,000 coastal homes sit on land that will be under water in 30 years.44
SUMMARY
Metropolitan areas are replacing cities as the major urban unit, and within metro areas suburban edge cities are the locus of growth. The first half of the 20th century saw a major inflow of population into metro areas, and the central city clearly dominated the metro area economically, socially, and demographically. Since the mid-20th century, movement has been toward the periphery (and beyond), and suburban areas have experienced dramatic growth. Today over 60 percent of metro-area populations live in suburbs, and in some metro areas the figure is far higher. As of 2003 there were 362 Census Bureau-defined Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). The 73 largest of these were designated as Primary Metropolitan Statistical Areas (PMSAs).
The growth of metro areas during the 20th century is closely related to technological breakthroughs in transportation and communication. Automobile registration has gone from 2.5 million in 1915 to one car for every two people today. Not until 1920 did half of all Americans have telephones. Today digital cell phones and PDAs are commonplace, and businesses no longer require a central-city location. Decentralization to fringe locations has been somewhat selective. Downtowns with their high-rise buildings are still cost-effective for finance, advertising, legal services, and management operations that have limited space requirements. As the 21st century opens, cities from New York to Chicago to Atlanta to Phoenix are experiencing downtown office building booms.
However, the greatest growth is taking place in America’s approximately 250 suburbs edge cities. Edge cities are hard to define because they lack clearly defined legal edges. They are usually not legal entities but placeless places. Edge cities also differ from central cities insofar as edge cities are legally private places without any civic order or elected government. This privatization of edge cities has taken place largely without public debate or even discussion.
The majority of blue-collar as well as white-collar employment is now suburban. Northern New Jersey has more office space than Manhattan, and most industry has a suburban zip code. Suburban shopping malls have become the dominant metropolitan symbol for the beginning of the 21st century. Today there are 45,000 shopping malls that have replaced Main Street as the center of the community. Malls are designed to project a safe and secure image, and activities or persons that management views as potentially disruptive are banned from the corporate-owned and –managed malls.
Nonmetropolitan growth is again taking place, but it does not represent a rural renaissance or return to farm life. Some nonmetropolitan growth is the result of sprawl from metropolitan areas and some is occurring in outlying areas providing recreational opportunities for metro-area residents. Economically and socially we are becoming a national society.
For the last 30 years, growth in the sunbelt has outdistanced that of the nation. The sunbelt stretching from Virginia through the South and Southwest to California generally benefits from lower energy costs and quality-of-life advantages such as warmer winters. Sunbelt economic growth has not been the result of capturing runaway northern industries but of developing new economic activities in aerospace, electronics, and technology. A new population movement is toward coastal locations. One in seven Americans now lives in a county that abuts the shore. Coastal living is accelerated by the federal government largely funding insurance against the storm losses and other costs of building in high-risk coastal areas.
ENDNOTES
1 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population Estimates Programs, Population Division, Washington, D.C., April 2000.
2 Kenneth Johnson, The Rural Rebound, Reports on America, Population Reference Bureau, September 1999.
3 Norman Scott Brien Gras, Introduction to Economic History, Harper, New York, 1922; and Roderick MacKenzie, The Metropolitan Community, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1933.
4 U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Residences of Farms and Rural Areas: 1990,” Current Population Reports, series P-20, no. 457, 1992, p. 2.
5 U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce, “Population Profile of the United States: 1981,” Current Population Reports, series P-20, no. 394, Washington, D.C., September 1982, p. 7.
6 Larrt S. Bourne, “Commuting,” in William van Vliet, ed., The Encyclopedia of Housing, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1998, p. 72.
7 J. John Palen, The Suburbs, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1995.
8 Mark LaGory and James Nelson, “An Ecological Analysis of Growth between 1900 and 1940,” Sociological Quarterly 19:590-603, 1978.
9 Beverly Duncan, “Factors in Work-Residence Separation: Wages and Salary Workers, 1951,” American Sociological Review 21:48-56, 1956.
10 National Resources Committee, Technological Trends and National Policy, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1937.
11 Barry Bluestone and Mary Huff Stevenson, The Boston Renaissance: Race, Space, and Change in an American Metropolis, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 2000.
12 Tracie Rozhon, “Chicago Girds for Big Battle Over Its Skyline,” New York Times, November 12, 2000, p. 1.
13 Bernard Frieden and Lynne B. Sagalyn, Downtown, Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, 1989.
14 David Dunlap, “Filling in the Blanks at Battery Park,” New York Times, Feb. 7, 1999, p. RE2.
15 John D. Kasarda, quoted in “Social Scientists Examine Common Challenges Facing Industrial Cities,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 11, 1990, p. A6.
16 Rob Kling, Spencer Olin, and Mark Poster (eds.), Posturban California: The Transformation of Orange County Since World War II, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1991.
17 Thomas A. Guterbock, “Suburbanization of American Cities of the Twentieth Century: A New Index and Another Look,” paper presented at meeting of the American Sociological Association, Toronto, 1982.
18 Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, Doubleday, New York, 1991.
19 Ibid., p. 425.
20 J. John Palen, op. cit., p. 187.
21 Samantha Friedman, “Behind the Monuments: Taking a Sociological Look at Life in the Nation’s Capital,” Footnotes, American Sociological Association, 28:1, July/August 2000.
22 William S. Kowinski, The Malling of America, Murrow, New York, 1985, p. 22.
23 Tyler Cowen, In Praise of Commercial Culture, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1998.
24 Dawn Graham, “Going to the Mall: A Leisure Activity for Urban Elderly People,” Canadian Journal of Aging 10:345-358, 1991.
25 William H. Frey, “Migration and Metropolitan Decline in Developed Countries,” Population and Development Review, 14:595-628, December 1988.
26 Kenneth M. Johnson, “The Rural Rebound,” Reports on America, Population Reference Bureau, September 1999.
27 Lawrence Knutson, “Americans Moving to South and West,” Washingtonpost.com, March 17, 1998.
28 John Herbers, The New Heartland, Times Books, New York, 1986.
29 Otis Dudley Duncan, “Community Size and the Rural-Urban Continuum,” in Paul K. Hatt and Albert J. Reiss (eds.), Cities and Society, Free Press, New York, 1957, pp. 35-45.
30 The Department of Agriculture, for example, divides nonmetropolitan counties into six types: they “describe a dimension of urban influence in which each succeeding group is affected to a lesser degree by the social and economic conditions of urban areas. This includes the influence of urban areas at a distance as well as within counties themselves.
31 William Parker, “Frisbie” and John D. Kasarda, “Spatial Processes,” in Neil Smelser (ed.), Handbook of Modern Sociology, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA, 1988, p. 636.
32 Joe R. Feagin, Free Enterprise City: Houston in Political-Economic Perspective, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N.J., 1989.
33 Lawrence Knutson, “Americans Moving to South and West,” Washingtonpost.com, March 17, 1998.
34 Paul Campbell, Census Bureau, “Population Projections: States, 1995-2025,” Current Population Reports, P25-1131, May 1997, p. 2.
35 U.S. Census Bureau, “Metropolitan Areas Ranked by Percent Population Change: 1990-2000,” Internet Release date: April 2, 2001.
36 Sally K. Ward, “Trends in the Location of Corporate Headquarters, 1969-1989,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 29:468-478, 1994.
37 John H. Mollenkopf, The Contested City, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1983.
38 Steven A. Holmes, “After Standing Up to be Counted, Americans Number 281,421,906,” New York Times, December 29, 2000, p. 1.
39 Larry Sawers and William K. Tabb (eds.), Sunbelt/Snowbelt: Urban Development and Regional Restructuring, Oxford University Press, New York, 1984.
40 Kirkpatrick Sale, Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment, Random House, New York, 1975, p. 5.
41 Joe R. Feagin, “Tallying the Social Costs of Urban Growth under Capitalism: The Case of Houston,” in Scott Cummings (ed.), Business Elites and Urban Development, SUNY Press, Albany, N.Y., 1989, pp. 205-234.
42 Rchard M. Bernard and Bradley R. Rice (eds.), Sunbelt Cities: Politics and Growth Since World War II, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1983.
43 “Growth Reshapes Coast,” USA Today, July 21, 2000, p. 1A.
44 Owen Ullman, “Facing Mother Nature’s Fury,” USA Today, July 24, 2000, p. 6A.
BOX 5.1 Defining Metropolitan Areas
The Census Bureau has a number of ways of defining different-sized metropolitan areas, a term that commonly refers to a large concentration of 100,000 or more inhabitants that contains as its core a city with 50,000 or more inhabitants and that is surrounded by suburban areas. Traditionally, the Bureau of the Census has defined metropolitan areas in two ways: as urbanized areas and as Metropolitan Statistical Areas.
Urbanized Areas. According to the Census Bureau definition, an urbanized area consists of a central city, or cities, of 50,000 or more and their surrounding closely settled territory, whether incorporated or unincorporated. The term, thus, refers to the actual urban population of an area regardless of political boundaries such as county or state lines. All residing in the urbanized area are considered urban, but the population is also divided into those in the “central city” and those in the remainder of the area, or “urban fringe.”
Because it is based on density (at least 1,000 persons per square mile), the urbanized area has no fixed boundaries, and thus changes form census to census to reflect actual population changes. This potential strength can, however, become a weakness when one is doing longitudinal research since the urbanized area of study has covered different land areas in the 1980, 1990, and 2000 censuses. The proportion of a state’s population living in urbanized areas in 2000 varied form 85 percent in New Jersey to 15 percent in Vermont.
Metropolitan Statistical Area. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) are what are commonly referred to when speaking of metro areas. They are officially designated by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and are based on territory rather than population. (Before 1983 MSAs were known as Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas.) A Metropolitan Statistical Area is a county or group of counties having a central city of 50,000 or more, or twin cities with a combined 50,000 or more. The MSA includes the county in which the central city is located plus any adjacent counties that are judged by the Bureau of the Census to be metropolitan in character and socially and economically integrated with the central city. In New England, where there are no counties, MSAs consist of townships and cities instead. As of the 2000 census, 362 areas were designated as MSAs. The 73 largest of these were designated Primary Metropolitan Statistical Areas (PMSAs). New Jersey was the most metropolitan state with 100 percent of its population living in metro areas. Arizona was second with 88 percent, and Nevada third with 86 percent (open space in both these states is very open).
Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas. In order to distinguish the very largest concentrations of metropolitan populations, Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas (CMSAs) have been designated. A CMSA must have at least a million persons and is composed of a number of PMSAs. As of 2000, there were 18 Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas.
All the variously defined metropolitan areas can cross state lines. The New York CMSA, for example, includes portions of New Jersey and Connecticut. The Philadelphia CMSA includes, in addition to the section in Pennsylvania, portions of Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey.
In 1990, the term Metropolitan Area (MA) becae the overall umbrella term covering MSAs, PMSAs, and CMSAs. There currently are 362 Metropolitan Areas.
Canada has 25 metropolitan areas, called “CSAs” (Census Metropoltian Areas), each having an urban core population of at least 100,000.
BOX 5.2 The Ultimate Malls
The Goliath of shopping malls is the West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta.* Edmonton is a city of 967,000 persons, but during after-Christmas sales the mall alone draws as many as a quarter of a million people a day to its site on the cold Canadian prarie. This mall attracts 20 million people a year in a country of 30 million people. Visitor’s come to see a shopper’s fantasyland. There are some 800 stores, 110 restaurants, 19 movie theaters, and even a Caesar’s Palace Bingo parlor, as well as the world’s largest indoor amusement park, with 24 rides including two 13-story-plus roller coasters. There are additionally, an 18-hole miniature par-46 golf course, an NHL-size ice rink, and a dolphin lagoon. And set in a balmy 86-degree atmosphere, the world’s largest indoor wave pool boasts a sand beach, palm trees, and 22 water slides. On a lower level, the mall also houses an aquarium. All this in often frigid northern Alberta.
The most spectacular feature, however, is the mall’s 200-foot artificial lake. At the end of one lake, a replica of Christopher Columbus’s ship, the Santa Maria, rests on a coral reef, illuminated by a giant skylight. At the other end of the lake, children and parents line up to cruise the 20-foot-deep lake in one of four 25-person submarines. The mall actually has more submarines than the Canadian Navy.
In 1992 the Ghermezian brothers, who built the West Edmonton Mall, opened a United States version in Bloomington, Minnesota (south of Minneapolis), called the “Mall of America” (the brothers have since sold the mall). The Mall of America originally was slightly smaller than the West Edmonton Mall, but it has recently been enlarged. The original Mall of America covered 4.2 million square feet and had 350 stores, 14 movie screens, and 46 places to eat. Its Knott’s Berry Farm Camp Snoopy has 7 acres of indoor amusement rides, including a half-mile long rubber-wheeled roller coaster, a log flume ride, and a Hormel cookout area named Spamland. The Mall of America has 400 live trees, 300,000 plants, and a four-story waterfall. It also has its own zip code, police, doctors, dentists, and a public school for the children of the mall’s 10,000 employees.
Where all this will end is a matter of professional dispute. Some see entertainment malls as a new model, while others believe that the megamall, like the brontosaurus, is the final gasp of a concept that has been pushed to excess. So far the idea “Build it and they will come” seems to be working.
*Based on material in J. John Palen, The Suburbs, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1995, pp. 199-201.