The Uncoupling of the Economic City

Abstract

Recent years have seen unprecedented revitalization in many of America’s older industrial cities. The dynamics of revitalization, however, have tended to concentrate population and job growth in small parts of the city to the exclusion of the rest of the city, manifested in an uncoupling of the “economic city,” the city as a locus of economic activity, from the city’s population, leading in turn to growing economic and racial inequality within the city. As cities become increasingly polarized by race and income, this uncoupling has had particularly adverse consequences for these cities’ African-American populations. This article studies trends over the past decade in a cluster of 10 cities, including Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and others, and explores the implications of increasing polarization for these cities’ future.