Racial Settlement and Metropolitan Land-Use Patterns: Does Sprawl Abet Black-White segregation?

This paper advances a theory of how metropolitan land-use patterns affect racial settlement patterns and tests it by measuring the relationship between seven dimensions of land-use patterns and five dimensions of segregation of Blacks and Whites for a representative sample of 50 large metropolitan areas, using multiple regression analysis. We find substantial, nonlinear relationships between changes in multiple dimensions of segregation and multiple dimensions of land use, with most evincing a direct relationship between more compact patterns and segregation once a threshold value is exceeded. The results can be explained holistically by positing that variations in different dimensions of land-use patterns differentially affect land/housing prices, inter-group propinquity, interracial commonality of commuting destinations, and spatial mismatch, which in turn appear to affect the ability of a metropolitan area to desegregate. But alterations in certain aspects of land use—density/continuity and job compactness—apparently spawn a combination of forces that affect desegregation in contrary ways; which force dominates seemingly depends on how extreme the given land-use pattern has become. These findings hold implications for those designing land-use policies designed to fight sprawl.