1990s Further Reshape Suburbs Minorities Show Striking Gains Here, Nationwide

By D'Vera Cohn Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, June 25, 2001; Page B01

The Washington region is among dozens of urban areas across the country where minorities accounted for most of the suburban population growth during the 1990s, further redefining the communities where half of Americans live, according to an analysis of 2000 Census data released today.

Suburbanization has been sharpest among Hispanics, even as whites have increasingly moved to smaller metropolitan areas, according to the study written by demographer William H. Frey for the Brookings Institution.

The increased minority presence is part of a transformation of the demographics and economies of suburbs, which have been growing more rapidly than cities or rural areas for decades. The changes have been particularly striking in the Washington area and three dozen others that have been called "melting pot metros" because of their multiethnic makeup.

"Back in the 1950s, when you told someone you lived in the suburbs, you were telling them something about who you are," Frey said. "Now . . . you are not telling them much at all, because the suburbs are pretty heterogenous. In fact, you are telling them more when you tell them you live in the city."

The study said each of the nation's major minority groups -- blacks, Hispanics and Asian Americans -- increased its presence in the suburbs of the largest metropolitan areas during the 1990s.

As a result, minorities accounted for most suburban growth in 65 of the 102 largest metropolitan areas. They are regions from Phoenix to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with populations of a half-million or more. One in four suburban residents in these areas is a member of a minority group, compared with one in five in 1990.

Along with their greater racial diversity, American suburbs also vary more physically than in the past. Though some consist of residential cul-de-sacs as far as the eye can see, a growing number include downtownlike agglomerations of office buildings.

A report by the Fannie Mae Foundation last week defined a new type of suburb, a large and fast-growing citylike area, mainly in the Sunbelt, that it called "boomburbs."

These areas, which include Chesapeake, Va., Scottsdale, Ariz., and Hialeah, Fla., are horizontal cities that grow out rather than up, the report said.

Though many suburbs are prosperous, there also are many older neighborhoods that are struggling with blight.

The report also makes it clear that the white middle class no longer views suburbs as a perfect refuge from city life.

Frey reported that the magnitude and pervasiveness of whites leaving the suburbs of the large metropolitan areas he studied were noteworthy. One-quarter of those areas lost white suburban residents during the 1990s. In some -- including Honolulu, Los Angeles-Long Beach, San Francisco and Miami -- white populations declined more sharply in the suburbs than in the cities.

Many whites left places such as Los Angeles and Bergen-Passaic, N.J., for less multiethnic metros in the South and West.

"It is not just white flight but also flight away from expensive suburbs and congestion and urbanism," said Frey, a demographer at the University of Michigan and the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, Calif. "Many whites are moving to smaller-sized and interior metros, and as a result, it is making more room for growth by minorities."

More than half of Asian Americans in large metropolitan areas live in the suburbs, as do half of Hispanics, but only 39 percent of blacks do, the study found.

Hispanics, whose numbers grew so rapidly in the 1990s that they now equal blacks as the nation's largest minority group, make up one in eight suburban residents, up from one in 11 a decade earlier.

Asian Americans form a smaller share of the population, so even though most live in the suburbs, they make up only 4 percent of suburban populations in large metropolitan areas.

Black suburban increases over the decades have been steady but slower than for other minority groups. Hispanics outnumbered blacks in the suburbs in 1990, and the gap widened over the decade.

"Blacks are still very much unequally distributed not just at the neighborhood level, but between city and suburb," Frey said. "This shows this is a group with special issues involved; there is not complete acceptance."

Frey also analyzed living patterns for people who included themselves in more than one racial group in the census, an option available for the first time on the 2000 questionnaire. He found that they differed from other minority groups. People who identified themselves as black and white, for example, were more likely than blacks to live in the suburbs.

The minority boom is most intense in areas that were already multiethnic and multiracial, such as Washington, New York and Los Angeles. The Washington area ranked in the top fifth of metropolitan areas in its presence and increase of suburban minorities, especially for blacks.

Frey said the census figures sharpen the distinction between such melting-pot areas and the rest of the country. Such metros, and the Hispanics living in them, "are the major drivers of national minority suburbanization trends," his report said.

The study might have understated the effect of minority growth, because it used a Census Bureau definition of "city" that includes some close-in urbanized suburbs -- places such as Arlington or Dearborn, Mich., outside Detroit.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

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