METROPOLITAN EXPANSION AND BLACK SOCIAL DISLOCATION - THE LINK BETWEEN SUBURBANIZATION AND CENTER-CITY CRIME

A long-standing though unexplained finding is that the degree of subur banization in a metropolitan area is positively related to the rates o f serious crime in the incorporated center city. We account for this r elationship by integrating theoretically two underlying features of ur ban life in the U.S. First, from a human ecology standpoint, suburbani zation is part of a broader metropolitan expansion process that underm ined and isolated many center-city black communities. Second, serious crime in cities is disproportionately concentrated in black communitie s. We reexamine the suburbanization/city-crime link using racially dis aggregated models for cities and SMSAs in 1980. The findings show that the rate of suburbanization among the total SMSA population is strong ly related to the center-city rates of serious crime among blacks, but not among whites. This supports the view that suburbanization increas ed black center-city crime rates by socially isolating black communiti es and engendering a variety of social problems. Indeed, upon controll ing for potential mediators of the suburbanization-crime link, the rel ationship between suburbanization and black city-crime rates virtually disappeared.