NEIGHBORHOOD CHANGE UNDER CONDITIONS OF MASS IMMIGRATION - THE NEW-YORK-CITY REGION, 1970-1990

This article investigates the shifting racial and ethnic composition o f neighborhoods in the Greater New York metropolitan region in the 197 0-1930 period, during which the region has been one of the nation's ma jor receiving grounds for new immigrant groups. Neighborhoods are defi ned in terms of census tracts, and changes in neighborhood composition are tracked with data from the 1970, 1980, and 1930 censuses. Four ra cial/ethnic groups are considered: non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic b lacks, Hispanics and Asians, The analysis, which exploits the neighbor hood transition table (Denton and Massey, 1391), reveals a somewhat pa radoxical set of developments. On the one hand, there is increasing ra cial and ethnic complexity in neighborhoods throughout the region: mor e and more neighborhoods contain multiple groups; fewer and fewer are ethnically or racially homogeneous. On the other hand, there is a cros scutting trend: all-minority neighborhoods, occupied by blacks or blac ks and Hispanics, are growing in number. We demonstrate further that t hese two patterns are associated with other characteristics of neighbo rhoods, such as the median incomes of their households and whether the y are located in cities or suburbs.