Spatial mismatch is not always a central-city problem: An analysis of commuting behaviour in Cleveland, Ohio, and its suburbs

One prediction of the spatial mismatch hypothesis is that black residents o f the central city will have longer commutes than others. This prediction a ctually has two different components: African-Americans commute longer dist ances because they face discrimination in housing and/or labour markets; ci ty-dwellers commute longer distances because entry-level jobs are scarce in the central city. This study uses a quasi-experimental design to distingui sh between these two types of spatial mismatch. We compare 1990 commuting t imes for the residents of four Cleveland neighbourhoods: a poor black neigh bourhood in Cleveland, a poor white neighbourhood in Cleveland, a lower-mid dle-class black suburb and a lower-middle-class white suburb. We were unabl e to find strong evidence that city residents suffered from poor job access ibility in 1990. We did find, however, that residents of the black suburb h ad longer commutes than residents of the white suburb-in spite of the fact that the black suburb was accessible to more skill-matched jobs. Probing fu rther, we discovered that far more black than white suburbanites worked in the central city. This finding suggests that hiring discrimination or indus try sector preferences on the part of black workers are potentially overloo ked causes of racial differentials in commuting behaviour.