The Dynamics of Neighborhood Integration and Segregation in the Past Four Decades

American metropolitan areas remain segregated by race. Yet the factors that create the conditions that lead to segregation have changed. I document and classify neighborhood change that has occurred over the past four decades and explain how a lack of moves into integrated neighborhoods---not their flight out of integrated neighborhoods---is a major factor that maintains segregation in the twenty-first century. In contrast to the avoidance that White residents show, people of color continue to move into predominantly White neighborhoods. I argue that the "negative space" created by the lack of knowledge and lack of interest among Whites in moving to integrated neighborhoods with implications for understanding racial inequality in health, educational, and political outcomes.
Michael Bader is an associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University and the director of the 21st Century Cities Initiative, an interdisciplinary research initiative that transforms academic research and creates the basis for policies that enact measurable change for equitable development in Baltimore and urban regions throughout the world. He studies how cities and neighborhoods have evolved since the height of the Civil Rights Movement. He links long-term patterns of neighborhood racial change to the ways that race and class influence the housing search process.