BOOK REVIEWS

Bruce Katz and Robert E. Lang (Eds.), Redefining Urban and Suburban America:Evidence from Census 2000, Volume I (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press,2003).

Redefining Urban and Suburban American is required reading for urban affairs scholars. Inthis volume of essays, Katz and Lang have enlisted an outstanding group of scholars to lookat the 2000 Census to answer three questions: Are cities coming back? Are all suburbsgrowing? Are cities and suburbs becoming more alike? The answers to these questions arelaid out in 13 chapters. The first five chapters address the first question of whether cities arecoming back; Chapters 6 and 7 explore the second question ‘‘Are All Suburbs Growing?’’ Asits title promises, the book redefines our vocabulary of places with ‘‘Patchwork Cities’’ andwith new suburbs called ‘‘Boomburgs.’’ The last six chapters are devoted to probing the thirdquestion ‘‘Are Cities and Suburbs Becoming More Alike?’’ Because of the richness of theanalysis and data it is difficult to do justice with less than a chapter by chapter review.

In Chapter 1, ‘‘City Growth: Which Cities Grew and Why,’’ Edward L. Glaeser andJesse M. Shapiro find that cities of 100,000 or more grew twice as fast in the 1990s as inthe 1980s from a high of 85% for Los Vegas to a low of 15% in Hartford with westerncities growing fastest and northeastern cities loosing population on average. They discovera tyranny of weather with warm dry places growing while cold wet places declined.

In Chapter 2, ‘‘Gaining but Loosing Ground: Population Changes in Large Cities andTheir Suburbs’’ Alan Berbue points out that not all cities did well, especially in compar-ison to their suburbs. Although as a group, the 100 largest cities gained population, 28 didnot gain or lost population. Among these only five cities that lost population in the 1980sstaged a come-back in the 1990s to qualify as Renaissance cities–Denver, Memphis,Atlanta, and Yonkers. No matter how well a city did in population growth, their suburbsdid better–9% compared to 18%, respectively.

In Chapter 3 ‘‘Urban Turnaround’’ Patrick A. Simmons and Lang find that the 1990swere the best decade since the 1940s for older Rust Belt cities of the Midwest andNortheast. Their worst decade was the 1970s. ‘‘Fifteen cities converted their populationlosses into population gains in the 1990s’’ (p. 56). Chicago and New York grew again.

Turning their attention to the downtown areas of cities in Chapter 4 ‘‘DowntownRebound,’’ Rebecca R. Sohmer and Lang discover that the 1990s were good for down-towns too. Of the 24 downtowns studied, 18 saw their population increase. The explosivegrowth of some such as Denver and Seattle mirrored the population growth of the city.The real high performers were six cities in the Midwest and Northeast that were ableincrease downtown residents despite citywide losses–Cleveland, Norfolk, Baltimore,Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee. It is not yet clear whether this reflects changingdemography, different residential choices, or proximity of downtowns to work and transit.

In Chapter 5, Berube and Benjamin Froman coin the term ‘‘Patchwork Cities’’ tocapture the uneven pattern of change among city neighborhoods within cities. Nearly

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Volume 27, Number 4, pages 463–466.

Copyright # 2005 Urban Affairs Association

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

ISSN: 0735-2166.

two-thirds of city growth occurred on the suburban edge and where downtowns grew theywere islands ‘‘within a larger sea of population of population loss in the urban core’’ (p. 76).

Chapters 6 and 7 shift to the question of whether suburbs are growing and documentthe contrast of new rapidly growing suburbs in the southwest with declining ones inMidwest and Northeast. Growth in suburbs continued to outstrip city growth in the1990s whether the city was declining, stable, or growing rapidly. In Chapter 6, Langand Simmons introduce a new urban form of ‘‘Boomburgs.’’ Fifty three in number, theseare a new type of large rapidly growing suburban ‘‘cities’’ that retain their suburbancharacter as they grow into cities. Not the largest cities in their metropolitan areas, theyare places with more than 100,000 persons that have maintained double digit growth.Found throughout the United States, they occur mostly in the Southwest with more thanhalf being located in California.

In Chapter 7, William H. Lucy and David L. Phillips step back and look at the overallpattern of suburban growth. They found that although suburbs grew as a whole duringthe 1990s, growth was highly uneven and not all suburbs grew. More than one-third of thesuburbs in the 35 metropolitan areas studied were either stagnant or loosing population inthe 1990s. Suburban loss was heaviest in the northeast led Buffalo, which lost populationin 71% of it suburbs, Philadelphia in 68%, and Detroit in 57%.

The final six chapters of the book ponder the third question of whether cities andsuburbs are becoming more alike. Nationally, in the 1900s, the US population becameracially and ethnically more diverse. Four out of five new people were persons of colorwith Hispanics passing African Americans as the largest ethnic racial group in the nation.The traditional nuclear family continued the shrink.

Most significant, for the first time in American history, the majority of central citiesbecame majority ‘‘minority’’ in the 1990s In Chapter 8, Berube describes how the nation’s100 largest cities were transformed into ‘‘truly multiracial, multicultural centers’’ (p. 9).–non-Hispanic whites declined by more than two million while their Hispanic populationmushroomed by 3.8 million. The increase in Asians was as widespread as Hispanics whilethe share of African Americans contracted very slightly.

In Chapter 9, William H. Frey tracks an equally dramatic shift of minority populationinto the suburbs of the country where minorities have become one-quarter of the popula-tion, a trend most pronounced in so-called melting pot metro areas with large immigrantpopulations.

In Chapter 10, Roberto Suro and Audrey Singer describe how the ‘‘explosive growth ofthe Latino population has created many new Latino destinations’’ in the United States,especially in smaller metro areas with little history of immigration. More than half ofLatinos live in suburbs.

In light of the new Hispanics, Asians, and other immigrants, Chapters 11 and 12examine the status of racial discrimination in the United States. In Chapter 11, Glaeserand Jacob L. Vigdor report that although African American segregation remained high in2000, it continued its three-decade decline to reach the lowest point since 1920.Integration, however, occurred because blacks integrated white neighborhoods and notthe reverse. This promising trend was seen most in growing metro areas and those in thesouth and west. Segregation remained ‘‘severe in highly populous metro areas’’ andhistorically black areas were not being integrated by whites. (p. 10). In Chapter 12, JohnLogan cautions that segregation remains severe and the pace of integration is slow, notingthat ‘‘black-white segregation (as measured by the dissimilarity index) and isolationremain high, especially in old Rust Belt metro areas . . . ’’ (p. 237). Suburbs have becomemore diverse overall at the cost, however, of being more segregated within.

464 | JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS | Vol. 27/No. 4/2005

In the concluding Chapter 13, ‘‘City Families and Suburban Singles,’’ Frey and Berubeshift to analyzing households, observing that ‘‘households may be a better indicator ofchanges in metropolitan housing demand, tax base, and service needs than populationchange’’ (p. 257). Finding that while city population growth was at a three-decade high,household formation was at three-decade low. Most significant, they also find a reversal inhousehold composition occurring between cities and suburbs in some regions. Whilesuburbs historically have been associated with ‘‘married with children’’ and cities with‘‘coming of age’’ singles and childless married couples, Frey and Berube found that fast-growing cities in the South and West (in the high immigration metros) experiencedsignificant increases of families married with children thus becoming more suburban.Conversely the suburbs of the slow-growing Northeast and Midwest became moreurban with the growth of more non-family households of elderly and singles living alone.

This book takes a while to absorb as it is thick with analysis as it challenges much ofwhat has been conventional wisdom of metropolitan patterns of growth for the last 40years. It also takes a while to appreciate because of the rate of change in American urbansociety it documents. And because the authors are looking at different aspects of urbanpatterns with new data, the narrative does not flow as well as it will it the future–but thenit will not be as new. The each essay is so replete with supporting data that the reader cannot only see what the writer is basing the analysis on but also test his or her own ideas.

On that note, urbanists will be excited to know that Volume II has just been published,which probes the data from the ‘‘long form’’ and looks at trends in poverty, migration, andhomeownership.

David AmesUniversity of Delaware

William S. Hettinger, Living and Working in Paradise: Why Housing Is Too Expensiveand What Communities Can Do About It (Windham, CT: Thames River Publishing,2005).

With 20 years of experience in real estate, housing, and community development,Dr. William S. Hettinger, also CEO of the Wyndham Financial Group, has succeededin writing a comprehensive guide understanding the housing crisis many face today.Hettinger provides a compelling look at the affordable housing problems in Americatoday and the challenges faced by the now vulnerability middle class. Hettinger utilizedhis dissertation research, completed at the University of Southern Mississippi, to compilevaluable information on which he based his book.

The general premise of the book is based on Hettinger’s research and stems from studiesinvolving specific tourist towns in North America, all of which have evaluated theirhousing markets and have begun to address housing problems. The communities utilizedin Hettinger’s research are Aspen, Colorado; Whistler, British Columbia, Canada;Martha’s Vineyard; and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Hettinger’s research suggests thatthese communities and others like them have witnessed an out-migration of local residentswho are employed by the local businesses due to the fact the locals can no longer afford to

| Book Reviews | 465

live in the area. The result of this migration is a lower standard of living for these people aswell as inconveniences associated with commuting to and from work. Hettinger explainsthe market failures in these communities are due to various external factors, which rangefrom topographical, regulatory and the ownership of a second home.

Hettinger’s book provides the reader with a friendly flow that allows for enjoyablereading from chapter to chapter. The book’s format provides intellectual stimulation forthose readers in the field of academia through his theories. His analysis of the research iscompelling evidence and he does an excellent job at conveying factual material as well ashis personal perspective. His arguments are convincing and he utilizes the theory ofmarket failure and economic theory to support his research results.

Hettinger optimized the use of primary and secondary data for each one of the com-munities studied. The primary data is from public record data such as census material,while the secondary consisted of strategic planning reports, planning department operat-ing document and other of this nature.

Hettinger’s research work will play a significance role in future studies related to thistopic. Furthermore, it will provide a useful tool, which can be used by middle classAmerica in their efforts to firstly understand rapidly increasing housing costs and secondlywhat can be done about it.

Ryan PittsUniversity of Southern Mississippi

466 | JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS | Vol. 27/No. 4/2005