ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the residential segregation of Negro Americans and the effects of this segregation on housing markets and on patterns of urban development. If low income explains the concentration of Negroes in central cities, it also should be true that most low-income whites live in central cities and that most of the small Negro middle class live in the suburbs. Numerous explanations have been offered for the virtually total segregation of blacks. There is more than a germ of truth to the characterization of an increasingly black central city being strangled by a noose of white suburbs. While the economic theories of residential location unquestionably provide some insight into the residential choices of urban households, they are very incomplete. To conclude that "voluntary" self-segregation is responsible for much of the pattern of Negro residential segregation it is necessary to assume that Negroes have much stronger ties to their community than other groups.
