ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors present the bare outlines of suburban ascendancy and dominance and focus on chinks in the suburban armor. They emphasize diversity in suburbs as they looked for diversity rather than uniformity in cities. Many suburbs have declined in population. Some have fewer housing units. Many have more minorities and immigrants. The elderly population is up and the proportion of families with children is down. In our sample, 11 of 40 central cities (28 percent) lost population at an average rate of 8.3 percent per city, and 431 suburbs lost population in these 11 metropolitan areas where the central cities declined, at an average rate of 6.4 percent per suburb. Suburban population decline was more frequent in the slow-growing metropolitan areas, where 37.6 percent declined. Suburban population decline was least common in fast-growing Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), where only 8.0 percent of the suburbs declined.
