[...] The figures follow a national trend that suburban metropolitan areas from Chicago to Washington are experiencing, said William Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer, who has labeled such cities "melting pot metros."
"There are a surprising number of suburban counties where minorities are fueling much of the growth," he said. "It used to be when you saw a place where the white population was making up a smaller share of the overall population it was in the cities. But now it's in the suburbs."
Because metropolitan Baltimore remains mostly black and white, it isn't likely to become an overnight stew of ethnicities, such as Houston or Los Angeles, said Frey. Still, like cities nationwide, Baltimore's blacks are moving in greater numbers to the suburbs and the foreign-born population is choosing to settle outside of the traditional inner city.
"We're a suburban society," he said. "For a lot of minorities, making it in America is the brass ring, the American Dream. It doesn't mean that cities are dead, but at least in the United States, people who live in cities are not in the majority."
Frey said the drop in the white population could be a case of longtime suburbanites eager to move to a farther-removed suburb, with newer or more affordable homes.
"In the outer suburbs you'll also see growth in minorities, but not to the extent of white growth, because there were more whites in the suburbs to begin with," he said. [...]
| That's what caught our attention in Kelly Brewington's registration-required Baltimore Sun article "Minorities drive population growth in Baltimore suburbs"
Also: "The progress that blacks have made in Dallas and the challenges that remain," "In the 'burbs, you don't even know your next-door neighbor," "Buffalo's black suburbs actually exist in Atlanta or in Mecklenburg County, N.C." and "'The romance of having black folks who are very influential has to pass away'"
posted in articles on October 2, 2004 5:31 AM | t (0)
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