Suburban Segregation

Many suburbs display two forms of segregation:

• Residential segregation. Housing in a given suburban community is usually built for people of a single social class, with others excluded by virtue of the cost, size, or location of the housing. Segregation by race and ethnicity also persists in some suburbs (see Chapter 7).

• Commercial segregation. Residents are separated from commercial and manufacturing activities that are confined to compact, distinct areas.

Residential Segregation

People with low incomes and African Americans are less likely to live in many U.S. suburbs because of the high cost of the housing and unwelcoming attitudes of established residents. Suburban communities discourage the entry of those with lower incomes and people of color because of fear that property values will decline if the high-status composition of the neighborhood is altered. Extensive areas of suburbs have been developed with houses of similar interior dimension, lot size, and cost, appealing to people with similar incomes and lifestyles.

The homogeneity in suburban communities is legally protected through zoning ordinances. A zoning ordinance is a law that limits the permitted uses of land and maximum density of development in a community. Zoning ordinances typically identify districts designed only for single-family houses, apartments, industry, or commerce. Low-income families may have difficulty finding affordable housing through provisions such as requiring each house to sit on a large lot and prohibiting apartments. Fences are built around some suburban housing districts, and visitors must check in at a gate house to enter.

Zoning Ordinance, Miami, Florida

Marketing geographers identify sectors, rings, and nodes that come closest to matching customers preferred by a retailer. Companies use this information to understand, locate, and reach their customers better and to determine where to put new stores and where advertising should appear.

Segmentation is the process of partitioning markets into groups of potential customers with similar needs and characteristics who are likely to exhibit similar purchasing behavior. A prominent example of geographic segmentation is the Potential Rating Index by Zip Market (PRIZM) clusters created by Nielsen Claritas. As Nielsen Claritas states, “birds of a feather flock together”—in other words, a person is likely to live near people who are similar.

Nielsen Claritas combines two types of geographic information: distribution of the social and economic characteristics of people obtained from the census and the addresses of purchasers of various products obtained from service providers. The variables are organized into 66 clusters that are given picturesque names. For each ZIP code in the United States, Nielsen Claritas determines the five clusters that are most prevalent (in alphabetical order). Nielsen Claritas calls this analysis “you are where you live”.

Mean Income, Cincinnati Suburbs

The Village of Indian Hill has a mean household income around $250,000, much higher than neighboring suburbs. The village is 92 percent white, compared with only 6 percent Asian American, 2 percent Hispanic, and 1 percent African American. According to Nielsen Claritas PRIZM cluster analysis, Indian Hill comprises mostly wealthy older people.

Suburban Consumer Services

Consumer and business services are also expanding in suburbs. A number of factors account for this trend. Consumer services have expanded in the suburbs because most of their customers live there (Figure 13-60). Historically, urban residents bought food and other daily necessities at small neighborhood shops in the midst of housing areas and shopped in the CBD for other products. But since the end of World War II, downtown sales have stagnated, whereas suburban sales have risen at an annual rate of 5 percent. Suburban retailing is concentrated in shopping malls of varying sizes. Larger malls, surrounded by extensive parking lots, contain department stores and specialty shops once located only in the CBD. A shopping mall is built by a developer, who buys the land, builds the structures, and leases space to individual merchants.

Suburban Shopping Malls, Columbus, Ohio

The malls surround the city near the beltway. Northland Mall and Westland Mall are examples of malls that have closed.

Suburban residents no longer wish to make the long journey to shop in the CBD, and corner shops have been replaced by supermarkets in shopping malls. The low density of residential construction discourages people from walking to stores, and restrictive zoning practices often exclude shops from residential areas.

Suburban Shopping Mall

Easton Town Center, in a Columbus, Ohio, suburb, is a shopping mall designed to look like a CBD.

In recent years, shopping malls have begun to lose customers. The rise of online consumer services, such as Amazon, has taken away from mall traffic. A number of malls have closed, including two near Columbus.

Pause & Reflect 13.3.3

Are you able to walk from your home to consumer services? Would you want to live near shops? Why or why not?

Suburban Business Services

Offices that do not require face-to-face contact are increasingly moving to suburbs, where rents are lower than in the CBD. Executives can drive more easily to their offices and park their cars without charge. Factories and warehouses also increasingly locate in suburbs for more space, cheaper land, and better truck access.

Suburban locations have posed hardships for some employees, especially lower-paid workers, such as administrative assistants and custodians. These employees may live in neighborhoods that are not convenient to where they work. They may not own reliable cars, and public transportation may not serve their place of employment. Some workers miss the stimulation and animation of a central location, particularly at lunchtime.