Case Studies

White flight happened in countless cities across the United States, each with its own story. Two are highlighted on this website: Atlanta, where white flight and housing segregation was spurred by white, segregationist activists and city policy, and St. Louis, where federal policies and the local housing authorities devalued properties in black neighborhoods while overvaluing white neighborhoods to incentivize suburbanization. 

These cases illustrate two common pathways of white flight and suburbanization in the post-war period and serve as guideposts to imagine how white flight occurred in other cities around the United States.