FREE ESSAY ON CITY - SUBURBAN DICHOTOMY

CITY - SUBURBAN DICHOTOMY

After LAPD officers Laurence Powell, Theodor Briseno, and Timoty Wind, supervised Sgt.
Stacey Koon, were found not guilty of beating citizen King, the Los Angeles riots
erupted. Why did the riots occur? The rebellion was an outcome of the fiscal and social
troubles which conffroting America's city and now. To understand riots, one must
understand the causes of social rage, ussually said to be racism, poverty, lack of
economic opportunity, and why people who experience this rage manage it in such a
destructive manner. 
America is a suburban country and urban America is still losing population. Today about
three-quarters of all Americans live in metropolitan areas. Two-thirds of them - in other
words, about half the nation's population - live in suburbs. Furthermore, in every region
of the country - even where city population are increasing - the fastest-growing parts of
the metropolitan areas are the surrounding suburbs. During the 1980's, for example, Los
Angeles grew by 17.4%, while its suburbs grew by 29.5%. Baltimore lost 6.4% of its
population while its suburbs grew by 16.5%. Between 1970 and 1990, Chicago was loosing
17% of its population as its suburbs gained 24%. 
Furthermore, in fact the suburbs dominate politics. The number of Congressmembers who
represent cities is declining, while the number who represent suburbs is increasing. For
example, in 1992,when the riots in Los Angeles occured, the House had 98 urban districts,
170 suburban districts, and 88 rural districts; the rest were a mix of urban-suburban or
rural-suburban populations. Of course, members of Congress who present suburban areas may
be personally sympathetic to the plight of the central cities,but it does not mean they
will vote to spend their constituents' tax dollars to alleviate urban problems.
These aspects have led to the movement of businesses to the suburbs, and these forces are
extremely difficult to counteract. Because people live, work, and pursue many of their
leisure activities in the suburbs, its income much bigger than cities'. In 1960's, the
per capita income of cities was 5% greater than their surrounding suburbs; by the 90's it
had fallen to 84% of suburban income. 
As a result, America's cities now face a shrinking tax base and fiscal traumas; cities
become increasingly populated by the poor. Poverty and racism are the most fundamental
problems facing our cities. Most of America's 38 million poor people live in our cities
and they are increasingly concentrated in ghettos and barrios. In 1980, there were 2.4
million poor people living in ghetto - 8.9 persent of all U.S. poor peple. Their poverty
stems from both high unemployment and low-wage work, but their concentration results from
racial discrimination. Sixty-two percent of non-Hispanic blaks live in blocks that are
60% or more black. Forty percent of the Hispanic population live in blocks that are 60%
or more Hispanic. At least two out of every three white Americans live in essentially
all-white neighborhoods. The black and Hispanic poor are much more likely than the white
poor to live in poverty neighborhoods. There are everything: high level unemployment,
falling incomes, the huge deficit of skills, terrible housing situation, overcrowding,
exorbitant rent, alarming failure of public health and health care delivery which
altogether represents the urban crisis.
William Julius Wilson claims that many of today's problems in the inner-city ghetto
neighborhoods - crime, family dissolution, welfare, low levels of social organization and
so on are fundamentally a consequence of a disappearance of work and indeed many people
argue that only an employment oriented policy can reduce the social problems of these
communities. Yet, stimulating true economic development in the inner city through tax
incentives or direct capital subsidies has proven very difficult. As a result, policy
makers have begun to develop ways to change the supply of labor by bringing the people in
the inner city to the jobs in the suburbs, instead of bringing jobs to the people in the
inner city. For example, in 1979, was created the Gautreaux program purpose of which was
attemting to break up the poverty community. The program has given 6,000 inner city
families (primarily single mothers) vouchers that allow them to relocate to low poverty
neighborhoods throughout a six county area in and around Chicago. 
In 1992 was made an experiment to compare the employment and educational outcomes of the
city movers with the suburban movers. Was found that women who moved to the suburbs were
28% more likely to be employed than the women who moved inside the city, on average 5.5
years after moving. This was true even though the wage gains attributed to the move were
the same for all women who worked, regardless of their location. In addition, he found
that 9 years (on average) after the move, the children of the suburban movers were doing
significantly better than the children of the city movers. Although criminal activity was
not measured, the children of the suburban movers dropped out of high school only 25% as
often as the city movers, were in college track courses 1.6 times as often as the city
movers, were 2.5 times as likely to attend college, were more than 4 times as likely to
earn $6.50 an hour if working, and only 38% as likely to be unemployed. These results
suggest that for children in these environments, relocation can be an effective tool to
change their focus towards positive outcomes like meaningful employment. 
These large positive results led to new housing programs. In 1992, HUD provided $168
million to fund Moving to Opportunity as a demonstration program for the housing mobility
concept. Moving to Opportunity has 5 sites in large cities - Baltimore, Boston, Chicago,
New York, and Los Angeles - and is funded for at least 10 years. 
Education, also, plays an important role in framing choices; low educational attainment,
which puts people at risk of frequent periods of unemployment and of achieving only low
paying and unsatisfactory jobs, will be associated with high crime participation.
Numerous programs were developed to provide basic education, vocational training and work
experience for youth and adults in high crime and high unemployment communities in order
to provide legitimate employment or employment skills to at-risk individuals . The
federal government spends large sums ($2.5 billion in 1994) on skills-developing programs
as PERP, TARP, LIFE, JTPA, CADD, KPEP, PIRP, PREP, STEP, and so forth.
Even though Americans are suburban nation, we cannot prosper if our cities are decaying.
We have to recognize that we are all in the same boat. Our future depends on how well,
and how soon, we find sovation and reforms which will help our cities and the people who
live in these cities. It is important becausee despite all the negative aspects, cities
play at least three critical functions in our regional and national economies. First,
they are the location of most metropolian area jobs, including the best-paing jobs, and
the nucleus of key industries - what economics call the advantages of agglomeration.
Second, these city-based firms and industries spin off jobs that are located in the
suburbs, but depend on the central cityfor their sustenance. Third,cities remain the hub
of the metropolitan region's civic life, where the major cultural, educational, medical,
governmental, and other institutions are located. 
Bibliography
Work Cited
Dreir, Peter The struggle for our cities PN'96:National urban policy/ 3/4/00 
Haddock,David, Polsby, Daniel Understanding riots 
Mashane,Clay BIB-ESSAY:American cities and suburbs H-Urban mail/