Urban Industrial Transition and the Underclass

Abstract

Major U.S. cities have transformed industrially from centers of goods processing to centers of information processing. Concurrently, the demand for poorly educated labor has declined markedly and the demand for labor with higher education has increased substantially. Urban blacks have been caught in this web of change. Despite improvements in their overall educational attainment, a great majority still have very little schooling and therefore have been unable to gain significant access to new urban growth industries. Underclass blacks, with exceptionally high rates of school dropout, are especially handicapped. Whereas jobs requiring only limited education have been rapidly increasing in the suburbs, poorly educated blacks remain residentially constrained in inner-city housing. Within underclass neighborhoods, few households have private vehicles, which are shown to be increasingly necessary for employment in dispersing metropolitan economies. The implications of interactions among race, space, and urban industrial change are explored. Reasons for the success of recent Asian immigrants in transforming cities are considered, and policies are suggested to rekindle social mobility in the black underclass.