“Running Down the Up Escalator”: A Revisionist Perspective on Decentralization and Deconcentration in the United States, 1970-2000

Abstract

This article proposes that decentralization and deconcentration in the United States be measured by tracking the proportion of people or jobs in fixed categories of places across census years, using metropolitan areas designated in each year rather than the fixed-year standard employed in studies that measure growth or migration rates. Measured this way, there was continuous centralization to metropolitan areas from 1970 to 2000 as well as a marked preference for very large metropolitan areas after 1980. This period of rapid economic transformation has generated theoretical explanationsnot only of decentralization,but also of recentralization(e.g., in the 1980s). Most of these explanations rely on fundamental shifts in society’s preferences for metropolitan or nonmetropolitan settings. The data suggest that decentralizing behavior, like the “nonmetro turnaround” of the 1970s, can instead be explained as an attempt to maintain the status quo. The essence of this behavior is captured in the phrase “running down the up escalator.” A related argument from the literature on metropolitan deconcentration is also analyzed.