Employment Decentralization in US Metropolitan Areas: Is Los Angeles an Outlier or the Norm?

1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 1727-1743 ◽  
Author(s):  
P Gordon ◽  
H W Richardson

In this paper data from the economic censuses are utilized to show that most job growth in the manufacturing, wholesaling, retail, and service industries in the 1982–87 period has been in the urban peripheries of the twelve consolidated metropolitan statistical areas (CMSAs). Similar data for 1976, 1980, and 1986 from another source, the Wharton Urban Decentralization Project, confirm many of these trends, and for a larger set of metropolitan areas. The results show that Los Angeles is more in the middle of the twelve CMSAs than it is an outlier. It is suggested that these common results reflect a common process, that is, an initial movement of households towards the metropolitan edge in search of amenities (or flight from central city ills), followed by the decentralization of firms to increase their access to suburban labor pools.

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Wright ◽  
Mark Ellis ◽  
Virginia Parks

This paper works through some of the epistemological and methodological consequences of an unreflexive use of white suburbs as the expected residential destination in U.S. spatial assimilation research. Foregrounding immigrant suburbanization in spatial assimilation occludes alternative geographic trajectories; simply put, spatial diffusion need not be central city to suburban decentralization. More problematically, spatial assimilation research often translates residential movement to the suburbs into increasing proximity with whites. This results in the degree of segregation from whites becoming the standard by which immigrant assimilative progress is gauged. Building on critical whiteness studies and recent research on aspatial assimilation, we develop some new theoretical entry points into the process of spatial assimilation. We treat metropolitan areas as constellations of neighborhoods rather than a central city–suburban doughnut and become circumspect in our use of whites as a referent category. Our investigation of spaces of assimilation in greater Los Angeles reveals that established immigrants are more dispersed residentially than recent conational arrivals, although the effect varies by group. For many immigrant groups, these dispersions from concentrations of initial settlement do not reduce segregation from whites. Segregation lessens over time, however, between immigrants and other native‐born Americans. For many groups, but by no means all, a dispersed residential pattern is associated with higher quality neighborhoods.


2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. N. Le

This article uses census data from the 2006–08 American Community Survey to illustrate the range of Asian American entrepreneurial activities in the Los Angeles and the New York City areas and finds that Los Angeles self-employment is characterized by emerging high-skill “professional service” industries while New York continues to be dominated by low-skill traditional “enclave-associated” niches. Within these patterns, there are also notable interethnic and generational differences. I discuss their socioeconomic implications and policy recommendations to facilitate a gradual shift of Asian American entrepreneurship toward more professional service activities that reflect the demographic evolution of the Asian American community and the ongoing dynamics of globalization.


2004 ◽  
Vol 112 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Gibson ◽  
Daniel Robinson

Much recent academic and public discourse has centred on the fate of non-metropolitan Australia under successive federal neoliberal reform agendas. This paper discusses creative networks in non-metropolitan areas in light of this, with a focus on issues of youth unemployment and out-migration. First, it draws on research on creative industry development on the New South Wales Far North Coast to assess the efficacy of creative networks as a source of new job growth in rural areas. Second, and more broadly, the paper discusses the North Coast Entertainment Industry Association (NCEIA), a nascent creative network in the region. Several observations are drawn from its experiences. Creative networks in non-metropolitan areas face problems of informal and itinerant membership, and anti-socialisation attitudes, Yet they appear to have a substantial role in improving the conditions of viability for vulnerable cultural producers. When conceived as part of interventionist strategies to promote youth employment and to stem the youth exodus from rural areas, they may also have sociodemographic implications beyond the scope of their original intent.


1994 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
W Wiewel ◽  
J Persky

In this paper the authors seek to build a new case for neighborhood-oriented government programs, primarily based on economic, rather than moral, political, or social policy considerations. Serious government investment can provide a base for much expanded service sector employment in neighborhoods in the central city and aging suburbs. Agglomeration effects in expanding service industries remain important for productivity, in spite of decentralization. Furthermore, the costs of decentralization impose constraints on further suburban growth. Urban neighborhoods can provide relatively high-productivity locales for service industries, because of existing infrastructure, a large labor force, proximity to downtowns, local entrepreneurs, and the enduring advantages of density. However, programs are needed to improve public infrastructure to increase productivity; invest in human capital; and strengthen the competitive position of neighborhoods through quality-of-life improvements.


2012 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-255
Author(s):  
Michan Andrew Connor

Early television shows that focused on Los Angeles as subject, such as The City at Night (KTLA) and Jack Linkletter's On the Go (CBS), assured white, middle-class, suburban viewers that they had a place in the larger metropolis by presenting a selective knowledge of its features and issues. On the Go surpassed the entertainment level of The City at Night to address some serious social issues. By the mid-sixties, suburbanization had been fully embraced as the "good life." Shows such as Ralph Story's Los Angeles (KNXT), instead of engaging suburban viewers in metropolitan issues, entertained them with glimpses of the city's "oddities." The change in tone marked the passing of the center of cultural identity from the central city to the suburbs.


2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 539-562 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey K. O'Hara ◽  
Sarah A. Low

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) agricultural sales doubled in the United States between 1992 and 2007 and then plateaued between 2007 and 2012. It is not clear whether the plateau in sales was attributable to the recession, market saturation, an aging population, or other factors. We estimate the influence of socioeconomic factors in metropolitan areas on DTC agricultural sales between 1992 and 2012 in thirteen Northeast states using county-level panel data. We find that the income elasticity of DTC agricultural purchases ranged from 2.2 to 2.7 and that counties in metropolitan areas did not have higher DTC agricultural sales than other counties, ceteris paribus.


Contexts ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 44-48
Author(s):  
Karen Sternheimer

In 1992, then-Vice President Dan Quayle charged that Murphy Brown, a fictional character on the CBS sitcom of the same name, glamorized single motherhood by having a child outside marriage. His comment ignited a national debate about not just single parenthood, but the influence Hollywood and celebrities have over the choices Americans make in their lives. In a speech about civil unrest in Los Angeles, Quayle charged that characters like Brown indirectly contribute to central city problems by “mocking the importance of fathers.”


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