Social Polarization in Post-Industrial Metropolises 9783110878394, 9783110137286

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Social Polarization in Post-Industrial Metropolises

Social Polarization in Post-Industrial Metropolises Edited by John O'Loughlin and Jürgen Friedrichs

W DE G Walter de Gruyter • Berlin • New York 1996

John O'Loughlin, Professor of Geography, Institute of Behavior Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA Jiirgen Friedrichs, Professor of Sociology, Head of the Institute of Sociology, University of Cologne, G e r m a n y

With 79 tables and 36 figures

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

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Social polarization in post-industrial metropolises / edited by John O'Loughlin and Jürgen Friedrichs. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 3-11-013728-3 (alk. paper) 1. Urban economics. 2. Polarization (Social sciences) 3. Minorities - Economic conditions. 4. Sociology, Urban. I. O'Loughlin, John V. (John Vianney) II. Friedrichs, Jürgen. HT321.S63 1996 307.76—dc20 96-3316 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging-in-Publication

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Social polarization in post-industrial metropolises / ed. by John O'Loughlin and Jürgen Friedrichs. - Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1996 ISBN 3-11-013728-3 NE: O'Loughlin, John [Hrsg.]

© Copyright 1996 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany. Typesetting: Converted by Knipp Medien und Kommunikation oHG, Dortmund. Printing: Gerike, Berlin. - Binding: Mikolai GmbH, Berlin. - Cover Design: Johannes Rother, Berlin.

Preface

In June 1995, a mile-long stretch of shops in Bradford, an industrial city in the woolen region of Yorkshire in the United Kingdom, was burned to the ground in a riot. While the flashpoint that touched off the riot was similar to earlier riots in Detroit (1967), Miami (1980), London (1981), and Los Angeles (1993) - poor treatment of a minority population by police - this Bradford riot was not a typical "race riot". It involved only part of the large South Asian community in Bradford; it did not occur in a slum area but in a lower middle-class neighborhood; and it clearly had a strong economic basis. In short, this Bradford incident was a possible outcome of the trends portrayed in this book, which examines the relationships between economic changes in large cities in Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa. The authors in this volume were asked by the editors to consider the impacts of the large-scale economic shifts that have occurred since the beginning of the global period of economic stagnation, beginning around 1970, on the political and social relations between majority and minority in their respective cities. The Bradford example, while clearly unknown at the time of the book's conception in 1990, portends what the editors see as a worst-case scenario for the cities of the Western world. Bradford's textile mills now employ 9,600 compared to 70,000 in 1961'. At the height of their operation in the 1950s, many Muslims from Pakistan and (what is now) Bangladesh were recruited to work in the textile mills. Now, unemployment for the various ethnic groups in Bradford is (respectively): 36% for the Bangladeshis, 35% for Pakistanis, 23% for Caribbean populations, 16% for Indians and 9% for Whites. Indians and East Asians are predominantly engaged in business and in the professions while the Muslim populations are still mostly employed as unskilled labor. With the collapse of the textile industry in Bradford, the Muslim population was most negatively affected and it is especially the younger generation (children of the original immigrants) that are most alienated from the British host society. "Bradford's Muslim youths are stuck between two worlds. They are not part of the western one, because they cannot get the jobs that would allow them to join it. They do not feel part of the eastern one, either, and they do not believe that its leaders, either the councillors or the mullahs, have stood up for them" (Economist, 17 June, 1995, 60-61). 1 The material appearing in this paragraph is based on the article "Why Bradford burned" (.Economist, 17 June, 1995, 60-61).

VI

Preface

The question of whether we can expect more Bradford-style incidents is not too hidden in each of the chapters in this book. While the particular character of the economic change experienced in each city can be expected to vary a lot, between countries and within a country (compare the economic growth rates of Miami and Detroit), the one common denominator has been the shift from industrial to service employment. While big cities like New York have seen shifts of hundreds of thousands of jobs between these two sectors, all of the authors in this book document a similar shift over the past quarter-century. Growing and declining cities experience a similar economic fate as globalization processes change the nature of the national and local economies. "Deindustrialization" has become an everyday phrase as people in Western industrial countries note the shift of manufacturing jobs offshore to East Asia and other semi-peripheral locations and the associated surge of imported manufactured products. Labor unions have experienced a sharp (catastrophic in the U.S.) fall in membership as Fordist production is being replaced by flexible manufacturing and a shift to service employment, including the growing number of part-time employees. Only public-service worker unions have managed to retain membership. Governments try to balance the dominant neo-liberal belief in free trade with protection of native industries under threat from cheap imports through tariffs, quotas and subsidies. In the eyes of the workers, governments are losing credibility for their failure to control global economic forces and the consequent loss of employment in domestic industries. The alienation of both the traditional working-class and the immigrant populations has simultaneously produced an electoral shift to parties of the right, like the National Front in France, and street demonstrations and riots in minority communities. While the global trends are fairly clear, the reactions of governments, employers and workers vary from city to city. This book presents 11 case studies of the economic and social developments in large metropolitan areas. The activism of governments in the Netherlands stands in sharp contrast to the free market atmosphere that dominates in U.S. metropolitan areas. Consequently, the particular political and social outcomes are the results of contingent circumstances interacting with large-scale, extensive structural economic developments. By comparing the details of the changes presented in the individual chapters, the reader gains a keen sense of the wide variety of possible outcomes while seeing the similarities of the processes operating across the geographic spectrum. This book had its beginning at two conferences held in the summer of 1990. In Paris, at the International Housing Research Council conference, the editors were in charge of the panels on residential segregation and housing. A week later in Madrid, they participated in the International Sociological Association meeting at which further sessions were devoted to the issues of segregation and polarization. From these meetings, the idea of a book devoted to the topic of the effects of economic change on social polarization, with a question mark still attached to the concept of polarization. Individual authors were invited to contribute to the volume and an effort was made to balance the American experience, which dom-

Preface

VII

inates the literature on polarization, with other case studies of cities of Western Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world outside the U.S. The result is, we believe, a more carefully balanced picture of a social-economic process that affects all parts of the rich Western world. The individual authors of the volume were requested to treat the following common themes that would unite the chapters, locationally separated across the globe: 1) Why your city fits the "post-industrial restructuring" profile? What kinds of economic changes has your city seen in relation to national and international economies and links? 2) Examine phases of change in the 1960-1991 period by a) economic, b) demographic, and c) social indicators. 3) Using theory-based explanations of changes and their (causal) relationship, try to specify the relationships between the dimensions mentioned above and then proceed to their spatial implications. 4) What are the relationships between different levels of analysis, that is, the international, national, regional and household, in terms of context effects? The editors wished to identify the changing options (opportunities and constraints) for individuals and households under specified conditions of (international, national and regional) economic change. Authors were further asked to organize each chapter in a consistent manner so that the typical chapter would resemble the following format: 1) The metropolis " X " in the changing global and national economy since 1960 (at least since 1970); 2) the social and spatial effects of these changes on polarization and segregation of minorities and/or immigrants; 3) the efforts (or non-efforts) of national, regional and local governments to redress these developments; and 4) the future outlook for the social ecology of the metropolis and for group relations, that is, for social conflict, housing and job competition, and social movements. That the chapters have this format and consistent character is a tribute to the care and attention of the individual authors and we thank them for their work. In the course of this work, we have collected some debts. The particular editorial team of a geographer in North America and a sociologist in Europe was first mooted by Willem van Vliet of the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado. It turned out that almost all of the chapters were written by geographers but a specific geographic, discipline-based fetish is absent from the contributions. However, the specific contingent circumstances and character of each of the cities is highlighted, as one would expect from the works of geographers. Michael Shin of the Geography Department and the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado helped enormously with the construction of maps and preparation of the graphic materials for many chapters and he was later pressed into service in the editorial work. American and European students in the class on "Immigrants in Western Europe and the United States" at the University of Colorado provided useful comments on rough drafts of the chapters. Finally, as always, the excellent research facilities and work environment of the Program on Political and Economic Change of the Institute of Behavioral Science at the Uni-

Vili

Preface

versity of Colorado made this editorial and writing task a lot easier by providing a refuge from the administrative responsibilities of the first editor. Jiirgen Friedrichs and John O'Loughlin Cologne, and Boulder, Colorado, December 1995

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Polarization in Post-Industrial Societies: Social and Economic Roots and Consequences

1

John O 'Loughliti and Jürgen Friedrichs I II III IV V VI Vl.a VII

The Concept of Polarization The Causes of Polarization: Economic Restructuring The Changing Nature of Employment and the Polarized Nature of Cities Linking Groups and Economic Change Relating Social to Spatial Polarization Propositions for the Study of Social Polarization Propositions Conclusions

Chapter 2 Social Polarization in Post-Industrial London

1 3 5 12 13 16 17 18

19

Emrys Jones I II III IV V

From Pre-Industrial to Post-Industrial City The Emergence of the Post-Industrial City Social Polarization in London Race and Ethnicity in London Issues of Policy

Chapter 3 Social Segmentation and Spatial Polarization in Greater Paris

19 22 27 32 43

45

Catherine Rhein I I.a I.b II II.a

The Economic and Political Roles of Paris Paris as an International and National Metropolis Paris as a National Capital Regional and Local Forms and Processes of Polarization and Segregation Processes of Social Polarization

46 46 47 51 52

X II.b III IH.a III.b III.c III.d IV IV.a IV.b V

Table of Contents

Residential Segregation Social Policies against Polarization and Residential Segregation ... Urban Renewal in Paris and Social Polarization in the Metropolis . The District of La Défense New Towns as Growth Centers Social Housing: Is there a Duality in the Suburban Housing Market? Present Stakes and Future Challenges of Segregation Suburban Crisis: Social Crisis or Housing Crisis? Urban Dynamics and Relations between Metropolization and Segregation Conclusion

54 58 60 61 61 62 65 65 68 69

Chapter 4 Amsterdam: Urban Change and the Welfare State Sako Musterd and Wim Ostendorf

71

I II II.a Il.b II.c II.d III IILa III.b IV IV.a IV.b V

71 71 72 74 74 77 80 80 84 88 88 91 93

Introduction Changes Affecting Dutch Society in the Last Quarter-Century Economic Restructuring in the Netherlands Changing Household Composition in the Netherlands International Migration to the Netherlands The Growth of the Dutch Welfare State Socio-Spatial Consequences of Immigration in a Welfare State Amsterdam and its Urban Region The Urban Mosaic of the City of Amsterdam State Policies as Reaction to Population Trends Compact City Model to Stop Urban Decline The Restructuring of the Welfare State The Future of Amsterdam: A Hard City?

Chapter 5 Ziirich Goes Global: Economic Restructuring, Social Conflicts and Polarization Hansruedi Hitz, Christian Schmid and Richard Wolff I II Il.a Il.b II.c III IILa

Introduction The Swiss Model of Development Swiss Fordism The Rise of the Headquarter Economy The Crisis of the 1990s The Urbanization Process The Economy of the Centers

95 95 97 97 99 100 102 102

Table of Contents IILb IV

The Development of Urban Regions Politics and Planning: From the Growth Coalition to the Territorial Compromise IV.a Zürich in the Fordist Boom IV.b The Urban Crisis and the End of the Growth Coalition IV.c The Territorial Compromise V Zürich as a Global City V.a The Urban Revolt V.b The Culture of the Headquarter Economy V.c The Selective Housing Crisis and the Struggle for Affordable Housing V.d The New Stalemate of Urban Development V.e A City of Jobs versus a City of Housing VI The Urban Periphery VI.a. Spatial Fragmentation and Flexibilization VI.b The City Belt in Zürich-North VI.c New Frontlines and Fracture Zones VII Socio-Economic and Territorial Restructuring VILa Polarization and Segmentation VII.b Small-Scale Social Segregation VIII The Constraints of a Red-Green Government VHI.a Fiscal Crisis VHI.b Right-Wing Rhetoric Sets the Agenda IX The New Model of Urban Development IX.a Flexibilization and Fragmentation: The New Configuration of Center and Periphery IX.b Polarization and Segmentation: The Urban Region as a Super-Market Chapter 6 Intra-Regional Polarization: Cities in the Ruhr Area, Germany Jürgen

I I.a II II.a III IV IV.a IV.b IV.c

XI 104 106 106 108 110 Ill Ill 112 113 114 115 116 116 117 118 119 119 122 124 124 127 129 129 130

133

Friedrichs

A Brief Historical Sketch of the Ruhr 134 Historical Preconditions for Urban Change after 1970 140 Propositions and Methodology 141 Propositions 141 Comparing the Ruhr Area to Changes in Northrhine-Westphalia and the Federal Republic of Germany 142 Changes in the Ruhr Cities 1970-1993 144 Economic Change in the Ruhr Area 146 Fiscal Change in the Ruhr Cities 151 Social Change in the Ruhr 154

XII V V.a V.b V.c VI

Table of Contents

Summary: Has Polarization Occurred? Structural and Dynamic Aspects Relating Economic Change to Inequality Integrating the Findings Discussion

Chapter 7 Economic Change, Immigration, and Social Polarization in Sydney

162 164 165 166 170

173

Seamus Grimes I II III IV V VI

Sydney's Economy: From Local to International Physical Development of the City Immigration and Ethnicity in Sydney Immigrants of the 1950s and 1960s Indochinese Concentrations in Sydney Conclusion

Chapter 8 Resegregation within a Process of Desegregation: Social Polarization in Johannesburg

173 180 182 184 188 191

195

Graeme H.T. Hart I II III IILa IV V

Introduction 195 Background to the Study of Racially-Based Residential Location .. 196 Flatland 1960-1990 198 Rent Control in Johannesburg 199 Problems of Flatland 203 Conclusion 205

Chapter 9 Economic Restructuring and Social Polarization in Toronto

207

Robert Murdie I II II.a II.b II.c II.d II.e III

The Emergence of Toronto as the Dominant Metropolitan Center in Canada Toronto in the Changing Global and National Economy Decline in Manufacturing and Increase in Service Employment . . . Rapid Growth of Financial Activities and Producer Services Decentralization of Manufacturing and Routine Office Functions .. Toronto as a Post-Industrial Metropolis Toronto in the 1990s The Effects of Economic Restructuring on Immigrant Groups in Toronto

207 210 210 213 214 216 217 219

Table of Contents III.a IILb III.c Ill.d IV V V.a V.b

XIII

Concentration of Selected Ethnic Groups in Industry and Occupation Categories 221 Inequalities Among Ethnic Groups in the Toronto Labor Market ... 223 The Case of Recent Immigrants 224 Differential Experiences of the Portuguese and Blacks 226 Efforts of Governments to Remove Barriers to Employment 229 Future Outlook 230 Social Ecology of Metropolitian Toronto 230 Group Relations 231

Chapter 10 New York City: Caribbean Immigration and Residential Segregation in a Restructured Global City

235

Dennis Conway and Thomas J. Cooke I II III III.a IILb III.c IV IV.a IV.b V

Introduction Immigration and Residential Segregation of "Non-White" Immigrants Caribbean Immigration and Residential Segregation Since the 19th Century The Formative Phase of Non-White, Caribbean Enclave Communities An Interruption in the Consolidation Process of Non-White Caribbean Enclaves The Third Phase of "New Caribbean Immigration" to New York City Residential Separation of Caribbean Enclaves in New York City, 1980 Indices of Racial Segregation Comparative Enclave Residential Ecologies Conclusions

235 237 240 241 243 244 250 252 254 257

Chapter 11 Economic Restructuring, Job Opportunities and Black Social Dislocation in Detroit 259 Donald R. Deskins I II III IV V VI

The Cyclical Nature of U.S. Automobile Industry Employment Automotive and Other Selective Employment Trends Changing Job Opportunities Structure Financial Rewards from Automobile Industry Employment Japan and the U.S. Automobile Market Social and Spatial Dislocation

260 262 263 266 268 270

XIV

Table of Contents

VI.a Vl.b VII VIII IX

Class Separation Within the City Race and Class Divisions in the Metropolitan Area Detroit's Changing Resource Base and Social Weil-Being Future Prospects for a City Struggling to Survive Conclusions

271 272 277 281 281

Chapter 12 Ethnicity, Class, and the Economic Internationalization of Miami

283

Jan

Nijman

I II III IV

Miami's Socio-Cultural Metamorphosis Economic Restructuring and Internationalization Social Polarization in Miami Conclusions

284 287 291 297

References

301

Authors and Affiliations

331

Index

333

Chapter 1 Polarization in Post-Industrial Societies: Social and Economic Roots and Consequences John O 'Loughlin and Jiirgen Friedrichs Why has there been a renewed interest in social polarization and urban fragmentation among social scientists in the Western countries since the late 1980s? The problem is not new; descriptions like the monumental study by Charles Booth, "Life and Labour of People in London" (1889), or subsequent studies for the U.K. (Townsend, 1979), the U.S. (Harrington, 1962, 1984) or France (Paugam, 1991, 1993) or ten neighborhoods in different European cities (Jacquier, 1991) have given ample evidence of the concentration of poverty in urban areas. The major reason seems to be that after two decades of prosperity and liberal policies to increase social equality, we find ourselves in a time of recession, disappointment about the success of government programs, and a severe cut-back of social welfare in favor of individual responsibility. All these changes add up to a growing disparity of incomes and loss of the tenets of liberal policy. The challenge that this situation creates for social scientists is most vividly discussed by Wilson (1987).

I The Concept of Polarization To describe recent trends in cities of highly industrialized countries, the term "polarization" has been introduced by numerous authors. This term, however, is somewhat ambiguous. In a strict statistical sense, it may be interpreted as a change from a uni-modal distribution of a given variable into a bi-modal distribution. Using a statistical interpretation, Sassen (1991) has suggested that the top and the bottom occupational groups will increase, whereas those in the middle group will decrease and the gap between the top and the bottom will grow. Data for different cities indicate that this is not the case. In the 1981-1991 period in London, the upper occupational levels increased in size, but so did the middle categories, and it was the lower occupational categories that decreased in numbers (Hamnett, 1994). This statistical distribution is but one way to explicate the concept of polarization. The most common variable in polarization studies is income. However, this uni-dimensional focus is too simple for any analysis at the societal level. In our view, it falls short because certain groups in the population (the potentiallyactive population) are blocked or excluded from the labor market. It is exactly this process that accounts for the decreasing numbers in the lower occupational level. These groups became either unemployed, or started to receive public assistance,

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John O'Loughlin and Jürgen Friedrichs

or they resigned and dropped out of the labor market; this latter trend may be especially the case for women. This group of persons seeking a job, but hindered in finding one due to labor market restrictions, has to be included in analyses of polarization. It may be more fruitful to re-conceptualize polarization and growing antagonism between social groups as a change in the number and composition of social groups, including ethnic status. The latter idea captures two societal changes, an increase in the number of different social groups and, more importantly, an increase in the population (or membership) in any of these groups. The number of new social groups may be negligible, but change in the membership of groups is the dominant pattern of social change. Neither unemployment, nor homelessness, nor single-parent families are new phenomena, but the number of unemployed persons, the number of homeless and the number of single-parent households have increased substantially over the last ten years in Western nations. It is the impact of these changes upon (urban) society that we have to assess in this book since the combined effect of such changes causes severe problems for urban society. To give just one example: From the rising number of unemployed, a constantly larger percentage moves into public assistance. Since the same holds true for the increasing number of single-parent households, an increasing percentage has to apply for public assistance. The combined effect of both sets of public assistance imposes a heavy burden on the budgets of cities. Spatial polarization is the result of a process of urban change, which, in turn, is assumed to be the result of economic changes on the national and international level. Further, it is assumed that urban residents are subjected to contradictory economic and social futures or options, broadly described by two categories, rising and declining social status. The outcome on the urban level is supposed to be a "dual city" (Mollenkopf and Castells, 1991); the city of the rich and the city of the urban underclass. Others have proposed a more differentiated picture; for Marcuse (1989), it resembles a "quartered city". Irrespective of the number of groups, the common element in these diagnoses is a growing social inequality, measured by a growing inequality of income and job opportunities. The rich and better-qualified get richer; the poor get poorer and lose their jobs; the middle-class is splitting apart. The same argument holds true for the debate about a "new urban underclass" (Fainstein and Harloe, 1992; Kasarda, 1990; Musterd, 1994; Naroska, 1988; W.S. Wilson, 1990). Evidently, there has always been urban poverty; it was documented by Friedrich Engels for Manchester in the 1840s and the already-cited study by Charles Booth for the London of the 1880s. It is mainly for this reason that most authors reject the "underclass" term because it has discriminatory connotations (Steinberg, 1989). We may conceive of this phenomenon "only" to have recently increased in numbers. There is no new urban underclass, but an increase in numbers of persons and households below the poverty line. The outstanding new phenomenon is the rise in the feelings of alienation of the middle-class and the economic insecurity of

Chapter 1 : Polarization in Post-Industrial Societies

3

their position. There is a rising probability for members of the traditional middleclass of becoming unemployed or even to experience poverty. Olson (1963) has remarked that economic growth will create not only a "nouveau richesse", but also new poverty for people in the middle-class who, in contrast to working-class people, have never experienced poverty. What we are discussing, therefore, is not a new phenomenon or the formation of new groups but an increase and separation of pre-existing social, economic and ethnic groups.

II The Causes of Polarization: Economic Restructuring Two different approaches to the polarization problem may be distinguished. One refers to changes in the labor market while the other refers to changes in the income structure. Obviously, they do not exclude each other, although they have been separated in the literature. Both of these, in turn, may be related to their spatial outcomes, such as segregation and the increase in size and number of depressed inner-city areas. In the following, we will elaborate these approaches and propose a methodological frame for integrating them, especially with respect to the spatial impacts. The labor market approach is a derivative of the analyses on the changing economic basis of highly industrialized countries from goods-producing to servicesand information-processing. This change, which has often been denoted as deindustrialization (e.g. Bluestone and Harrison, 1982) is well-documented for the U.S. and almost all European countries, including the U.K. (Goddard and Champion, 1983; Keeble, 1976), Germany (Hamm and Wienert, 1990) and France (Rhein, Chapter 3 of this volume). The major components of this process are a decline of jobs in manufacturing (which still has not ended), a rise in jobs in the tertiary (service) sector, and a subsequent decline of old-industrialized regions, captured by terms like "sunbelt-frostbelt" or "south-north-gradient". The main effect on the labor market was a rise in demand for higher educational and professional qualifications which could not be met by the supply of unemployed from local manufacturing industries. For most old, industrialized regions and cities throughout the U.S. and Europe, this resulted in a spatial mismatch (Friedrichs, 1985; Kasarda, 1983, 1985; Kasarda and Friedrichs, 1985; Kasarda, Friedrichs and Ehlers, 1992). Job availability did not match labor availability. Rising rates of unemployment and households receiving public assistance were among the best indicators of such changes and of the decline in the economic base of cities. The risk of job loss was higher for persons with a low-level of education; a second dividing line was between un- and semi-skilled vs. skilled workers. A further consequence was the decline of traditional entry-level jobs, once common in manufacturing, that allowed persons entering the labor market to move gradually to better jobs. By contrast, the entry level jobs became dead-end-jobs, such as working in the restaurant industry.

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John O'Loughlin and Jürgen Friedrichs

This assumption of the negative effects of economic restructuring has been questioned. First, it is not clear whether the majority of the newly-created jobs are really low-qualification dead-end-jobs; further, this percentage may vary among countries. Second, there is a debate over the extent to which specific minorities are affected by these changes, i.e. unemployment and dead-end-jobs. Wilson (1987, 45,103,123) finds Blacks to be especially disadvantaged. In times of labor force surplus, employers can be particularly selective and will recruit less Blacks because of qualification rules and discrimination. This may not hold true for all ethnic minorities, as the U.S. case indicates. Lin (1995) observes upward mobility chances for Chinese working in New York sweat-shops. The ethnic and immigrant minorities in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands tend to be unemployed more frequently and for longer periods than the indigenous labor force. The second approach pertains to income polarization. In an important article, Steinberg (1983) asked the question "Is the Mass Market Drifting Apart?"; he supplied data for the U.S. indicating that this is indeed the case. Logan et al. (1992) have shown income inequality to have increased both in New York and - to a lesser extent - in London over the 1977-1988 period. Data from the Income Surveys in 1978 and 1983 would corroborate these findings for Germany, since approximately 20% of the gainfully employed either had no increase in real income or an increase below the inflation rate. Since the mid-1980s, in almost all European countries unemployment rates have gone up, as has the number of households receiving public welfare, and also the number of households below the poverty level. We are restricting our discussion to these indicators, since a precise analysis of income changes is very difficult to establish due to changes in household composition and the lack of a common standard in the calculation of equivalent incomes. (For a more detailed discussion of the German case, see Krause, 1992, 1994.) To depict these changes, the French introduced the expression of a society "at three speeds" (société à trois vitesses) and the Germans speak of a "two-thirds society" (.Zwei-Drittel-Gesellschaft) (Habich et al., 1991). Finally, it is plausible to assume that cities with a declining economy exhibit a different pattern of poverty within its urban districts compared to cities that are growing or entering a phase of revitalization. Available evidence, however, does not indicate a reduction of poverty for cities experiencing revitalization. The new growth and poverty rates seem to be only loosely connected. Data on New York (Drennan, 1991 ; Lampard, 1986), on Hamburg (Alisch and Dangschat, 1993), and cities in the Ruhr region (Friedrichs, 1994,1995) consistently show that regeneration or continued growth (as in the case of Munich) does not result in a significant reduction of unemployment, nor in a reduction of the number of households receiving public assistance, nor in the expenditures per resident for public assistance.

Chapter 1: Polarization in Post-Industrial Societies

5

III The Changing Nature of Employment and the Polarized Nature of Cities1 In this book, we wish to understand the recent development of the economies of metropoles in highly-industrialized countries, and the resultant impacts on the fortunes of the respective groups that comprise these metropolises. As a starting point, we need to pose broad issues such as the future economic development of a city in a rapidly-changing world economy, that are associated with new technologies and means of production and dramatically-changed political circumstances. In this view, cities are the nodes in the networks that link the national and local economies of an integrated world-economy and the cities at the top of that urban hierarchy can be termed "world cities" (Friedmann and Wolff, 1982; Friedmann, 1986). Because of the end of bounded national economies, and their replacement by states that form the constituent blocks of the world-economy, it is easy to agree with Castells (1988) when he refers to the replacement of a "space of places" by a "space of flows". In the language of geography, "formal regions" are being displaced increasingly by "functional regions". Over the past 200 years, the world-system has experienced four Kondratieff (approximately) 50 year cycles, each with about a quarter-century of growth and a quarter-century of stagnation and decline. Currently, we are in the B (decline) phase of the fourth cycle (Taylor, 1989). While the cycles are well-defined, the particular circumstances giving rise to the growth and decline phases are not wellexplained. There seems to be growing evidence for the innovation-productionoverproduction explanation. In this view, each cycle is generated by a new technology and to the products that spin off from it. Thus, the first cycle was generated by the steam engine and coal power, the second by the iron and steel revolution, the third by chemicals and the fourth by electronics in the 1940s. The geographic location of the innovation and the first manufacture of the resulting products will have an initial competitive advantage over all other areas and the result will be an industrial boom and a major surge in exports from that location. Gradually, the innovation diffuses to other competitive locations and eventually over-production results from the individual decisions of numerous manufacturers. Production shifts to low-wage locations, especially during the decline phase as producers try to cut costs, especially wages, in order to keep adequate profit margins. Competition between businesses and locations intensifies in this phase and governments increase their efforts to protect and defend their domestic producers in the competitive world-economy. It is unclear what the new technology will be that will spur the fifth cycle but bio-technology, producer services, information processing and high-technology manufacturing appear most promising at this stage.

1 This section is a modified version of O'Loughlin (1992, 16-25).

6

John O'Loughlin and Jürgen Friedrichs

In Wallerstein's (1979, 1991) view, the sequence after the development of the new technology is that the state controlling its initial development will have a productive lead that is soon translated into a trade lead as its products are in global demand. The capital accumulating from the production-trade lead is used to generate an increased concentration of financial resources, in the leading city of the leading state. Thus, Amsterdam was a leading financial center of the first hegemonic power (the Netherlands) in the 17th century, London became the world city in the nineteenth century and New York retains that role in the late 20th century. Just as hegemony is gained through the succession of research and development, production, trade and financial services leads, it is lost in the same sequence. Thus, it was clear that in 1992, the U.S. had lost the research and development, productive and trade advantage and was increasingly being challenged by Europe and Japan (London and Tokyo, respectively) for the financial services lead (O'Loughlin, 1993). As noted already, world cities are the key basing points in the myriad network of flows that characterize the modern world-economy. They play a dual role, being points of both distribution and control for the national and the global economies and they perform both roles by acting as the interstices of the global and national networks. Friedmann and Wolff (1982) note that there are different kinds of world cities corresponding to the zones of capitalism (core, semi-periphery and periphery) defined by the core and peripheral processes of the contemporary world-economy. Thus, the core world cities of New York, London and Tokyo have more in common than the mixed bag of regionally-proximate cities of New York, Toronto and Mexico City. World cities in the global core are similar to other world cities and so on because the mix of functions are similar despite the enormous differences in culture, size and location that give each its special character. There exists a distinct hierarchy with Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Zurich, Milan, Paris, Brussels, Sydney, Toronto and Los Angeles generally placed in the second rank of core world cities. From the writings of Friedmann and those of other writers (Hall, 1988; Castells, 1988; Kasarda, 1988a) on the world city phenomenon, we can identify seven additional contemporary developments. First, they note the continued deindustrialization of the core cities as high-wage manufacturing jobs have migrated to the semi-periphery in the past 20 years of global economic stagnation. Second, they note the influx of immigrants from the global periphery and semi-periphery to the core cities. Most of the formal recruitment and open door reception of the immigrant workers were in the growth years of Kondratieff IV-A until 1973 and since then, it has been increasingly difficult to get permission to enter Europe. It has meant that the character of previously-ethnically- homogenous cities, like those of the Ruhr, has been changed irrefutably as immigrants and their families settle permanently. Third, attention is increasingly paid to the government policies that have fluctuated from free trade and recruitment of workers from abroad in a time of growth, productive leads and labor shortages (to 1973) to protective

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tariffs, attempted repatriation and the building of trade blocs in a time of global economic stagnation (after 1973). In the fourth place, world city proponents and all the writers on the changing nature of the economies of the core countries have stressed the replacement of manufacturing by the growth of service industries (Dertouzos et al., 1989; Drennan, 1992; Fainstein and Fainstein, 1981; Hall and Preston, 1988; Jobse, 1987; Norton, 1992; Soja, 1991). Mollenkopf (1983) classified American cities into three types on the basis of their mix of manufacturing and service activities and their resulting economic fortunes. Decline was characteristic of Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo in the traditional manufacturing heart of the Midwest, while growth was the result of the development of high-technology industry and corporate services in Sunbelt cities such as Seattle, Tucson, San Jose and Miami. The third type had a mix of services and manufacturing and as a result experienced both growth and decline at the same time. The large East coast cities of New York, Boston and Philadelphia were in this group. New York City is archetypical. During the period 19531984, the city lost 600,000 manufacturing jobs but gained 700,000 service jobs (Castells, 1988). The result was the development of a "dual city" (Mollenkopf and Castells, 1991) in which Friedmann's "citadel" and "ghetto" are well-defined. The key service growth sector is producer services, such as communications, banking, security brokers and agents, holding companies, business services, legal services, advertising and film production. This sector grew by 9.5% per year in the United States between 1980 and 1990, with exports growing three-fold in the same period. Thirty-one percent of exports went to Western Europe, mostly from the four gateway cities that generate 24% of the U.S. total of this sector (Drennan, 1992). What is most interesting about the new services sectors is the discovery of the old concept of agglomeration. Noyelle and Stanback (1984), in what has now become a classic study, noted that services cannot be stockpiled and that they usually cannot be shipped so that typically they must be produced to meet special and immediate needs. They are found where accessibility to clients are maximized. Face to face contacts still remain of vital importance in that sector (Norton, 1992). Large companies are characterized by vertical integration of services with back-offices located in cheaper wage locations and not as formerly where cheap female labor was available. Thus, Neodata, a huge company in Boulder, CO. which fills magazine subscription orders, has back offices in Co. Limerick, Ireland for data entry, and the files produced are sent to the headquarters in Boulder, Colorado by satellite. Increasingly, industries such as this will move to Third World locations, with India a favorite site because of the English-language skills of a large number of people there. Small companies contract out services, in turn generating a spawning of ancillary service operations. Service growth is not just an American phenomenon. In the European Union, 7% of total Gross Domestic Product is currently contributed by this sector and it is expected to grow to over 10% by 2000. The economic integration of the European Union after 1992 is ex-

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pected to increase the concentration of employment in this sector in London, Paris, Frankfurt and the Randstad. A fifth contemporary development of the world city network is the geographic stratification of the networks into three sub-systems. The Asian one has TokyoSingapore as its major axis; the American one links New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto intensively and South America less intensively; and the European one retains its London/Paris/Frankfurt orientation with weak links to South America, the Middle East and to Africa. There are, of course, huge transfers of capital and services across the Pacific and the Atlantic but another noticeable trend has been the intensification of the networks within the individual economic blocs. The sixth contemporary development has the appearance of the moving headquarters. On the one hand, headquarters continue to centralize but on the other hand, they seem to have an increasing mobility as a result of a willingness to move. Declining urban services and quality of life in the large metropolitan areas of the Northeast and Midwest U.S. has lead many companies to shift their operations to the South and West. New York City, in particular, has seen the willingness of companies to move as a special problem and the city authorities have tried to retain them in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. In an economically-integrated Europe, we would expect this phenomenon also to occur, especially if the disparities in office rents between high-cost cities (London, especially) and the cheaper Mediterranean locations persist and if regional incentives to move, such as tax and relocation inducements, remain in effect. The last phenomenon, that of a dichotomized labor force, has already been noted. Service jobs are not an undifferentiated category. We must distinguish especially between personal services, which are usually low-paying and on the margins of the formal sector, and the kinds of producer services discussed earlier. Even the back-office functions of the producer services category should give pause to anyone who views growing employment in this category as an unmitigated blessing. To quote Castells (1988, 96), "New York City is the showcase of the process we are analyzing: a booming CBD, a growing gentrified Manhattan, and yet the persistence of rundown devastated areas are the spatial signs of a new process of growth that deepens its contradictions while showing extraordinary vitality." Social polarization has been noted in cities all across the capitalist core as the traditional manufacturing jobs of the working class have moved offshore and the service jobs that have replaced them are either geographically-inaccessible in the suburbs or require skills that the working-class, especially the minority segments of it, do not have. Friedmann and Wolff (1982) have developed a hierarchy of the chief economic functions of the world city that clarifies this polarization. At the top are the producer services defined earlier as well as research and higher education. In the second tier comes a cluster of services of real estate brokers, construction activities, hotel services, luxury shopping, entertainment, private police and domestic services. Third is international tourism and the fourth level that is

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falling fast is manufacturing. A fifth level is government services, which is many countries grew quickly in the crisis years of the early 1980s as states had to provide welfare services to a whole new segment of the population that had never known state dependence. The sixth, seventh and eight levels are the informal sector, the illicit economy and those on no steady income. Clearly, the relative size of the sectors will vary from place to place but the classification is useful since the emphasis is on the new type of services that drives city growth or decline. As well as services, there are three other growth industries in the contemporary world-economy. High-technology industry is important not only for the employment that it generates and the export revenue that accumulates but out of current high-tech ventures will likely come the next generation of products that will lead the world-economy out of the current slump. To remain far from the frontiers of science and technology is to remain far from the product development of the next wave. Again, agglomeration economies seem to be important here (Norton, 1992). There has been a rediscovery of Marshallian industrial districts where small batches of flexible production systems and key spatial linkages (networks or clusters of firms) gather. Thus, the Silicon Valley and Route 128 around Boston became the gathering places for computer firms, Houston became the service center for the oil industry, New York became the capital of producer services and Boulder, CO, is leading the bio-technology agglomeration race. Since industrial decline is not the result of regional aging but of product aging, there is a constant need to invest in research and development of new products. Furthermore, even high-technology industries are subject to boom and bust cycles as can be seen in the collapse of many companies along Route 128 and the regional recession that resulted. In Europe, high-technology centers have, as in the U.S., located in environmentally-attractive places. The efforts of the French government have been rewarded with sparkling research and development centers in SophiaAntipolis (near Nice), Grenoble and Montpellier while Cambridge (England) and Hannover-Gottingen are alternative nodes of research and development growth and high technology. Distribution network centers also offer great opportunities for economic growth at the end of the 20th century. Central to this sector are communications and transport facilities. Because of mechanization and automation, employment generated in these facilities is not as high as might be expected in the transport sector with the notable exception of major airports. There, the airplane, freight and passenger services produce many jobs, but the problem with the transport sector is that the restructuring of the global networks is far from complete and it is very uncertain how the future "hub and spoke system" and the amalgamation of the airlines will play out in any individual city. The final growth industry in industrial countries is that of tourism. As more and more countries experience a rise in leisure time and disposable incomes, international tourism is expected to continue to grow quickly. Already, Northern Europe

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has seen a reversal of the traditional one-way flow of tourists with large groups of Spaniards and Italians travelling to cities such as Amsterdam. Jobs in the tourist industry (in hotels, food and services) are notoriously low-paying and though the amount of employment generated may be large, the number of skilled, high-wage jobs is small. A final aspect of large Western cities must be mentioned. The spatial impress of the economic restructuring processes has led to an intensification of long-term trends in the United States. Castells (1988) has summarized the pattern for the U.S. and we can see some signs of similar developments in British and French cities. At the core of the metropolitan area, the CBD is increasingly concentrated in directional activities and is being emptied of retail, commercial and residential land uses. This is Friedmann's "citadel" and is visibly seen in the enormous high-rise office buildings, hotels, and luxurious shopping galleries - all reflecting glass, marble and polished steel - that are to be found in most big American and large European cities. It is the center of political dominance, economic growth and cultural centrality. Nearby are the homes of the "new elite", the lawyers, brokers, managers and financiers of the citadel in gentrified sub-areas. In these up-scale neighborhoods are found the expensive restaurants and other entertainment functions of the elite. Next to the CBD is the "ghetto" or "urban reservations" as Castells calls them. Populated by destitute workers (frequently racial minorities in the U.S. case), these neighborhoods are the scene of great misery and a downward trajectory of hopelessness and social malaise. If there is an underclass in Western societies, this is where it is found. In these minority areas and scattered throughout the American cities are pockets of vitality, produced by the newly-arriving immigrants from Asia (Koreans, Filipinos, Indians, Vietnamese, and Chinese), Europe (Russians, Poles and Jews), the Middle East (Israelis and Palestinians) and Latin America and the Caribbean (Colombians, Salvadoreans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans and Haitians). Many are engaged in small-scale entrepreneurial activities and demonstrate a remarkable resilience in the face of economic adversity. Beyond the city limits, suburban sprawl is changing its face. On the one hand, it is showing signs of concentrating business services and other office and retail functions into "Edge Cities", economic sub-centers that are often larger and busier than the downtown. They are often found near motorway interchanges and are, like the rest of the area beyond the city, accessible only by car. Finally, the residential areas of the suburbs are increasingly diversified and targeted to specific lifestyle groups, such as couples without children, young families, tennis-oriented individuals, etc. The homogenous suburb of Levittown has long gone. When we discuss polarized cities, we are making comparisons between core and peripheral cities, which is not altogether appropriate. In core cities, with the possible exception of some American cities, the polarization, perceptible and generally accepted as growing, pales by comparison with that of semi-peripheral and peripheral world cities. There, the gaps between the citadel and the ghetto are even

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greater and the comparison to core cities is less apt because of the different global economic role that these cities play. Clearly, the kind of nightmare scenario portrayed so well by Mike Davis (1990) for Los Angeles is not on the horizon for most European cities, yet the American urban experience has salutary lessons for any city entering the kind of restructuring that U.S. cities have seen for the past two decades. It may not be so far from Manhattan to Rio de Janeiro after all. There are, however, some important limitations to taking the U.S. pattern of urban change as a model for cities in Europe. This point was earlier made by O'Loughlin (1987) in a paper titled "Chicago an der Ruhr or what?" First, the entire globalization debate is restricted to a few very large cities, namely New York, Tokyo, London and Paris. Their economic base is almost entire analyzed in terms of financial services. In contrast, the great majority of cities in both the U.S. and Europe are not financial centers and will never be; they have mixed economies based on manufacturing, crafts, trade and commerce. The globalization theory has not yet specified whether and how changes in the global cities affect middle-sized cities. It must be shown that the global model can be applied to such cities as Manchester, Liège, Hamburg or Milan. Even for London, there is contradictory evidence for the supposed globalization effects (Hamnett, 1994). Globalization theory further assumes a growth of large international companies. Quite contrary to this position in Germany, two-thirds of gainfully-employed work in companies smaller than 500 employees. Finally, the role of ethnic minorities in the U.S. cannot simply be transposed to Europe. None of the minorities in European countries is subjected to the amount and continuity of prejudice as U.S. Blacks. The fate of the Korean and Chinese communities in the U.S. may resemble the fates of ethnic minorities in the European countries much more than that of Blacks, the usual group of comparison. Ethnic minorities fare comparatively better in European cities, as the results of Wacquant (1993) indicate. Further evidence comes from the comparative analysis of the impact of economic restructuring on minorities in New York and London (Logan et al., 1992, 144-149) and a longitudinal study of how economic change affected different ethnic minorities in London (Hamnett and Randolph, 1992). Such a differentiated approach is also favored by Cross and Waldinger (1992); the authors suggest a study of ethnic labor market niches and the increasing differentiation, and conclude: "The ethnic division of labor is, in this sense, the central division of labor in the postindustrial city" (Cross and Waldinger, 1992, 173). Central to the adjustment of ethnic minorities is the distribution of minorities over the range of industries (including lower-skill jobs). The extent to which they are concentrated in one industry is most important, since "a minority's adaptation to poverty will depend on its mixture of vulnerable industries, invulnerable industries, welfare recipients, and unemployed persons" (Light and Wong, 1975, 1364). It should be noted as well that, in many European countries, ethnic minorities are working migrants. The ratio of immigrants having applied for and received citizenship varies greatly among European countries; it is particularly low in Ger-

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many. Hence, the pressure to make a living in Western Europe is lowered by the possibility (and often expectation) of an eventual return to the home country. We conclude from these differences that the U.S. model of urban change, posited by globalization theorists, has to be specified more precisely, differentiated for ethnic minorities and adopted for its heuristic value for the study of European cities. The contributions in this volume allow for more precise comparisons and tests of the globalization assumptions.

IV Linking Groups and Economic Change The basic assumption of polarization analyses is that the different social and ethnic groups in a city are affected by the economic change in different ways. The transition of a goods-producing to a predominantly information- and servicesproducing society not only results in a net loss of jobs but also makes numerous jobs obsolete. Jobs-holders with poor educational qualifications will either face long-term unemployment or new employment at wages lower than their last ones. The opposite holds true for those with good or high qualifications; their jobs are relatively stable and their incomes grow. Social polarization, as stated above, has to be viewed as a specific form of social inequality. Thus, our specific interest is how social inequality on a macro (societal) level translates into inequality in an urban society, and even further into socio-economic differences among urban neighborhoods, typically analyzed on the census tract level. Although there exists a long-range trend in modern societies, as Emile Durkheim described in his "Division of Labour", we find a growing diversity of social groups in modern societies, especially over the last 30 years in highly-industrialized countries. An illuminating account of this process was given by Fischer (1975). He assumes urban society to be divided in subcultures. The diversity and the "distinctness" of these subcultures is assumed to vary with urban size: "The larger the town, the more likely is it to contain, in meaningful members and unity, drug addicts, radicals, intellectuals, 'swingers', health-food faddists, or whatever; and the more likely they are to influence (as well as offend) the conventional center of the society" (Fischer, 1975, 1329). In his exposition of the problem, he posits a) urban society is a mosaic of subcultures; subculture being defined as "a set of modal beliefs, values, norms, and customs associated with a relatively distinct social subsystem (a set of interpersonal networks and institutions) existing within a larger social system and culture" (Fischer, 1975: 1323); b) the number of subcultures and their size (membership) increases with urban size; c) strongly correlated to the size of a subculture (number of members) is the diversity (number and rage) of facilities catering for them, e.g. shops, clubs, churches, since the rentability of any such institution or opportunity depends upon the demand, which in turn can be measured by the proxy variable "number of members of a given subculture."

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Thus, the diversity of a subculture's institutions varies positively with the size of the subculture. Although Fischer assumes boundaries between these subcultures, he suggests that they are permeable, allowing for a diffusion of subcultural values not only in the respective subculture but also into the urban society at large. Fischer's exposition of the problem of heterogeneity of urban society can easily be related to the present discussion of life-style groups from Thorstein Veblen (1934) to the present contributions made by Pierre Bourdieu (1984). Although few attempts have been made to apply this concept and its weak theoretical underpinning to urban societies (Blasius and Dangschat, 1994), this approach may be fruitful for a description of the socio-economic differentiation to found in to be observed in cities and the polarization problem as well. If it is true that these groups or subcultures in the conceptual scheme of Fischer have different values and behavior sets, this plurality of norms requires a high degree of tolerance among urban residents, posing a cognitive strain on the residents. But the situation is more complicated if we take into account a further assumption of lifestyle scholars, that lifestyle groups can only partially be ordered on a higher-lower status dimension as is done for socioeconomic-status groups using the Duncan dissimilarity index. The hypothesis that can be drawn from the life-style research is that competition for similar resources is stronger in vertically-and horizontally-stratified societies than in predominantly vertically-stratified. Two conclusions can be drawn from this preliminary attempt to use the subculture theory of Fischer for the analysis of polarization. First, the tolerance required induces a strain on urban residents since they constantly have to compare norms and behavioral patterns of their own group with those of other groups. To escape this strain and cognitive dissonances, spatial segregation and even segregation of action spaces seems to be an adequate strategy. Second, this mixture of tolerance and ignorance will be possible as long as these subcultures do not compete for the same scarce resources, such as jobs, housing, or public financial support (subsidies). The latter condition, competition for scarce resources, has occurred as a consequence of industrial restructuring since the late 1970s. Tension between groups has grown, as resources became more restricted for some groups more than for others, thereby constraining the options of the former.

V Relating Social to Spatial Polarization Economic restructuring affects cities in several dimensions, including land use, changes in the socio-spatial distribution of the residents and the distribution of poverty. A final consequence is the socio-spatial distribution of residents and the changing extent of segregation. The income approach can be related to the labor market approach by assuming that the changes in the labor market affect the incomes (and income chances) di-

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rectly, thus a polarization of jobs would result in a polarization of incomes. But how can both be related to spatial changes? The first effect is that income to a large extent determines the choice of housing options a person or household has, with options increasing with income (letting aside the effects of discrimination or life-style as criteria of neighborhood choice). Thus, residential segregation would increase as a consequence of polarization processes, since the rent-bidding capacities are more unequally distributed. The situation is aggravated by the conditions of the housing market. In all large European cities, there is a shortage of dwellings for low-income groups - the social housing segment of the housing market, as the contributions in Hallett (1993) document. The amount of new construction in social housing had gone down until the early 1990s, either due to low rentability or, like in the U.K., due to state policy. Thus, the growing number of low-income indigenous residents and ethnic migrant workers are competing for a declining number of available social housing dwellings. One of the outcomes of this condition is a growing number of homeless. On the other end, we find gentrification in inner-city neighborhoods with formerly lower (and middle) class residents. Furthermore, the housing market is crucial for the distribution of poverty. Social housing dwellings typically are concentrated in but a few urban areas, often large new housing estates. Therefore, households with low incomes or living from transfer payments are concentrated in these areas - resulting in a disproportionate distribution of poverty over the urban areas. (But as well on the market segment of middle-income rented dwellings the demand exceeds supply, and as a consequence rents go up. In Germany, households spend 25% to 40% of their net household income for housing.) The analyses presented by Wilson (1987) show that the number of depressed areas has increased and that the amount of poverty in these areas has increased, predominantly by the exodus of relatively better-off families from such depressed areas. However, both consequences of polarization may be more obvious in the U.S. than in Europe, as the results from Wacquant (1993), comparing Chicago and Paris, suggest. The evidence presented in the articles of this volume allow for modifications of the U.S. findings: Although the general observation of the spatial correlates of polarization is viable, the effects are somewhat weaker in European cities. There are mainly two reasons accounting for this difference. First, although there is discrimination against ethnic minorities in European countries, these groups have not been afflicted with discrimination rooted in the history of the country. Second, in almost all European cities urban planning and welfare provisions have prevented urban areas to get as run-down as many depressed areas in U.S. cities, irrespective of the fact that depressed areas exist, for instance in Liverpool, Charleroi or Hamburg. Further, there are good reasons to assume that the distribution of poverty over the urban neighborhoods and the concentration of poverty to be a function of the economic conditions of a city. A city experiencing decline due to a shrinking economic base has higher rates of unemployment and of persons in public assistance than a growing or regenerating city. As Massey et al.

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(1991) have shown for the fifty largest U.S. SMSA's comprising a total of 54,442 urban tracts, the amount of a group's poverty rate at the metropolitan level has a positive effect upon the extent and the disproportionate distribution of poverty among urban tracts. To resume our assumptions on the relations between social and spatial polarization, we present a multi-level model (Figure 1.1).

National

Restructurina of

* Socio/Spatial polarization (number of depressed neighborhoods, concentration of households below poverty level)

Figure 1.1:

Theoretical model relating economic change, social polarization and residential segregation

This model is clearly a general one that illustrates the kinds of effects and feedback loops that connect the elements of the polarizing city, as outlined in this chapter. In the chapters that follow this introduction, each of the elements of the model in Figure 1.1 are prominent. Each author begins with a consideration of the effects on the local economy of the city under consideration of the global economic restructuring that became evident after 1970. As the Western economies saw a sharp reduction in their level of manufacturing employment consequent on the shift of jobs to semi-peripheral states, the most immediate impact at the nationallevel was the restructuring of local labor markets, towards service employment and out of "old" industries. Though governments tried to assuage the worst effects of the shift, this amounted in most cases to fiddling at the margins because the net effects did not vary a lot between states. The fact that state policies shared a common belief in the dominant neo-liberal paradigm of free trade and less government intervention in the structural developments produced a similar outcome across the globe.

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At the urban level, there were very obvious developments through job losses, impoverization of large numbers of the stable working-class, and a rise in the numbers receiving welfare and unemployment compensation. The most dramatic impacts appeared in one-industry cities, like the automobile manufacturing center of Detroit, as Deskins shows clearly in Chapter 11 of this volume. As service employment grew, the gap between service jobs needing high educational qualifications (like financial services) and those offering minimal wages to unskilled workers (like food and tourism services) became more evident and began to widen the cleavage between the "haves" and the "have-nots". Government taxation and spending policies away from the welfare-oriented efforts of the post-war period in the U.S. and Britain in the 1980s exaggerated the gap and widened the resulting social polarization. As more and more households were pushed below or near the poverty line, demand for government services, especially social (public) housing rose and the competition between indigenous working-class groups and immigrants became the basis for shifting electoral preferences toward the right. The discussions in the chapters in this book on Paris (Chapter 3), Amsterdam (Chapter 4), and Toronto (Chapter 9) are representative of these social and electoral developments. At the neighborhood level, the spatial impacts of these economic and social developments are mixed. In some cities, like Zurich (Chapter 5), there is little spatial separation of the rich and poor because the housing market is so tight that little residential mobility occurs. By contrast, in the U.S. metropolises of New York City (Chapter 20, Detroit (Chapter 11) and Miami (Chapter 12), a very visible spatial isolation of the poorest households appeared, leading to increased concern with the fate of the "underclass". In African-American neighborhoods, the spatial separation of middle-class and poor grew, as is documented for Detroit in Chapter 11. A feedback loop connects socio-spatial polarization in Figure 1.1 suggesting the validity of the "spatial mismatch" (Wilson, 1987) hypothesis, that the suburbanization of jobs (greater distance from the poor inner-city Black populations) has helped to generate higher unemployment in certain parts of the metropolises. While we have no expectations that Figure 1.1 is an accurate portrait of the circumstances in every city in the Western world for the past quarter-century, we believe that it provides a starting point for the examination of social polarization, its economic causes and its spatial/neighborhood consequences. While local political, economic and social contingencies will shape the specific outcomes in individual cities, the model is generalized across many locales so that it can be used as a basis for empirical comparison.

VI Propositions for the Study of Social Polarization In this section, we present some possible research questions that would allow comparison of levels of polarization and its causes between cities in different

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countries. The list is not intended to be exhaustive but more an indication of the kinds of important research questions that need better answers than we currently have. The main difficulty is the theoretical underpinnings of the ideas on "polarization". While the term refers to a situation on the urban (sometimes individual) level, the explanations refer to economic, political and social changes on the national and international levels. But how exactly does economic change on a global or a national level transpose to the urban or even individual level? This is a macromicro problem but it is seldom stated as such and analyzed with the necessary rigor. Political geographers have especially engaged the question of the linkages between the scales of "reality" (global/structural economic), "ideology" (national/policy) and "experience" (local/social polarization) (Taylor, 1989). The "world city" literature (reviewed earlier) allows one to visualize the global historicalstructural forces that change the economic character of individual cities but which indicators are we to use to measure polarization? Is it income, employment (employed versus unemployed), years of schooling, crime, expenditures for public assistance, attitudes toward minorities, rising housing costs, or an excess demand for low-rent housing? The question remains open.

Vl.a Propositions As examples of the kinds of propositions that might be proposed and tested, we offer the following five propositions: 1) In the first phase, economic change does not alter the composition of employment (sectoral proportions), but instead changes the structure and extent of demand for goods and services. Empirical evidence for this proposition would involve the collection of consumer expenditures, product introduction and sales, and employment by detailed sectoral category at the metropolitan and local levels. 2) Polarization is evident between high- and low-skilled jobs in the same service industries. An example would be in educational institutions with a clear sorting and stratification of tasks according to training and skill level. 3) Only a segment of the laid-off blue-collar workers are candidates for retraining, and only a small percentage of the retrained are eligible for a new job adequate to their retraining. For the past two decades, local and national governments have adapted job retraining policies as a way to cope with rising unemployment consequent on geographic industrial shifts. There is now enough information on the eventual fate of these "re-trained" workers to evaluate the proposition. The anecdotal evidence suggests that keeping large numbers in job-training programs is a way to hide high unemployment figures and that the rate of permanent placement of these formerly-jobless individuals is lower that once seemed to be the hope.

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4) Macro-level change will be reflected in a decline in tax revenues; micro-level levels will be reflected in a changing population by demographic characteristics, such as an increase in singles living alone, one- and two-person households with higher than average incomes. These groups will seek residential locations close to the Central Business District and promote expansion of the offer of luxury goods. Empirical evidence for this kind of gentrification can be found in residential registration offices in Europe, in census publications and from field research. 5) Under the conditions of increasing housing shortage (rising demand exceeding stable supply), the aggregate effect will be more segregation, higher rents in the private market, and rising land values. The effects would be expected to vary greatly by locale since, for example in Zurich, residential segregation is low though social isolation is high, while the match between high social and spatial isolation is very close in U.S. cities.

VII Conclusions While there is a widespread public and policy perception that Western societies are increasingly bifurcating along multiple lines (class, ethnic and religious), the empirical evidence for the divergence is not conclusive. Different experiences between states and locales suggest that generalizations are hard to make and substantiate. Within the European Union, a wide variety of government responses (compare the Netherlands and France on the one hand to the United Kingdom on the other) has produced experiences as different as Amsterdam, Paris and London, as portrayed in the chapters of this book. One theme that emerges consistently in the chapters of this book is that the U.S. model, dominant since the hey-day of the Chicago school of sociology in the 1920s, is not entirely appropriate for the European experience. This has both policy and theoretical implications (O'Loughlin, 1987). Whether the Atlantic is becoming a bigger policy and political divide is an open question but there seems little doubt that the experiences of the various European cities will begin to converge as the individual national policies take on more of a pan-European orientation. Ultimately, the ramifications of societies becoming more polarized are political. A shift of the traditional labor union supporters to the extreme right, as reflected in the increased support for the National Front in the Paris suburbs, has forced centrist governments to take seriously the threat of extremism and the possibility of widespread conflict between immigrants and native blue-collar workers. The type and cause of riot recently seen in Bradford (U.K.), the large vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 1995 French Presidential elections and the victory of Proposition 187 in California in 1994 (to deny government services to illegal immigrants) may be harbingers of the future of more polarized Western societies.

Chapter 2 Social Polarization in Post-Industrial London Emrys Jones

Like all other great metropolitan cities, London has both maintained continuity and experienced change over a long period. For three hundred years, it has served the dual role of a national capital and a world city. The two roles have reinforced one another and enabled changes to be absorbed and adapted. After more than a century of technological, social and political upheaval, the city is one of a select group of post-industrial metropolises which exhibit continuing greatness, but which are also undergoing the traumatic economic and social problems which are an outcome of its progress. The great cities of history have always exhibited the kinds of polarization of which society is now so aware, from the co-existence in Athens of democracy and slavery to the confrontation of the elite and the dispossessed in the Middle Ages, and to the haves and the have-nots of the industrial city. Today, polarization persists in novel and changing social circumstances which are, moreover, replicated within an urban global network. This chapter will examine the dramatic changes in London's role in recent times and the effect these have had on the lives of its peoples, on the pattern of social inequalities and on the physical fabric of the city itself, in both its inner and outer boroughs (Figure 2.1).

I From Pre-Industrial to Post-Industrial City Before analyzing the problems of today and the events of the last thirty years which have led up to them, something must be said about continuity on a larger time scale, for several reasons. The present is built on the past and can never be freed from the historical processes which gave rise to it even when this is nothing more than inertia. The very fabric of the city encapsulates the past which is part of a nation's system of values and which continues as an important economic and social component of its life today. Just as the physical city is a palimpsest of the past, so its contemporary life cannot be understood outside the processes which gave rise to it. London emerged as a world city - i.e. a city pre-eminent in relation to others of the same period - in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the impetus to growth was coupled with its links with the New World and its expansion into a empire based on world-wide dominance. In the 19th century, this was coupled with the advances of the industrial revolution, well in advance of other countries, and the exploitation of world trade.

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Figure 2.1 : Key to boroughs, Inner London and Central London

London was the symbol of British economic dominance. It was the first modern million city, the first two-million city and the first five-million city. The wealth of empire poured into its warehouses; power and control resided firmly in London. This was symbolized by the building of the Crystal Palace in 1851 and of Wembley Stadium in 1924, although by the latter date, decline was just over the horizon. In the inter-war decades, American influences were beginning to be intrusive (King, 1990, 81-82), a reminder that supremacy had crossed the Atlantic. After World War II, American influences could have been paramount as the colonial heritage quickly diminished, were it not for the fact that the internationalization of economic activities took over, as did the growth of Europeanism after the 1960s. London's history means that, in some ways, the seeds of post-industrialism were present when the city was at its industrial peak. Its control of overseas territories, markets and trade, and its administrative and financial role in the late 19th century, already gave it a function over and above that of being a national capital and the prime city of Britain. This in no way diminishes the magnitude of the changes of the last thirty years when it became a post-industrial city par excellence; this explains the ease with which it assumed, or aspired to, a changing

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role in the global network of great cities. The fundamental nature of the change lies in London's relatively diminishing role as capital of Britain and its increasing part in world finance. As national capital, it was the foremost industrial center in Britain and its largest port, as well as administrative center for nation and empire. The first two functions have ebbed dramatically, mainly because the capital is reflecting structural changes in the economy as a whole. But as an alternative, it has identified itself firmly with the business and financial systems of international transactions in the global capitalist system. The first section of this chapter will analyze these changes over the last thirty years or so and establish London's changing role, both as capital of Britain and as a major node in the world network in a post-industrial era. The term "postindustrial" makes certain assumptions and these may well be worth clarifying. It suggests the acceptance of evolutionary stages of development which geographers and sociologists have generalized as "pre-industrial", "industrial", and "post-industrial". As western societies have moved through these stages, so their primary cities have tended to reflect the changes in the structure of their national economies. Generally speaking, therefore, London is the capital of a country in which a) industry almost entirely superseded primary production in the last century, and in which b) industrial activities have taken second place to tertiary, or service activities, during this century. We can now add that quaternary activities, based on business transactions and communications, have reached significant proportions and are concentrated in the traditional center of power and wealth, the capital city. It is the dramatic growth of tertiary and quaternary activities which have made London a post-industrial city; the same change has seen the swing from being pre-eminently a center of empire to being one of the half-dozen prime nodes in the global system of cities which control international transactions. Before dealing with the demographic and social implications of these structural changes of the last thirty years, a glance at the statistics will make their nature clear. Between 1981 and 1987, London lost over 168,000 jobs in metal goods engineering and other manufactures and, during this same period, it gained over 195,000 jobs in banking and financial services, mainly between 1984 and 1987 (Frost, 1991,41). The gains have been over a very narrow range of activities with the decrease in the traditional range of jobs. The service sector was very strong throughout this period but, significantly, did not share in the growth shown by business. By the late 1980s, business and finance completely dominated the center of London. These changes must be viewed against the existing trend of diminishing industrial activity which began in the early 1960s. The number in manufacturing industries fell from 1.09 million in 1971 to 0.63 million in 1981, a decline of 42%, and this was no more than a reflection of structural changes in Britain as a whole. London was particularly affected by those industries traditionally associated with its inner districts - the clothing trade, furniture-making, printing and publishing most of which were carried out in small units which had been adapted to the close-

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Emrys Jones

knit urban fabric of the inner city. They finally failed to cope with technological changes and many succumbed to the obsolescence of age and the non-adaptability of the premises. The most notable example of this structural change is the wholesale loss of the newspaper publishing and printing trade, which had created one of the bestdefined quarters in the central area. Its axis was Fleet Street, strategically poised between the City and the seat of government for two centuries. Here they conducted all the processes of newspaper production, as well as attracting associated activities. In the face of technological and organizational change, the site became quite untenable, and today not a single paper remains. The dockland areas have claimed most of this activity. A great many other manufacturing activities have met changes by moving to premises and new plants elsewhere, often to new towns and in response to financial incentives. Between 1966 and 1974, over 105,000jobs left London, 36,000 to "assisted areas" and 26,000 to overspill towns (Manners, 1986). Although structural changes in London generally reflected those in the country as a whole, the capital suffered comparatively much greater losses in some sectors such as manufacturing, food and drink and clothing (Jones, 1988,107). Paradoxically, encourage ment to industry to move to the deprived areas of Britain was helping to create a new depressed area in London.

II The Emergence of the Post-Industrial City The fact that the economic and functional structure of London has undergone a transformation in the last thirty years or so has had results beyond the statistics of occupations. Although this chapter is concerned mainly with radical changes in the urban society and its reflection in the ecology of the city, we should not underestimate the effect the changes have had on the physical aspects of the city; how they have been reflected in changes in land-use, occupancy and more particularly, in the built environment. In a great metropolis which is vying for primacy in a world system of cities, physical change is not simply an extension of space to accommodate growth and change but a new dimension is introduced by the competition between great corporations seeking the prominence of prestigious sites which will enhance their standing and emphasize their dominance. In addition to being places of work, buildings are symbols of wealth and power and an indication of supremacy. For example, height has been one of the constant measures of importance since the beginning of this century, as New York and Chicago so eloquently testify; it is now introducing a new dimension into the cities of Europe. Height is one aspect of monumentally, an essential declaration of leadership and supremacy. London and other European cities have fought hard with the inertia of the historic past which has often acted as a break on unbridled expressions of this kind.

Chapter 2: Social Polarization in Post-Industrial London

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The critical change, then, is not so much the size or growth of the city as a whole, but the transformation which occurs in the core of the city, where the most dynamic changes have always taken place. London has undergone a boom in office development which corresponds to the changes in economic structure. The boom has created a new urban environment which is meant to attract even more business, while also creating a symbol of prosperity and power and of capacity to expand even more. Along with most European cities, London in the past has been reluctant to diminish in any way its rich historical heritage, or to substitute a "brave new world" in its place. It has exploited its past by, for example, the social cache attached to its 18th century Georgian squares leading to their conservation and to their exploitation as an impressive milieu for small professional businesses such as doctors, lawyers, architects, and consultants who have always played a prominent part in the service sector of the city. The intimacy of the professional/client relationship is best enhanced at a domestic scale and in the cozy luxury of an opulent past. The social values inherent in such use of certain sectors of London far outweigh the economic attractions of increasing the space by building modern super-blocks. This in part explains the movement of some central business activities from the City to parts of the West End, often from 17th century domestic buildings to their 18th century counterparts. The demand for more office space in the last two decades, however, has been unparalleled, and London's response to the business and financial explosion was a building boom unprecedented in its history. The critical point was the "big bang" deregulation of 1989 (Diamond, 1991,79), coinciding with the abolition of the Greater London Council and the consequent change in building policy which allowed unlimited office expansion. Although the development of information technology burgeoned during this same period, theoretically allowing unlimited locational choice, what resulted was the intensification and enlarging of the traditional core. The "square mile" of the City is still supreme, and within it, there is great pressure to locate in those restricted streets whose value is enshrined in tradition. The "prime area" - that most highly prized - is around the Bank of England and Threadneedle Street, extending into an "acceptable area" at the southern end of Moorgate. Here prestige reigns (King, 1990). This is the location of the City's highest block, the NatWest Bank building (188 meters), erected in 1980. Diamond has shown that this area has a rent contour of £50 per square foot, compared with the remainder of the City and much of the West End at £40 per square foot (Diamond, 1991). The movement of some City activities, particularly services, has been spreading westward for some time, particularly into the traditional and prestigious West End. The £40 contour now covers the whole of this area, and recently, there is even a £50 island enclosing an area from Covent Garden to Picadilly and St. James (Figure 2.2). The building boom was somewhat unexpected, because until the early 1980s employment in the City had fallen, the number of commuters had decreased over

24

Figure 2.2:

Emrys Jones

The City: Economic expansion and office development (based on Diamond)

twenty years, and the Location of Offices Bureau had successfully encouraged a decentralization of offices to Greater London, the home counties, and even further afield (Manners, 1986). Applications for more space in the City began in 1985. In the decade before that, floor space under construction or given permission was about 800,000 square meters. By 1988, it was 2.2 million square meters in a total stock of just over 6.0 million square meters. Diamond (1991) identifies several factors which underlie this new trend: the identification by speculators of new sites, for example above railway termini (as at Liverpool Street station), or on derelict land in the former docklands; a good economic climate; encouragement from the government, as in the establishing of a Free Enterprise Zone in Docklands; the growth of information technology; the internationalization of financial services; and a realization of the increasing obsolescence of stock and of infrastructure. The new development was not high, but it was massive. For example, Broadgate, begun in 1986, was a site of 12 hectares and composed of 14 buildings, the largest single development ever seen in the City. Between eight and ten stories in height, it was technologically very advanced, had uninterrupted floor space, and a completely controlled environment.

Chapter 2: Social Polarization in Post-Industrial London

25

The knock-on effect of this kind of huge venture was not only to make other city offices obsolescent, but to demonstrate the possibilities of new sites which were not necessarily tied to the traditional and highly-restrictive center. This idea has been further tested by developments in King's Cross, on the northern perimeter of the City, and by bridgeheads south of the river between London Bridge and Tower Bridge; and more particularly, by the opening up of the Isle of Dogs dockland area. Here, the Canary Wharf scheme amounts to well over 930,000 square meters of office space (see Figure 2.2); this is also the site of London's highest block. While there is no question of London challenging the classic skylines of American down-town areas, largely due to post-war planning policies which rejected both height and massing, there is no doubting the City's bid to become a new center of advanced business technology, providing the office space and the associated services which vie with any city in Europe, or even in the world-system. Canary Wharf is a symbol of the new departures. London's dock activities had for a long time moved further down the river and had disappeared from their traditional locations. Therefore, the region's conversion began on a virtually cleared site, fortuitously interspersed with the water of the old docks, an enormous potential for residential development as well as for prestige office blocks. The additional incentive was the granting of a Free Enterprise Zone, with no planning restrictions and free leasing for ten years. The central tower is the largest in Europe, though there is now competition from Frankfurt/Main and Paris. Although the economic depression in the United Kingdom of the last two years has made its immediate future very precarious, the very fact that Canary Wharf has been built indicates a new center of gravity. Had its founding been planned in a more comprehensive manner, many of its present difficulties would not have arisen. This is particularly so in the paucity of infrastructure and the lack of an efficient link with the City. In this respect, it could have learned a lesson from La Défense in Paris, where a gradual build-up of infrastructure guaranteed an uninterrupted growth and a very successful new business node. The temporary lull at Canary Wharf, however, must be set beside the broader success of Docklands in attracting newspapers (Wapping and the Isle of Dogs), a world communications center (the new Reuter building), and the fact that so much residential expansion has taken place. To sum up, the period since 1980, in particular, has seen radical changes in office provision in London, not only in increase of floor-space but in technological advances, and in particular, the attraction of national and international business. The new node in Docklands will provide ample and desirable space for expansion in the future. There can be no doubt that London has been successful in attracting new business. Six activities have been pinpointed by Rajan (1988) as being critical to the perception of London as a global city; viz., world banking, other financial activities, securities, insurance, accountancy, and software services. In 1992, they accounted respectively for 125,000, 48,000, 25,000, 50,000, 30,000 and 26,000 jobs, with an annual growth of 2.0% from 1988 to 1992 and as much as 10% for the

26

Emrys Jones

last two of those years. The international nature of these activities can be gauged by the fact that employment in foreign banks trebled from 1975 to 1987 to 62,000 (Diamond, 1991,88). In 1989, London accounted for one-fifth of the world's total banking (Jones, 1988). Ninety-six of the world's largest banks have a branch in London. In 1961, there were 100 foreign banks; in 1983,460 were present, representing seventy countries. In addition, many firms have invested in consultancies (King, 1990) and look to London as a leading center. Data on U.S.-based business/ service activities show 73 offices in London compared with 32 in Paris and 18 in Brussels: 40 management consultancies compared with 39 in Brussels and 19 in Paris; and 24 legal offices compared with 10 in Paris (King, 1990,102) What King refers to as "the internationalization of London property" (King 1990, 106-107) is also evidence of its role in the global network. Reference was made earlier to American interests in this respect, beginning as early as Selfridges' foothold on the retail market, and to influences in the inter-war period. Between 1981 and 1985, sixty leading hotels were sold to foreign interests. The Dorchester Hotel went through Lebanese, Saudi Arabian and American interests before being bought by Brunei in 1985 and then finally, going back into American hands. Hilton, Sheraton and Europa Hotels are all American-owned. In 1985, Harrod's was bought by the Egyptian Al-Fayed. Japanese investments in the City are also very active (King, 1990, 107-108). The emphasis on structural changes leading to a pre-eminence in business and finance could lead to our underestimating the way London exploits its longestablished attraction in retailing, cultural activities, and tourism. The city has a long history as a shopping center, a feature which has evinced envious and enthusiastic comments from travellers from the 17th century onwards. Luxury and specialty goods are as tempting as ever to the affluent outsider. So are the city's offerings in the arts; its 40 or so regular theaters, crowned by a national theater, its two opera houses and numerous concert halls, with five major orchestras, make it second to none as a cultural center. Barbican Center, in the City of London, with its concert hall, theater and museum now provides an alternative node to the West End. London has also enhanced its international standing by harnessing an immense tourist trade to its historic heritage. This is a sector of the service industries which is directly international. A thousand years of history has been preserved, on the one hand, consolidating former colonial links and on the other deliberately exploiting the fact that pre-19th century British history is a heritage shared by the people of the United States. Of those tourists who come to Britain 95% visit London and 75% stay in the central area. The effect on the economy is marked. Tourism accounts for 8.2% of the city's GDP. Housing and feeding some 20 million visitors annually provides, directly and indirectly, 250,000 jobs, of which 130,000 are in catering. With the attraction of royalty as well as priceless historic relics, London "sells itself to the world" (King, 1990, 125).

Chapter 2: Social Polarization in Post-Industrial London

27

The last 30 years have seen a boom in hotel building, encouraged by the Development of Tourism Act (1969) which subsidized improvements in existing hotels and promoted the building of new ones. There has been a westward drift of hotels, particularly since Heathrow airport was built, but this is now being countered by the extension of the City eastward. There is an 820 room hotel in St. Katherine's Dock (one of the first to be abandoned by shipping and now a marina) adjacent to the World Trade Center and very near the Tower of London. Among many older buildings about to be adapted to house tourists is the former County Hall (which housed London's government until 1988 and was acquired by a Japanese group) and a former West End hospital. Finally, London's excellence as a center for learning and the arts has been given a boost by the emergence of English as the lingua franca of world communications. This makes it very attractive to Americans, Japanese and Scandinavians, and increasingly, to other Europeans. Not the least of London's activities is the teaching of English to foreign students in some 80 language schools, whilst the Americans have established their own university faculty in the very heart of the city.

Ill Social Polarization in London A brief word on the physical geography of London is an essential part of understanding the patterns of human activities. Although our concern is with the economic, the social and the ethnic, we ignore at our peril the urban fabric which is the day-to-day environment of six and a half million people. A simple subdivision of the city based on age gives us an Inner and an Outer London, an acceptable split for many years and one which the census has found useful as a data base. Socially, the division derives from classical ecological theory, and however simplistic this may prove to be, it is nevertheless a recognized starting point from which we can subsequently build up a more complex and realistic picture. Students of London usually recognize a third component, namely Central London. Historically this is the earliest part, a combination of the two cities, the City of London and Westminster, which together gave rise to modern London. The former, for centuries circumscribed by a wall, is still very compact and virtually coextensive with the commercial "square mile"; its historic identity is very jealously guarded, and it still has its own form of government. Westminster is focused on Parliament and its associated offices, and on the seat of the sovereign (Figure 2.1). Although its core is very well defined, it has also extended into the 17th and 18th century squares of the former upper-class. Together these two cities which would be referred to as the "CBD" in the United States - made up preindustrial London; its limits are roughly defined by the major early Victorian railway termini which, in the period 1840-1860, lay a little beyond the closely builtup city. In spite of the careful preservation of much of what is historic and imbued

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Emrys Jones

with social value, Central London has undergone greater changes than any other part of the city. In particular, it has lost its residents (the City of London has rarely had more than 4,000 in the last eighty years), and most of it is given over to offices, shops and public buildings. The buildings which have not been zealously preserved have been transformed beyond recognition in answer to the needs of the 20th century. This, par excellence, is the London to which people commute, perhaps as many as a million a day, and where shoppers and tourists predominate. Beyond the Central area, the remainder of Inner London is essentially Victorian in age and character. This is evidence enough of the enormous growth of the city after the coming of the railway age, but it has retained much of its fabric and even most of its function. Broken though it is by shops and small manufacturing, this is a city of people, and their lives inevitably reflect the environment in which they live. It is by no means socially uniform because it reflects the social classes which characterized Victorian society; but whatever classes they once represented, most of the buildings are now obsolescent, and only sometimes are they totally acceptable in contemporary society. There are thirteen boroughs in Inner London. A wide range of social characteristics is hidden by this very broad political subdivision. One generalization which could be made is that there is still a readily identifiable east and west. The perception of a West End and an East End arose in later Victorian times; the former benefitted from the extension of the old upperclass districts of the city of Westminster, and the latter indicated the poverty areas adjacent to the inner dock areas. The 19 boroughs which make up Outer London share many characteristics, not the least of which are the age and type of building, and the relative absence of land uses other than residential (Figure 2.1). This is suburban London, most of it an accretion of the inter-war period. This relatively small span of time means more homogeneity, a predominance of single-family dwellings at a comparatively light density on detached and semi-detached sites, giving the "uniqueness" which so impressed Rasmussen. Historically, many social correlates have been linked with suburbia but all that needs to be stressed here is the environmental differences between these boroughs and those of Inner London. It gives a context within which polarity can be discussed. There are marked demographic differences between inner and outer boroughs. London as a whole has been losing population over the last half-century. The city reached its peak in 1939, when Greater London had 8.6 million people. By 1981, this had fallen to 6,696,200 and by 1991, still further to 6,393,600, a decrease of 4.5%. In the last two census counts, Inner London fell from 2,496,700 to 2,343,100 (-6.1 %) and Outer London from 4,199,500 to 4,050,500 (-3.5%). The long-term decline can be explained by planning policies which decanted tens of thousands from slum neighborhoods to new towns beyond the green belt. Naturally, this process had a much greater effect on the inner areas of Victorian London than the more recent suburbs of the outer boroughs. The loss in Inner London

Chapter 2: Social Polarization in Post-Industrial London

29

would have even greater had not much of the property left by re-housed Londoners been partly filled by the increasing number of immigrants after 1950. Before examining the social aspects underlying polarization in Inner and Outer London, it should be stressed that this contrast between relative deprivation and relative affluence can be grossly oversimplified. For historic reasons, the spatial pattern of social contrasts is much more complex than this. But generally speaking, London has had until comparatively recently a pool of labor near the center, the basis of slum areas around the commercial core and also of the contrast between West End and East End (Jones, 1988). The assumption may be made that every great metropolis, upon becoming a center of accumulated power and wealth has, as a corollary, a lumpenproletariat which is the necessary condition of the production of such wealth. Social discrimination in the pre-industrial city may have produced a mosaic of rich and poor, the co-existence of wealth and deprivation within very close proximity. Nineteenth-century East and West Ends were the outcome of a broader polarization. In this century, this has tended to be replaced by the inner/outer contrasts. The inequality of the distribution of resources within London must be seen in the context of the country as a whole. Here, the gap between rich and poor has been increasing in the last decade or so, as increasing prosperity has favored the skilled and professional classes at the expense of the lower-paid. This is probably due to a decrease in the amount of comparatively well-paid industrial work and an increase in service employment. Across the country as a whole, too, unemployment has grown to an unprecedented degree; in the 1980s, it hovered near 3 million. These national characteristics have had an even greater effect in London where the loss of most of its industrial activities and of its docks has exacerbated the trends to the extent that some of the areas of most acute deprivation are now found in the inner boroughs of London itself. The resulting inequalities have been thrown into even sharper relief because internationalization has resulted in substantial increases in top salaries in order to meet international standards (King, 1990). In 1985, there were probably only 430 or so earning over £100,000 a year; two years later, this figure was over 4,000, and 15% of Britain's millionaires were in the City. There was a tremendous upsurge of young people in the financial markets whose conspicuous spending became a familiar feature of life in the capital. At the other end of the spectrum, and affecting the traditionally-poor areas east of the city, sweated labor, low wages and even homelessness were rife and emphasized by the exploitation of new migrant labor. It was this sector which was seen as characterizing the standard of living in Inner London, compared with the affluence of the suburbs. Unemployment figures for 1991 by borough give some indication of the pattern of deprivation, and this does indicate the Inner/Outer contrast. In only four of the outer boroughs does the figure exceed 10%, whereas in Inner London all the boroughs are over 10%, eight are over 15%, and Hackney and Tower Hamlets (in the traditional East End) are over 20% (Figure 2.3). Inner London has become

30

Emrys Jones

an area of acute unemployment with all its accompanying problems of poverty and deprivation.

vwX

Enfield >

Barnet

xS^SSSx^

Haringey

\ V

Redbridge X V Havering-

iHillingdon;

Camden.

Hackney Tower |f Hamlets

Newham

Thames Greenwich" Hounslow!

Richmond

Wandsworth'

Lewisham

(%) Percent

¡S3 100-9.9 149

Merton;

Bromley^ Sutton

Croydon'

I [ 15-19.9 H I

20 and over

I-"I

Greater London

j — j Inner London I — [

Figure 2.3:

Borough

Unemployed of economically active males 16 to 64 (in %)

The contrast between inner- and outer is further emphasized by differences in tenure. In Inner London, renting local authority housing was until recently the dominant mode of tenure, whereas the households in Outer London were majority owner-occupied. Again, changes must be set against trends in the country as a whole, where ownership has increased dramatically against a decrease in local authority renting, particularly in the 1980s, when council tenants were encouraged to buy their houses at favorable rates. Table 2.1 gives some indication of the contrasts. The high local authority figures in Outer London are a reflection of several massive local authority schemes of the inter-war period built within the Greater London Council boundary. The figures also show that much of the property in Inner London is still privately-rented, though even this has diminished since the 1960s; it is comparatively small in Outer London. Only seven of the Outer London boroughs have over 15% in local authority housing, whereas in Inner London, only the borough of Kensington is below this figure. Others are well over the average: Hackney, 47.9%; Islington, 48.7%; Southwark, 51.1% and Tower Hamlets,

31

Chapter 2: Social Polarization in Post-Industrial London

58.3%. The ecological correlates are familiar. The figures not only confirm the difference in life-style between inner and outer boroughs, but show that the disparity is increasing as more people in general are buying their own houses. Table 2.1: Year

Percentage of households in tenure groups in London Inner London

Outer London

Local authority

Owner-occupied

Local authority

Owner-occupied

1971

30.3

19.4

42.8

55.7

1981

20.9

27.3

23.2

61.9

Thus far, two things are apparent; first, the data confirm the general perception that there is a marked general contrast between Inner and Outer London based on unequal access to resources; and second, this gap has probably deepened in the last decade or so. The social pattern still conforms to a classical ecological model, though it should be stressed that this is more useful as a descriptive tool rather than as a basis for causal explanations. A smaller-scale analysis would be much more complex. Any measurement of polarization depends on the unit of measurement. Those used so far are large boroughs with populations varying from 250,000 to 350,000. There are polarities within them. Some of the inner boroughs which exemplify the worst characteristics of poverty have within them enclaves of gentrification, i.e. the rehabilitation of former middle-class and even working-class property from slum conditions to desirable city pads. This has affected many inner areas, albeit on a small scale. On a larger scale is the rehabilitation in the 1980s and 1990s of former dockland areas into very expensive residential blocks. The latest residential boom within the Docks Development Corporation could not be a greater contrast with the adjoining deprivation of the remainder of Tower Hamlets. The opposite effect occurs where there are extensive areas of inter-war local authority housing interspersed with and breaking the uniformity of comfortable middle-class suburbanism. This does no more than confirm what Harris (1973) pointed out 20 years ago. In fact, she showed how polarity was also very marked at the ward level, details often hidden by the need to see the broader picture. The greater fragmentation revealed by smaller-scale analysis is confirmed by the distribution of social class as defined in the latest census (10% sample). There is much less difference than one would expect between Inner and Outer London; for example, the number of heads of households in classes I and II (highest-status) is 42.2% in Outer and 42.5% in Inner London. On the other hand, Richmond on Thames and Kingston on Thames have 63.3% and 60.0%, respectively, while those inner boroughs to the east of the City have low percentages in classes 1 and 2, viz., 29.8% in Tower Hamlets, 34.7% in Southwark, 33.5% in Hackney and 39.3% in Islington. Inner boroughs illustrate unipolarity, while most outer boroughs show bipolarity, i.e. a social mix. Part of the reason is that there has been

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Emrys Jones

a tendency towards much greater change in the suburbs in the more recent past. Much of the housing in the suburban fringe is now half a century and more in age and it is fast becoming obsolescent. Many of the affluent have already moved still further out. Many families in the lower socio-economic groups who have succeeded in becoming owner-occupiers have become suburbanites. In the less homogeneous parts of north-west London, in particular, rich and not-so-rich are frequently neighbors.

IV Race and Ethnicity in London Social polarity in London's population has acquired a new dimension in the last three decades as the increase in the non-White population has increasingly affected both the character of the population and the ecology of the city as a whole. Racial and ethnic heterogeneity has been a constant feature of metropolitan cities throughout time. But it has been comparatively insignificant in London until historically-recent times. There were frequently small numbers of foreigners in the city like the 13th-century Lombard bankers, the German Hanseatic traders, and the Hugenot silk weavers of the 17 th century. These were acceptable as part of the economic structure and their numbers never suggested a threat to society nor were they difficult to assimilate. The 18,000 or so West African servants who were brought to London in the late 18th century were no more than adjuncts to the lives of the rich, and played no part in the social differentiation of the city. Small numbers of foreign diplomats and traders were a necessary part of the international role of a major city. Nineteenth-century industrial growth, and social and economic conditions outside Britain, brought strangers in much greater numbers. After the potato famines of the 1840s, Irish peasants flooded the capital. Visibility - they were destitute, spoke a strange language and were Roman Catholics - bred social prejudice and created social polarity. Much later in the century, the already considerable Jewish population in east London was swollen to bursting point by a flow of migrants from Eastern Europe. They created a Jewish hearth in the East End which only confirmed the poverty of that area. As with the Irish, a strange language and a strange religion made their acceptance almost impossible. The slum areas of London lay around the outskirts of the City, a zone of despair. There were never ghettos in the European city sense, but neither was there either assimilation or a movement towards a culturally plural city. Subsequent generations of Jews lost their visibility. Even the ethnically-distinctive became absorbed as they abandoned their orthodoxy, thrived economically and started to move to the more prosperous parts of London. By the mid-20th century, London gave the general impression of being an overwhelmingly White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant and English-speaking city that was culturally homogeneous. The subsequent changes were rapid and hard for some to

Chapter 2: Social Polarization in Post-Industrial London

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accept. Not only was there a comparatively sudden and large influx of strangers, beginning in the 1950s, but they were racially distinct. Visibility and prejudice soon emerged as "racial problems". Moreover, these people were much more difficult to accommodate within the city than previous inflows. A new ecological pattern was emerging (Glass, 1960) and polarization acquired a new and less acceptable meaning. Although there had been a trickle of West Indian immigrants into the country in the earlier 1950s (Peach, 1968), by 1959, they averaged 20,000 a year. Most came to London, and by 1961, there were 78,000 Caribbeans in the capital. There were also 64,000 Asians, mainly from India and Pakistan, and 17,000 from Africa. The "New Commonwealth" migrants had arrived, capitalizing on their freedom to move to what had been the capital of the empire. The 1960 saw an even greater inflow of Caribbeans, partly as a result of restrictions on their movement into the United States; the reaction in Britain was legislation which made work permits necessary as well as subsequent review of the work status. But the work was there as the labor was needed in post-war reconstruction; although immigration from the West Indies diminished somewhat, that from India and Pakistan increased rapidly (Jones and Sinclair, 1970). Between 1961 and 1971, the number of migrants in London doubled. Peach (1968) points out that until the 1960s, economists, sociologists and social workers viewed the influx in economic, rather than in racial terms. Structurally, this was a replacement phenomenon, the immigrants filling particular gaps in the economic structure and helping to assuage a labor shortage in Britain. For example, there was a period when public transport in London might have come to a halt were it not for West Indian recruitment. Numbers were still small enough to foster a hope that the newcomers would be assimilated and absorbed into the host community. Although by 1960, there were areas of the city which were associated in the popular mind with colored people, their proportion was actually very small. Their distribution was restricted, but they were not concentrated; there was no hint at ghetto formation. Even by 1971, when West Indians had further increased by 73%, only a very few wards showed concentrations of about 8%. Shepherd et al. (1974) saw no trend towards further concentration, and there was even a hint of dispersal. The 1981 census figures revealed a different picture. The foreign-born population had increased very considerably and now accounted for 18% of the total population of London. Immigrants now totalled 165,389 Caribbean, 137,324 Indian, 35,183 Bangladeshi, 35,183 Pakistani, 90,000 from East Africa and nearly 52,000 from the rest of Africa. The boroughs of Brent and Ealing had the highest proportions, 33.54% and 25.4%, respectively. In Brent, four wards had a slight majority of colored people, and two wards in Ealing had 85.4% and 71%. But these were exceptional, and in no way was there strong segregation. This is not deny the popular perception of an acute problem, raising fears among the host population.

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Emrys Jones

These figures all relate to people who had been born elsewhere. By the 1980s, a new generation had emerged who were born in Britain, and one of the greatest deficiencies of the data was any definite information of where the London-born colored people were living. Individual studies of small groups suggested that there had been considerable movement from, as well as an extension of, the hearths where the first migrants had settled, and this was certainly the general perception of their distribution. How far this had gone would be revealed when the 1991 census was published, for this gave a new set of data which radically altered ideas about the number and distribution of racial and ethnic groups in London. In the 1991 enumeration, people were asked to identify themselves with particular ethnic groups, in addition to being asked their country of origin (10% sample only). We can now cartographically examine both these sets of data in some detail (Office of Population Census, 1993).

Harrow

\W\X\

Havering o

Camden'

;Hillingdon

[Tower [

Newham

Hamlets;

lames River : GreenwichHounsiow> (%) Percent Richmond1

Wandsworth

Lewisham

Merton:

Bromley. Sutton-

Croydon: Greater London Inner London

Figure 2.4:

Non-White population (in %)

Dealing first with the foreign-born population, although their distribution is wider than in any previous census, they are still rather more evident in Inner London than in Outer London. There are 731,633 New Commonwealth migrants (11.44% of the total population, of which 326,349 are in Inner London -

Chapter 2: Social Polarization in Post-Industrial London

35

Barnet Haringey

X(Redbridge : Hauering

Hillingdon:

Camden, Tower

Newham

Hamlets 'Thames H i » « ^Greenwich. (%| Percent Richmond

Wandsworth

Lewisham

Merton'

Stlttonv

Croydon:

[ — | Greater London | — | Inner London [—

Figure 2.5:

| Borough

Country of birth of immigrants: Caribbean

13.92%) and 405,284 in Outer (10.00%). Although these numbers indicate that suburban London has accepted these migrants only to a slightly lesser extent, a more detailed analysis shows variation in their distribution. For example, Indian and Bangladeshi-born migrants are negligible in Outer London (1%), but they are very evident in Inner London, with two concentrations, one of Indians in Newham (5.34%) and one o f Bangladeshi in Tower Hamlets (14.6%). Caribbean and African-born are ubiquitous in Inner London but with areas of greater concentration, Caribbean in Southwark (4.01%), Lewisham (4.49%) Hackney (5.58%) and Lambeth (10.35%), while African-born are more evident in Hackney (4.02%), Newham (4.41%), Southwark (4.32%) and Lambeth (7.62%). In Outer London, these two groups are f e w in number except along a north-west axis, Africans and Caribbeans in Brent (7.41% and 5.33%) and Africans in Harrow. The former is an extension of a well-established hearth in Inner London, but the latter is a special case. East Africans were very f e w in London in 1961, but the expulsion of Asians from Kenya in 1967 and from Uganda in 1972 added 27,000 to their number. Today, there are 83,000 in London, and the relative concentration in a part of the northwestern suburbs reflects the fact that many of those expelled from East Africa were business people and traders. They came directly to Harrow and most

36

Emrys Jones

Enfield

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Redbridge \ \ Havering. Hackney

Hillingdon'

Tower ?

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254

Dennis Conway and Thomas J. Cooke

Ideas that there would be regional-cultural group differences among Caribbean enclave patterns are supported by the New York evidence with respect to the within-group versus between-group indices of separation of the English- and Spanish-speaking constituencies. The within-group average of the five English groups' indices is 28.66, whereas their average with the three Spanish-speaking constituents is 65.86. The within-group average of the three Spanish groups' indices is 49.44 which is also considerably lower than the comparative separations from the English-speakers. An anticipation that Puerto Ricans would be more residentially separate from Cubans than from Dominican Republicans cannot be supported, however. The indices of 54.83 and 56.80 with Cubans and Dominican Republicans, respectively, are roughly equivalent. Given their distinctive cultural identity within the francophone Caribbean, it might be expected that Haitians would be more residentially separate from constituents of the other two sub-cultural groups. With indices of 70.04 (with Puerto Ricans), 66.78 (with Cubans) and 70.98 (with Dominican Republicans), this idea gains some support. With reference to the constituents of the English-speaking Caribbean, Haitian separation is not so generalized, however. The average of all indices between Haitians and the others is 33.25, and Haitians are scarcely residentially separate from Trinidadians and Tobagonians (ID=26.39). Barbadians are more separated from Guyanese (ID=41.58) than Haitians (ID=31.5), and Jamaicans are as similarly separated from "Other Islanders" (ID=35.67) as they are from Haitians (ID=35.71). On the other hand, the most recent entrants among the Caribbean migrant groups, the Dominican Republicans, have the highest average of indices of separation with all other groups (ID=63.81). However, both Cuban and Puerto Rican overall patterns of separation are equally high (ID=61.94 for Cubans, ID=61.06 for Puerto Ricans). But, for their affinity to Cuban-settled areas (ID=36.7), the Dominican Republicans' segregation would be more prominent (Table 10.4). Overall, the notion that distinctive clusterings of Caribbean migrant groups would be identified is largely supported. Caribbean migrants appear to form "urban villages" residentially separated from each other. Social polarization and subcultural distancing does appear to be a realized mechanism among these "nonWhite" immigrants in New York City.

IV.b Comparative Enclave Residential Ecologies All Caribbean migrant residential ecologies can be satisfactorily described by three main factors (i.e. three dimensions explain over 80% of the co-variances of the seven ecological variables of each national grouping) (Table 10.5). The most important factor (explaining the most variance) for all but the Puerto Ricans is positively related INC (median income) and RENT (renter proportion). Among the English-speaking Caribbean migrant group it was also common for their first

Chapter 10: Caribbean Immigration and Segregation in New York City Table 10.5:

Comparative factor solutions of Caribbean residential ecologies

Country of origin (Cum. Variance)

Dimen- Variables sion FEM CRWD STBL

Cuba (89.2%)

1 2 3

Puerto Rico (84.1%)

1 2 3

-.69 .56

.94 .87

.57 .68

1 2 3

-.49 .73

.43 .76

Haiti (88.9%)

1 2 3

-.84

-.46 .82

1 2 3

-.82

1 2 3

-.49 .82

Trinidad & Tobago (86.3%)

1 2 3

-.73

Jamaica (85.0%)

1 2 3

.91

Guyana (85.0%)

EDUC

SELF

.72

.76

.47

.42

.84

.94

INC

RENT

.95

.89

.84

.92

.87

.77

.96

.88

.94

.85

.89

.88

.92

.90

-.89

-.65 .48 -.40

.93

Dominican Republic (86.9%)

Barbados (83.7%)

255

.72

.88 -.58

-.42 .84

.78 .58 .52

.88

.85 .42

.84

.70 .57

.79

.85

-.45 .82

.60

.91 .80 .54

.82

.90

.85

.77

.91

.78

.91 .92 .50 .80

factor to have high but negative loadings on CROWD (persons per household) and FEM (female-headed households) measures. Cubans had another variant in its first major factor with high loadings of EDUC (median education) and SELF (selfemployed workers) accompanying the high loadings of INC and RENT. Among the English-speaking Caribbean migrant groups, this primary factor was not only a socioeconomic status dimension but it was a bi-polar with low income and low rent strongly associated with crowding and female-headed households. The Puerto Rican residential ecology was distinguishable from all others with regard to their primary dimension, which had high loadings on EDUC, SELF and CROWD.

256

Dennis Conway and Thomas J. Cooke

The second factor was a pure family status dimension for Cubans, and with an association of STABLE (households in the same house 5 years before), this family status construct also characterized Puerto Rican and Guyanese ecologies. Educational attainment and self-employment variables had high loadings in the Barbadian and Jamaican residential environments and when linked with the CROWD variable, this secondary association of descriptors was also characteristic of Dominican Republican, Trinidadian and Haitian ecologies. Where STABLE emerged as a third independent factor, it was common to several Caribbean migrant ecologies; Cuban, Dominican Republican, Trinidadian, Jamaican and Haitian. The third factor of the Puerto Rican ecology, on the other hand, was the INC/RENT association, which had been present in every other group's first factor (Table 10.5). If these results are presented in terms of urban ecological theoretic expectations (Hamm, 1982), then these results question its validity. Not only is the Puerto Rican residential "ecological" experience apparently quite different from the others, but other differences among the remaining groups also emerge. The residential ecological factors are neither identified as pure socioeconomic status nor family status dimensions. Instead of clearly demarcated factors, five different bi-variate or tri-variate clusterings of variables appear to represent the comparative factorial ecologies of Caribbean migrant groups in New York City. Table 10.6:

Average household income as a socio-economic discriminator among Caribbean immigrant residential ecologies, 1980 (in US$)

Country

Average household income Mean

Std. Dev.

Haiti

17,995

5,665

Trinidad and Tobago

17,144

5,004

Cuba

16,791

5,044

Jamaica

16,122

5,667

Guyana

15,154

4,921

Barbados

14,888

5,088

Dominican Republic

13,658

5,266

12,901

4,043

Puerto Rico

One further distinguishing feature of the residential ecology profiles is the hierarchical ranking of the set that can be deduced from a single socio-economic discriminator: group averages (and standard deviations) of the median household income by Zip Code Area (Table 10.6). Trinidadians and Tobagonians and Haitian profiles have the highest average household income levels - over $ 17,000, Cubans, Jamaicans, Guyanese and Barbadians follow them in the $16,000 to $14,000 range, while at the bottom in terms of average household income levels

Chapter 10: Caribbean Immigration and Segregation in New York City

257

are Dominican residential ecologies ($13,658) and Puerto Ricans with an average of only $12,901 (Table 10.6). Sub-cultural distancing along this class/wealth dimension appears to be occurring among the set of non-White Caribbean residential groups.

V Conclusions Empirical investigations of New York's residential differentiation indicate that Caribbean immigrants appear to occupy distinctively different areas of this restructuring world city in 1980. Considerable clustering is evident and there is significant "distancing" among this set of "non-White" immigrants. Although the groups hail from the same region, and therefore have similar geographical relations with the U.S. mainland, notably proximity and relatively easy transportation access, "differentiation in metropolitan experience" appears a better generalization than regional commonalities. Most illuminating, if difficult to conceptualize, is this study's findings which suggests that there are significantly different profiles of non-White Caribbean residential ecologies, and that consolidation of distinct neighborhoods is likely to continue through the 1990s. Urban ecology theoretical propositions were not directly put to any test in these exploratory examinations, but they perhaps offer a tentative inductive interpretation. If we reference the four processes which are thought to underlie the residential patterns of these non-White immigrant groups; international mobility, U.S. metropolitan ecology, socio-cultural conditioning and the host society's perceptions and political-mobilized selective policies, then this study's findings appear to downplay the significance of urban ecological factors. Notably, they are a challenge to the relevance of urban ecological theory in this contemporary era of "restructuring". The role of international mobility was assessed, albeit indirectly, and found to be a significant feature of the contemporary social polarization of New York City's new immigrants' residential experiences. "Distancing" among groups and the demonstrated selectivity of these Caribbean immigrant streams which is inferred by the significantly different income profiles of several groups' residential environments (see Table 10.6), suggests that the theoretical notions developed from Johnston's (1980) arguments may be applicable. These Caribbean migrant groups are not homogeneously low-status, nonWhite immigrant masses, herded together in inner-city "urban villages" alongside similarly disadvantaged indigenous minorities, Black American and MexicanAmericans for example. Perhaps it is their "near-Whiteness" in the case of the Cuban and Haitian sub-groups in New York City. Perhaps it is their "Englishspeaking" ability, the selectivity criteria of the U.S. immigration policy, or both, which contributes to differential residential experiences of West Indian/Commonwealth Caribbean resident aliens. Sassen's (1989a, 1989b) observations on the significant roles such enclave groupings might play in the restructuring of today's

258

Dennis Conway and Thomas J. Cooke

global cities focused on labor market dynamics rather than the particulars of residential enclave structures. Informal sector servicing of formal productive sector activities might be expected to be fostered by enclave uniqueness and monopolization, but the theoretical arguments concerning such economic activity and the distinctiveness of residential experiences among non-White immigrant enclaves remain poorly understood. The evidence of the differing occupational profiles in 1990 of a selective set of non-White Caribbean immigrant groups illuminated in Table 10.1, however, strongly suggest that the residential distinctions observed in 1980 are being continued through the decade. The processes whereby the distinctive Caribbean communities in New York City boroughs are being "culturally" replenished by unauthorized overstayers, where transnational circulation appears firmly rooted in the social, communal dynamic of these consolidating neighborhoods, and where the maintenance of ties between Caribbean "home" communities ensures the involvement of newcomers, and repeat-sojourners in the expansion and diversification of the immigrant enclave services sector, are contributing to a maintenance of social polarization and sub-cultural distancing within the immigrant enclaves of New York City today. For example, Warren (1990) found relatively high levels of unauthorized overstaying among Trinidadians and Haitians in comparison to other Caribbean groups. What is well documented by INS statistics is the observation that non-immigrant visiting volumes remain at all time high annual totals (INS, 1991). Estimates of the ebb and flow of Caribbean immigrants suggest that New York City retains its magnetism as the "gateway" for many, with the Caribbean enclave neighborhoods which we have distinguished continuing to function as important, if not the only, welcoming stations for visitors, sojourners, and would-beimmigrants (Conway, 1992a; Conway and Cooke, 1991). To conclude, the considerable differences in "non-White" Caribbean immigrant residential experiences in New York City have been established in this first study of its kind. There is definite social polarization during this contemporary era of restructuring. The processes of immigration, transnational circulation, unauthorized overstaying and sojourning, continue to affect "welcoming" immigrant enclave residential populations. Racial ascription which was so fundamental in the initial settlement experiences of "non-White" Caribbean immigrants, still appears profoundly to influence the process. Cultural self-identification, community cohesion, sub-cultural distancing, also appear to be as important today as they were in the early decades. Employment opportunities in informal and formal labor markets appear to be utilized to their utmost, enclave networking providing an accessible avenue for many, but formal recruitment mechanisms also remain functional contributors to these new immigrants' experiences. Like all initial exploratory inquiries, however, it leaves more questions unanswered than answered. It remains a daunting prospect for some, and certainly a challenge for those of us who seek a better understanding of our complex metropolitan systems, even if it demands complex analysis.

Chapter 11 Economic Restructuring, Job Opportunities and Black Social Dislocation in Detroit Donald. R. Deskins Detroit is a city in crisis. While to some, it is still the "Motor City" or "Motown", noted for the manufacturing of automobiles and the production of a distinctive musical sound, these achievements reached their zenith in the city's prosperous past. Symbolically, the city's automotive and musical legacies continue in diminished forms, for example, in the "Grand Prix" and the "Montross Jazz Festival." But these celebrations of past glories are unable to compensate for contemporary Detroit's growing reputation as one of the hypersegregated cities of the U.S. High crime rates (particularly juvenile homicide) (Goetting, 1989; Widick, 1989), extreme aberrant behavior such as "Devil's Night", massive social dislocation, high unemployment coupled with massive job losses, and major shifts in occupational structure, as the automobile manufacturing industry downsizes and restructures in response to national and global competition, plague the city (Darden et al., 1987). Combined, these social and economic factors have contributed to Detroit's image as a city in decline faced with what seems to be insurmountable economic and social problems. Despite its previous prosperity, observers of Detroit's present decline find its future precarious. However, few recognize that the city's overall population has been in decline since 1950, dropping from a peak of 1.9 million to just slightly over a million in 1990. Over the same time, the proportion of its Black population has rapidly increased from 16.2% to 75.7%. The city's 1990 Black population reached 777,916, making it the third largest concentration of Blacks among the nation's cities, behind only New York and Chicago (Marlin et al., 1983,61). Moreover, Detroit has the highest percentage of Black population nationally among cities with populations that exceed one million. Detroit had to have been an attractive place in the past, or perceived to be so, for its Black population to grow as it has. A major contributor to the city's magnetism was Black access to job opportunities in the Detroit-based automobile industry which can be attributed to the United Auto Workers (UAW) and its egalitarian hiring policies. Although most of the jobs accessed were classified as lowskilled, they provided Blacks with stable employment and a higher income relative to that available to Blacks employed in other industries and places (Widick, 1989, 7; Meier and Rudwick, 1981, 3; Mast, 1994, 3). During the decades of the 1950s and 1960s, Detroit had the highest Black per capita income for a city of its size, with the exception of Washington, D.C., where the Federal government was the major employer and the proportion of Blacks employed in professional occu-

260

Donald R. Deskins

pations was larger. To Blacks, Detroit, with its unionized automobile manufacturing as the dominant industry, was a place where prospects of having a "piece of the pie" were high (Feldman and Betzold, 1990; Meier and Rudwick, 1981; Rich, 1989). Undoubtedly, Black Detroiters shared the optimistic view of the city expressed in 1972 by Widick (1989, xxi-xxii) in his book Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence when he stated: What makes Detroit distinctly important and what is new here is the emergence of a Black community possessing a powerful economic, social, and political base. In this respect it is unlike other inner cities in urban areas which seem doomed to become wastelands of human and material resources. All trends suggest that Detroit, the city, is destined to become a Black metropolis - not just a slum or a ghetto, though these do exist, but a municipality with a strong Black middle class and perhaps more significantly, a powerful Black unionized working class. This community has already demonstrated its strength, viability, and leadership on both political and union fronts. It is moving toward domination of the city and challenging the White suburbs.

I The Cyclical Nature of U.S. Automobile Industry Employment The automobile manufacturing industry, which Black Detroiters viewed as a means to achieve economic prosperity, has long been characterized as a "boom or bust" industry. The degree to which this is myth or reality is easily determined when the industry's annual employment levels are examined over time. Annual fluctuations in the number of workers employed in the industry were quite common on the local (Detroit), state, and national levels during the period 1970-1990 (Figure 11.1). Not only are the annual fluctuations in the industry's employment obvious, they affect the level of employment locally as well as nationally. It is clear that those in the industry who were subjected to these volatile fluctuations in employment faced short-range economic uncertainties. Therefore, the relatively high salaries were only available to Blacks in the automobile industry when the assembly lines were moving. In response to market conditions and competition, automotive employment in Detroit peaked in the early 1950s, dropped in 1958, rose again in 1960, and dipped the next year. Employment peaked once more in 1966 only to drop again in 1967, followed by an increase again in 1969 and another decline in the following year. The number of employees increased once more in 1973 followed by a drop in 1975 and an upward turn in 1978, thereafter declining (Figure 11.1). During this period (1950-1990), covering four decades, automobile employment in Detroit, the state, and the nation, went through nearly six cycles of "boom or bust", contradicting the image of the industry's growth and employment stability. However, the negative effects of these employment fluctuations on Black employment may have

Chapter 11: Economic Restructuring and Social Dislocation in Detroit

261

Year Figure 11.1:

Trends by year in the employment in the automobile manufacturing industry in the U.S., Michigan and Detroit, 1950-1990

been partially offset by the UAW policies negotiated in its contacts with the industry that guaranteed temporally-laid-off workers the first right to return to their jobs during periods of increased production at the high salary level negotiated for them by the union; this policy made employment in the automobile industry, relative to other industries in the area, more attractive in spite of the frequent fluctuations. The record also reveals that the short-range fluctuations in automobile employment hid a long-range downward trend. The overall trend for automobile employment in Detroit since 1950 has been downward for four decades (Rich, 1989, 91-125; Trachte and Ross, 1985) while at the same time the number of Blacks attracted to the city and its perceived employment opportunities have been rapidly increasing. For the state of Michigan, the trend in employment in car manufacturing is flat to slightly downward and nationally, it remains flat to slightly decreasing. From these data, it is also clear that the industry's employment is not expanding, particularly in Detroit where 60.2% of the Black population of Michigan resides (Deskins, 1988,9-18). Another indicator of the industry's long term economic health is the nation's share of the world's automobile production, which decreased from a high of 76.2% in 1950toalowof27.1%in 1990, showing that the United States' hegemony in the global industry has weakened considerably. Evidence of the industry's weakening status is also shown by the increasing share of the domestic

262

Donald R. Deskins

(U.S.) passenger car market captured by foreign products. In 1993, the foreign share reached 28.2%, which has held to the present and represents nearly a doubling of the 14.7% share in 1970 (Trachte and Ross, 1985, 210).

II Automotive and Other Selective Employment Trends There is little doubt that the United States has lost its global hegemony in the automobile industry. The impact of this disturbing fact has undoubtedly been felt throughout the U.S. economy. In spite of the decline in this industry, some economic prognosticators and political pundits suggest that the nation has a bright economic future. Industries other then "automotive vehicle manufacturing", such as "retail trade", "finance, insurance and banking" and "service" (Silvertri and Lukasiewicz, 1989), have been identified as having future growth potential. An examination of the change in the number of employees in these industries, compared with those in automobile manufacturing, provides a broader basis to assess the impact that restructuring has had on Detroit's economy. Using the same employment categories, it is also useful to see how the City of Detroit is faring compared to the Detroit Metropolitan Area, the state of Michigan, the nation, and, finally, the state of Tennessee, which has been identified as the model state with a growing economy and a promising future in the new global economic reality. The period in which these changes in employment are examined is 1970 to 1990. Employees in "all industries" between 1970-1990 nationally increased by 36,210,795 which represents a growth of 63.2% (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1971,1991). This is a substantial increase in the number of employees and at face value, appears to be quite promising. Positive increase in employees in the category "all industries" also hold true for Michigan, the Detroit-Ann Arbor Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA) and Tennessee (Table 11.1). The rate of increase in the number of employees in Tennessee is 72.9%, slightly higher than that for the nation, with Michigan's growth rate about half that of Tennessee at 36.7%. In contrast, the increase for Metropolitan Detroit (less Wayne County) is 116.4% while Wayne County, which contains the City of Detroit, lost 196,332 employees during this 20 year period, the only place where employees experienced a 18.1% decrease in overall job availability. The change in the number of employees in the "all manufacturing" category is negative for all places, with the greatest percentage of loss in manufacturing employment (46.4%) recorded for Detroit (Wayne County) with the Detroit Metropolitan Area and Tennessee, respectively, recording positive growth of 13.9% and 12.2%. Trends by place for the employment category "transportation equipment manufacturing" (SIC 37) and "motor equipment manufacturing" (SIC 371) which is nested in (SIC 37) parallels those for "all manufacturing". Employment in both of these categories is negative

Chapter 11: Economic Restructuring and Social Dislocation in Detroit

263

for Detroit, with losses at -63.8% and -62.5% respectively, while Tennessee's respective increases of 73.9% and 191.0% are the highest (Table 11.1). "Retail trade" employment, one of the growth industries, is increasing in all places except Detroit at rates that exceed the increases for the "all industries" employment sector. In this category, Detroit is the only place with a decrease in employment. An almost identical pattern is observed when changes in "finance, insurance and banking" employment are considered. "Finance, insurance and banking" is the second employment category expected to grow; Detroit shows a loss compared to the increased employment recorded for this employment category for all other places examined. It is only in "service" employment, expected to grow fastest, that Detroit shows a 43.7% gain but still trails the increases for the nation, Michigan and Tennessee. Employment recorded in "all industries" in all places exceeds Detroit's by at least a factor of three. The Detroit Metropolitan Area holds the lead with a 353.2% gain in this employment category, followed by Tennessee's nearly 200% increase. Not only has Detroit lost employment in the "automotive manufacturing" categories (SIC 37 and SIC 371) as expected, it has also decreased in two of the three employment sectors with high promise for growth and new job creation potential. Even in the "service" category where there is an increase in employment in Detroit, the rate of increase ranges between one-third and one-eighth of that observed for all other places. It is apparent that if these trends continue, Detroit's economic future is not promising.

Ill Changing Job Opportunities Structure A four part occupational taxonomy (I) "professional, executive and administrative", (II) "sales and administrative support", (III) "precision machine" and, (IV) "service" can be used to determine the sectoral distribution pattern of Black occupations of Detroit and the degree to which the pattern is shifting in response to the restructuring of the local economy between 1970 and 1980. Three of these occupational categories II, III, and IV approximate the industrial employment categories of "retail trade", "manufacturing", and "service", respectively (Figure 11.2). In 1940, 61.4% of Black Detroiters were employed in "service" occupations with an additional 28.7% in the "precision machine" category ("manufacturing" employment), the sector dominated by automotive manufacturing. The "professional, executive and administrative", and "sales and administrative support" occupational categories each accounted for approximately 5% of Black occupations. For the most part, these trends reflect the sectoral distribution in Black occupations back to the turn of the century where "service" represented 75.7% of the total, and "precision machine" only 16.0%. In 1950, the proportion of Blacks in the "precision machine" sector accounted for 38% of all Black occupations, a

264

Donald R. Deskins

Table 11.1:

Change in manufacturing and other selective industry employment, 1970-1990

Industry

Location U.S.

Michigan

Detroit CSMA*

Wayne County* (Detroit) Tennessee

All industries 1990 1970 Change 1970-1990 %

93,476,081 57,265,296 36,210,785 (63.2)

3,411,784 2,496,603 915,818 (36.7)

1,118,369 516,933 601,436 (116.4)

755,297 922,705 -167,408 (-18.1)

1,869,268 1,080,940 788,328 (72.9)

All manufacturing 1990 1970 Change 1970-1990 %

19,173,382 19,761,548 -588,166 (-3.0)

943,463 1,103,816 -160,353 (-14.5)

276,908 243,183 33,725 (13.9)

202,451 378,043 -175,592 (-46.4)

506,998 451,673 55,325 (12.2)

Transportation equipment (SIC 37) 1990 1,797,524 1970 1,817,492 Change 1970-1990 -19,968 % (-1.1)

207,816 308,776 -100,934 (-32.7)

36,238 77,547 -41,309 (-53.3)

38,019 105,152 -67,133 (-63.8)

34,064 19,589 14,475 (73.9)

Transport vehicles (SIC 371) 1990 707,160 1970 774,021 -66,861 Change 1970-1990 (-8.6)

194,529 289,861 -95,332 (-32.9)

24,421 64,311 -39,890 (-62.0)

37,152 99,152 -62,000 (-62.5)

23,306 8,008 15,298 (191.0)

751,594 462,305 289,289 (62.6)

247,186 108,038 139,148 (128.9)

143,447 152,617 -9,170 (-6.0)

386,813 188,126 198,687 (105.6)

194,540 119,198 75,342 (63.2)

71,467 18,704 52,763 (282.9)

45,746 56,100 -10,354 (-18.5)

108,992 57,204 51,788 (90.5)

971,297 393,866 577,431 (146.6)

337,693 74,511 263,182 (353.2)

236,774 164,717 72,057 (43.7)

513,318 171,210 342,108 (199.8)

Retail trade 1990 1970 Change 1970-1990

19,875,054 11,071,289 8,803,765 % (79.5) Finance, insurance and banking 1990 6,956,484 1970 3,281,585 3,774,899 Change 1970-1990 (89.3) % Services 1990 1970 Change 1970-1990

28,800,088 10,461,468 18,338,620 (175.3)

* Detroit-Ann Arbor, MI, Consolidation Statistical Metropolitan Area (Lapeer, Livingston, Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, Wasthenaw, Wayne and St. Clair Counties). ** Wayne County includes the City of Detroit. Source:

U.S. Department of Commerce, County Business Patterns 1970, US Summary, Michigan and Tennessee, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971; U.S. Department of Commerce, County Business Patterns 1990, US Summary, Michigan and Tennessee, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991.

Chapter 11: Economic Restructuring and Social Dislocation in Detroit

265

Year

Figure 11.2:

Trends by decade in occupational categories for the Black population of Detroit, 1900-1990, with the growth in the Black population

share which continued to 1970. The clustering of Detroit's Blacks in the "precision machine" occupations represents the degree to which Black employment is concentrated in the Detroit-centered automobile manufacturing industry; this industry afforded Blacks a relatively-stable employment base and higher income then could normally be provided by other industries in cities of this size. Between 1950 and 1970, the Black share of employment represented by the "service" category shrunk to 34.0%. Growth for the same period in the proportion of Blacks in occupational categories I and II were each quite high, nearly doubling the portion of Blacks found in each category in 1970, while Black representation in the "service" category decreased by nearly 50%. By 1990, the Black "sales and administrative support" occupations share was 30% of all Black occupations - six points higher than it was a decade earlier. The growth in sectors I and II are encouraging because they represent two sectors where growth in other places has recently been demonstrated and promises to continue. The Black "professional, executive and administrative" category is growing in Detroit, as it is elsewhere. The "sales and administrative support" occupational category also shows growth and closely matches the gains observed for the Black "professional, executive and administrative" category. However, it is important to note that, in Detroit, the "service" sector, where the most growth is observed and forecast in other

266

Donald R. Deskins

locations, still shows a decline in the number of Black employees. In a parallel development, between 1970 and 1990, there has been a 54.8% decline in the Black "precision machine" occupational sector, which now accounts for only 18% of the city's Black occupations. From these trends, it is clear that the "industries" employment sector lags well behind the growth found in the other occupational categories considered. The number of Blacks in occupational category "sales, administrative and support" has increased and now exceeds 30% of all other Black occupations reported for the City of Detroit. This is also the occupational sector that includes (SIC 371) "transportation vehicle manufacturing" where the greatest overall job loses are encountered.

IV Financial Rewards from Automobile Industry Employment Blacks in "precision machine" occupations accounted for 38.0% of all Detroit's Black occupations for the two decades between 1950 and 1970. As early as 1940, the proportion of Blacks in this job category was 30.0%. Although it declined to 26.0% by 1980, this occupational category still accounted for the dominant share of Detroit's Black occupations for thirty years. By 1990, "precision machine" represented only 19% of all Black occupations caused by the city's automotive industry job losses. An examination of the average annual salary of Detroit's auto workers relative to salaries of similar workers in other locations over time should provide some evidence, as well as a partial explanation, for the strong Black preference for Detroit. Such a comparison should also include employment categories that place the mean annual salary of Detroit's auto workers in a broader perspective. In 1970, approximately the midpoint in the period when the proportion of Detroit's Black workers in the "precision machine" occupations remained stable at 38.0%, the national average salary for "motor vehicle manufacturing" employees (SIC 371) was $22,778. At that time in Detroit, the average salary for employees in this category was $24,372, 107% of the national mean (Table 11.2). The percentage for Michigan, a state with strong unions, is 108% and the mean salary for the Detroit Metropolitan Area was not available for that year. Tennessee, a right to work state where the number of new automobile industry jobs continues to grow, had an average salary of only ($15,261), 67.0% of the national mean at that time. Detroit and Michigan's average percentage of the nation's average salary for "all manufacturing" employment which includes (SIC 371) "motor vehicle manufacturing" shared the highest average salary across all places and employment categories in 1970 (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1971, 1991). There is the possibility that a headquarters effect contributes to Detroit's higher mean salary in this

267

Chapter 11: Economic Restructuring and Social Dislocation in Detroit

employment category since the corporate office's of the "Big Three" automobile manufacturers were all located in Wayne County (Detroit) at the time. Table 11.2:

Change in average salary for employees in manufacturing and other selective industries, 1970-1990

Industry

Location U.S. (US$)*

Michigan (%)

Detroit-Ann Arbor CMS A

Detroit (%)

Tennessee (%)

All

22,510

108

117

120

87

All manufacturing

28,376

124

130

145

81

Motor vechicles manufacturing (SIC 371)

34,543

122

N.A.

126

91

Service

20,638

101

119

104

91

85

(%)

1990

1970 All

16,464

117

123

142

All manufacturing

19,219

123

138

135

80

Motor vehicles manufacturing (SIC 371)

22,778

108

N.A.

107

67

Service

12,985

130

116

114

90

N.A. Data not available. * The figures for the U.S. are the average salaries in dollars; the other values in the table are percentage of the average U.S. salary for that industry. Source:

U.S. Department of Commerce, County Business Patterns 1970, U.S. Summary, Michigan and Tennessee. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971; U.S. Department of Commerce, County Business Patterns 1990, U.S. Summary, Michigan and Tennessee. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991.

Although there are Black-White differences in salary, Blacks were undoubtedly still attracted to Detroit because the base salary in the automobile industry was much higher than what was available to them in other industries and locations. The racial differential in mean salaries in Detroit at the time were probably dampened by UAW contract negotiations which embraced a policy that stressed equity. Even under these relatively favorable economic circumstances that the union had created for Blacks, access was heavily concentrated in those jobs that required low-skill levels (Widick, 1989).

268

Donald R. Deskins

Mean salary comparisons for the other employment categories in 1990 are very similar to those observed for SIC 371. Detroit's average salary for "all manufacturing" employees was $41,145,145% of the nation's average of $28,376. Though auto jobs have expanded in Tennessee, the comparative mean salary for "all manufacturing" industries located there is only 81% of the national mean and remains the lowest among all places considered. Detroit's mean salary for employees in "all industries", even in the growing "service" industries whdre job opportunities are expanding, also exceeds the national average. In 1990, Tennessee's average salary for the "all industries" employment category is among the lowest and does not exceed national averages, although the 91% mean salary recorded for "service" employees is nearer to the national mean salary than other occupational categories. To appreciate the significance of the automobile industry's contribution to Black aggregate income, the Chrysler Corporation, the smallest of the "Big Three" auto companies paid Black employees 800 million dollars in salaries in 1979, estimated to be 1 % of the nation's aggregate Black income. General Motors, the industry's giant, estimated that its 1987 payroll for its 76,792 Black employees was 3.03 billion dollars. This means that General Motors' Black employees, which account for only 0.6% of all Black employees, received 1.7% of all Black wages and salary income in the nation for that year (Cole and Deskins, 1988). Undoubtedly, Blacks saw the automobile industry as providing job opportunities that would allow them to achieve economic status and realize a better middleclass life style. The heavy concentration of Blacks in "precision machine" occupations, which remained at 38.0% between 1950 and 1970, provides convincing evidence of Blacks over-selecting jobs in the automotive manufacturing industry. Therefore, any changes or economic adjustments that reduce the job opportunities base that Blacks depend on for their future prosperity threatens Black social well-being in Detroit.

V Japan and the U.S. Automobile Market In 1970, Japan's share of the U.S. passenger car market was only 3.7%. Twelve years later, in 1982, the share had increased to 21.9%, representing 81.0% of the U.S. foreign import share (Trachte and Ross, 1985). In 1993, Japan's share of the domestic passenger car market stood at 28.2%. Collectively, the Japanese automobile industry activity in the U.S. market has threatened the hegemony of the "Big Three" companies and has caused these once unchallenged giant corporations to restructure their business in order to remain competitive. Numerous plant closings of U.S. automobile manufacturing facilities have occurred in the name of tackling obsolescence and inefficiency. New, highly- automated plants have opened, resulting in a net loss in the number of plants and in the number of jobs available. Concurrently, during this period of plant closings

269

Chapter 11: Economic Restructuring and Social Dislocation in Detroit

and job losses, the UAW has been weakened. Its membership has decreased by a third, from 1.5 million in 1979 to 1 million in 1987 (Cole and Deskins, 1988). The U.S. automotive industry's readjustment to the Japanese entry into the domestic automobile market has resulted not only in a change in the number of automobile assembly and part plants in the U.S. but also in major shifts in their locations. During the period 1970-1990, when the number of employees in automobile manufacturing dropped to an all time low on all levels (Figure 11.1), the number of automobile plants in the nation increased by 63.8%. Tennessee experienced a 178.7% increase in the number of plants while Michigan less Wayne County (Detroit) experienced a 70.2% increase in automotive plant expansion. Only in Detroit (Wayne County) was there a 27.8% decrease in the number of automobile manufacturing plants (Table 11.3). Table 11.3:

Changes in number of motor vehicle equipment manufacturing plants (SIC 371) in the U.S., 1970-1990 Number

Change 1970-1990

(%)

Location

1970

1990

Number

U.S.

2,739

4,487

1,748

(63.8)

Michigan

341

452

111

(32.6)

Michigan (-Detroit)

215

366

151

(70.2)

Detroit-Ann Arbor CMSA

296

181

115

(-38.1)

Detroit-Ann Arbor CMSA (-Detroit)

170

95

75

(-44.1)

Detroit (Wayne Co.)

126

86

-40

(-27.8)

47

131

84

(178.7)

Tennessee Source:

U.S. Department of Commerce, County Business Patterns 1970, U.S. Summary, Michigan and Tennessee, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971; U.S. Department of Commerce, County Business Patterns 1990, U.S. Summary, Michigan and Tennessee, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991.

As early as 1970, Japanese presence in the American automobile market was well-established, highly visible and strengthening. Rather than just being a foreign exporter of cars to the U.S., the Japanese automobile industry began to establish assembly and part plants throughout the U.S. This is partially reflected in the fact that the number of auto plants in the U.S. at the national level expanded by 63.8% during the period. Even in Michigan, at the state and metropolitan area levels increases occurred. During this period, 111 new plants, small and large, were added outside of Detroit but 40 were closed in Detroit between 1970-1990. The plant losses sustained in Detroit severely affect the high proportion of Blacks who have depended on the automotive industry as the primary source of employment. This, along with the fact that new plant locations are springing up in such places

270

Donald R. Deskins

as out-state Michigan and the rural parts of Tennessee where Black accessibility to these opportunities is reduced, makes the prospects for a prosperous economic future for Detroit Blacks seem dim. While automotive employment is decreasing in both absolute and relative terms, the proportion of Detroit's Blacks in the professions is increasing. However, it is well known that most of this type of employment is in the public sector. Such public sector jobs are subject to changes in public policy, particularly those linked to entitlement programs that serve Blacks. The future of these jobs, therefore, remains uncertain if the present conservative political climate continues (Collins, 1983). Even in "service" employment, which shows some growth in Detroit, the increase is not high enough to provide alternative replacement jobs for those lost due to shutdowns in the automobile industry. Since most Black jobs in the automobile industry were low-skilled, the work experience gained may not be sufficient to meet the technical skills required for the new jobs being created in the restructured automobile industry. Nor has this past work experience prepared the displaced Black auto workers for the technical information service job sector that is presently expanding, thus creating a class of workers with obsolete skills and little employment potential (Feldman and Betzold, 1990; Mast, 1994; Rich, 1989).

VI Social and Spatial Dislocation Racism can no longer be invoked as the sole explanation for the increased poverty found in America's central cities. There are myriad complex economic and social factors that contribute to the creation of the urban underclass which has been labeled the "truly disadvantaged". Structural changes in the economy and urban labor market conditions must also be considered when an explanation for urban poverty is sought. The Black response to these changing economic forces is bifurcated; Black poverty has increased in U.S. cities at the same time as the Black middle class has rapidly expanded. Thus, Black poverty has been concentrated in central cities as the Black middle class exits for the suburbs, distancing themselves from the devastating inner-city poverty-ridden environments. Such flight has created leadership and role model voids in the Black community that have yet to be filled. Consequently, the disassociation of the Black middle-class from the Black disadvantaged has led to further social disintegration creating class cleavages (Wilson, 1987). Verification of this assertion has great significance because it is one of the cornerstones on which the structural explanation for Black inner-city poverty is based. It is possible to test such assertions using segregation measures to examine census tract information. Dissimilarity indices (IDs), the most reliable of the segregation measures, are particularly useful in this case because they gauge the degree to which Black professionals (middle-class) are spatially polarized from those

271

Chapter 11: Economic Restructuring and Social Dislocation in Detroit

Blacks who are below the poverty line. When such measures are taken for at least two points in time, it is possible to assess the degree to which the Black middleclass is or is not separated from or interacts with Blacks who are disadvantaged. The strength and direction resulting from these indices taken over time should provide information sufficient to reject or support the hypothesis of Black middleclass disassociation. Since the indicators of dislocation (e.g. crime and poverty) are worsening in Detroit over time, Detroit's professionals - the Black middleclass - are expected to be more segregated from the Black poor today then they were in the past.

Vl.a Class Separation Within the City Using census tract data, dissimilarity indices (IDs) are generated for the city of Detroit to test the Wilson hypothesis. Data representing the Black middle-class are drawn from the Black "professional, executive and administrative" occupational category. The following census categories for Black groups which are below the poverty line are used to represent the city's poor: "families", "families headed by females", "families headed by females with children under 18 years" and "families headed by females with children under 6 years". The latter Black groups are at the low end of the social and economic hierarchy in contrast to Black "professional, executive and administrative" job holders, who are at the top of the economic ladder and represent family stability and middle class achievement. The test results are limited to tracts within the city and use only those city census tracts that have 400 hundred or more Blacks. Table 11.4:

Year

Dissimilarity indices (IDs) of black population by different categories, Detroit 1970,1980 and 1990 Below poverty level Families

Female heads of household

Female heads of household: children < 18

Female heads of households; children < 6

1990*

.47

.49

.48

.51

1980

.44

.48

.48

.51

1970

.45

.45

.47

.49

* Female heads of households with children under 5 years of age.

Although limited, the results are useful in determining the degree to which the Black middle-class, who represent family stability and comparatively high income, interact with those Black families below the poverty line who have been designated "the truly disadvantaged" or "underclass" because each respective

272

Donald R. Deskins

group occupies polar positions on the social and economic continuum. There are slight changes in the indices of dissimilarity generated between the Black middle class and the Black family categories in poverty residing in the city between 1970 and 1990 (Table 11.4). Some support for the assertion that the Black middleclass is abandoning the Black underclass leaving them to fend for themselves is found in these results. Since this test was restricted to the city, the results cannot confirm Black professional flight to the suburbs; however, they indicate that the Black middle-class is moving as far away as they can from poor Blacks concentrated in the inner-city core. The bulk of this movement by middle-class Blacks has been to the city's edge, confirming that there is increasing neighborhood class division among Blacks in Detroit. The small changes in the dissimilarity indices generated for the city are in the hypothesized direction and provide evidence that Blacks are increasingly separating along class lines in Detroit. Although the results support the Black middle class disassociation assertion, stronger support for his position can be gathered by a metropolitan area scale analysis.

Vl.b Race and Class Divisions in the Metropolitan Area The results above are strengthened by the fact that the Detroit-Ann Arbor Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area's Black professionals are less concentrated, both numerically and proportionally in the city in 1990 then they were in 1970 (Table 11.5). Even though the absolute and relative number of Black professionals in the Detroit CMSA has increased by 36,709 (which represents a 142.8% increase), only 68.7% of the area's Black professionals were found in the city in 1990, compared to 89.2% in 1970. These percentage changes indicate that Detroit's Black professionals are growing fast and are much less concentrated in the city in 1990 than is the total Black population. The concentration of Blacks in the City of Detroit is confirmed by the fact that Detroit has recently been cited as one of the nation's "hypersegregated" cities (Massey and Denton, 1989). Recent work on residential segregation by race across social status categories in metropolitan areas also indicate that the division by race remains quite high, even though Black professionals are leaving cities (Denton and Massey, 1988). The regional distribution of Black female-headed households in poverty with children under 6 years in the Detroit CMSA has also become less concentrated in the city; the respective percentage for these Black female-headed households residing in the City of Detroit is 85.9 in 1990 and 89.0 in 1970. Although both groups are leaving the city, Black professionals are leaving at a rate that is seven times greater than that of the Black disadvantaged. These population shifts imply that there is a class separation among Blacks taking place between 1970 and 1990. Stronger support for the proposition that the Black middle-class is leaving the city might result from calculating dissimilarity indices for the Detroit CMSA. Generating these indices between race and class would provide evidence not on-

Chapter 11: Economic Restructuring and Social Dislocation in Detroit Table 11.5:

273

Population change 1970-1990, Detroit-Ann Arbor, MI, consolidated metropolitan statistical area

Year

CMSA

CMSA less Detroit (Suburbs)

City of Detroit number

(%)

Population Total 1990

4,665,236

3,637,262

1,027,974

(22.0)

1980

4,752,713

3,549,374

1,203,339

(25.3)

1970

4,783,972

3,272,490

1,511,482

(32.0)

Change 1970-1990 (number)

-118,736

364,772

-483,508

11.1

-32.0

%

-2.5

White 1990

3,645,037

3,394,979

250,058

(6.9)

1980

3,831,653

3,387,253

444,400

(11.6)

1970

4,003,991

3,152,937

351,054

(21.2)

Change 1970-1990 (number)

-358,954

242,042

-600.996

7.7

-70.6

% Black 1990

-9.0 1,020,199

242,283

777,916

(76.3)

1980

921,060

162,121

758,939

(82.4)

1970

779,981

119,553

660,428

(84.7)

Change 1970-1990 (number)

240,218

122,730

117,488

30.8

102.7

17.8

Professionals, executives and administrators Total 1990

571,512

508,638

62,874

(11.0)

1980

447,868

382,476

65,392

(14.6)

1970

398,486

308,509

89,977

(22.6)

Change 1970-1990 (number)

173,026

200,129

-27,103

43.4

64.9

White 1990

509,095

489,081

20,014

(3.9)

1980

404.316

372,484

31,832

(7.9)

1970

372,778

305,744

67,034

(18.0)

Change 1970-1990 (number)

136.317

183,337

-47,020

%

%

36.6

60.0

-30.1

-70.1

Black 1990

62,417

19,557

42,860

1980

43,552

9,992

33,560

(77.1)

1970

25.708

2,765

2,943

(89.2)

Change 1970-1990 (number)

36.709 142.8

16,792 607.3

(68.7)

19,917 86.8

cont.

>

274

Donald R. Deskins

Table 11.5 cont. Year

CMSA

CMSA less Detroit (Suburbs)

City of Detroit number

(%)

Female heads of households below poverty with children under 6 years Total 1990*

56,205

27,729

28,476

(50.7)

1980

31,254

10,258

20,996

(67.2)

1970

17,067

4,574

Change 1970-1990 (number)

39,138

23,155

15,983

229.3

506.2

127.9

White 1990*

27,850

23,956

3,894

114.0 i

1980

10,478

7,398

3,080

(29.4)

1970

5,705

3,319

2,386

(41.8)

22,145

20,637

1,508

—

388.2

621.8

%

Change 1970-1990 (number)

%

63.2

—

(85.9)

Black 1990*

28,355

3,773

24,582

1980

20,776

2,860

17,916

(86.2)

1970

11,362

1,255

10,107

(89.0)

2,518

14,475

—

143.2

—

Change 1970-1990 (number) %

16,993 149.6

200.7

* Female heads of household with children under 5 years. Sources:

U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population and Housing: 1970 Census Tracts, Final Report PHC( 1 )-58 Detroit, Michigan, SMSA, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population and Housing: 1980, Census Tracts, Final Report PHC80-2 58 Detroit, Mich. SMSA, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census of Population and Housing, Population and Housing Characteristics for Census Tracts and Block Numbering Areas, Detroit-Ann Arbor, MI CMSA, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993.

ly on the degree of Black middle-class segregation, but also the degree to which Black groups are segregated from their respective White middle-class and disadvantaged class counterparts, as well as determining the class separation between White groups. Table 11.6 presents dissimilarity indices between the total White population and each of the following groups: Black middle-class, White middleclass, Black disadvantaged and White disadvantaged. Here again, the middleclass for both groups are represented by the census occupational category, "professional, executive and administrative" and the disadvantaged for both races are represented by "female heads of households below poverty with children under 6 years." It is obvious from the results that all groups but one, the Black disadvantaged, regardless of race are becoming more integrated with the total White population. The Black disadvantaged is the only group to experience an increase in segrega-

Chapter 11: Economic Restructuring and Social Dislocation in Detroit

275

Table 11.6: Dissimilarity indices by race and class, Detroit-Ann Arbor, MI consolidated metropolitan statistical area, 1970-1990. Race Black

White

Middle class 1990 1980 1970 Change 1970-1990 in percent

.618 .665 .679 -.061 -8.9

.030 .037 .030 .000 .000

Disadvantaged class 1990 1980 1970 Change 1970-1990 in percent

.798 .746 .678 +.120 +17.7

.071 .176 .205 -.134 -65.4

tion from the total White population during this twenty year period (Table 11.6). Clearly there is a within-race class cleavage between Black privileged and Black disadvantaged groups in the Detroit CMSA. Even though the Black middle-class is integrating more with the total White population, the White disadvantaged is integrating more then four times as fast. These findings support class separation among Black groups but it does not seem to support the notion that the Black middle-class is rapidly integrating with Whites along class lines. Whites are integrating with the total White population more rapidly than with any Black class, suggesting that race may be significant in class desegregation. Dissimilarly indices are employed again to determine the change between group relations over time using the same population categories. The results are based on indices generated between various pairs of the privileged and disadvantaged groups by race to answer whether the Black middle-class in the CMSA is integrating more by class than by race. When examining the dissimilarity indices between these race pairs, it is no surprise that the greatest segregation in the region has occurred between the Black disadvantaged and the White middle-class (Table 11.7). Nor is it startling that there is separation between the Black and White disadvantaged groups. However, this racial division across class is evidence that question the argument that group cohesion is class rather then race-based. It is also no surprise that there is a division between the Black middle-class and Black disadvantaged. Although the dissimilarity indices increase over time, it is surprising that the rate at which the Black middle-class is disassociating from the Black poor, 800% between 1970 and 1990, is highest, nearly 15 times that of the next highest rate of increased segregation, between Black and White disadvantaged groups.

276 Table 11.7:

Donald R. Deskins Dissimilarity Indices by Race and Class Detroit-Ann Arbor, MI Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area 1970-1990

Black disadvantaged

White middle

Black middle

1990

.828

.180

.727

1980

.783

.090

.570

1970

.710

.020

.472

Number

+.118

+.160

+54.0

%

+ 16.6

+800.0

+54.0

1990

.101

.547

1980

.213

.479

1970

.238

.474

Number

-.137

%

-57.6

+.073 + 15.4

1990

.648

1980

.692

1970

.712

White disadvantaged

Disadvantaged change 1970-1990

White disadvantaged

Disadvantaged change 1970-1990

Black middle class

Change 1970-1990 Number

-.064

%

-8.9

The White disadvantaged and the White middle-class are desegregrating, which is another example of group cohesion overriding class differences. Segregation between the White disadvantaged and the Black middle-class has also increased over time. Although the Black middle-class is becoming less segregated from their White counter parts, the magnitude of the segregation between the Black and White middle-class is more then six times higher then it is between the White middle- and disadvantaged-classes. The results again show that race plays a stronger role than class in defining group cohesion. The results clearly show that the Black middle-class is less segregated from the White middle-class than it was in 1970 but that it is now more segregated from the Black underclass. These changes suggest that race has not completely lost its significance in defining groups and remains a strong overriding group delineator. Separation by race and its manifested social and economic impact also reduces access by disadvantaged groups to resources.

Chapter 11: Economic Restructuring and Social Dislocation in Detroit

277

VII Detroit's Changing Resource Base and Social Well-Being Loss of jobs in automobile manufacturing due to industrial restructuring and the persistent segregation of CMSA's Blacks in Detroit where the highest job losses have occurred has resulted in Black separation and isolation. Concurrently, the increasing Black middle-class is struggling to separate and disassociate from the Black poor within the constraints of regional social and economic segregation. Demographically, Detroit is becoming increasingly Black. The total population has decreased to the degree that its status as a million person city is threatened. It is the seventh-largest city in the U.S., two ranks lower than two decades ago. In contrast, Detroit's Black population is now 777,916, an increase of 17.8% since 1970 preserving and maintaining its rank as the U.S. city with the third largest Black population (Table 11.8). The overall depopulation of the city has resulted in a low population density of only 7,581 per square mile, under one-third the value in 1970. As Detroit's Black population increases, it has also become poorer. Today, three of every ten individuals are found below the poverty line. The greatest increase in poverty between 1970 and 1990 is among families headed by females, accounting for nearly half of those in this category. Families headed by females in poverty with children six years or younger is next, with 44.5% classified as poor. It is clear that as Detroit's population became increasingly Black, it also became increasingly poor with a concentration of this poverty in female-headed families with young children. Detroit's birth rate (now 16.1 per 1,000) has only slightly decreased in the last twenty years as has its death rate (10.5 per 1,000). However, the percentage of births to mothers under twenty years of age has not significantly changed over time; one-fifth of the births are to teenage mothers, many of whom may not be ready for the economic and social responsibilities of parenthood, creating a situation where children are having babies. Although the infant mortality rate in Detroit, a western industrialized city, has declined since 1970, it still remains above 20 per 1,000, a rate which is comparable to many poor Third World countries. Unemployment in Detroit reached 19.7% in 1990, almost three times the 1970 rate. This increase in unemployment parallels the 27.8% loss in automobile manufacturing plants and the 64.5% reduction in auto industry employment that reduced the number of jobs available in the city from 64,311 to just 24,421. The total number of jobs in the city during the same period decreased by 18.1%, and as a consequence, median family income adjusted to 1989 dollars has decreased in value by 55.5% while per capita income in 1989 dollars has increased by only 2.6%. Education continues to be identified in the U.S. as the principal path to greater job access, increased earnings, improved standard of living and a higher quality

278 Table 11.8:

Donald R. Deskins Changing social and economic indicators City of Detroit, 1970-1990

Indicators

1970

1980

1990

Change 1970-1990

(%) Total population

1,511,482

1,203,389

1,027,974

Total population rank

5

6

7

Black population

660,428

758,939

777,916

17.8

Black population percentage

42.6

63.1

75.7

77.7

Black population rank

3

3

3

Population density (per square mile)

11,147

8,874

7,581

-31.9

-32.0 —

—

All jobs

922,709

789,428

755,293

-18.1

Motor vehicle manufacturing jobs

64,311

61,232

24,421

-62.5

Auto plants

126

88

86

-27.8

Average salary motor vehicle manufacturing (1989 $)

69,372

57,573

43,524

-37.3

Unemployment percentage

7.2

18.5

19.7

172.2

Percentage of individuals in poverty

18.7

21.9

31.4

64.5

Percentage of families in poverty

11.3

18.9

29.0

156.7

Percentage of families headed by females

18.0

41.0

46.5

158.3

Percentage of families headed by females with children

Chapter 11: Economic Restructuring and Social Dislocation in Detroit

279

Table 11.8 cont. Indicators

1970

1980

1990

Change 1970-1990 (%)

Percentage Vacant housing units

9.1

8.0

8.7

Median value housing unit (1990 $)

39,248

33,310

25,600

-34.8

Construction permits

2,217

1,171

633

-71.4

Percentage of permits for single family housing units

39.6

17.9

0.0

-100.0

Assessed valuation of property in millions (1990$)

12,096.9

6,697.2

5,579.8

-55.5

Value added by manufacturing in millions (1989 $)

9,564.4

8,089.2

4,829.0

-49.5

Crime rate (per 100,000)

8,452

11,987

16,396

94.0

Homicides reported (per 100,000)

47

46

57

21.3

Full time police officers (per 100,000)

342

347

437

27.8

Property taxes per capita (1990 $)

216

280

507

134.7

Gross revenue expenditures per capita (1990 $)

498

1,548

1,418

184.5

-4.3

* Female heads of household with children under 5 years. Sources: Department of Health, City of Detroit: Courtenay M. Slater and George E. Hall, editors, 1992 County and City Data: Extra Annual Metro, City and County Data Book, Lanham, MD: Bernan Press, 1992. Detroit Public Schools: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports for the United States, 1990, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports for the United States, 1980, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports for the United States, 1970, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population and Housing: 1970, Census Tracts, Final Report PH(1)- 58 Detroit, Mich. SMSA, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Census of Population and Housing: 1980, Census Tracts, Final Report PHC80-2 58 Detroit, Mich. SMSA, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1990 Census of Population and Housing, Population and Housing Characteristics for Census Tracts and Block Numbering Areas, Detroit-Ann Arbor, Ml CMSA, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972; Federal Bureau of Investigation, County and City Data Book, 1983, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983; Federal Bureau of Investigation, County and City Data Book, 1972, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973; U. S. Department of Commerce, County Business Patterns 1970, US Summary, Michigan and Tennessee, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971; Federal Bureau of Investigation, County Business Patterns 1980, US Summary, Michigan and Tennessee, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981; Federal Bureau of Investigation, County Business Patterns 1990, US Summary, Michigan and Tennessee, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991; Tax Commission, State of Michigan, Department of The Treasury, 1970, 1980 and 1990.

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life style. The development of human capital has been cited by citizens, politicians, government officials and the lay public in Detroit and elsewhere as the only means to combat increasing poverty effectively by preparing individuals to compete in a high-tech global economy. Education is in crisis and there is little confidence that urban school systems can adequately educate students. In Detroit since 1970, the number of students enrolled in the public schools has declined by 41.7%, while at the same period, the number of teachers have declined by 17.4%. Like the city's population, Detroit's public school student body has also become increasingly Black. By 1990, Black students accounted for 89.2% of the Detroit Public Schools' enrollment. City revenues between 1970 and 1990, in 1990 dollars, have declined by 62.4% reducing the dollars available per student from $7889 in 1970 to $5093 in 1990, a 35.4% decrease. The high school dropout rate has increased by 198.5%, with only four out of every ten students graduating from high school. In 1970, the California Achievement Test scores in reading for Detroit's public school students was 40% of the national norm; by 1990, it dropped to 37%, while reading scores declined by 7.5% and the math scores increased by 2.7%. Detroit's housing stock, the basis for property taxes, fell by 22.5% to 410,027 units in 1990, with a vacancy rate of 8.7%. The median value of housing units has also declined in 1990 dollars by 34.8% with an average value of only $25,600 per unit. The 1990 aggregate value of property in Detroit was $4,829,000,000, representing a 55.5% decline from 1970 in constant dollars. No signs of growth in the property tax base is on the horizon as the number of building permits issued in 1990 was only 633, contrasting to 2,217 permits issued in 1970. Of the 633 permits issued in 1990, not one was issued for a single-family housing unit. As the city's property tax base has eroded, property tax rates have increased since 1970 by 134.7%, placing greater reliance on a shrinking tax base. In addition to the reduction in aggregate assessed valuation dollars, value added by manufacturing has been reduced by 49.5% since 1970. Together, all the economic indicators show that the Detroit's tax base and revenue resources have been vastly reduced - making it resource poor as the gross revenue expenditures per-capita (in constant 1990 dollars) has increased by 184.5%. Per capita revenue expenditures of $1,418 in 1990 exceeded the percapita property tax of $507, leaving a gap of $911 to be covered by other resources. This is a bleak economic picture and the result was a $93.6 million city deficit for 1990. Crime has plagued the city for years paralleling the dramatic economic decline. Serious crime nearly doubled during the 1970-90 period and now stands at 16,396 incidents per 100,000 population. In 1970, Detroit reported 714 homicides and was known as the "murder capital", a title it is pleased to relinquish (Mast, 1990). By 1990, 582 homicides occurred but the rate per 100,000 has increased since 1970 by 21.3% The homicide rate has had a detrimental effect on the city's image as well as its commerce because many feel that Detroit is not a safe place to

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conduct business. The overall demographic and economic indicators paint a bleak picture; it is difficult to envision a promising future for Detroit.

VIII Future Prospects for a City Struggling to Survive The demographic and economic indicators delineating Detroit's resources are bleak enough to break the community's spirit and could lead to complacency and hopelessness among its leaders and citizens. Black political hegemony has reigned in Detroit for 20 years; the election of Black mayors has heightened community pride and increased expectations in the Black community for a promising future. The expectations that a Black mayor can solve problems in a resourcepoor environment is unrealistic because the endemic social and economic problems were well in place before the Black mayors were elected. In an attempt to improve race relations, and decrease police brutality, once elected, the Young administration's first task was to reform the police department, reorienting it to serve the community rather than to just police it. By 1993, the police ranks were 50% Black and even at the sergeants level, there were 303 Whites, 302 Blacks, 4 Hispanics, and 2 each for Asians and Native Americans. Revitalization of Detroit's downtown area has also taken place. The downtownriver front redevelopment was focused on the Renaissance Center, the result of a coalition between the captains of business and industry and the mayor to build this project, the cornerstone to revitalizing this deteriorating area. Job losses in automobile manufacturing would have been greater than they were if it was not for the city's support, encouragement and investment in the development of the new General Motors Poletown and Chrysler Jefferson Avenue plants (Report of the Detroit Strategic Planning Project, 1987). These are the only new plant investments by major automobile manufacturers in a union-dominated central city and Detroit would be a much more impoverished city without them. Signs of commercial and economic development, although much more is needed, are visible in Detroit and are encouraging in light of the city's declining social and economic indicators. Although there has been concentrated development and redevelopment in the downtown river front area, redevelopment in the neighborhoods has languished and it will take new resources and creative leadership and responsible management to improve neighborhood quality.

IX Conclusions When Black-White segregation is measured for Detroit, it is abundantly clear that it is among the most highly segregated metropolitan areas in the nation, confirming that the separation of Black "haves" and "have nots" has occurred. Based upon these findings, it is not difficult to accept the argument that Black urban poverty

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and social dislocation is partially attributed to Black class differences and separation. However, racial discrimination must also be considered when explanations for urban poverty are being sought as does the loss of manufacturing jobs due to shrinkage and relocation in the suburbs, smaller cities, rural, and offshore areas. To seek a fuller explanation for Black urban poverty, these structural economic factors must be reexamined. Detroit's Black political leadership which has been in office since 1973 acknowledges that the massive relocation of jobs from the city to the suburbs has limited Black economic access and contributes to the persistent poverty found in its neighborhoods (Rich, 1989). City officials with some justification feel that treatment by a hostile press of the resulting "economic mismatch" (Kassarda, 1988a, 1988b) has aggravated the problems of the poor and damaged the city's image. Like other cities, according to Katz (1989, 10), contemporary politicians (local and state), moralist and editorial writers are preoccupied with labelling the poor in a manner which tends to further isolate them from the rest of society. Such labelling stigmatizes the group as having norms and values that are not compatible with those of larger American society thus constraining the poor and making their rehabilitation difficult if not impossible. It should be recognized that many of the poor are deserving of help and find themselves in an untenable position attributed to external political, economic and social forces over which they have little to no control. It is encouraging that Detroit has just been designated an Urban Federal Empowerment Zone. This federal grant will benefit development in the 18.35 square mile designated empowerment zone which covers 13.4% of the city's area, containing about one-tenth of its population. The generous tax credits available should attract business to the zone which in turn will improve the local economy by providing new jobs which is the foundation for economic recovery. This is a fine beginning for the new city administration to restore the city's economy. However, is it enough for Detroit to rebound once again, regaining its past posture as one of the world's leading industrial cities in a newly-restructured global economy?

Chapter 12 Ethnicity, Class, and the Economic Internationalization of Miami Jan Nijman Something interesting happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in the late summer of 1992. When the U.S. army came in to set up large campgrounds to the south of Miami, they were equipped with tents, kitchens, and sanitation but some unexpected visitors showed up. The temporary facilities were part of a large federally-funded relief effort to accommodate people whose houses were destroyed by the hurricane. But many of the victims chose to stay with what was left of their property and protect if from looters. Soon, however, Miami's homeless (those without a home before the storm hit the city) got the word and in large numbers, they decided to take advantage of the opportunity. For them, the camps were a significant improvement in life-style. As one might expect, they were the last ones to leave the camps after several months. Miami is a relatively attractive place for the homeless and the poor because of the climate, and because they can pick up what is left behind by the tourists and the very wealthy that inhabit parts of this city. The contrast between rich and poor in Miami is about as sharp as anywhere in the United States and in some ways, the gap is more reminiscent of cities in Latin America or other Third World regions. Miami has its share of social and economic polarization, even if it is not a typical post-industrial city. Traditionally, tourism has been one of the key industries while the manufacturing sector has always been relatively small. Nonetheless, Miami has experienced profound economic and social change and presently displays some traits found in other post-industrial cities like New York. Perhaps most important is the rapid growth of service industries, especially producer services. This, in turn, is accompanied by a widening of the income-gap between various industries, occupations, and social groups. Socio-economic polarization may be studied as a general phenomenon in the sense that it takes place in many cities around the developed world. However, the manner and degree in which it occurs is largely determined by local circumstances and historical and geographical context. In Miami, the process is complicated by massive immigration in the past decades, a most unusual ethnic composition of the population, and the rapid internationalization of this city's economy. This chapter discusses polarization trends among Hispanics, Blacks, and Whites (Anglos) in Miami in the context of these unique local circumstances. This division of Miami's population in its three most important groups obviously entails a large degree of generalization and does not pay much attention to more detailed distinctions (especially among various groups of Latin-Americans). It is

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argued, though, that this broader distinction allows proper understanding of Miami's socio-economic transformations. First, attention is directed to the city's social transformation as a result of immigration. This is followed by a discussion of the internationalization of Miami's economy that was, in part, made possible by the arrival of large number of foreign migrants. These sections set the stage for the subsequent section about the particular nature of the polarization process in Miami.

I Miami's Socio-Cultural Metamorphosis To the outside world, Miami is best known for its high immigration rates and unusual ethnic composition. The scale of Miami's ethnic change over the past three decades is unprecedented. In 1960, Latins made up 5% of the metropolitan population; today, they represent more than half of the city's two million people, and approximately 66% of all Latin people are Cubans (see Table 12.1). Total populations in 1990 for Dade County (Miami) were 953,410 Hispanics, 370,348 nonHispanic Blacks and 613,336 non-Hispanic Whites. Just as spectacular was the drop in the share of the Anglos, from 80 to about 30%, over the 1960-90 period. The percentage of African-Americans increased only slightly, to around 20%. The rate of immigration is twice as high as that of New York and it is by far the highest of any city in the United States (Knox, 1994, 71). Table 12.2 provides further evidence of Miami's international character exceeding that of other major cities in the United States. Almost half of the present population was born abroad, and over 60% does not speak English at home. Miami consists of at least three communities with their own mainstream, hierarchy, social values, and, most importantly, their own "definition of the situation" locally (Portes and Stepick, 1993). In this city, there exists no history of assimilation to one single mainstream. Thus, while the Anglos make up Miami's old establishment, newcomers have either not assimilated at all but instead created their own mainstream (Cubans), or they have assimilated to the Cuban mainstream (Nicaraguans) or to the African-American mainstream (Haitians). The year 1980 was the single most dramatic year in Miami's recent history. The city was flooded with 125,000 Cuban refugees (the so-called "Marielitos"), allowed to leave Cuba by the Castro regime during a brief period. At the same time, the influx of Haitians peaked as well (about 60,000 between from 1977 and 1980). Also, in 1980, Miami witnessed the most violent race riots in recent American urban history (to be superseded only by the infamous Los Angeles riots in 1992). Violence exploded after the so-called "McDuffie verdict" in which four White police officers where acquitted of charges of beating an African-American motorist to death in downtown Miami. The riots left eighteen people dead, hundreds wounded, and damages estimated up to two hundred million dollars.

Chapter 12: Ethnicity, Class, and the Economic Internationalization of Miami Table 12.1:

285

The national origin of Miami's (Dade County) largest foreign-born populations in 1990*

Total

874,569

Caribbean, Central America, and South America

746,775

Cuba

428,965

Nicaragua

67,948

Haiti

45,149

Colombia

43,387

Jamaica

30,952

Puerto Rico**

18,699

Dominican Republic

16,394

Honduras

15,988

* These figures do not include estimates of illegal residents. ** Puerto Ricans are not officially considered foreign. Source:

U.S. Census 1990, Social and Economic Characteristics.

Table 12.2:

The percentage of the population that is foreign born and the percentage of the population that does not speak only English at home, 1990 (urbanized area/central city; code 400) Miami

New York

Los Angeles

Chicago

Foreign born

45.4

27.9

36.6

15.5

Non-English

60.6

45.2

52.4

32.9

Source:

U.S. Census 1990, Social and Economic Characteristics.

In more than one way, 1980 proved to be a turning point. First, it raised anxiety among Anglos to a very high level. In the eyes of Miami's White establishment, their city was under siege. Many of those who decided to leave moved north to Broward County. The sentiment among Anglos was expressed on bumper-stickers with the alarming announcement, "Will the last American to leave Miami, please bring the flag." Near the end of the year, an "English only" referendum was passed as a means to resist the perceived Cuban siege. Anglos feared that their city was on the verge of turning into a "paradise lost": in 1980, Miami already contained more Cubans than Cuba's second largest city. For the Cubans already in Miami, the events of 1980 served as a wake-up call. On the one hand, the arrival of the Marielitos indicated that the Cuban stay in Miami would turn out to be more than temporary. On the other hand, the hostile and organized response of the Anglo population to the growing Cuban presence provided a lesson to the Cubans. After 1980, Cubans set their eyes on Miami rather than on Cuba and laid claim to residence in the city. They naturalized (taking U.S.

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citizenship) in large numbers in order to become eligible to vote, and the number of Cubans in political office increased rapidly. Finally, Miami's African-Americans (Blacks) were caught in-between. Instead of tasting the long awaited fruits of "victory" in the civil rights movement, African-Americans were crowded out of Miami's political apparatus. In addition, the sharp contrast between the harsh treatment of Haitian refugees and the federal government's pampering of Cuban immigrants did not go unnoticed1. Economically, the successes of recent Cuban immigrants only led to intensified feelings of relative deprivation among African-Americans. After 1980, Miami's ethnic triangle was firmly in place. By the late 1980s, Anglo hegemony in Miami had definitively come to an end. This was illustrated, for example, by the changed stand of the Miami Herald. The city's largest newspaper had traditionally voiced the concerns of the Anglo population and had taken a very critical position against the arrival of the Marielitos in 1980. But in 1988, when the influx of Nicaraguans peaked as a result of the termination of U.S. aid to the Contras, the reaction of the Herald was much less hostile. Indeed, the newspaper editorials were quite sympathetic to the warm welcome extended to the Nicaraguans by the Cubans, who considered themselves "brothersin-arms". There are presently more than 100,000 Nicaraguans in Miami. In the same year, the newspaper introduced a brand-new Spanish language edition, "El Nuevo Herald", that is, independent of the English edition, with its own reporting staff and editors, most Cuban-Americans. In commercial circles, it was increasingly realized that "bilingual Miami was profitable, monolingual Miami was not" (Portes and Stepick, 1993). It is especially significant that the years between 1980 and 1994 witnessed not merely a further numerical increase of Hispanics but a structural shift in the population balance (to an absolute Hispanic majority) and the consolidation of political and economic power in the hands of Hispanics and, especially, Cubans. It appears that the city has now reached a phase of stabilization and normalization: stabilization in the sense that the Hispanic majority already exists and can at most increase to a larger majority; and normalization in the sense that many Miamians have learned to accept their city's unique ethnic composition as the normal state of affairs. (Ethnic tensions remain, of course, but it is now more than fifteen years since the riots of 1980.) In 1994, President Clinton repealed the law that gave special immigration rights to Cubans in order to discourage large numbers of desperate refugees from cross1 Cuban refugees automatically qualified as political refugees since the U.S. government considered them victims of Castro's Communist regime. Consequently, every Cuban refugee that made it to U.S. soil was granted asylum. In contrast, Haitian refugees came from a country whose right-wing governments went uncriticized by the U.S. authorities. As a result, fleeing Haitians were classified as economic refugees and were denied access to the United States.

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ing the Florida straits to the U.S. Many Hispanics in South Florida were supportive of the efforts of the federal and state governments to turn the tide of Cuban refugees in the summer of 1994. It was felt by many that Miami could not afford another "Mariel influx". Thus, although immigration will undoubtedly continue to be a central issue for this city in the years ahead, it appears that, by 1995, the most dramatic episodes of Miami's immigration history had come to an end. Portes and Stepick (1993) refer to the emergence of a "normalizing narrative" among Hispanics and Anglos (but not African-Americans) that emphasizes Miami's "natural" role as "capital of the Americas". This reflects the recognition among the elites of a common interest in Miami's economic well-being, even if this may not be the kind of economic profile that the Anglos had in mind for their city twenty or thirty years ago. The next section discusses the impact of this process of internationalization on Miami's economic structure.

II Economic Restructuring and Internationalization The transformation of Miami was not confined to ethnicity. The influx of immigrants was accompanied by the rapid internationalization of Miami's economy. The presence of large numbers of relatively skilled and educated bi-lingual Latinos makes Miami an attractive location for companies that conduct business in Latin America. Thus, Miami's ethnic transformation helped facilitate its economic (and cultural) reorientation from the "north" to the "south". Miami's transformation from a "southern U.S. city" to a "northern Latin American metropolis" is nicely illustrated by, among other things, the impressive shift in the geographical origins of tourists visiting Miami. From 1985 to 1993, the number of international tourists as a percentage of all tourists increased from 31% to 61%. In 1993, 63% of all foreign tourists came from Latin America and the Caribbean (Beacon Council, 1990; 1994c). Several decades ago, Miami was a favorite destination for American retirees, especially from the northeast. These days, the typical seasonal visitor who owns a second house in Miami comes from Brazil, Venezuela, or other Latin American countries. For many Latin American visitors, Miami is a shopping center par excellence as it was decades ago for the Cuban elites, though in recent years, this shopping center element appears to have become a much larger phenomenon. In Miami's upscale malls, one is struck by the display of fashionable winter-clothes in a tropical city where temperatures, even in winter, rarely reach below 21 degrees Celsius. Typically, the customers are Brazilians, Argentineans and other Latin Americans who come to Miami to shop for the latest luxury products on the market. The nature of Miami's multinational corporations also testifies to this city's international role. A recent study identified 352 offices of multinational companies in Miami (Beacon Council, 1994a). A multinational company was defined as a company with a physical presence in at least two countries. Most companies are

Jan Nijman

288

from the United States (33%) and Europe (32%). Latin American and Caribbean firms make up only 17% of the total. Only 8% of all companies are in manufacturing and more than 50% are in sales/marketing. An additional 20% are involved in warehousing/distribution. Many of the European multinationals are banks: Miami is now the third most-important foreign banking center in the United States (after New York and Los Angeles) in terms of the number of foreign banking offices (Nijman, 1995b). About half of all multinationals' offices are regional headquarters for Latin America and most are relatively small operations (most have less than ten employees). Many companies settled in Miami in recent years: 70% of all offices was established after 1980. The main reason that is usually given for the decision to locate in Miami is the relative distance to Latin America (Grosfoguel, 1994; Beacon Council, undated). More specifically, company representatives cite such factors as communications, skilled labor, services, political stability, and cultural affinity with the Latin American market. With regard to air traffic, Miami is better connected throughout Latin America than any other city in Latin America itself. The rapid internationalization of Miami's economy is also shown by its role as a gateway to Latin America for U.S. trade. Miami handles more than a third of all U.S. trade with Latin America. Of the city's top ten trading countries, the first nine are in Latin America. Table 12.3 shows Miami's share of total U.S. trade with various world regions. While Miami plays virtually no role in the nation's trade to other regions, its share of Latin American trade is very high and has increased in recent years. Approximately 70% of all trade of the Miami Customs District passes through Miami International Airport or the seaport of Miami. Table 12.3:

The Miami Custom District's share of U.S. trade with different world regions, 1990 (billion US$)

World region

U.S. trade

Miami

Miami (%) 1990

1992

South America

42.0

7.0

17.0

28.0

Caribbean

11.0

3.8

35.0

43.0

6.7

2.7

40.0

47.0

888.0

19.1

2.1

Central America World Source:

—

Beacon Council (1992,1994b).

Miami International Airport (MIA) may rank only 24th in the U.S. for national connectivity (Ivy, 1993), but it has the largest number of foreign airlines of any airport in the world, and was the second busiest airport in the United States for international passengers in 1993 after New York's JFK airport. MIA is the largest in the country for international cargo shipments. Moreover, Miami is internationally better connected than nationally: MIA has non-stop or one-stop services to 70

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289

U.S. cities and 118 to foreign destinations. Table 12.4 shows MIA's international orientation compared with New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Table 12.4:

The importance of international air traffic: the total number of domestic and foreign airlines with scheduled passenger and/or cargo services in 1993, and volume and share of international air traffic in 1993 Airlines

International passengers

International cargo

Number

Absolute

%

Tons

Miami

149

12,373,223

43.2

923,741

78.4

New York*

107

16,011,662

34.4

917,027

61.9

Los Angeles

87

11,945,032

25.0

589,941

45.8

Chicago

85

5,899,466

9.1

423,362

33.5

%

* New York includes JFK and La Guardia. Sources: Departments of Aviation of New York, Florida, California, and Illinois; Airports Council International: World Wide Air Traffic Report, 1993.

The relative size of the producer services sector in the economy is a common measure of a city's post-industrial status (Fainstein et al., 1992), but also of its control functions in the wider national and international economy (Drennan, 1992). Typically, producer services include the finance sector, insurance, legal services, and a variety of management services that are needed to "control" production. It is one of the arguments of world city theory that decentralization of manufacturing goes hand in hand with centralization of producer services that reflect command functions (Sassen, 1991,1994). Table 12.5 compares the absolute and relative size of producer services in Miami with New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. These figures clearly demonstrate three points. First, in absolute terms, Miami's producer services are quite small compared to these larger U.S. cities, reflecting Miami's overall smaller size. Over time, this difference has remained about the same. Second, in relative terms, the size of Miami's producer services is comparable to that of Los Angeles and Chicago (but significantly smaller than that of New York). Third, this suggests that for its overall size, Miami has a relatively large producer services sector. If producer services are, in fact, indicative of a command function in the wider economic area (as argued in world-city literature), this raises the question of the geographical direction and extent of Miami's control function. Often, producer services are linked to the local manufacturing sector but this is not necessarily so. Sassen (1994, 6465) argues, correctly, that the service sector cannot exist without manufacturing but that they need not be in the same place. One of the consequences of the process of globalization is that these different economic activities are increasingly separated in space. In the case of Miami, it seems that many producer services

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emerged in relation to the city's economic internationalization and increased ties with the Caribbean and Latin America. Table 12.5:

Absolute and relative share of the workforce in producer services in 1981 and 1991, by county*

Miami**

New York***

Los Angeles****

Chicago*****

Number

%

Number

%

Number

%

Number

%

1981

112,651

16.7

844,895

28.8

524,583

16.5

401,821

17.9

1991

153,668

20.5

932,308

31.0

727,987

19.7

532,444

22.7

* Producer services include finance, insurance, real estate, legal services, business and repair services, engineering and management services. ** Miami comprises Dade County. *** New York comprises New York, Kings, Bronx, Queens, and Richmond Counties. **** Los Angeles comprises Los Angeles County. ***** Chicago comprises Cook County. Sources: County Business Patterns, U.S. Department of Commerce.

Table 12.6 reveals that the relative size of Miami's manufacturing sector is as small as that of New York. But that does not make Miami the same kind of postindustrial city as New York. A comparison with figures from 1980 shows that Miami has traditionally lacked industry. The city's economy always depended more on the service sector and trade. In recent years, the rise of producer services went at the expense of both manufacturing and other services, including tourism. In other words, if Miami's producer services are only in small part linked to local manufacturing, they are probably related to industries elsewhere. In short, these data suggest that Miami's producer services are more internationally oriented than those in Chicago or Los Angeles. (The latter two cities have a comparable share of producer services but a substantially larger local manufacturing sector.) Table 12.6:

Employment in manufacturing 1980 (SMSA) and 1990 (county) (in % of total employment) Miami

New York

Los Angeles

Chicago

1980

14.4

18.2

25.5

26.5

1990

11.4

11.4

20.5

18.7

Source:

U.S. Census 1980, Detailed Population Characteristics; U.S. Census 1990, Social and Economic Characteristics.

In summary, Miami is not a typical post-industrial city because it never had a typical urban industrial base. While its industrial sector was always relatively small, it has traditionally relied on a relatively large service sector in which

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tourism was particularly important. This has been changing over the past years, whereby a partial shift occurred from the tourism sector to the producer services sector. The type of services that have grown most in Miami in recent years are those linked to the wider international economy, particularly in the Latin American region. In some ways, therefore, the resulting economic pattern may be comparable to that of more typical post-industrial cities, even if the original situation was different. As we shall see in the next section, the impact of these developments on trends of social polarization in Miami is complicated by its peculiar ethnic composition.

Ill Social Polarization in Miami In Miami, as everywhere, the socio-economic standing of various groups is closely related to their cultural identity. In Miami, the three largest and most important groups are Hispanics, Anglos, and Blacks. (It is worth remembering that, as Castells and Mollenkopf, 1991,407, remind us, ethnicity and race are a matter of culture!) As pointed out earlier, each of these groups have their own mainstream and they each define Miami's socio-cultural character in their own terms. With regard to potential alliances or animosities between the three groups, we may identify three important social divisions in the population of Miami. First, both Anglos and Blacks have long opposed the massive influx of Cubans and other Hispanics, or at least witnessed this process with apprehension. Both Blacks and Anglos consider themselves "Americans" while they view the new immigrants as a folk with a different social and political background and unaccustomed to the American ways. Of course, Blacks and Anglos shared the fear of domination by Hispanics as their numbers surged. On the other hand, Anglos and Cubans share their chances for upward mobility in this city and often find themselves belonging to the same economic class in terms of jobs and income. In this respect, they both tend to view Miami's Blacks as a burden on society due to their high unemployment rates, high poverty levels, and they tend to perceive a disproportionately high involvement of Blacks in Miami's infamous crime rates. It should be noted that most Hispanics - and especially the ones that are economically successful are Whites, which further contributes to this perception of a racial division. Miami's Cubans come originally from a racially-stratified society and many carry with them a tradition of racial discrimination against Blacks. In addition, Cubans and African-Americans are often on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum: it is estimated that 95% of Cuban-Americans vote Republican, while AfricanAmericans overwhelmingly choose the Democratic Party. Finally, Blacks and recent Hispanic immigrant have sometimes found themselves in the same situation where they encountered hostility or discrimination by Miami's old Anglo establishment. Anglos had dominated Miami in the days before it became a Latin city. To some Anglos, the new immigrants are as alien as

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are Blacks - even if their origin is very different - and in their eyes, both pose a threat to Miami as a "White American city". It should be noted, however, that this division seems to be waning. As indicated in the previous section, there appears to be a trend of convergence of Anglos and Hispanics, at least among elites. One of the most important consequences of Miami's transformation is that this city's Black population has been left behind in the process of economic restructuring and internationalization. A large number of Hispanics has been successful and the Anglos that remained in Miami are generally of high socio-economic status. Blacks, on the other hand, are said not to have benefitted as much and their relative standing on the socio-economic ladder is said to have deteriorated. Table 12.7 provides some information on household incomes among the three groups in comparison with other major U.S. cities. The census does not allow differentiation between Black and White Hispanics and as a result, there is some overlap between the categories used here. In all four cities, White incomes are substantially higher than incomes of Blacks and Hispanics. In Miami, however, Hispanics are doing much better than anywhere else. In relation to White incomes, Miami's Blacks are not doing any worse than in most other U.S. cities. However, in relation to Hispanic incomes, Blacks in Miami are doing much worse than anywhere else. Over time, all cities (except New York) witnessed an increase of the income gap between Whites on the one hand and Hispanics and Blacks on the other. The difference between Hispanic and Black incomes changed little. In Miami, Hispanic incomes relative to White incomes decreased as a result of the influx of the Marielitos in 1980, a relatively disadvantaged group that differed significantly from the earlier Cuban immigrants. The arrival of the Marielitos has therefore probably prevented further income polarization between Hispanics and Blacks. Table 12.7:

Household incomes of Blacks and Hispanics* in 1980 (by SMSA) and 1990 (by county) (in % of White household incomes) Miami

New York

Los Angeles

Chicago

1990

1980

1980

1990

1980

1990

1980

Hispanics

83.2

78.4

55.4

57.8

71.2

63.4

70.6

65.2

Blacks

66.4

62.8

60.4

64.6

65.9

62.8

60.7

57.0

1990

* The categories overlap: Hispanics include Whites and (a minority of) Blacks, Blacks include African-Americans and (a minority of) Hispanics, and Whites include Anglos and Hispanics. Source:

U.S. Census of Population, 1980 and 1990, General Social and Economic Characteristics.

Further evidence of the economic well-being of the three groups is presented in Table 12.8, which lists the percentage of families in Miami and other U.S. cities living below the poverty line. Again, it is obvious that Hispanics in Miami are not

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293

nearly as deprived as in other cities. On the other hand, the percentage of Black families in poverty in Miami is higher than New York or Los Angeles and about the same as in Chicago. The figure for Whites in Miami is higher than in other cities because it includes a relatively large number of White Hispanics. Almost everywhere, and for all groups, poverty is on the rise. Table 12.8:

Families living in poverty in 1980 (by SMSA) and 1990 (by county) (in %) Miami 1980

New York

Los Angeles

Chicago

1990

1980

1990

1980

1990

1980

1990

Hispanics

14.8

15.9

33.3

31.2

18.2

19.8

19.1

19.5

Blacks

26.4

26.8

25.9

22.2

Whites

8.6

10.7

7.9

9.2

20.9 7.2

19.2 7.3

26.5 4.1

26.7 4.4

Source:

1980 and 1990 Census of Population, General Social and Economic Characteristics.

The same patterns are repeated in Tables 12.9 and 12.10, showing additional measures of socio-economic polarization. Miami is the only city of the four where Hispanics hold more managerial and professional jobs than Blacks. On this score, the difference between Miami and Los Angeles - both cities with large Hispanic populations - is especially striking. Also, Miami has the lowest Hispanic unemployment rates of the four cities. Table 12.9:

Workforce in managerial and professional specialty occupations, by race and Hispanic origin in 1980 (by SMSA) and 1990 (by county) (in %) Miami

New York

Los Angeles

Chicago

1980

1980

1980

1980

1990

Hispanics

17.3

18.7

12.6

15.3

9.4

10.9

8.8

10.5

Blacks

13.9

16.9

16.3

21.4

18.1

24.5

15.4

20.5

Whites

25.6

26.9

31.2

38.1

27.7

33.1

26.2

31.2

Source:

1990

1990

1990

1980 and 1990 U.S. Census of Population, General Social and Economic Characteristics.

It can be argued that crime is a corollary of social polarization, as it can testify both to relative deprivation and to the erosion of the social contract due to increased antagonism among various cultural groups. In comparing serious crime rates, Miami is far ahead of other big cities, with 12.33 serious crimes per 100 people compared to values of 8.49 in New York City, 7.81 in Chicago and 7.40 in Los Angeles. These data confirm Miami's notorious record but it is difficult to explain the differences across cities merely on the basis of multi-ethnicity and socio-economic polarization. Indeed, in that case, one would expect Los Angeles

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Table 12.10:

Unemployment by race and Hispanic origin in 1980 (by SMSA) and 1990 (by county) (in %) Miami

New York

Los Angeles

Chicago

1990

1980

1990

1980

1990

1980

1990

5.7

8.0

10.5

13.3

7.9

10.1

11.1

10.8

Blacks

7.3

12.6

10.8

12.9

10.4

12.0

14.9

17.8

Whites

4.3

6.4

5.6

6.5

5.2

5.9

5.0

4.6

1980 Hispanics

Source:

1980 and 1990 U.S. Census of Population, General Social and Economic Characteristics.

to have substantially higher crime rates than it actually does. (The Rodney King riots of 1992 in Los Angeles were a testament to the high level of polarization and ethnic tension there.) In Miami's case, high crime rates are closely associated with the large tourist industry. Statistically, Miami's crime-rates move in tandem with the number of tourists visiting this city. Compared to other places, Miami offers abundant opportunity for crime. What is peculiar about polarization trends in Miami is that the recent immigrants have done significantly better than the indigenous Black population. So much better, in fact, that despite real absolute gains by Blacks, feelings of relative deprivation prevail. Obviously, Blacks are now not more deprived than several decades ago, before the civil rights movement. For example, as late as 1962, there were no Blacks in public office in the whole state of Florida (Mohl, 1991, 1994). Then, racial discrimination by Anglos was much more harsh and backed by local laws. But the present situation is so ironic precisely because of the high expectations after the civil rights movement and because of the rapid socio-economic gains of recent Hispanic immigrants. Politically, Cubans have laid claim to the establishment of Miami while Blacks have been confined to a marginal position. New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have all had Black mayors at some time in their recent history; it is striking that this possibility belongs to the realm of the unthinkable in Miami. A further reason for Black resentment was that it was widely felt that the generous federal funds for Cuban refugees cut into spending programs for Blacks (Mohl, 1991). One of the main reasons for the marginalization of Blacks is that they did not take part as much in the internationalization of Miami's economy. This did not happen because, first, Blacks did not occupy the kinds of key economic positions on which newcomers depended, like the banking sector; instead, this sector was almost exclusively dominated by Anglos. These were the kind of industries that were drawn into Miami's international reorientation. Second, Blacks found it hard to obtain a place in the new internationally oriented sectors of the economy that became dominated by Hispanics and Anglos. This was due in large part to cultural, ideological, racial, and language barriers (Rose, 1989). We see that Blacks,

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295

as opposed to Hispanics, are more involved in economic sectors and businesses that are not articulated with the wider international economy. For example, a typical Black company may be in the residential landscaping business, while a typical Hispanic company is in the air courier service business (there are no less than 177 such businesses in Miami, most of which specialize on one or two routes in Latin America). In addition, it seems that a disproportionate number of Blacks is involved in Miami's informal economies which are for the most part disconnected from the internationalization process. The best example of this is the Black immigrant community of Little Haiti, which is said to rely heavily on subsistence in the informal sector (Stepick, 1991). Table 12.11 :

Workforce in producer services in 1980 (SMSA) and 1990 (county) (in %) Miami

Hispanic

New York

Los Angeles

Chicago 1980

1990 10.6

1980

1990

1980

1990

1980

1990

14.7

16.6

17.1

18.0

10.0

12.1

8.6

Black

9.4

11.0

17.8

18.8

14.1

16.1

11.5

15.4

White

17.6

18.2

21.4

24.9

16.4

17.7

16.1

19.0

Sources: U.S. Census 1980, Detailed Population Characteristics; U.S. Census 1990, 5% samples (PUMS).

Miami's Blacks are not well represented in the producer services sector which has, as we saw in the previous section, a distinct international orientation. As Table 12.11 shows, their representation is well below that in other cities. In contrast, Miami's Hispanics are strongly involved in this sector. Indeed, Miami is the only city of the four, where Hispanics find more employment in producer services than do Blacks. Another way of looking at this is by comparing the share of the three cultural groups in the total workforce with their share of all jobs in producer services. Table 12.12 gives the ratio of these two figures. A value of 1.0 is the expected score in the case of proportionate representation; figures lower than 1.0 indicate under-representation whilst figures higher than 1.0 indicate over-representation in producer services. For example, in 1990, Blacks comprised 17.8% of the total workforce in Miami but only 11.7% of the workforce in producer services. The ratio in this case is 0.66, reflecting substantial under-representation in the producer services sector. Miami's situation is the reverse from other major cities where the participation of Hispanics in producer services is consistently less than that of Blacks. In 1990, Hispanic representation in this sector was just about proportional to its overall share of the total workforce. At the same time, there was no other city where Blacks were as poorly represented as in Miami. It should be noted that not all Hispanics in Miami are equally successful in climbing the socio-economic ladder. As one might expect, Cubans tend to do better than most other Hispanic groups. As Table 12.13 shows, Cubans outscore other

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Table 12.12:

The standardized share of employment of various ethnic groups in producer services: the ratio of the percentage of Hispanics, Blacks, and Whites in producer services and their percentage of the total workforce, 1980 (SMSA) and 1990 (county) Miami

New York

Los Angeles

Chicago

1990

1980

1980

1990

1980

1990

1980

1990

Hispanic

0.91

0.99

0.85

0.82

0.65

0.74

0.57

0.60

Black

0.58

0.66

0.88

0.86

0.92

0.98

0.76

0.88

White

1.09

1.09

1.06

1.13

1.07

1.08

1.07

1.09

Sources: U.S. Census 1980, Detailed Population Characteristics; U.S. Census 1990, 5% samples (PUMS). Hispanics in many respects, except in higher education. This is in itself an interesting finding: it suggests that in this tight-knit Cuban community, Cubans are better able than others to succeed, even without a diploma 2 . Still, despite the difference between Cubans and other Hispanics in Miami, the latter seem better off than Hispanics in other U.S. cities. Table 12.13:

Selected indicators of the socio-economic status of Cubans and other Hispanics in Dade County, 1990 (in %) Cubans

Unemployment

Other Hispanics

6.8

9.4

Persons below poverty line

15.5

19.7

Workforce in producer services*

15.2

14.0

Jobs in executive, administrative, or management positions

20.3

16.2

Persons with B.A. degree or higher

13.5

15.1

* The definition of producer services used here is not identical (it is slighly narrower) to the one used in Tables 6 and 13. Source:

Metro Dade 1994; U.S. Census 1990, Social and Economic

Characteristics.

These polarization trends are reflected in Miami's geography. With regard to ethnic segregation, Miami occupies an average rank when compared to other large American cities (Boswell, 1995). A m o n g the three largest groups, the highest index o f segregation is between non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics, at 73.2%, foll o w e d by non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks at 70.5%, and then by Hispanics and 2 An additional explanation is that, for other Hispanics, a diploma of higher education has been one of the means of getting entry into the United States, something that Cubans never needed because of their status as political refugees.

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non-Hispanic Whites at 50.5%3 (Boswell, 1995). Most Hispanic residential areas have become less segregated in recent years (Boswelll, 1995). Black residential areas are the most isolated and segregated ones. In the more affluent residential areas, such as Coral Gables or Key Biscayne, one finds high-income Anglos and (White) Hispanics living side by side. Some less prosperous Hispanic areas like Hialeah are more segregated, but they do not compare to the poor Black ghettos of Overtown or the Black Grove. (See Figure 12.1.) Outside of the residential areas, one can easily identify the parts of the city that are articulated to the international economy, and those that are not. The Brickell banking district just south of Downtown Miami, with its high-rise trophy buildings, shows all the signs of a pretentious international finance center (King 1994), as does downtown Coral Gables. These areas stand in sharp contrast with Overtown and some of the areas stretched along the US-1 further to the south of the city. Another interesting area is the so-called Fashion District (sweat shops) to the northwest of downtown Miami. This is the third largest manufacturing center for apparel in United States, after Los Angeles and New York (Beacon Council, 1993). Apparel is Miami's leading import and forms the bulk of all imports from the Caribbean: the fabric is imported into Miami and cut, exported back to the Caribbean and finished, and then most of it is re-imported into the United States. Even for the casual urban observer, it is hard not to notice the results of socioeconomic polarization in Miami. One finds "The Collection", a pretentious Jaguar car dealer and showroom right next to some of the worst and dilapidated public housing where people get around on old bicycles. Or, one can observe residents from one of the poor Black areas in the city fishing for their dinner in the stylish lake on the campus of the University of Miami, where tuition costs more than the average Black family income in this city. Hard-nosed efforts by local authorities to rid the tourist areas from the homeless led to a ruling by a federal judge in 1993 ordering the city to establish "safe zones" for the homeless. They can now be found in large numbers in the dead spaces underneath the interstate highway that runs through Overtown - out of the sight of oblivious tourists.

IV Conclusions Miami is not a typical post-industrial city since it was never a typical industrial city. Still, it presently shares some important characteristics with cities like New York, Los Angeles, or London. Most importantly, it has a small manufacturing sector and a large producer services sector. The effects of economic restructuring on trends of polarization in Miami should, as in any other city, be considered in the context of specific local circumstances. 3 The index represents the percentage of either group that would have to be moved in order to have identical distributions of both groups across Dade County's census tracts.

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Jan Nij man

N

M I A M I

Source:

Based on Portes and Stepick (1993). (Map made by Michael Shin, Department of Geography, University of Colorado at Boulder.)

Figure 12.1:

The Miami Metropolitan area

At least three interrelated factors must be taken into account in order to understand socio-economic polarization in Miami. The first is the momentous scale of immigration in the past three and a half decades that has had a dramatic impact

Chapter 12: Ethnicity, Class, and the Economic Internationalization of Miami

299

on all population groups. The second is the resulting composition of the present population which is unique in that recent migrants make up the absolute majority in this city. Finally, the third factor is the exceptionally strong international reorientation of this city that was made possible by the high influx of migrants from Latin America and that in turn reshaped the local economy. The case of Miami also underscores the possibility of a city with a relatively high degree of social polarization without that city being a typical "world city" in the sense of a command center in the international economy. One of the ways to measure world city status, according to this literature, is the extent of local social polarization (Friedmann, 1986; Sassen, 1991,1994). Miami is an exceptional city in the sense that it is a very internationally-oriented place with an international economy, but as an international command center, it does not compare to New York or London or Tokyo (Nijman, 1995a; 1995b). Miami is an "importer" rather than "exporter" of global flows and in this sense, it compares better to a city like Amsterdam. This has resulted in a local scene with an impressive international flavor and this in turn has affected the nature of the polarization process in this city. The emergence of the so-called Cuban enclave economy (Portes and Stepick, 1993) rested on the tightly-integrated social structure of the Cuban community and the economic success of many immigrants. There are several explanations for the economic success of the Cuban immigrants. These including the wealth brought by the first wave of newcomers, the financial support from the United States government, the fact that the option of returning to Cuba in the near future was essentially eliminated after 1980, and the mere size of the immigrant population. In addition, the Cuban community was held together tightly by a shared ideology and political purpose. Unintentionally, Fidel Castro united the Cuban exiles and helped them forge a tight knit community. In the United States, Cubans often encountered a lack of understanding of their political views (the debate surrounding the Cuban embargo in a case in point) which further induced them to stick together. As a result, the Cuban population in Miami constitutes a "moral community" that is characterized by strong solidarity and mutual support, and a strong determination to prove Castro and communism wrong by way of their own economic success. The Cuban success story is closely related to the internationalization of Miami's economy. One might say, with slight exaggeration, that those who would not or could not go along with this internationalization process, are the ones that eventually lose out. As pointed out earlier, this is why, for example, the Miami Herald in 1988 embraced the Hispanic community and went "bi-lingual". In 1993, Dade County overturned the "English Only" law and Spanish became the official second language in Miami. The Anglos that participated in Miami's internationalization and did not join in the "White flight" to the northern suburbs, are the ones that are now promoting Miami as "capital of the Americas" in concert with many Cubans. The prospects for Miami's Blacks are not very appealing. Without ever

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having moved, they increasingly find themselves in the wrong place. The process of socio-economic polarization in Miami is most painful for those who play no part in its transition to a Latin city.

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