The extent of minority suburbanization

This trend is happening across the country, but it is most consequential in the largest metro areas whose cities are surrounded by well-developed suburban rings. In the largest 102 metro regions (those with more than 500,000 population, which were studied in a report recently issued by the Brookings Institution), the minority percentage of the suburban population grew from 19% in 1990 to 27% in 2000. These suburbs are now 12% Hispanic, 9% black, and 5% Asian.

In some areas the shift has been even more substantial: Blacks are more than 20% of the suburban population in such regions as Atlanta, Washington DC, Richmond, New Orleans, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami. Suburban regions with the smallest black populations (all below 2%) include Salt Lake City, Portland, Milwaukee, and Orange County.

Hispanics are more than 25% of the suburban population in Miami (55.8%), Los Angeles (44.7%), Riverside (38.3%), and San Diego (27.0%). At the other extreme, they are less than 2% of suburban residents of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Buffalo, St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Cleveland.

The Asian population is generally smaller, but is above 10% of suburban residents of San Francisco and Oakland, Los Angeles and Orange County, and the Middlesex-Somerset-Hunterdon suburban area of northern New Jersey. However, they are below 1.5% in Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Cincinatti, Indianapolis, and Greenville.

In the smaller metro areas (less than 500,000 population), minorities are generally not as well represented in suburbia - though the trend is in the same direction, still only 16% of the suburban population in these areas is minority.

Another way to think about suburbanization is to ask what percentage of members of each group live in the suburbs. Whites continue to be the most suburban of major racial and ethnic groups; nationally nearly 71% of whites now live in suburbs.

But minorities are starting to catch up: More than half of Asians (58%) lived in suburbs in 2000, up from 53% in 1990, and nearly half of Hispanics (49%, up from 46%). Lagging behind are African Americans (39%), though their current situation also represents a marked increase from 1990 (34%).