The Main Argument

The current problem of urban unemployment, the concentration of the disadvantaged in the central cities (particularly in the Northeast and North central regions of the country) is structural in nature - caused by the disequilibrium of shift in industrial structure that replaced central city blue-collar jobs with information processing jobs and the generally low educational attainment of minorities residing in central cities. Since the move of blue collar jobs supplying manufacturers away from cities to suburbs and exurbs, as well as the transformation of cities from the industrial nucleus to the center of information processing jobs are structural in nature in that they are caused by changes in technology and the resultant change in the pattern of advantageous spatial organization for different industries, trends of blue collar jobs moving outward and cities coming to be dominated by information processing, as well as cultural and leisure industries cannot be reversed. So, it is proposed that location-oriented policies aiming to bring blue-collar jobs back in to the city is largely ineffective. It must also be realized that welfare policies that mitigate the effects of severe unemployment and poverty for the inner-city minorities, while to some extent obviously necessarily, are also contributing to pin down these disadvantaged groups to their current locations without work. Instead, Kasarda proposes that policies aiming to increase the mobility of the disadvantaged groups, including those that reduce the effects of discrimination in housing - so that they can have access to blue collar jobs now located outside of the city - are likely to be most effective.

In addition to this basic outline of the main argument, this work contains well-written expositions on the respective topics of the changing structural organization of American cities, and the disadvantaged human capital acquirement of minorities who now reside in those central cities in large number.

PP. 36 - 49

Review of the historical - structural change that has led to the flight of blue collar, as well as retail and service sector jobs, away from cities.

In the latter half of the 19th century, heavy industries that provided blue-collar jobs were concentrated in the inner city. Two reasons, the transportation costs and the nature of steam power - then the main source of energy - were key to this concentration. The weight and size of the raw materials used, combined with the primitive transportation technology, meant that it was most efficient for the large-scale factories to conglomerate in the inner city. In addition, the steam power dissipates easily, it had to be used at the spot it was produced. It is the first half the 20th century that the trend of outward move of manufacturing jobs took place in large scale. Changes in technologies of transportation, communication, and production technologies made suburban location more attractive, while congested locations in cities were increasingly inimical to the large scale freight transfer efforts. The shift in the scale of production to that of large scale mass production and assembly line methods also made outside location more attractive. Further, widespread development of suburban services and external economies previously available only in central cities also contributed to the move of blue collar jobs away from cities.

In addition, retail and service sector jobs also moved away from cities to suburbs - as enclosed malls located in suburbs became the most attractive center for shopping and other communal activities for middle class residents now living in suburbs.

In place, central cities came to be increasingly dominated by information processing jobs that require fairly high educational attainment, as these are now the jobs that can take advantage of being in the large city where information and technological resources tend to concentrate. In addition, those offering highly specialized services and goods, including those of convention-tourism and cultural-entertainment industries, also tend to concentrate in central cities, as these industries are better off where they can expect the merits of agglomeration and mutual scale economies.

Finally, number of statistical tables numerically depicting this trend of loss of blue collar jobs, and the increase of information processing jobs in cities, are shown from p. 43 to 49. Significant regional difference in these trends can also be noted of, however, as decline of blue collar jobs in large cities had been particularly acute in Northeast and North Central regions, whereas in South and West regions many cities gained both blue-collar and information - processing jobs due to the general trend of economic expansion.

PP. 51 - 6. Changing Demographic Compositions

Here, the argument is quite straightforward - you know the trend. Cities, especially those of Northeast and North Central, lost whites and gained minorities in dramatic numbers so that now in many of these cities minorities outnumber whites. Of course, considerable gap in educational attainment between whites and minorities exist. It is also important that the majority of these minorities do not have automobiles or trucks - thus they are effectively constrained in mobility to seek jobs in suburbs.

PP. 56-61. Consequences of Minority Confinement

Rising unemployment, increased labor force dropout, and growing welfare dependency - these consequences can now be interpreted as resulting from the structural disparity of the changing economic structure of the cities and their demographic composition. However, significant difference in unemployment remains even when educational attainment is controlled, indicating a possible existence of discriminatory practices.
 

William Julius Wilson
The Urban Underclass in Advanced Industrial Society

The Main Argument

Blacks living in cities of the United States have experienced a remarkable degree of deterioration of life since the 60's - increase in crimes, dissolution of family, teenage pregnancy, problem of drugs, to name just a few. Just why this has happened is the question asked in this article. The answer Wilson gives is a very comprehensive one, attempting to integrate past contributions looking at various aspects of this problem, encompassing demographic to economic factors. But on the whole, one characteristic of Wilson's explanation is that he is decisively against the cultural explanation that attributes deterioration of urban life among blacks to different cultural values and outlook they have compared to other groups. Wilson states that cultural values do not ultimately determine behavior or success (p. 158). Rather he notes, cultural values emerge from specific circumstances and life chances and reflect one's position in the class structure. This indicates that Wilson believes culture cannot have independent effects, and that any sort of cultural explanation must ultimately be reduced to the structural and economic conditions it rests upon. In this sense, Wilson's explanation, although very comprehensive, is decisively a structural explanation with the further assumption that people are capable of rationally reacting to the structural and economic conditions they find themselves in almost instantaneously, so that there is no room for culture as a fixed and independent variable to come into the picture to influence people's behavior.

PP. 129-33.

In this introductory part, Wilson laments that despite the fact that social scientists until the 60s paid attention to structural factors in explaining deterioration of urban life among blacks, since 70s due to the influence of "black perspective" these endeavors had been abandoned and replaced with a misleading attempt to reinterpret the urban life deterioration as functional. In this context, race became the overwhelming concern while structural and economic factors were largely neglected. Meanwhile, during this period of "black glorification" the urban life deterioration have reached a "catastrophic level" - experiencing skyrocketing rise in crime rates, households headed by women, welfare dependency. Pages 133 to 41 describe the contents of this "catastrophic decline" in urban life quality, using variety of indices including violent crimes, family dissolution and welfare dependency.

PP. 141-59.

The core of this article, this portion lists and explicates on several key variables that Wilson believes to together form a comprehensive explanation of the urban life deterioration among blacks.

1. Effects of Historic and Contemporary Discrimination

For Wilson, it is particularly important to clearly distinguish between the effects of historic, and contemporary, discriminations. Given this distinction, Wilson notes that on the whole contemporary discrimination cannot account for the rapid decline of life since the 60s. For instance, the black unemployment rate actually had been lower in the 1940s and 50s, when the discrimination was presumably more acute. Wilson asserts that he regards historic discrimination as being a far more important factor than the contemporary discrimination, but that we would have to explore other historical and contemporary factors besides discrimination to fully account for the effects of that historical discrimination. This endeavor he never actually conducts, and in general this section on the role of discrimination is left undeveloped.

2. The Importance of the Flow of Migrants

Wilson considers this factor, and the consequent population pressure resulting from the constant inflow of blacks into the central cities, as a major variable contributing to the urban decline, for several reasons. One, it increases the visibility of the minority group and thus renders them more vulnerable for discrimination. Two, greater numbers would mean more difficulty in finding occupational "niches" that might have been available to smaller number of minorities otherwise. Three, since older residents and those of somewhat higher socioeconomic status cannot totally ignore the newcomers of their own ethnic group, their quality of life tends to be adversely affected by those newcomers who arrive with lower standards of life.

3. The Relevance of Changes in the Age Structure

The large number of incoming migrants to the cities kept the population relatively young. This would render the black population relatively younger compared to the whites, and this would have negative impact on crime rates, as well as out-of-wedlock births, female-headed homes, and welfare dependency - as these things are more commonly found among the young. In short, sheer increase in the number of young people contributed greatly to the deterioration of life - although this alone cannot quite account for all of it. How is it possible to explain the remaining portion, then? For this, Wilson mentions of the "critical mass" hypothesis as stipulated by James Q. Wilson as potentially accounting for this problem. Wilson hypothesizes that an abrupt rise in the number of young persons has an "exponential effect on the rate of certain social problems", as there may be a critical mass of young persons in a given community that they set off a "self-sustaining chain reaction that creates an explosive increase in the amount of crime, addiction, and welfare dependency" (p. 151).

4. The Impact of Basic Economic Changes

Quite simply, joblessness among urban blacks, especially among the youth, has reached a catastrophic proportion. Further, unemployed blacks tend to be concentrated in cities more than whites. Roughly 60 percent of the unemployed blacks in the U.S. reside within central cities, mostly within the cities' low-income areas. However, on the whole this section is rather unsatisfactory, for while it says that the unemployment is a big problem it does not really explain where does the unemployment come from in the first place. He does, however, briefly note of factors that have been mentioned with much greater depth by Kasarda, that urban minorities have been particularly vulnerable to structural economic changes, such as the shift from goods-producing to service-producing industries.
 

Terry Nichols Clark
Fiscal Strain: How Different Are Snow Belt and Sun Belt Cities?

The Main Argument

Socioeconomic characteristics of the city are not the only determinants of fiscal strain city government comes to suffer; instead one must also pay attention to the political factors to comprehensively account for why some city governments cannot balance revenue and expenditure and thus suffer fiscal strain. In general, Clark's analysis which tries to assess the comparative strength of different explanatory variables of fiscal strain including economic and demographic characteristics of the city, citizen preferences, organized groups, and political leaders (with the latter three standing for political factors) shows that while economic and demographic characteristics may have significant consequences over the long run, say if the same trend continues for more than 10, 15 years, their effects are very variable and without definite trends over the short-term. In the very short term, fiscal policies are primarily influenced by political leaders and organized groups, while citizen preferences can have substantial impact for the trends longer than four years or so in general. Also, in terms of the political processes, the general tendency is that the more homogeneous the population and more stable the political climate, the more citizens preferences would have direct impact while reducing the importance of independent roles of political leaders and organized groups.

So, how does Clark reach this conclusion?

PP. 253-263.

Denies the simplistic views holding either the socioeconomic characteristics of the city (i.e., median family income, median value of taxable property, percentage of old housing, age of city, etc.) or the demographic characteristics (more specifically, the population loss) as solely responsible for the fiscal strain some city governments, particularly those in the Northeast, are facing. For both of these factors, Clark's conclusion is that while it is not that they are not important, but that what socioeconomic characteristics and population loss do is that they present problems to which local officials must adapt. Yet, just how they adapt is not determined by those socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, and in order to investigate into this matter one must also pay attention to the political processes of the city.

PP. 263-5.

Explicates and operationalizes four groups of variables that are to be tested for their effects on the fiscal policies, which are economic base, citizen preference, organized groups, and political leaders.

PP. 265-78.

Shows the results of the analysis from the time period of 1960 to 1977, divided into three time periods of 1960-70, 70-74, and 74-77, as different factors were salient as determinants in different time periods (See the table on p. 267 for the summary of this result).

Briefly, for the years 1960-70, the citizen preferences, as indicated by the size of voting blocs (specifically, that of middle class and blacks) were most important. The years of late 60s to early 70s - partially due to more turbulent political climates due to civil movements and other factors - saw the emergence of the dynamic political leaders capable of influencing policies independent of the citizen preferences. To be more precise, variables measuring the level of black political activities were influential in raising spending, but they had no effects independent of mayoral commitments - thus the presence of a powerful political leader was crucial for this time period (See graph on p. 270 for concise summary of this).

Meanwhile, the years 1974 to 77 saw fiscal retrenchment. Where did this retrenchment come from? To answer this question Clark again reviews and assays in light of his empirical data the validity of many different theories including the socioeconomic characteristic explanation, federal support cutback argument, Neo-Marxist argument that stresses the influence of conservative business elites, and the influences of political leaders and municipal employees. He finds none of these explanations impressive, rather for the fiscal retrenchment of this time period he attributes the explanation to the changing citizens preferences - a taxpayers revolt.

Finally, in pp. 277-8 Clark looks at the expenditure and debt levels of cities studied in 1977 for overall levels of expenditure, as distinct from changes from one time period to the next. When one simply looks at this overall expenditure level disregarding the changes in it, Clark notes that two findings come to be more salient: (1) the role of the economic base of a city becomes more apparent, and (2) the accumulated impact of all the factors identified in separate periods can be discerned. In another word, the general insight here is the one that has been the repeated theme of this article. That overall economic characteristics do matter in the long run, it is that looking at this factor is not enough to tell how fiscal policies are determined on the short-term basis as a result of the interplay of political processes and the particular socioeconomic and demographic situations politicians must adapt to.