The patchwork metropolis: The morphology of the divided postindustrial city

Abstract

This research examines the new divides and changing structure of the modern city and metropolis. Since the classic Chicago School models, the urban form of the metropolis has been conceptualized as a divided space, where affluent suburbs surround a less-advantaged and denser urban core. More recently, the concept of a great inversion has been advanced to capture the return of more advantaged groups to the urban center and the outward shift of poverty and disadvantage to the suburbs. To gain insight into contemporary urban form, we undertake a descriptive mapping exercise of the residential locations of three major classes—the advantaged class of knowledge, professionals and creative workers, the declining blue collar working class, and the less advantaged service class of workers—across a dozen of America’s largest metro areas and their core cities. We find a pattern of class division and urban form that we refer to as the “patchwork metropolis,” where class divides cut across city and suburb alike. These divides appear to be conditioned by the location of the advantaged class that occupies and clusters around the most functional and desirable areas of the metropolis—close to the urban core, around transit, near knowledge institutions, and along areas of natural amenities. The less-advantaged classes are shunted into the spaces leftover or in between—either traditionally disadvantaged areas of the inner city or the fringes of the suburban and exurban periphery.