SAT OG 2016 Reading - Test 4 reading 2

We are not witnessing the abandonment of the

suburbs, or a movement of millions of people back to

the city all at once. The 2010 census certainly did not
turn up evidence of a middle-class stampede to the
₅ nation’s cities.The news was mixed:Some of the

larger cities on the East Coast tended to gain

population, albeit in small increments.Those in the

Midwest,including Chicago, tended to lose

substantial numbers.The cities that showed gains in
₁₀ overall population during the entire decade tended to

be in the South and Southwest.But when it comes to

measuring demographic inversion,raw census

numbers are an ineffective blunt instrument. A closer

look at the results shows that the most powerful
₁₅ demographic events of the past decade were the

movement of African Americans out of centralcities

(180,000 of them in Chicago alone)and the

settlement of immigrant groups in suburbs,often

ones many miles distant from downtown.
₂₀ Central-city areas that gained affluent residents in

the first part of the decade maintained that

population in the recession years from 2007 to 2009.

They also, according to a 2011 study by Brookings,

suffered considerably less from increased
₂₅ unemployment than the suburbs did.Not many

young professionals moved to new downtown

condos in the recession years because few such

residences were being built.But there is no reason to

believe that the demographic trends prevailing prior
₃₀ to the construction bust will not resume once that

bust is over. It is important to remember that

demographic inversion is not a proxy for population

growth; it can occur in cities that are growing, those

whose numbers are flat, and even in those
₃₅ undergoing a modest decline in size.
America’s major cities face enormous fiscal

problems, many of them the result of public pension

obligations they incurred in the more prosperous

years of the past two decades. Some, Chicago
₄₀ prominent among them,simply are not producing

enough revenue to support the level of public

services to which most of the citizens have grown to

feel entitled. How the cities are going to solve this

problem, I do not know. What I do know is that if
₄₅ fiscal crisis were going to drive affluent professionals

out of central cities,it would have done so by now.

There is no evidence that it has.
The truth is that we are living at a moment in

which the massive outward migration of the affluent
₅₀ that characterized the second half of the

twentieth century is coming to an end.And we need

to adjust our perceptions of cities,suburbs,and

urban mobility as a result.
Much of our perspective on the process of
₅₅ metropolitan settlement dates, whether we realize it

or not,from a paper written in 1925 by the

University of Chicago sociologist Ernest W. Burgess.

It was Burgess who defined four urban/suburban

zones of settlement: a central business district; an
₆₀ area of manufacturing just beyond it; then a

residential area inhabited by the industrial and

immigrant working class; and finally an outer

enclave of single-family dwellings.
Burgess was right about the urban America of
₆₅ 1925;he was right about the urban America of 1974.

Virtually every city in the country had a downtown,

where the commercial life of the metropolis was

conducted;it had a factory district just beyond; it had

districts of working-class residences just beyond that;
₇₀ and it had residential suburbs for the wealthy and the

upper middle class at the far end of the continuum.

As a family moved up the economic ladder, it also

moved outward from crowded working-class

districts to more spacious apartments and,
₇₅ eventually, to a suburban home.The suburbs of

Burgess’s time bore little resemblance to those at the

end of the twentieth century, but the theory still

essentially worked. People moved ahead in life by

moving farther out.
₈₀ But in the past decade,in quite a few places,this

model has ceased to describe reality.There are still

downtown commercial districts, but there are no

factory districts lying next to them.There are

scarcely any factories at all.These close-in parts of
₈₅ the city,whose few residents Burgess described as

dwelling in“submerged regions of poverty,

degradation and disease,”are increasingly the

preserve of the affluent who work in the commercial

core.And just as crucially newcomers to America are
₉₀ not settling on the inside and accumulating the

resources to move out;they are living in the suburbs

from day one.