Metro Atlanta suburbs on cutting edge of desegregation

By Bill Torpy

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Black families, as well as Hispanic and Asian, are increasingly moving to the suburbs, helping to drop housing segregation to historic low levels, a national study released last week optimistically noted.

The study’s title — “The End of the Segregated Century” – is certainly an eyebrow raiser. The report has drawn widespread media attention from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio and others.

Gentrification, immigration, suburbanization and the expansion of credit stirred the demographic urban stew in the past decade, making U.S. cities the most integrated they’ve been in a century, the study noted. All-white neighborhoods are virtually extinct, declared the study from the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank that helped popularize the “broken window theory” of cracking down on petty crimes.

“Racial diversity is much more a fact of life in Southern cities,” said Jacob Vigdor, a Duke University professor who is one of the authors of the study. “And if you want to see where the integration is really happening, look to the suburbs.”

In Sunday’s newspaper, the AJC takes a deep look at integration trends in metro Atlanta. It’s a story you’ll get only by picking up a copy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution or logging on to the paper’s iPad app. Subscribe today.