Sustainable Development in the USA

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Sustainable Development in the USA



Jean-Marc Zaninetti

First published in France in 2008 by Hermes Science/Lavoisier entitled: Les États-Unis d’Amérique face au défi du développement durable : peuplement et territoire © LAVOISIER, 2008 First published in Great Britain and the United States in 2009 by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address: ISTE Ltd 27-37 St George’s Road London SW19 4EU UK

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA

www.iste.co.uk

www.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd, 2009 The rights of Jean-Marc Zaninetti to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zaninetti, Jean-Marc. [États-Unis d’Amérique face au défi du développement durable. English] Sustainable development in the USA / Jean-Marc Zaninetti. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-84821-133-9 1. Sustainable development--United States. 2. United States--Population. 3. Cities and towns--United States--Growth. 4. Environmental policy--United States. I. Title. HT384.U5Z3613 2009 304.6--dc22 2009018613 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-84821-133-9 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI/Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne.

Table of Contents

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ix

Chapter 1. The American Territory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

1.1. A continent-nation with a dispersed population 1.2. Major geographical areas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3. Unfavorable climatic factors. . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4. Physical geography of the US . . . . . . . . . . .

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1 5 9 17

Chapter 2. Developing the Territory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

2.1. Agricultural regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2. An agriculture which does not influence settlement . 2.3. The abundance and limits of natural resources . . . . 2.4. Working towards the sustainable management of the American forest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5. Fossil resources-abundance and dependence . . . . . 2.6. The case of fossil fuels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6.1. The world’s second largest producer of coal . . 2.6.2. Oil – a strategic dilemma . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6.3. Natural gas – a highly desirable resource . . . . 2.7. Environmental protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 3. A Rapidly Growing Population . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1. A relatively high fertility rate due to immigration 3.2. Life expectancy and aging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3. Aging – regional disparities . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4. Immigration to the United States of America . . . 3.5. The country’s gateways. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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50 51 53 54 58

Chapter 4. A Multi-ethnic Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63

4.1. Native peoples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2. A nation of immigrants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3. The African-American question. . . . . . . . . 4.4. America and Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5. Geography of the population of Asian origin .

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Chapter 5. Regional Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

85 89 90 91 93 95

Chapter 6. Economic Change and Territories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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99 102 105 108 117

Chapter 7. A Suburban Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

119

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7.1. Urban sprawl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2. Big cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3. Consequences of urban sprawl on sustainable development 7.4. Urban sprawl is not only a big city phenomenon . . . . . . .

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6.1. A changing economy . . . . . . . 6.2. Economic growth . . . . . . . . . 6.3. Industrial change. . . . . . . . . . 6.4. A population on the move . . . . 6.5. Migration of retired populations

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64 66 68 76 82

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5.1. Main features of settlement in the US territory . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.1. The United States in 1930 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.2. America in 1970. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.3. The United States in 2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2. The dynamics of regional settlement between 1930 and 2005 .

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49

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121 126 131 133

Table of Contents

Chapter 8. Urban Fragmentation and Sprawl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1. Social divisions find expression in land use patterns . . . . . . . 8.1.1. Atlanta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.2. Detroit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.3. Houston. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.4. Portland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2. The challenge of governance in fragmented metropolitan areas . 8.3. The crisis of cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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vii

137

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137 138 148 156 165 171 174

Chapter 9. New Orleans in Dangerous Waters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

177

9.1. The physical components of natural hazards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2. Increased vulnerability from urban sprawl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3. The consequences of a natural disaster. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

178 184 195

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

203

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

211

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

239

List of Tables and Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

245

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

251


Introduction

Since its very beginning, the United States has been a land of growth and expansion – a growth that was both territorial and economic and that made the nation the world’s largest consumer of land, merchandise, and energy. Following the Second World War, this growth and drive to expand was introduced to the world as a model for development and was known as the American Way of Life. This model is reaching its limits today, since the Earth’s ability to support such development on a worldwide scale is no longer taken for granted. The world’s leading superpower is now dealing with the challenge of sustainable development. The United States is a young nation, born out of the Industrial Revolution. The Far West was “conquered” using the railroad and the electric telegraph as tools. Oil exploration began in Pennsylvania in 1859. The US saw the birth of the phone, airplanes, and Internet; automobiles were manufactured in series for the first time in the US. The concentration of these inventions in one single country was no accident; they all responded to a need – the need to overcome the challenge of the immensity of the territory while dealing with the chronic shortage of manpower. These inventions accelerated communications in an unprecedented way across all activities. Thus, despite relatively limited human resources, the expansion of American territory in a short period of time made the country the leading global industrial power, without compromising the nation’s cohesion. This cohesion is sustained at the steep cost of high energy and natural resource consumption. This is why the geography of settlement in the US is a strong indicator of the exceptional nature and paradoxes of this country. Despite the economic crisis in which it is immersed today, the United States is still one of the richest countries in the world. It produced 22% of the adjusted gross world product in purchasing power parity (PPP) in 2003. With $37,750 PPP per capita, the US is therefore the world’s most prosperous nation among countries with more than 20 million inhabitants. This global economic leadership was already

x


established in the late 19th century, and fed a tenacious Promethean myth. With attitudes shaped by seventeenth-century Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, Americans saw themselves as a “chosen people” and first viewed their wide open space as a type of Biblical “New Canaan”, a territory with unlimited resources, overflowing with milk and honey. Their Manifest Destiny was to make the best use of this gift from God. When for the first time an American set foot on the Moon in July 1969, public opinion was that the United States had reached a stage of development that would permanently preserve it from the tyranny of nature. This belief in the steady progress of living conditions and in the control of our environment no longer exists today. American supremacy has recently been handicapped by the emergence of new global enemies, symbolized by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City. The limits of military power were put under the spotlight and the international influence of the United States was blighted by the military adventurism of the Bush administration in Iraq. Its economic leadership trembled at the onset of the subprime crisis in 2006 which eventually led to the collapse of financial markets in September 2008. Although on a much more local scale, Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans (August 29, 2005) changed the way that Americans view the environment. The popularity of former Vice President Al Gore, who was recently awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, has increased. The unilateral policy of the Bush administration in environmental matters is openly questioned. While Americans consume more than 22% of the world’s energy for less than 5% of its population, they have come to a turning point in their relationship with environmental protection and development. The aim of this book is to address this issue by exposing the situation of the US settlement and population during this current transitional period which is a period that is bound to see the very foundations of the US territory challenged, as well as the end of past development models and ideals. A young country of exceptional growth Just like Canada and Australia, the United States is a “new country,” as they were so called at the beginning of the last century. Unlike China, India, and most European countries, the US does not have thousands of years of experience in rural territorial development. The country was mainly populated during its colonization. Native Americans left only subtle traces of their ancient presence. Decimated by epidemics, which preceded the Conquistadors, before the Native Americans even met the first “pale face”, these Native peoples primarily lived on a crop-based economy and adopted a kind of semi-nomadic life as a result of the introduction of the horse on the Great Plains. The story of westward expansion and the development of the US territory has often been portrayed as an epic story [CLA 92]. Considering that the country was born with the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, it is

Introduction

xi

remarkable to think that a territory of such size was conquered and developed so quickly with such limited human resources. The first census, held in 1790, counted no more than 4 million inhabitants, of which 20% were black slaves, which meant that the average population density was only four people per sq. km in the area covering the 13 founding colonies, between the Appalachian Mountains and the shores of the Atlantic; the census excluded the Native Americans who were at that time considered as foreigners and deported towards the West. The United States experienced exceptional growth in the 19th century. Today’s borders were established in 1853 for the 48 conterminous states. In 1850, there were already 23.2 million inhabitants – once again excluding Native Americans. Expansion resumed at the end of the Civil War. Alaska was purchased in 1867; Hawaii became a protectorate in 1898. There were nearly 76 million inhabitants at the turn of the century, including Native Americans who had been included in censuses since 1880.1 After the final internal “frontier” closed, Arizona and New Mexico became states in 1912. The 100 million population mark was reached in 1915. Population growth exceeded an average annual rate of 2.2% per year between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the First World War, which was a growth rate four times higher than the average rate in the world at that time. This population explosion was fueled by the arrival of more than 40 million people from Europe between 1845 and 1915, by a high birth rate and by a life expectancy that was already higher than in the rest of the world. The US territory still bears the marks of this period of development. Port cities served as gateways to the continent. During the steel industry boom, industrial growth was concentrated in the cities of the Northeast, while the mountains to the West were barely populated. It was during this period that the main regional patterns of the US territory were formed and with the same proportions which continue to characterize the country today. The First World War marked a turning point. In particular, it marked the abrupt and voluntary end of the great wave of European immigration, which in turn resulted in the relative slowdown of population growth. The lowest growth rate of the US population (0.7% per annum) was observed in the decade from 1930 to 1940. The United States had reached its territorial limits. Its economic and military power now directed at outside countries, particularly to Latin America and the Pacific Ocean. In return, these regions have provided the US with the majority of its immigrants since the 1960s. The 1930s were also the transition from the “paleotechnical” era symbolized by coal-powered railways to a “neotechnical” era dominated by fuelpowered automobiles and airplanes [MEI 04]. In terms of geography, the 20th century was a time for urbanization. The majority of the population lived in cities by the time of the 1920 census and the newly settled Great Plains were already 1. According to the US Census Bureau official figures, the 1880 census counted 66,000 survivors of more than 500 American-Indian nations living in miserable conditions on Indian “reservations”.

xii


beginning to depopulate. In 1960, metropolitan areas were drawn statistically in an effort to understand the new realities of suburban sprawl. Population growth remained strong. The United States went from a population of 100 million to 200 million between 1915 and 1968. It then went from 200 to 300 million between 1968 and 2007. But over such a long period it could not grow seamlessly. Recent decades – since about 1969 – marked by the unprecedented growth of the information technology (IT) and telecommunications industries, differ significantly from the post-war period. While the United States may be living proof of the power of technology, which enabled modern mankind to disproportionately increase its control over nature, it is impossible to entirely ignore the environment in which mankind lives. This is why human geography, which studies the territory, is useful for defining the foundations that allow humans to organize their lives and build their societies, economies, and governments. To understand the settlement of the United States is to understand the representations of those people who, for over a century, have projected their hegemonic power onto countries the world over – an act which now carries heavy responsibilities given the increasing dangers linked to global warming. Faced today with the threat of a “man-made” apocalypse, all humans are forced to alter their relationship with territory and environment, and rebuild their societies with respect for sustainable development. Even more so than everyone else, Americans must now radically transform their relationship with the land on which they live. This book explores the fundamental elements of the relationship Americans have today with their territory in an effort to understand the nature of changes necessary at the dawn of the third millennium. How this book is organized This book deals with human geography, but not without consideration for the study of American society and the environment in which Americans live. Scales are therefore treated in a flexible way, switching rapidly from overall views to local or regional views in an attempt to understand the complex interactions between society and the environment. Based on a tradition founded by French geographer Vidal de la Blache, we begin with a map showing population densities which we explore asking ourselves, “Why are there so many people in this area?” Each chapter takes a step towards finding a logical answer to this important question. The first chapter is devoted to the physiography of the United States. Determinism remains an important factor in the geography of existing settlements, especially when we consider the impact of natural hazards. Based on a map of population distribution, we will explore in turn the influence of the environment

Introduction

xiii

through the study of topography, geology, and the climates and ecosystems in the US. The second chapter studies how Americans have developed and used their territory and its natural resources, and offers an explanation of how their awareness of the value of this natural heritage grew, as well as how they envisage its preservation. In this context, we will explore, in particular, agriculture, forestry, mining, and fossil fuel resources, such as coal, oil and natural gas, the use of which we now know is responsible for global warming. Finally, the last section of this chapter is devoted to federal land and protected areas in the United States. In Chapter 3 we consider the environment in which Americans live, and focus on population growth, fertility, life expectancy, aging and immigration in the United States. An important part of the work of the US Census is the classification of the population by race and community. The fourth chapter is devoted to the study of these issues, which have divided American society since its inception. We give special attention to the study of the most delicate issues, starting with the “Native American question” followed by the “Black question”, which is today the most heated political debate in the country. This enables us to better understand the contribution of recent immigration to the diversity of this “multicultural” nation; we will study two population groups of uncertain definitions, “Hispanics” and “Asians”. The fifth chapter focuses on regional settlement of the American territory. It is put into perspective using three carefully selected observation points: 1930, 1970, and 2005. Each is analyzed according to geography and population dynamics. This chapter looks at the beginning of the urbanization of the United States and presents the territory’s urban framework. Chapter 6 explores the dynamics of regional settlements highlighted in the previous chapter. We begin with economic factors, analyzed through data on employment, and with special attention given to industrial evolution. We then look at internal migration, since the American population is very mobile and internal migration is constantly changing population maps. Special attention is given to the migration of retirees. Chapter 7 moves to a different scale to further complete the study of the way in which population dynamics affect the territory. We take the opportunity to look at the specific way urbanization occurs in this country. American cities tend to be diluted by the widespread urbanization of metropolitan areas. This phenomenon is not reserved strictly to big cities, as is demonstrated through a brief case study.

xiv


Case studies also form the backbone of Chapter 8, which seeks to explain urbanization in the United States through two main factors: segregation and the fragmented governance of metropolitan areas. This chapter focuses on specific examples in four selected metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Detroit, Houston and Portland. The ninth chapter is devoted to the study of New Orleans and the natural disaster, Hurricane Katrina, which struck in 2005. In order to understand what is happening in southeastern Louisiana, one must understand the factors presented in all other chapters. The case of New Orleans is also an opportunity to measure the extent of environmental challenges in the United States. This natural disaster may mark a turning point in the history of the relationship which this country has with the environment, and we hope to present the reader with an approach by which geography can contribute to the debate on the concept of sustainable development, which is too often clichéd. Methods, tools, and acknowledgements This book primarily addresses population, and census data is its primary source of information. Such a work would not have been possible without the input of key data on the environment and economy of the US. The following major federal agencies have, over several years, provided a wealth of valuable information, reference maps, and downloadable databases free of charge via the Internet: the US Census Bureau, the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The author warmly acknowledges these initiatives, since without the visionary policy launched by President Clinton, geographic information systems (GIS), the basis for this book, would never have come into existence. The author is also especially grateful to the NOAA and the US Department of Commerce project study managers who joined efforts for the STICS (Spatial Trends in Coastal Socioeconomics) program to compile, harmonize, and document databases, which categorized neighborhoods during the period 1970 to 2000. This work enabled us to provide the necessary chronological depth, too often absent from GIS, to understand the evolution of territories over the long term. Indeed, this book is, first, the result of the creation of geographic information systems. A GIS is an organized set of geo-referenced, graphic, and appointed databases, which constitutes a model of geographical reality. A GIS is a powerful tool which allows managers to reconcile a variety of data using spatial factors as

Introduction

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common denominators. It can work at different levels. A GIS consists of five essential components: – hardware; – specialized software2; – databases; – classification and documentation of this data; – an expert capable of handling and analyzing the data. The power of GIS is such that it enabled us to work on the scale of a continent, based on data pertaining to levels as detailed as block groups which constitute the smallest unit of census data freely distributed. It enabled us to work at different levels and to move from an analysis of the entire continent to a study of the neighborhoods of a single city. The power of GIS can only be successfully utilized, however, using methods that allow the manipulation of massive tables of locally geo-referenced data as well as their statistical analysis and mapping within all of the studied territory, particularly in the case of a territory as large as the United States. This is where spatial statistics, the subject of our previous work [ZAN 05], comes in. This branch of mathematics applied to spatial data is used here for the purpose of mapping with “smoothing” methods which use qualitative data. “Smoothing” makes it possible to provide a cartographic generalization and a reliable map despite the multitude and variety of statistical units used by databases. We therefore have readable maps for the entire US territory, based on significant data collected for each county, which reduce the loss of detail caused by the aggregation of data broken down by state (51, including the District of Columbia). The implementation of this map “smoothing” is done using free software CrimeStat v.3.1, whose existence we owe to Ned Levine3 and which was published with the support of the US National Department of Justice. For this we are most sincerely grateful.

2. We worked with licensed software MapInfo v.8.0£ and Vertical Mapper v.3.1£ acquired

by the Geography Laboratory of the University of Orléans, the CEDETE. 3. Ned Levine, CrimeStat III: A Spatial Statistics Program for the Analysis of Crime Incident

Locations. Ned Levine & Associates, Houston, TX, and the National Institute of Justice, Washington, DC, November 2004. Dr. Ned Levine, Ned Levine & Associates, Houston, TX, email: [email protected].

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Seattle Portland

Minneapolis

Boston Buffalo Detroit New York Cleveland Chicago Philadelphia Pittsburgh Baltimore

Salt Lake City San Francisco Denver

Washington

Saint Louis

Kansas City

Las Vegas Los Angeles Phoenix

Atlanta Dallas Austin Houston

New Orleans

Orlando

Tampa 0

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1,000 km

West Palm Beach Miami

Projection Lambert Conformal Conic (North America)

Alaska

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Regional projection (Lambert) 0

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Regional projection (Lambert) Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 1. The US territory

Chapter 1

The American Territory

1.1. A continent-nation with a dispersed population The United States of America consists of a federation of 50 states located on the North American continent and in the Pacific Ocean. The country’s surface area spans 9,161,924 km², and represents 6.1% of the total of Œkoumene.1 It is the fourth largest country in the world after Russia, Canada, and China (see Figure 0.1). Although it has the third largest population in the world after India and China, its population only represents 4.5% of the world’s total population. With nearly 32.4 inhabitants/km², the US has a lower population density than the world average of 50 inhabitants/km² according to the latest population estimates of the United Nations. The US territory is composed of three distinct geographical areas. The vast boreal region located in the northwest became the 49th state of the Union in 1959. The state of Alaska spans 1,481,347 km², but its estimated population of 663,661 in 2005 gives it an average density of only 0.45 inhabitants/km². After long benefiting from the status of “colony”, the Pacific archipelago of the Hawaiian Islands had a population of 1,275,194 inhabitants in 2005, a surface area of 16,635 km², and an average population density of about 76.7 inhabitants/km². Hawaii became the 50th state of the Union in 1959.

1. Literally, the “inhabited world”, referring to all emerged land except for Antarctica.

2


Most geographical studies of the United States focus on the territory of the 48 conterminous states, including the District of Columbia, and the two remaining states are treated separately. The surface area of the conterminous states is 7,663,942 km². With an estimated population of 294,471,549 inhabitants in 2005, the average density (38.4 inhabitants/km²) remains below the world average. The population is very unevenly distributed (see Figure 1.1). The permanent imbalance between East and West can first be explained by the history of the country, but many other elements are explained as a matter of location and environment. Geographical determinism is particularly important for the two peripheral states in the Pacific region. Alaska is largely unoccupied, due both to its location and to its environment. It is a remote, peripheral territory, located in the extreme northwest of the continent on the opposite side of the territory from the area first settled by Europeans. It is also a boreal region with a very hostile climate; it is mostly barren, very mountainous (Mount McKinley, 6,194 m), volcanic, and highly prone to seismic activity. Access is very difficult; only the southern coast is free of ice all year round. As the “last frontier” for American pioneers, Alaska is nonetheless a highly coveted territory due to its wealth of natural resources, particularly hydrocarbons. The Hawaiian Islands benefit from a tropical climate with relatively favorable trade winds since they are outside the path of major hurricanes in the Pacific. They are, however, a mountainous region of volcanic origin with highly active, though not eruptive, volcanoes. Populated areas are therefore concentrated along the coast. Freshwater resources in volcanic regions are typically scarce, particularly on the leeward coast. It is also an ultra-peripheral region which lived in total isolation until the 19th century. Its intermediary position between America and Asia earned strategic interest during the imperial period of 1895–1945, which led to a mixed population of indigenous Polynesians, American settlers of European origin, and immigrants from Asia, particularly Japan. With the arrival of long-distance aviation, its strategic importance declined, but the archipelago developed a solid tourism-based economy to the point where the Oahu island coast is, in fact, densely urbanized today. Today, over 72% of the archipelago’s population resides in the metropolitan area of Honolulu.


3

Geographical determinism also influences the 48 conterminous states. It is easier to understand the geography of the population through a map of counties2 as opposed to a map of states, but not without first adjusting values to smooth the effects of variability, improve the map’s general readability, and compensate for the fact that the very large counties of the West are much more visible than those of the East. As with most maps that show detailed socioeconomic data, the following map was realized using this smoothing process [ZAN 05].

Population Density (2005) per sq. km. 0.3 2.6 10.0 38.4 75.0 118.0

-

2.6 10.0 38.4 75.0 118.0 990.8

MSA-CMSA estimation 2005

0

500 km

Metropolitan Areas Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing in a flexible bandwidth of the 30 nearest counties

22,000,000 11,000,000 2,200,000

Source: US Census bureau Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 1.1. Population density 2005

2. The county is the basic territorial division of the American territory. There were 3,141 counties in 2005 (see Chapter 8).

4


From the Atlantic to the Pacific, the country has very simple, yet strikingly vast, structural areas. The territory forms a rectangular block of 7.7 million km² which lies between 67°W and 125°W longitude and spans 4 time zones. New York is barely closer to San Francisco than it is to Ireland. From east to west, the 45th parallel crosses the country over nearly 4,500 km. In latitude, the country stretches from the 24th parallel North at the tip of Florida, to just a stone’s throw from the 49th parallel North, which was adopted under a treaty with England in 1846 as the official border between the United States and Canada, west of the Mississippi all the way to the Pacific coast. From north to south the 100th meridian crosses the country for more than 2,500 km between Mexico and Canada. With its continental mass and its position in latitude, the United States territory is quite similar to the territory of China, with one major difference: it shares borders with the ocean on three sides along nearly 40,000 km of its coastline. This long coastal played a considerable role in the settlement of the United States.

Figure 1.2. Population share living within 100 km of an ocean or the Great Lakes

The Atlantic Ocean coast is the longest, with nearly 23,500 km, and follows a very jagged coastline from the tip of Florida to Maine, and 2,600 km in a straight line from Key West to the Canadian border. The Atlantic Ocean extends south and merges with the vast Gulf of Mexico. Less uneven than the Atlantic coast, the Gulf Coast is more than 8,300 km in length. Over 18,100 km long, the Pacific coastline stretches over 1,900 km in a straight line between San Diego and Vancouver. In addition to these three ocean fronts, the five freshwater Great Lakes at the Canadian border form a veritable inland sea stretching over nearly 250,000 km², and greatly influencing the climate of the Northeast. The majority of the US population now resides in a “coastal region”, defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a place usually located within 100 km of one of the three ocean fronts or the Great Lakes (see Figure 1.2). In 2005, the average population density of these coastal regions reached 118 inhabitants/km², compared to only 22 inhabitants/km² for the “inland” regions in the conterminous 48 states. Although


5

not a new phenomenon, the importance of “coastal” regions has increased since 1930. While total population grew by 140% between 1930 and 2005, that of coastal regions increased by 176%, and that of inland areas by 114%. If we exclude the Great Lakes and only consider counties located along the coasts of the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico or Pacific, the coastal population, as defined in its most traditional sense, increased from 24 million in 1930 to nearly 84.5 million in 2005, representing an increase of 250%, and a density of 165 inhabitants/km². The first seven chapters of this book are devoted to identifying the factors which explain today’s map of the population, and to exploring the diversity of these factors. 1.2. Major geographical areas

Elevation 3,000

1,000 500 0

meters

Projection Lambert Conformal Conic for the Continental U.S. Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 1.3. Topography of the United States of America

Land topography has as much influence on settlement as do climate and the presence of waterways. Topography influenced settlement patterns from the very beginnings of westward expansion, as well as the development of regions by

6


populations of European origin. Site characteristics defined the location of major cities founded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, less because of obstacles brought about by nature, and more because of the natural influence that the environment had on transportation conditions at a time when horse-drawn carts and inland waterways still represented the main means of transportation, and the first railways were struggling to climb steep slopes. The urban framework developed naturally, starting on the Atlantic coast and gradually expanding westward, based on opportunities determined in part by topography. Rural populations were more influenced by the obstacles of nature, mostly climate-based, but they were also strongly influenced by topography and altitude. A land relief map shows three main regions running north to south (see Figure 1.3). To the east, the medium-size Appalachian Mountains reach 2,060 meters. They separate the coastal plains of the Atlantic, which are narrow in the north and wider in the south and end with the very flat peninsula of Florida, from the central Great Plains. Even though the Appalachians hardly represent a real obstacle to settlement, they played a role in the layout of transportation routes which prevailed before 1850. The development of some transportation and urbanization networks was influenced by the ease of movement offered by valleys. The development of New York, and its dominance over its rivals, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, at a time when coastal cities (gateways to Europe) were supplying westbound settlers and therefore driving the country’s expansion was greatly assisted by its easy access to the Hudson-Mohawk passage. These same transportation factors facilitated to a lesser extent the development of the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, situated at the head of the Ohio River Valley. The Great Plains form the largest geographical natural region on the continent, and extending into Canada. In the US portion they form a flat basin which is drained by the third largest river basin in the world, that of the Mississippi River and its major tributaries. From the source of the Missouri River all the way to the Mississippi River delta, the Missouri-Mississippi river system extends to 5,934 km. The drainage basin covers 3.22 million km². The deep gutter that follows along the 2,000 km of the Mississippi’s lower course corresponds with a tectonic trench of high seismic risk (New Madrid fault). Towards the south, the Lowlands cover the entire coast of the Gulf of Mexico, with its uneven shores, especially in the vast delta of the Mississippi. In the north, the dividing line between the Mississippi and St Lawrence River basins does not show any significant land relief, but it represents the limits of the terminal moraine from the last Quaternary glaciation.


7

It was only in the vast plains of the Middle West that the US was really able to put into practice the geometric survey of the territory based on the parallels and meridians of Thomas Jefferson’s concept of Township.3 The geometric grid, which characterizes urban and rural areas, and was initiated in Philadelphia in the eighteenth century, is a hallmark of the American landscape. In these immense flat areas, it is the hydrographic system that determines the points of contact between land and river transport, or the crossing points of major rivers where main cities were built. The success of Chicago is therefore linked to its location at the southern tip of Lake Michigan. The eastern part of the territory is populated in a continuous and relatively dense manner. This is first explained by the precedence of its colonization, but also by the absence of any major natural obstacles. West of the Mississippi, the environment becomes less friendly, especially starting at the 100th meridian. The Great Plains rise gradually until they form the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The city of Denver is more than 1,600 meters above sea level. These high plains differ from the lower plains of the Middle West mostly by their semi-arid climate. The plains end abruptly at the barrier of the Rocky Mountains. The Rocky Mountains are actually a series of separate mountain ranges whose altitude do not exceed 4,400 meters. They mark the beginning of the Pacific West region, whose topography is particularly rugged all the way to the coast. The irregular geology of fault blocks explains the juxtaposition of mountain chains and basins, some of which form high plateaus and others very deep troughs. This is why, for instance, the Great Salt Lake of Utah is situated at an altitude of 1,280 meters. The highest point of the conterminous United States is Mount Whitney (4,417 m) located in the Sierra Nevada in southern California, just 150 km away from the lowest point located in Death Valley at 86m below sea level. This irregular topography considerably impeded the progress of settlers in the 19th century. High altitudes combined with the land’s general aridity explain the very sparse population of the plateaus and basins of the inland regions of the West. Apart from a few urban oases, the population of the West is concentrated along the shores of the Pacific Ocean. 3. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) is considered to be the father of the Declaration of Independence of 1776. He was president of the United States from 1801 to 1809 and pioneer of the country’s expansion (in particular, the Louisiana Purchase from France, in 1803).

8


Projection Lambert Conformal Conic for the Continental U.S. 11 000 000 0

Earthquake Hazard Major Risk High Risk Moderate Risk Low Risk Insignificant Risk

500 km

Volcanic Activity since 1 AD no activity known eruption recent eruption Source: USGS

Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 1.4. Areas of volcanic and seismic risk

Of all the natural hazards found in the West, frequent volcanic and seismic activity is among the most well known (see Figure 1.4). The city of San Francisco was destroyed by the great earthquake of 1906. California’s big cities are located along the San Andreas Fault line, a major transform fault whose massive strike will eventually result in The Big One, a major earthquake which is bound to happen in the future. Major earthquakes have recently shaken Los Angeles (Loma Prieta in 1989) and San Francisco (Northridge 1994). The risk of volcanic activity is also high. There are numerous active volcanoes in coastal states, especially in the Northwest. A major eruption occurred in 1980 at Mount St Helens in Oregon, 120 km northwest of the city of Portland and 170 km


9

south of Seattle. Mount St Helens experienced a Plinian4 eruption that liberated 1 km³ of ignimbrites and devastated a very large, although practically uninhabited area. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) lists 16 potentially active volcanoes and shows that certain Quaternary eruptions were more violent than that of Mount St Helens. While they may be less active than Indonesian volcanoes, the mountains of the Pacific Northwest are unstable. Certain geological studies indicate that the region of Yellowstone National Park is a potential “super-volcano” whose mega eruption once covered half of the United States in ash about 700 million years ago. This risk remains nonetheless hypothetical. Isolation and the harshness of winter in the highlands of Yellowstone Park, situated between 1,600 and 3,200 m of altitude, is a much more significant obstacle to settlement in the region. In the West, as in the rest of the country, climatic factors have more influence than topography and geology in explaining the settlement of the United States.

1.3. Unfavorable climatic factors Despite the latitude of the country, the prevailing climates in the United States can hardly be characterized as “temperate” in the sense of being moderate or restrained. They are temperate since, for most of the territory, each year is marked by alternating cold and hot seasons. Most of the US experiences a continental climate, typified by extreme seasonal contrasts. The mountain barriers that follow the Pacific coast reduce the influence of the ocean to a narrow coastal area. Meanwhile, the corridor of the Great Plains, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, reinforces the continental climate in central and eastern regions, which is dominated by the clash of polar and tropical air masses, which results in frequent tornadoes. The western part of the continent has an arid climate, while the Atlantic coast, and the shores of the Gulf of Mexico are very humid, and subject to an average of two hurricanes per year. Compared with Europe, winters are harsh despite the relatively low latitude. The North gets a great deal of snow and freezing temperatures, while the areas sheltered from frost are limited to a southern strip. Summers are very hot except in the Pacific Northwest and in some Northeastern counties located near Canada.

4. Plinian eruptions are characterized by their explosive nature resulting in the formation of pyroclastic flows which sweep down the flanks of the volcano and cause the most loss of life. Another very dangerous phenomenon is “lahars”, violent mudflows caused by the sudden melting of snow which spread over valleys with great energy and speed.

10


Normal Rain / Year millimeters 0 500 500 750 750 - 1,000 1,000 - 1,500 1,500 - 2,000 2,000 - 5,000

0

500 km

Source: NOAA


Figure 1.5. Mean precipitation 1961–1990

Rainfall influences vegetation and agricultural potential (see Figure 1.5). Areas situated east of the 100th meridian receive just enough water to support dryland farming. The situation is different, however, west of the 100th meridian, with the exception of the Pacific Northwest region where ocean rains and rocky terrains bring above average precipitation rates. Some mountains in the West are natural water towers as a result of heavy snows, but the aridity is generally such that irrigation is required practice south of the 40th parallel, and also in common used farther north. The aridity increases moving south, where real deserts can be found. For example, average rainfall is less than 80 mm per year in Yuma, Arizona. The management of water resources is a major challenge for the American West.


0

11

500 km

Le

0

0 16 0 18 0

14

12

80 10 0

60

40

20

ss

th

an

20

Yearly Avg. number of freezing days

Source: NOAA


Figure 1.6. Average number of days of frost per year (normal years 1970–2000)

California, the Pacific Coast, and the South experience mild winters (see Figure 1.6). The cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Miami are usually spared any frost. The average number of days of frost in New Orleans is only 11, in Seattle 19, and 48 in Atlanta. The West Coast is protected by the North Pacific Current, which softens winters in the lowlands of Oregon and Washington State, despite the mountainous terrain. Everywhere else the continental climate brings on severe winters. There are nearly 80 days below freezing in a normal year in New York on the 40th parallel, despite its location on the coast. There are 130 days below freezing in Chicago, despite the role of the Great Lakes in moderating the climate in the Northeast. At higher altitudes, the number of days of frost increases even at relatively low latitudes. There is an average of 156 days below freezing in Denver. In the Great Plains, the Dakotas are known for their harsh winters, with more than six months of frost per year. In the mountains of the

12


Southwest, Flagstatt, a city located on the 35th parallel, but at 2,100 meters of altitude, has an average 208 days below freezing each year. While frost is more common and temperatures lower in the high plains and the mountains of the West, snow is more abundant in the Northeast, particularly in the mountains of New England. Only the regions bordering the Gulf of Mexico and the coast of California are exempt from snow. Average annual snowfall in Chicago is 1 meter and in New York, 75 cm. The abundance of snow in northeastern regions is so characteristic that the region was given the name the “Snowbelt”. Winter climates have played an important role in the geography of settlements since the midtwentieth century. Mild winters in the south are particularly sought out by retirees who go either permanently or seasonally, staying in caravans or motor homes. These seasonal migrants are nicknamed the “snowbirds” because of their temporary stay.

Yearly Avg. number of days of Heat less than 20 20 40 60 80 100 to 120

0

500 km

Heat day, temperature over +32.2° C (+90° F) Source: NOAA


Figure 1.7. Average annual days of heat wave (normal years 1970–2000)


13

In continental regions, winters are harsh, but summers are hot, even sweltering, in many parts of the southern half of the country (see Figure 1.7). The Southwest states hold the records for hot temperatures. Average temperatures exceed 90°F (32.2°C) 169 days per year in Phoenix, Arizona, 133 days in Las Vegas, Nevada, and 109 days in El Paso, Texas, in normal5 years. While the coastal climate of California is moderated by a cold current, the number of annual days of excessive heat goes from one in San Francisco to 108 in Fresno in the Central Valley. High altitudes limit the duration of any excessive heat to less than two months in the mountains of the West and in the high plains, but the Great Plains south of the 35th parallel suffer from torrid heat. In Dallas, for example, a heat wave lasts an average of 97 days. The Southeast is also very hot, with the number of days of excessive heat climbing up to 105 days in Orlando, Florida. The Great Lakes help cool the Northeast. Chicago has an average of only 17 days of excessive heat per year. The influence of the ocean climate also keeps the Pacific Northwest cool. For a long time, summer heat and humidity discouraged settlement in the South, with the exception of the coast of California. According to Meinig [MEI 04], the change occurred in 1951 when cheap, domestic air-conditioners were first sold. The harshness of climates in the US contributes to explaining the very high energy consumption in the United States, whether for heating in winter or air-conditioning in summer. The emission of more than 25% of the global production of greenhouse gases by a mere 5% of the world’s population is indeed also the unfortunate result of the high level of comfort in which Americans live, despite their harsh climate. Among the violent weather phenomena that particularly affect the United States, a special mention should be made with regard to tornadoes and hurricanes. Tornadoes are especially common in spring in the Great Plains, where polar and tropical air masses clash abruptly (see Figure 1.8).

5. Seasonal “normal” climate data from the NOAA is based on averages calculated from observations made between 1970 and 2000.

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Tornado Risk (%) 0 - 10 10 - 20 20 - 30 30 - 40 40 - 50 50 - 60 60 - 70 70 - 81

0

Victims 8 4 0.8

500 km

Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing in a flexible bandwidth of the 30 nearest counties source: NOAA


Figure 1.8. Tornado hazard assessment 2004

Tornadoes kill an average of 93 people per year in the United States. The frequency of these localized phenomena is highest along the Tornado Alley which runs from Nebraska to Texas, passing through Kansas and Oklahoma. It is in Illinois and Indiana, however, that tornadoes are most disastrous – they may be less frequent in this region, but they are generally more destructive. Only the Pacific coast is virtually exempt from tornadoes.


15

19 19

37 37

33 33 28 28 22 22 16 16 10 10 18 18 1818 14 14 18 18 13 13

56 56

13 13 14 1413 13 12 12

10 10 77 33 66

55

44

66

12 12

11 11 10 77 10 77 121211 11 99

10 10 10 88 10 88 88 77 66 77 6666 77

11 11

77

88 77 88 88 99 88 88 88 88 66 66 66 77 7766 66 66 44 66 44

0

500 km

55

Yearly Hurricane Risk (%) 1.7 - 5 5 - 10 10 - 20 20 - 25 25 - 30 30 - 33

10 Hurricane Return Period (years) Report based on the Atlantic Hurricanes landing in the U.S.A. from 1851 to 2006 Source: NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS TPC-5 April 2007


Figure 1.9. Average annual Atlantic hurricane hazard assessment

Hurricanes (otherwise known as cyclones) form in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, often in late summer (see Figure 1.9). During the hurricane season, which generally runs from June to November, about 15 tropical storms form in the Atlantic Ocean and move from east to west, before rising north towards the United States. On average, eight of these storms turn into hurricanes, with winds of at least 120 km/h.

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The number of hurricanes, their violence, and the path they take in the North Atlantic, are highly variable and unpredictable. The coast of the United States is directly hit by an average of two hurricanes per year, but some years are spared (2006) while others are very active. In 2005, 15 hurricanes formed in the Atlantic and six hit the United States, four of which had wind speeds exceeding 180 km/h. Hurricanes are the most feared natural hazard in the United States. In 1900, a hurricane hit the city of Galveston, Texas, during the night, killing over 6,000 people. Hurricane Katrina, which caused the flooding of New Orleans in 2005, killed more than 1,850 people and caused more than $85 billion of damage. It is, to date, the most costly natural disaster in the history of the United States. Among populated areas, the city of Miami is most likely to be hit by a hurricane, with an average of one hurricane every four years. The entire southern coast is likely to be swept by hurricanes at least once every 10 years. The risk of hurricanes is lowest in the Northeast. Major hurricanes (categories 3, 4 and 5 on the SaphirSimpson scale) are less frequent, but their return frequency is only nine years in Miami, 15 years in Charleston, 19 years in New Orleans, and 21 years in Houston. Until today, hurricane hazards have not hindered the attractiveness of the southern coast. The extent of damage caused by the passage of Katrina through three states in 2005, however, and the violence of hurricanes during that year have not only sensitized American general opinion on climate-related hazards, but they have also fueled the controversy surrounding global warming. Of equal concern is the worsening drought in the western part of the country, as well as the increase in the number of giant forest fires (wildfires) during summer and fall seasons, as demonstrated in October 2007 during the giant fires that ravaged southern California, including the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and San Diego. However responsible global warming may be for these events, increased awareness of environmental issues is in large part due to the increase of extreme weather hazards and their severe consequences. Hurricane Katrina not only ended the popularity of President George W. Bush, it also shattered certainties and led the American people to understand that sustainable development is not about hypothetical long-term speculation, but about a challenge whose stakes are already at hand. Geography shows us that America will experience difficulties in reducing its energy consumption, even if only for domestic use (travel, heating, air-conditioning). It must meet the challenge of finding substitute technologies for fossil energy sources in order to reconcile the very foundation of its territorial organization and its economic and social cohesion with the imperatives of sustainable development.


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105° W

W 75°

90° W

120° W

1.4. Physical geography of the US

45° N

30° N

Projection: Polyconic American (100° W)

165° W

W 135°

150° W

Alaska

180 °W

0

500 km

Ecological regions

California Chaparral and Woodlands North American Desert Marine West Coast Forests 60° Northern Forests N Eastern Temperate Forests Tropical Humid Forests 0 500 km Great Plains Regional projection Southern Semi-Arid Highlands Northwestern Forested Mountains Level I of the Omernik Classification (1987) Temperate Sierras adopted in 2005 by the U.S. - Canada Mexico Environment Cooperation Taiga Commission Tundra Source : E.P.A. (U.S. Environemental Protection Agency) Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 1.10. Major biomes in the US

The combination of topography, land type, and climate determines the major ecological regions found in the US (see Figure 1.10). In its simplest form, the 48 conterminous states share a space which is divided into about ten large homogenous ecological regions generally oriented north-south, while Alaska is divided into four large ecological regions separated by zone, two of which include biomes which cannot be found in any other state of the United States. Consider the

18


definition of an “ecoregion” by Omernik [OME 87]. An ecoregion is a region which is homogenous in terms of plant and animal species, land type, and available water resources. Omernik’s classification is hierarchical, and in addition to vegetation takes into account topography, geology, climate, land type, land use, wildlife, hydrography, and water quality. In its most detailed and complete form the combination of climate, natural plant formations, and topography are key. Alaska is characterized by a subarctic environment that has been changed little by the presence of man. More than 15% of the state is officially classified as “wilderness” – an area where nature presides and which has not been altered by man. Northern Alaska and the shores of the Bering Sea are dominated by bushy land, which, moving north, gradually turns into shrub and then tundra. The short and cool summers do not allow for the development of any forest area. The soil is permanently frozen (permafrost), and Indigenous Indian and Inuit populations once traditionally lived off fishing and hunting. This ecoregion covers 34% of the territory of Alaska. Today, as a result of the effects of global warming, thawing permafrost and the melting of polar ice are leading to coastal erosion which is threatening the livelihood of coastal communities. The lowlands of central Alaska are dominated by boreal, coniferous forests (taiga). Despite similarities with the previous region, here the subarctic climate allows forest to develop.6 Permafrost is widespread and the area is uncultivated. Traditionally, Indians here are hunters and fishermen. This ecoregion covers 28% of the territory of Alaska. Once again, thawing permafrost caused by global warming challenges the existing infrastructures. It also causes the appearance of “drunken forests”, as a result of land subsidence. The mountain ranges of central and southern Alaska are not unique and can be found in other states. Altitudinal layering and the orientation of slopes determine microclimates and vegetation. The climate is cold and humid. Taiga covers the lower slopes. In the southernmost areas, trees are quite tall and summers long enough to make possible the use of forest resources. The ground is deeply frozen and agriculture is generally absent. This ecoregion covers 18% of the territory of Alaska. Today, as a result of global warming, the glaciers are retreating rapidly. The most fertile regions of Alaska are found along a thin, coastal, and mountainous area to the south, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. This region is 6. Forest develops when average monthly temperatures exceed 10.5°C for at least two consecutive months.


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characterized by its cool, moderate, and very humid climate. The influence of the ocean considerably softens winter at low altitudes. A thick, coniferous forest, full of Sitka spruce, lends itself to the logging industry. Fishing and salmon harvesting are other forms of development in this ecoregion. The rare arable land found in Alaska is found in this region. This ecological region only covers 20% of the territory of Alaska. Most of Alaska’s landscapes are still wild. The state’s situation is very different from that of the conterminous states, in which human activity has profoundly changed the environment. The main classes mentioned hereafter describe the country’s environment as it probably was in the early seventeenth century, prior to European colonization. When Europeans first arrived, it is probable that half of the territory was covered with forests. The largest biome would have been the vast temperate mixed forest in the East which occupied most of the territory east of the Mississippi, spanning more than 2.5 million km², or one third (32%) of the surface area of the conterminous states. This ecosystem corresponded to the range of humid, temperate, continental climates of the east coast and of the continent. The composition of the primary forest could vary considerably depending on the type of soil, the humidity, the altitude, and the relative harshness of winter. Nevertheless, the continuum from tropical forest regions in Florida to boreal regions provided a biodiversity that far exceeded that of European forests. Forest clearing severely reduced the surface area of these forests, except in the highlands (Uplands), the Appalachians, Ozarks, and the southern Lowlands. These were areas of secondary, coniferous forest which, having been abandoned by farmers, were replanted as part of a program in the 1930s to fight soil erosion in the southern Appalachians. The landscapes of the eastern United States are the most populated by humans. The forest remains, nonetheless, omnipresent, with the exception of Midwestern states (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois), where intensive agriculture dominates a territory divided geometrically according to the system of townships. The forest landscape changes in the north, in the region around Lake Superior, and in the highlands of the northern Appalachian Mountains, Adirondacks, and New England. This is the region of northern forests which are characteristic of eastern Canada, but which cover only 5% of the conterminous states of the US. These forests developed because of the acid soils of the Precambrian rock as well as the colder climate, with long, snowy winters and short, cool summers. The forest landscape is dominated by conifers and maples, the unique combination of which explains the splendor of fall colors. Land clearing for agriculture is limited by the

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land’s infertility, so the landscape remains mainly covered in forest in these sparsely populated regions. The southern tip of the Florida peninsula (0.3% of the US territory) differs from neighboring regions with its subtropical climate. Winters are practically nonexistent, and frost exceptional. The climate is hot and humid during most of the year, and allows for the development of a hardwood forest composed of evergreen and semi-deciduous species. Wetlands prevail, whether in fresh water (as in the Everglades) or brackish water, enabling the US to have mangroves. The flooded cypress forest (Cypress Swamps) forms a landscape that is typical along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and in the state of Florida. Extending beyond the winterless region of south Florida, this forest is found along the swampy coasts, including the Mississippi delta. It is a fragile ecosystem. The development of plantation crops and urbanization has substantially reduced the expansion of subtropical forests, wetlands and the Cypress Swamps of the southeastern United States. These unique environments, along with their unique wildlife (such as alligators), are therefore seriously threatened. Since 1947, the pumping of groundwater to supply cities, as well as irrigation and drainage for intensive agriculture around Lake Okeechobee have severely disrupted the natural movement of groundwater which feeds the freshwater marshes of the Everglades. The natural reserves of the Everglades and of Big Cypress National Preserve are now in danger of drying up. Apart from these two natural reserves, southern Florida no longer has any forest. West of the Mississippi, north of the 38th parallel, or further south and above the normal 1,000-mm isohyets, the forest gives way to the grassy vegetation of the Great Plains. This vast region spans 2.2 million km², or 28% of the territory of the conterminous United States, from the Mexican border in Texas all the way to the Canadian border. This ecosystem extends into the Canadian Prairies of western Canada. Consisting of vast plains naturally covered with grassland, its climates vary from dry continental in the Northeast to semi-arid subtropical in the Southwest. Prior to the period of westward expansion, the prairie was characterized by a dense population of bison. There were a great number of Native American communities, such as the Cheyenne, and the wars with these communities in the Great Plains were far more unpardonable and drawn-out than anywhere else in the United States. Westward expansion was followed by widespread land clearing and the slaughter of the bison herds. The agriculture of the Great Plains relies heavily on climate. The rich lands east of the prairie (Midwest), in the most humid region, continue to lend themselves to intensive agriculture, while the more marginal lands of the West and Southwest require the use of dry farming agricultural practices, as a result of the devastation caused by wind erosion in the 1920s, and the area is often referred to as the Dust Bowl. Starting in the 1950s, however, the pumping of groundwater from


21

the Ogallala aquifer, which stretches from Nebraska to Texas, helped to generalize the practice of irrigation, and therefore more intensive farming. The problem is that the volume of water extracted is 85 times greater than the natural renewal rate of the aquifer, which now threatens to run dry. Irrigation is also used extensively in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, which act as a natural water tower (Colorado). In Wyoming, irrigation is being developed, especially in valleys. Further north, the lack of water is no longer a problem, thanks to reduced evaporation during the summer, but the obstacle there is cold temperatures and the severity of the continental winter (Montana, North and South Dakota). The aridity increases in the southwestern inlands, where the basins and plateaus become desert areas near the Mexican border, or at least semi-barren all the way to the state of Washington (Columbia Plateau). These desert areas cover almost 19% of the conterminous US. The climates here are dry with temperature contrasts accentuated by differences in altitude. Summers in the Southwest are hot; winters in the high plateaus, freezing. The vegetation varies according to latitude and to the contrasting climates of different regions, but it cannot escape drought, which occurs everywhere. Settlers began by developing extensive ranching activities on this unforgiving land, but irrigation has recently enabled the development of intensive farming. Water reserves come from mountains and rivers. The vital need for water resources led to an agreement in 1922 between seven states, including California, to regulate the sharing of water originating in Colorado (Colorado Compact). The increasing urbanization of desert states, however, cripples the balance of the Colorado Compact today, and creates new conflicts in shared use between states on one hand, and between city dwellers and farmers on the other. In a small part of southeastern Arizona, and near the border with New Mexico, can be found the same semi-arid, southern highland that is found widely in Mexico. This region only represents 0.5% of US territory. In this ancient volcanic area, with its rugged terrain, the region has been preserved from desertification by the altitude and only slightly more abundant rainfall. Badly degraded today, natural vegetation is a mixture of prairie and sparse trees and parkland. With pastures in the hands of ranchers, the ecosystem has suffered from overgrazing and, therefore, the threat of desertification. The environment of the highest mountains of Arizona and New Mexico resembles that of the temperate Sierras of the highlands of Mexico. This environment only represents 1.4% of US territory. These regions are mostly covered with coniferous forest that today suffers a great deal from the effects of global warming. Trees are dying due to infestations of beetles that proliferate as a result of the mild winters.

22


North of the 35th parallel, the western mountains and high plateaus of the Northwest (for example, Yellowstone) are characterized by harsh winters. The ecosystem of northwestern mountain forests covers 10.5% of the coterminous United States. It is a mountain region marked by altitudinal layering. The climate is dry, but snow accumulates during the winter to store water. A few glaciers still survive today in the Northwest states. Summits are usually covered with dry grass. The lower levels and the high plateaus are dominated by a coniferous forest. Today, this ecosystem is faced with the threat of giant forest fires in the summer. The Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington is different, with its heavy rainfall and therefore denser forest, more abundant snow and larger glaciers which increase its protection against the risk of forest fires. The western façade of the Cascade Range and the Sierra Nevada in California are dominated by the renowned forest of giant sequoias (redwood). A large part of the coastal lowlands of California (2% of US territory) differs from the rest of the United States by having a hot and dry climate with mild winters and ecosystems which resemble those of the Mediterranean basin. An area of bushy, evergreen vegetation called chaparral survives today on the slopes of coastal mountains. The southern part of the Central Valley and the Imperial Valley were dominated by semi-arid steppe, while the highest mountains were covered in mixed forest. Population pressure is very strong in this region where intensive, irrigated agriculture and urbanization were responsible for shaping the valley’s landscapes. Hot, dry summers and far too many negligent attitudes expose the chaparral hills to periodic, ravaging forest fires. The coastline of the Pacific Northwest has one of the densest ecosystems in the world, but only represents 1% of US territory. The temperate, fresh, and humid climate is characterized by mild winters and abundant rainfall, intensified by the region’s precipitous landscape. Rich volcanic soils, the long growing seasons, the abundance of water, and the scarcity of freezing temperatures at low altitudes have enabled the development of a forest of various conifers, including cedars, firs, spruces, as well as the famous Giant Western Cedar in the Olympic Peninsula. The logging industry has developed greatly since the period of colonization, while the valleys of Puget Sound and Willamette have been cleared and cultivated.

Chapter 2

Developing the Territory

2.1. Agricultural regions Americans are very attached to their rural roots. In 1790, 90% of the population lived directly off the land. Clearly, rural life and agriculture are still considered as an ideal in the United States. President Jefferson believed that democracy was based on the regular settlement of family farms, while industrialization and urbanization based on the British model could only lead to misery and social struggles. US government policy has always favored farmers, especially in the 19th century, when westward expansion was primarily based on voluntary agricultural settlements. The policy of mass immigration can only be understood as part of this desire for settlement and development of the mainland. The United States has long been the world’s agricultural superpower. Their agriculture is strongly capitalized and integrated into the overall economy. As the world’s leading exporter of food, one-quarter of cultivated land is devoted to export. The Chicago Board of Trade (CBoT) sets the prices of cereal, which farmers all over the world use. But this exporting dominance does not shelter US agriculture from crisis and it does not exclude environmental problems. The major difference between the US and Europe is the history of the settlement of each region. The US population is dispersed, and from the very start, with little exception, farmers did not practise subsistence agriculture, but commercial agriculture at the demand of both domestic and external markets. This is why the southern states, with their more crop-friendly climate, specialized early on in tobacco and cotton plantations – the foundations of their distinct, slave-based

24


economy. As early as the mid-19th century, mechanization helped offset the lack of manpower, and American agriculture quickly became an important export. According to the economic model of Von Thünen (1826), large areas of specialized crops, called belts, developed based on climate, richness of soils, and the distance from urban markets in the East, which were also gateways for exporting to Europe. Family farming in the Great Plains peaked during the First World War. Highly dependent on weather conditions and market prices, it then suffered from a structural crisis in the 1920s, which led it along a path of continual restructuring. Farmers were forced to diversify their production and to adapt to the market and international competition, to the point where the belts were gradually dismantled and became unrecognizable. Rural counties lost their population due to the continuous flow of emigration, which continues today in the Great Plains. Most of the land was taken over by large farms and marginal lands were abandoned. The agricultural crisis which took place during the interwar period was also an environmental crisis, as a result of land overuse and deforestation. Erosion and the decline of productivity caused farmers to leave Oklahoma and the southern Appalachians. Meanwhile, agriculture continued its economic development with intensive mechanization, the introduction of chemicals, and the development of irrigation. Instead of focusing on agricultural production or regional specializations, this chapter will focus on settlement and land use. What remains today of the agricultural colonization which started in the 19th century? Today, agricultural land covers less than one-fifth of the territory of the United States. Alaska is virtually uncultivated, as are the Hawaiian Islands (see Figure 2.2). Just in the 48 conterminous states, agricultural land totals 1.8 million km² (see Figure 2.1). Agriculture occupies very little space in the desert of the Southwest, or in New England. Only the states of the Great Plains, from north to south, exceed the national average farmland share (as a percentage of the total area). Iowa, at the heart of the old Corn Belt, is the state with the most agricultural land. Agriculture has declined greatly on the Atlantic coast, except in certain parts of central Florida, southern Georgia, the coastal plain of North Carolina and the borderlands of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Agriculture has left the Appalachian highlands, but is omnipresent in the Midwest. The percentage of land used in agriculture decreases west of the 100th meridian, which is nicknamed the “disaster meridian” because of the variability of precipitation rates from one year to the next. West of the Rocky Mountains, agriculture is concentrated in some fertile and generally irrigated areas; the Snake River valley in southern Idaho, the Columbia River Basin and the Willamette valley are the three main agricultural regions of the Northwest. Agriculture in California, the richest state in the US, is concentrated in the Central Valley and the Imperial Valley.


0

Arable Land (%) 0 - 10 10 - 23 23 - 33 33 - 66 66 - 87

500 km

Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing in a flexible bandwidth of the 30 nearest counties Source: US Agricultural census Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 2.1. Agricultural land 2002

80% 70% Area (%)

60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% U.S.A.

Alaska

Hawaii Coterminous U.S.

Figure 2.2. Agricultural land in the US in 2002

Iowa

25

26


Average Farm Size hectares 65 - 250 250 - 500 500 - 885 885 - 1,500 1,500 - 2,000 2,000 or more

0

500 km

Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing in a flexible bandwidth of the 30 nearest counties Source: US Agricultural census


Figure 2.3. Average farm size in 2002

Farms in the US are vast. The average farm cultivates 885 hectares (ha), and sizes range from 170 ha in Rhode Island, to 5,600 ha in Montana (see Figure 2.3). The increase in farm size from east to west primarily reflects the history of settlements, but also the influence of an environment which becomes more and more challenging moving west. Farms have to be vast in order to be able to be costeffective in the more mountainous and arid regions of the West. Farm sizes get smaller once again in the fertile valleys of the Pacific coast. Farms are exceedingly large in the northwestern Great Plains (Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming) because of drought and agricultural decline. Yet, the biggest farms of all are found in the arid regions of western Texas. Apart from a few isolated areas of the Appalachians dedicated to subsistence farming, the small family farm no longer dominates in the US, with one exception: the Pacific Northwest (Willamette Valley).


Production value $ / ha 30 -

85

85 -

700

700 - 1,500 1,500 - 3,500 3,500 - 6,650

0

27

500 km



Figure 2.4. Agricultural productivity in 2002

Agriculture in the Great Plains is based on extensive farming. The average yield per hectare was only $700 in United States in 2002, with a minimum of $85 in Montana and a maximum of $3,500 in Connecticut, a state which is located in the dairy and truck farmer belt of New York (see Figure 2.4). Suburban agriculture tends to specialize in very profitable production because of the inflation of land values as a result of urban development. This is very common on the Northeastern Atlantic coast. A more intensive agriculture, usually irrigated, developed first in California and Florida, before spreading to the Pacific Northwest and the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. Meanwhile, agriculture is rather extensive in the Appalachian highlands, in the mountainous West, and in the High Plains.

28


0

500 km

Share of irrigated cropland (%) 0 - 20 20 - 40 40 - 60 60 - 80 80 - 100



Figure 2.5. Importance of irrigation in 2002

80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% North-Central North East Irrigated Area

South

West

Cultivated Area

Figure 2.6. Irrigated regions in 2002


29

In the West, the lack of rainfall led to an early specialization in ranching. Since 1950, crop cultures have been developed with the widespread use of irrigation, based on the Californian model, wherever possible. On average, crops only use half of the agricultural land in the United States; the other half is dedicated to pastures. Over 64 million hectares are irrigated, representing 12% of all cultivated land (see Figures 2.5 and 2.6). Irrigation is used very little in mid-northern states, with the exception of Nebraska. In the South, irrigation was developed predominantly in Florida, but also in western Texas and along the valleys of the Rio Grande and the Mississippi. In the West however, irrigation is widespread. Virtually all cultivated land is irrigated in Arizona and California, and half of the land is still irrigated in Colorado. As the leading consumer of water, agriculture contributes very little to finance the cost of bringing freshwater to their fields. Today, urban dwellers and farmers fight over access to water resources in the West. While the logic of trade markets would simply provide water to the highest bidder, this would be likely to bring about the demise of the most productive irrigated agriculture of the country. Southwestern states are therefore forced to come to an agreement and regulate the use of water (Colorado Compact). Similar problems arise in the southwestern region of the Great Plains, as well as, paradoxically, in Florida. Indeed, despite a very humid climate, the freshwater resources of Florida, which is a karst region devoid of any major rivers, are disputed by three user-groups: urban consumption, irrigation and the preservation of wetlands. 2.2. An agriculture which does not influence settlement The number of family farms has continued to decline since 1920. The agricultural census of 2002 counted fewer than 1.1 million farms, which represents 89% of actively operating farms. The remaining farms are all corporate farms, i.e., farms owned by corporations, with farmers who are merely employees (see Figure 2.7). Family agriculture is still omnipresent in the South, particularly in the uplands of the Appalachians and the Ozark Mountains. Corporate farming, on the other hand, has developed in areas where farming is most profitable, either due to the intensity of production in California, Florida, or the northeastern region of “Atlantic Seaboard”, or because of the number of farms concentrated in the western inlands (Montana and Wyoming in particular), or in the fertile Mississippi Valley (Yazoo River valley).

30


0

500 km

Corporate Farming (%) 3811 15 20 -

8 11 15 20 30

Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing in a flexible bandwidth of the 30 nearest counties Source: US Agricultural census Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 2.7. Extension of corporate farming 2002

The US Census continues to count the population of farms. In the last decennial census, the farm population did not exceed 3 million people, representing about 1.1% of the total population of the United States (see Figure 2.8). Rural agricultural density is 0.32 inhabitants/km² for the 48 conterminous states, ranging from 0.1 to 0.6 inhabitants/km² depending on the state. Only in some parts of the Midwestern plains and southeastern Pennsylvania is a population of more than 1 inhabitant per km² able to live directly off the land. West of the 100th meridian, the density of agricultural population declines rapidly. The mountains of the western inlands are deserted countryside. Other areas of low density can be found around Lake Superior, in northeastern Maine, and in southern Florida. In the West, the Willamette Valley and the Central Valley in California are oases of rural settlement.


Farm pop. Density inh./km² 00.10 0.32 0.60 1.00 -

0,1 0.32 0.60 1.00 2.17

0

31

500

Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing in a flexible bandwidth of the 30 nearest counties Source: US Census


Figure 2.8. Density of the agricultural population 2000

Migration from rural to urban environments is very high. Between 1970 and 2000, the population of farms declined by 64% (see Figures 2.9 and 2.10). Most states lost between 50% and 80% of their farm population within 30 years. Alaska is an exception because of the commitment of its Indigenous population to the traditional lifestyles of hunters and fishermen. It is on the west coast, where agriculture specialized early in the cultivation of highly profitable crops, that the farm population has declined least. In these areas, Hispanic immigration has contributed to the renewal of the farming population. The decline is fastest in the South where the plantation economy pursues its reconversion to forestry and an emerging “poultry belt” and mechanization. Iowa, the Midwestern state considered to typify rural America, experienced a decline similar to that of the national average. The average age of farmers today is high, around 55 in 2002. The end of American family farming is perhaps just around the corner. As the world’s leading producer, will the US know how to develop sustainable agriculture without farmers?


0

500

Farm population change (%) -46 -58 -70 -91

-

-24 -46 -58 -70

Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing in a flexible bandwidth of the 30 nearest counties Source: US Census


Figure 2.9. Decline of agricultural population 1970–2000

1970 - 2000

32

20% 10% 0% -10% -20% -30% -40% -50% -60% -70% -80% -90%

Alaska

Oregon California Iowa Mississippi North Carolina

Figure 2.10. Evolution of agricultural population in several states


33

2.3. The abundance and limits of natural resources Until the 1920s, the abundance of natural resources and the immense size of the country supported Americans in the belief that their territory was a sort of Promised Land. Their management of renewable and non-renewable natural resources was therefore just as negligent as their manpower was scarce. Meanwhile, entire regions relied on farming for economic development. Gradually, the limits of this development model, and the damage caused by it, began to show. Americans came to realize that some strategic non-renewable resources were being depleted. The United States became particularly dependent on its oil imports, starting in 1950. They were also slow to discover that mining was unsustainable, and caused great pollution. There are many ghost towns in the United States in areas where a mineral resource was fully exhausted or its extraction abandoned. Finally, they have only very recently become aware of the serious consequences of global warming caused by a development model that is based on the unrestrained consumption of fossil fuels, which are responsible for massive emissions of greenhouse gases. The diversity of usable natural resources on US territory is considerable. This book focuses on just one of those renewable resources – the forest. The forest is a good example of the abundance of resources as well as of the incomplete transition from overusing natural resources to sustainably managing them. In the case of fossil fuel resources, the following section will be on non-renewable resources, which are destined to become the main geopolitical, economic and environmental issue for the country to confront in the coming years. 2.4. Working towards the sustainable management of the American forest As half of the US territory was covered in forest at the start of the colonial period, logging is one of the oldest forms of natural resource exploitation in the United States. Boston’s emergence in the eighteenth century as the United States’ first city was as a result of the development of shipbuilding’ be better. While the US territory represents just 6% of the world’s inhabited lands, it represents 10% of the world’s forests and provides 25% of the world’s production of wood and wood products. Between 1630 and 1907, logging and agricultural clearing reduced American forests which were reduced from an estimated area of 423 million hectares to 307 million hectares, mainly in the Northeast and the South. Today, the forest still covers 302 million hectares, or one-third of the country’s total land area. Forest area declined in the 20th century in the West and in the South, but it rose in the North and the East. Forest protection began early. The National Forest Service was founded in 1891. National forest reserves represent the majority of protected forest

34


areas, spanning 11 million hectares. Approximately 10 million hectares of private forest are also protected. The protected area has doubled since 1953, representing up to 7% of the total US forest area. Most of these forest reserves (75%) are found in the West (see Table 2.1). Forest Region Area (millions ha)

North, North-East

South

West and High Plains (including Alaska)

Total

167

216

533

916

Forest 1630

120

143

159

422

Forested area % 1630

72%

66%

30%

46%

56

95

156

307

Forest 1907 Forested area % 1907

33%

44%

29%

34%

Area change 1630–1907 (base 100 in 1630)

47

66

98

73

Forest 1953

65

91

149

305

Commercial Forest 1953

62

83

61

206

Commercial Forest share 1953

95%

91%

41%

68%

1

1

8

10

2%

1%

5%

3%

Forest Preserves 1953 Forest Preserves share 1953 Forest 1997

69

87

147

303

Forested area 1997

41%

40%

28%

33%

Area change 1907–1997 (base 100 in 1907)

123

92

94

99

Commercial Forest 1997

65

81

58

204

Commercial Forest share 1997

94%

93%

39%

67%

3

2

16

21

4%

2%

11%

7%

5

5

50

60

National Forest share 1997

7%

6%

34%

20%

Other Forest on Federal Domain

12

5

51

68

17%

6%

35%

22%

Forest Preserves 1997 Forest Preserves share 1997 National Forest 1997

Forest on Federal Domain share 1997

Table 2.1. Forest area in the United States (Source: National Forest Service Report 2000)


35

Two-thirds of the American forest, including a large part of national forest, is exploited for commercial purposes. The logging industry exploits less than 40% of the forest in the West, and nearly half of that forest is neither exploited nor protected. This percentage is partly due to Alaska, since taiga has very little commercial value and is also very difficult to access in most of the state. Until the 1930s, the logging industry in America despoiled the land, with the widespread practice of clearcutting. Erosion, caused by the deforestation of the southern Appalachians, began generating greater awareness. Over time, private forest owners began developing management plans for their resources. The majority of exploited forests, including 40% of the area of privately exploited forests, are now sustainably exploited. According to estimates from the National Forest Service, the supply of usable wooded area has increased since 1953. However, this increase is only in the eastern half of the US; supply in the West remains changed. Some over-exploitation of large coniferous trees occurs in western states. The practice of clearcutting has largely been replaced by more selective methods, except in the South where many pine plantations are destined for commercial exploitation. An average of one million hectares of forest is planted each year in the United States, the majority of which is commercial pine forest in southern states (see Figure 2.11).

Coniferous Forest

0

500 km

Mixed Forest Deciduous Forest

Source: US Geological Survey


Figure 2.11. Forest area in 2002

36


2.5. Fossil resources-abundance and dependence The extraction of mineral and organic resources from the subsoil, which started in the 19th century, contributed to the strengthening of the United States as a superpower. The country is rich in a large variety of mineral resources, which enabled the development of a powerful industrial sector. As with forest resources, in the mid-20th century the United States went from the illusion of having unlimited resources to the understanding that their domestic production of those resources was insufficient to meet the demands of the insatiable consumption of their industry, their transport, and their cities.

Projection: Polyconic American (100° W) 0

500 km

Relative Mining Employment (%) Absolute Mining Employment 0 - 0,1 3,300 0.1 - 0.7 16,500 0.7 - 1.4 1.4 - 2.8 33,000 2.8 - 11.0 Source: US census Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 2.12. Employment in extractive industries in 2000

Although it was less significant than in the 19th century, the mining industry employed more than 0.9 million people in 1999. Its role at a local level can sometimes be very important (see Figure 2.12). In the coal belt of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, its share of local employment is more than 4 times higher than the national average. A similar rate is found in the iron mines region around Lake Superior, near Duluth. The extraction of hydrocarbons, mainly in offshore oilfields, is one of the main sources of employment in the coastal areas of the states of


37

Percentage of total Employment 2000

Louisiana and Texas. Houston is the undisputed capital of the US oil industry. The western Great Plains is another major area of production of coal and hydrocarbons. The sparsely populated areas of the western mountain regions are often heavily dependent on extractive industries. Gold and uranium mines provide one in three jobs to residents of Elko County in Nevada, which is an important historic site of the nineteenth-century Gold Rush, whose ghost towns have become tourist attractions. 7% 6% 5% 4% 3% 2% 1% 0% U.S.A.

Wyoming

Louisiana

Alaska

Figure 2.13. Importance of mining industry in several states in 2000

With its sparse population and very rich subsoil, Wyoming is now the state most heavily dependent on extractive industries (see Figure 2.13). Louisiana is ranked second, before Alaska. The dependence on extractive industries makes the economies of these states vulnerable, and often triggers serious environmental problems such as the destruction of land by strip mining, chemical pollution, abandoned mines, and land subsidence. A report from the USGS estimates that 80% of the subsidence of the Mississippi delta is due to the massive extraction of subterranean hydrocarbons. 2.6. The case of fossil fuels Since the Industrial Revolution, coal, oil, and natural gas have been at the heart of the US and world economies. Endowed with great amounts of primary and secondary sedimentary rocks, the American subsoil has proved to be very rich in fossil fuels. 2.6.1. The world’s second largest producer of coal Vast coal resources in the Appalachians enabled heavy industry in the US to develop during the 19th century, making Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the home of the steel barons.

38


Today, the United States is still the world’s second largest producer of steel, after China. The US production of 1 billion tons in 2003 represents 20% of world production for that year. Proven reserves amount to the equivalent of 500 years of production at present rates, although exports are declining. After peaking in the early 1990s to nearly 11% of national production, only 4% of the steady production is currently exported, while imports are increasing due to more competitive prices and the rapid increase in the consumption of coal for producing electricity.

Alaska 0 0

1000 km

Main producing States 2002 (Millions of Tons) 38

500 km

190

380

Gray Coal Field (Anthracite) Bituminous Coal Field (low Sulphur)

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 2.14. Coal regions and production 2002

Eight states are responsible for 81.5% of domestic production (see Figure 2.14). In 1970, 80% of national production (470 million tons) came from the Appalachian states, with Kentucky and West Virginia leading the production ranks. Rich in anthracite, Appalachian coal is ideal for the steel industry. In 2002, production in this region was only 420 million tons or 40% of national production. This was due to the decline of metallurgy and the relatively high cost of extraction. The mountains’ deposits are far from being depleted, however, and account for more than 36% of the country’s proven reserves. The exploitation of mainland deposits occurs chiefly in


39

the states east of the Mississippi River (Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky), but the states west of the Mississippi and in the South are also home to important reserves. Coal from the Great Plains has a high sulfur content, which makes it less useful for the metallurgical industry and very polluting since the combustion of this coal promotes the creation of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere which is responsible for acid rain. Its production has still increased due to the insatiable appetite of Americans for electricity, and the need of fossil-fuel power plants for the production of coal. Since 1970, increased awareness of the issue of pollution has favored the exploitation of coal in the West, and more specifically, of bituminous coal – which has a low sulfur content – from Wyoming and Montana. This type of coal is well suited to the needs of electricity since it releases relatively little ash. Insignificant in 1970, the production from these two states has grown rapidly to over 400 million tons in 2001, and today accounts for almost 40% of national production. Although Wyoming is today the leading state for production, the largest reserves are in Montana. Together, the proven reserves of the two states represent 37% of the national total. The United States also has lignite reserves located primarily in the state of North Dakota. Coal mining is an important element of society in regions where it is extracted. Coal has long dominated the Appalachian economy, at great cost to human and ecological life. Accidents, silicosis, unemployment, low wages, education levels well below the national average, land destroyed by strip mining, water pollution, and acid rain are just a few of its consequences. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 required companies to pledge funds for environmental restoration after the cessation of mining activities, before they could even obtain a permit to begin exploitation. Ever since the Act was passed, it has been contested by those who argue that the additional costs weaken the regional economy. This is an example of the debate concerning short-term profits versus the long-term investments required by sustainable development. After suffering decades of agricultural abandonment, Wyoming and Montana see the coal boom, which is also an oil and gas boom, as an opportunity for economic salvation. The effect of 150 years of exploitation on the Appalachian plateau, however, makes environmentalists skeptical about the long-term benefits of this new economic specialization. Today, coal supplies nearly 23% of energy currently consumed in the US. It is the only source of fossil energy for which production exceeds consumption and for which proven reserves are substantial. It is also, unfortunately, the fuel which pollutes the most, and it contributes heavily to the production of greenhouse gases. Coal liquefaction and gasification technologies are being researched today as it is likely that they would be cleaner sources of energy.

40


2.6.2. Oil – a strategic dilemma

Alaska 0

0

500 km

500 km

Oil 2002 millions of barils 550 2,750

Production Proven Reserves

5,500 Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 2.15. Oil production and reserves in 2002

The extraction of petroleum began on the Appalachian plateau in 1859. Although the geological conditions necessary for their formation are different, hydrocarbons are generally found in the same sedimentary rock as coal (see Figure 2.15). Oil extraction gradually spread to the West with the increase in demand that was intensified by the automobile revolution of the 20th century. Domestic production rose from less than 500 million barrels in 1920 to 3 billion barrels in 1940. Imports remained negligible until 1950 because the discovery of huge oil fields in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Louisiana, and California appeared to provide the United States with unlimited resources. While Germany and Japan struggled with fuel shortages, the US had domestic resources that greatly aided the Allies’ victory in the Second World War. Since then, oil has been at the heart of American geopolitics, as well as its geography. The oil industry had a much greater influence on the growth of several of the sunbelt cities, including Los Angeles, Houston and Dallas, than


41

military establishments, or the economy of tourism and recreation. More generally, postwar America grew accustomed to cheap fuel, and the population therefore rapidly decentralized to live in more spacious surroundings. The suburban revolution is the most obvious geographical result of the entrance of America into the Oil Age, and the new, widespread mobility of individuals. To respond to ever-increasing demand, oil exploration continued actively in the second half of the 20th century. Some oilfields were discovered in the High Plains (Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota), but the offshore resources of the Gulf of Mexico in Texas and Louisiana were the most promising discoveries, and they established Houston as the capital of the US oil industry. In addition, significant deposits were found in northern Alaska, on the shores of the frozen Beaufort Sea in the 1960s (Prudhoe Bay). Despite the extreme weather conditions of the polar environment, the deposits of northern Alaska were exploited from 1973 to 1984, a time when soaring oil prices resulted in an unprecedented economic boom for producing regions. However, after peaking at around 3.5 billion barrels in the early 1970s, domestic production began to decline as the deposits of the Middle West and Appalachian regions diminished, and those of southern California had already passed their peak production. Domestic production rapidly became insufficient for demand. By 1973, 25% of national consumption was imported. From 1973 to 2002, domestic production dropped by 38%, while overall consumption increased by 20%. Today, 66% of the domestic consumption of crude oil is supplied by imports. Although still the third largest producer of oil after Saudi Arabia and Russia, the United States is now dependent on other countries for its oil supply. 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

Texas

Alaska

California

Louisiana

Figure 2.16. Leading states in domestic oil production in 2004

42


Nowadays, domestic production is mainly concentrated in the West (see Figure 2.16). Alaska’s supply crosses the taiga towards regions in demand, via a north-south pipeline, before being loaded onto tankers at Valdez on the state’s Pacific shores. California was still the third largest state producer in 2004, but Texas comes in first place. The location of known proven reserves is roughly the same as that of today’s production. Unlike coal, in 2004, the United States had only 11 years of proven reserves at the current rate of extraction, with more than half of deposits in offshore platforms (Gulf of Mexico, Beaufort Sea). Producing regions experienced an economic crisis, starting in 1985, when they were hit by the aftershocks of the oil crisis. Exploration slowed down considerably until 2003, which was the year when crude oil prices began to rebound. The recent revival of the oil industry was prompted by soaring prices (2003–08). There was talk of extending exploration and development in northern Alaska and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico towards Florida – two of the most promising regions. Recent controversy has led to a shift in attitude however, and the two development projects now face strong resistance. In Alaska, oil companies covet lands situated on nature reserves and Native Indian lands. In Florida, residents of the eastern coast are opposed to the risk of coastal pollution caused by offshore drilling platforms. Influenced by the interests of the oil industry and increasingly embarrassed by the country’s dependence on imports from the Middle East, the Bush administration supported the development of domestic production, but scandals (Enron in 2001) and environmental crises (Hurricane Katrina in 2005) gave rise to growing opposition from the public. The development of the oil industry has turned into a political issue. Meanwhile, oil continues to provide 40% of the energy consumed in the United States. This dependency is even further aggravated by international issues. The dilemma is first geopolitical. The military adventure in Iraq was motivated by an attempt to plunder oil resources, which had been nationalized in 1970. The profits from the sale of this oil were to fully fund the military expedition, and more. Unfortunately, this strategy failed completely because the instability in the region was such that production could not be developed. Meanwhile military costs, expenses, and the loss of life continued to increase, and the strategic position of the United States in the region became hopeless. Since 2006, Americans have finally been convinced that the Iraq situation presents difficulties which mirror those of the Vietnam War, and they now seek to disengage without shattering strategic interests and, if possible, without losing face.


43

The obstinacy of President G.W. Bush on this issue required the country to wait until 2009 to find a way out of this strategic impasse. The dilemma is also technological. After the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, the US froze its civil nuclear program. As a result, most of the electricity consumed in the United States is produced in thermal power stations fueled by coal, gas or oil. There is now talk of reviving the nuclear program and the production of electricity from renewable energy sources. In his State of the Union address in 2006, President Bush proposed a plan along these lines (Advanced Energy Initiative); meanwhile, his administration continued to support the development of domestic oil production, which clearly contradicts the Advanced Energy Initiative. The third dilemma is related to the environment. After much stalling and denial of the obvious, American public opinion is now convinced that the burning of fossil fuels is responsible for global warming which is in turn threatening the security of the country itself, particularly on the coasts with coastal erosion in Alaska, increased hurricane hazards in South-Eastern states, the threat of coastal regions being permanently submerged under water, and the excessive heat and forest fires in the West. Other more indirect problems result from global warming. Insect infestation of forests and the arrival of new diseases of tropical origin are two examples. After the West Nile virus traveled from Africa to New York by plane in 1999, the mosquitoes that carry this tropical disease grew accustomed to the United States. In 2001, cases of this virus were identified throughout the eastern half of the country. The West has been infested since 2003, and the number of cases increases every year. The main problem is that the transportation sector in the United States, entirely dependent on oil, already represents 28% of the total domestic consumption of energy, and this consumption continues to grow. Air transportation has become crucial to facilitating mobility within the national territory just as road transport has become essential to ensuring connections within cities that are extremely spread out. To reduce the country’s dependency on oil would therefore either require radical changes in lifestyle and a reorganization of territory – both difficult to imagine – or radical innovations in technology (biofuels, hybrid vehicles, hydrogen engines, etc.) capable of completely remodeling the transportation industry. Today, the United States seems to be engaging in this second approach, which also has the advantage of providing promising economic growth opportunities.

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2.6.3. Natural gas – a highly desirable resource

Alaska 0

0

500 km

500 km

Natural Gas Billions of m3 5,000 25,000 50,000

Production Proven Reserves

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 2.17. Natural gas production and reserves in 2002

Natural gas and oil production usually go together (see Figure 2.17). At first, natural gas was merely a by-product which was burned. Its exploitation at an industrial level began in the 20th century in Louisiana1 and in the Appalachians. Natural gas was transported by pipeline from the extraction sites to the cities of the East Coast and Great Lakes where it was then consumed. Domestic production subsequently increased steadily to peak at almost 21,700 billion m³ in 1970, and then stabilized at the high level of around 20,000 billion m³ per year. The United States is now the world’s second largest producer of natural

1. The first gas pipeline was built in Louisiana in 1908.


45

gas, after Russia. Until 1990, domestic production was able to meet domestic demand. But the success of the new gas-fueled power stations – more efficient and less polluting than coal stations – generated such enthusiasm that the country began to import more. Nearly 18% of the gas consumed in the United States is now imported from fields in Alberta, Canada, via pipeline. Naturally, the geography of the production of natural gas is similar to that of oil. The state of Texas is the country’s leading producer, providing 26% of national production. In Wyoming, exploration efforts were multiplied and production more than tripled between 1985 and 2004, making the state the second producer in the country, with a jump from 2% to 7.3% of national production. Deposits found in the “Midcontinent” – Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas – are the most significant. Those of the Rocky Mountains and of the Gulf of Mexico follow closely behind, in the states of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, and Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, respectively. California contributes less than 2% of national production, and operations in Alaska are limited to a production rate of 2.3% of the country’s overall total. Unlike the oil fields, the Appalachians’ natural gas deposits have not yet been depleted. Proven reserves of natural gas 2004, however, represent only 10 years of production at current extraction rates. In 2004, natural gas contributed to 23% of national energy consumption. With relatively little pollution and fewer greenhouse gas emissions than other fossil fuels, natural gas has become the most popular energy resource. The problem is that at the current rate of consumption, if no new deposits are discovered, the United States will fully deplete its resources by 2015. Just as in the past with oil, the United States is becoming dependent on imports for its supply of natural gas, and most of the world’s reserves are located in unreliable countries like Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Natural gas is therefore not a sustainable alternative to oil for America. Americans are accustomed to having abundant and cheap access to energy, thanks to their natural resources in fossil fuels. Today, they are preparing for the transition, over a short period of time, from a situation of abundance of hydrocarbons to one of shortage. In such a vast country where geographical and climatic conditions require high levels of consumption, this presents a tremendous challenge for the upcoming years.

46


105° W

W 75°

90° W

120° W

2.7. Environmental protection

45° N

30° N

Projection: Polyconic American (100° W)

0

180 °W

W 135°

Alaska

500 km

Federal Domain 60° N

Wilderness Forest Service Region 0

500 1 000 km

Regional Projection Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 2.18. Wilderness, protected areas, and federal lands in 2005

In contrast with Europe, part of the US territory is considered to be completely wild and deserted in the classic sense of the term “wilderness”, even though most of this wilderness is found in Alaska (54% of 42.7 million hectares). This represents just under 4.7% of the country’s total surface area, far below the 12% recommended by the Brundtland Report on Sustainable Development (1987). Land which has never been subject to any contract of sale is considered federal property, which represents nearly 3.3 million km², or almost 36% of the territory. Federal land covers almost three-quarters of the territory of Alaska, but less than 30% of the territory of the 48 conterminous states, where it is found mainly in the West. Less than 9% of federal lands lie east of the 100th meridian (see Figure 2.18). This land distribution is inherited from the past. In the early 19th century, federal lands west of the Appalachians were sold to settlers for agricultural development.


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The federal government liquidated a large part of its property in the 19th century through the free distribution of land to settlers in the Great Plains (Homestead Act 1862), while most of the arid or mountainous areas situated west of the Rocky Mountains remained within its jurisdiction. After 1890 and the “closing” of the American frontier, a process of re-evaluation of the value of marginal land in the West began. With the creation of the Yellowstone National Park in 1872 in Wyoming, the United States became a pioneer in the creation of policies to protect its natural heritage. The administration of President Theodore Roosevelt (1902–09) was very supportive of the development of the National Forest Service (founded in 1891) as well as that of national parks. Today there are 52 national parks, mostly located in the mountains of the West, and among which the Yellowstone Park is undoubtedly the most famous. Unfortunately, excessive tourism is damaging its ecosystem. Outside the system of national parks, the primary mission of the US Forest Service is to protect what remains of the primary forest from damage caused by private owners. The following debate arose: should we work to conserve nature, i.e., to regulate human interaction with nature in natural heritage sites, or should we work to preserve nature, i.e., to exclude human interaction all together? During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the first idea prevailed. Federal authorities proceeded to delimit 186,000 km² of national park land, 757,000 km² of forest land, mostly destined to be used for commercial purposes, and 121,000 km² of natural reserves in this huge area which would otherwise mostly have been conceded to farmers, foresters or prospectors. Another evaluation of the environment occurred after the Second World War. Since the Wilderness Act of 1964, areas which are still “natural” or “unaltered by man” are classified as protected areas. Other laws followed in an effort to improve the management of these federal lands. The 1974 Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act required the creation of a management plan for each national forest, to be updated every five years with public consultation. The 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act imposed a similar program for all federal lands. These management efforts came in response to mounting criticism in the West (Sagebrush Rebellion) from voices who were challenging the legitimacy of federal property in the states of the West. Federal action for environment protection is not limited to the management of federal property. Since the first law on air quality (Clean Air Act of 1963), a series of environmental protection laws have been adopted, some of which are concerned primarily with public health (laws on air, water, pesticides), while others define protected areas and preserve natural heritage sites and reserves. The 1964 Act established the National Wilderness Preservation System. A law on the protection of

48


coastal regions was passed in 1972. The management of national forests was reformed in 1976 to favor protection and discourage exploitation. A mining law, taking into account the need to restore the environment in mining areas, was passed in 1977. Some laws were recently revised (Clean Air Act of 1990), but in the eyes of environmental activists no major breakthrough has been recorded since 1981, and logging and mining companies, as well as polluting industries, have even benefited from a certain degree of leniency on the part of federal authorities. Environmental protection is more the responsibility of each state than of the federal administration. Today the United States is lagging behind the EU member countries in terms of environmental protection. The omnipotence of oil and coal lobbyists in Republican administrations under the successive presidencies of Reagan (1981–88), George H. Bush (1989–92) and George W. Bush (2001–08) led to an easing of protection regulations. The blindness of the federal government went so far as to completely deny, for as long as possible, the reality of global warming, as well as the responsibility of humans in this phenomenon. The US has consistently refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol (1995) for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This negligence on the part of federal authorities is more or less compensated for locally by state actions for environmental protection. Today, environmental protection measures in the United States are very decentralized, which means that local situations are increasingly inconsistent.

Chapter 3

A Rapidly Growing Population

While the world’s population is currently growing at a rate of 1.24% per year (average rate between 2000 and 2005), the population of the United States is increasing at an average rate of 0.99% per year. The average rate of natural population growth, 0.61% per year, is less than half the global rate, but the United States continues to be the most attractive country in the world with an estimated average net migration surplus of nearly 1.2 million people per year between 2000 and 2005, or +0.38% per year compared with the total population. This rapid population growth in one of the world’s most developed countries contrasts sharply with the low population growth in Western Europe and Japan. Proportionately, it is now faster than that of China (see Figure 3.1). 2.5% 2.0% 1.5% 1.0% 0.5% 0.0% 1950- 1955- 1960- 1965- 1970- 1975- 1980- 1985- 1990- 1995- 20001955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 U.S.A.

World

Industrialized Countries

Figure 3.1. Average annual population growth 1950–2005 (Source: UN, Population Division)

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3.1. A relatively high fertility rate due to immigration 6

Children/woman

5 4 3 2 1 0 1950- 1955- 1960- 1965- 1970- 1975- 1980- 1985- 1990- 1995- 20001955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 U.S.A.

World

Industrialized Countries

Figure 3.2. Fertility rate trends (number of children per woman) 1950–2005 (Source: UN, Population Division)

The United States stands out among northern countries with a total fertility rate (TFR) which comes close to the replacement level. Following the postwar Baby Boom, the introduction of contraception (1960) led to a reduction of the TFR in the US, which reached its lowest level in the early 1980s before rising again, unlike in Europe and Japan, where the TFR rate continued to fall for another 20 years, before leveling out (see Figure 3.2). There are currently more than four million births per year in the United States and the number continues to grow each year (0.5% per year). However, the average number of children for a 45-year-old woman was only 1.9 in 2004, compared with 3.1 in 1957. In 2004 nearly 19% of women aged 40 to 44 years remained childless compared to less than 10% in 1957. Conversely, the number of women with at least three children went from 59% in 1957 to 29% in 2004. The recent progress of the TFR is mostly related to a rejuvenation of the population of women aged 15 to 49 years, as well as to early pregnancies in certain ethnic and social groups. The fertility rate of women of Hispanic origin was 2.3 children per woman in 2004, compared to 1.8 for black women and 1.9 for nonHispanic white women. High immigration from Latin America has, therefore, been the main cause of increasing fertility rates in recent years.


51

3.2. Life expectancy and aging As in all rich countries, life expectancy at birth is high, and continues to increase steadily in the United States. Male life expectancy today has reached 74.7 years and that of women, over 80 years. This is less than in Western Europe and Japan due to greater social inequalities which affect access to healthcare. These gaps are observed at all ages.

Median Age (years)

Although the situation is improving, the infant mortality rate of 6.8% is slightly higher than in Western Europe (4.5%). Population aging is a result of the combination of longer life expectancies and declining fertility rates. The United States population is aging, although much more slowly than the populations in European countries and Japan (see Figure 3.3). 40 38 36 34 32 30 28 26 24 22 20 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 U.S.A.

World

Europe

Figure 3.3. Median age of population by year (Source: UN, Population Division)

As is the population in all northern countries, the US population is older than the population of developing countries, but a comparison with Europe is interesting. The two continents were in similar situations in the 1950s. The American population then grew younger from 1955 to 1970, while the European population grew older. The gap which was formed during that period has been maintained since the two populations age similarly. Unlike the population pyramid in many European and Asian countries, the US population pyramid shows no marked narrowing at its base. Considering, however, that the first postwar baby boomers will celebrate their 65th birthdays in 2010, the United States is now coming into a phase of accelerated aging, just like all industrialized countries (see Figure 3.4).

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100+ 90-94 80-84 70-74 60-64

Age group

50-54 40-44 30-34 20-24 10-14 00-04

15,000

10,000

5,000

0 5,000 Pop. (thousands) Men

10,000

15,000

Women

Figure 3.4. US population pyramid 2005 (Source : UN, Population Division)

The number of seniors (65+) increased from 9.8% to 12.3% of the total population between 1970 and 2005. Since then, however, the population of working age people (aged 15 to 64) also greatly increased, going from under 130 million to over 200 million people, and the number of children (under 15) dropped from 28.3% to 20.8% of the population. This made the dependency ratio1 registered by the United Nations decline from 62% in 1970, to 49% in 2005. This demographic dividend is an important factor of economic growth since rapid job creation maintains unemployment rates at a low level (4.5%). The immigration of young adults significantly strengthens the available workforce in the United States. As they apprehend poor job market prospects for the year 2030 because of the large share of postwar baby boomers in the US manpower, authorities seem, therefore, reluctant to enforce laws against businesses that hire illegal immigrants. 1. The dependency ratio is an age-population ratio of people under the age of 15 years, or over the age of 64, and people between the ages of 15 and 64. In developing countries, the dependency rate is high because of the large number of children (young-age dependency). In older countries like Japan or Italy, this ratio increases due to the increase in the proportion of elders in the total population (old-age dependency). For economists, countries having the highest proportion of working age population benefit from a “demographic dividend” (15 to 64 years as the standard reference). This is the case in China today, as well as in the United States.


53

3.3. Aging – regional disparities When it is not the result of intentionally specializing in a residential economy, as in Florida, an aging population is an economic handicap.

0

500 km

Pop. Aged 65 and over (%)

7.8 - 9.4 Metropolitan Population 9.4 - 11.4 22,000,000 Method: Quartic Kernel density 11.4 - 13.4 11,000,000 smoothing – Bandwidth : 96 km 13.4 - 15.4 2,200,000 15.4 - 21.3 seniors others National avg. share 12.4% Source: US Census bureau Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 3.5. Proportion of seniors in the population, 2000

In general, Northeastern regions have older populations than in the South and West (see Figure 3.5). Population aging is particularly significant in regions affected by a continuous and regular flux of emigration. This is particularly true of the High Plains, Lake Superior, and Appalachian regions. Conversely, some areas attract many seniors. Migration of retirees increases the average age of the population in areas such as rural north California, and especially the big cities of south Florida.

54


25% 20% 15% 10% 5% ch

pa

Be a m

Ta m

tP al W es

M ia m i Bu ffa lo Pi tts bu rg h

D al Sa la s lt La ke Ci ty U .S .A .

Au sti n At la nt a H ou sto n

0%

Figure 3.6. Proportion of seniors in the population of selected cities, 2000

The 52 metropolitan areas with over 1 million inhabitants in 2005 represent 58% of the US population. Some cities, particularly those attractive to young workers, have an exceptionally low aging rate (see Figure 3.6). This is especially the case in some cities of the South, in particular in southern Texas. Austin is the city with the youngest population in the United States, just ahead of Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas. In the West, Salt Lake City and Denver also have young populations. Florida’s cities are at the other end of the ranking. West Palm Beach tops the list with twice as many seniors in its metropolitan population as the national average. Tampa/St Petersburg comes in second place. Among the declining industrial cities, Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), the old capital of steel, leads the ranks just ahead of Buffalo. Like Florida’s cities, some regions adopted local development strategies based on attracting seniors. Seniors have good incomes and they do not contribute to crime. The latter is the primary concern of the middle class, and can severely undermine the image of a city. This strategy may only be short term however, since welcoming young seniors can cause certain categories of population and economic activities to flee, and it also leads to an increase in health service charges after a few decades.

3.4. Immigration to the United States of America The United States of America is the leading country for immigration in the world. The country was built on successive waves of immigration, to the point where people who are purely Indigenous, Inuit, Native American or Hawaiian no longer represent even 1% of the total population, according to the 2000 census.

55

01

93

89

85

81

97

20

19

19

19

19

77

19

69

65

61

73

19

19

19

19

57

19

19

53

1,800,000 1,600,000 1,400,000 1,200,000 1,000,000 800,000 600,000 400,000 200,000 0 19

Immigrants


Year

Figure 3.7. Net immigration to the United States of America from 1953 to 2002 (including illegal immigration) (Source: estimates of the French National Institute for Demographic Studies)

Although immigration to the United States has never ceased, it does go through distinct phases (see Figure 3.7). Before 1845, about half a million Europeans (mostly British) and half a million black slaves crossed the Atlantic and formed the core of the dominant WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) and minority AfricanAmerican communities. From 1845 to 1880, the California Gold Rush and the Great Famine of Ireland launched the great wave of transatlantic European migration with 8 million British, Irish, German, and Scandinavian immigrants. A more modest Chinese and Japanese migration to California was later banned by racist laws. From 1880 to 1915, 33 million Europeans of very different origins crossed the Atlantic. New communities included Italians, Slavs, and Ashkenazi Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. Entries peaked at about 1 million immigrants per year, mostly arriving in the port of New York. Even though the United States sought to encourage the agricultural colonization of the Great Plains, many immigrants settled in the cities where they landed. This is how New York became the country’s leading city. From 1915 to 1965, immigration slowed down considerably and came mostly from neighboring countries with only 20 million entries, eight million of which arrived between 1950 and 1965. Temporary Mexican immigration triggered massive immigration movements, sometimes illegal (wetbacks), that the Mexican government, with the support of the United States, attempted to control with the Maquiladoras program (1965). The quota laws of 1924 intended to halt the settlement of non-native populations from the eastern hemisphere, which were not present in 1880, in order to try to preserve the majority population of Protestant Anglo-Saxons. The period spanning from 1924 to 1965 was very important,

56


however, for the linguistic and cultural assimilation of minorities of European origin who only differed from each other through their religious convictions. The period 1947–1964 was marked by a slight resurgence of European immigration in the context of the Cold War. America welcomed citizens of the Eastern Bloc, including many Jews and Germans, but also British and Irish citizens. With the 1960 election of J.F. Kennedy, a billionaire of Irish Catholic descent, the WASPs stepped down from their position of power for the first time. In 1965, the Johnson Act changed conditions for welcoming immigrants and put an end to the quota system established in 1924. Since 1965 the country has welcomed more than 25 million legal immigrants, with 400,000 annual admissions at first, gradually increasing since 1980 to exceed one million entries per year in recent years. This immigration has two main origins – Latin America, with a majority of Mexicans, and the Asian Pacific, of which the Chinese are the leading immigrant community. Canada and Europe contribute much less to these flows. The arrival of migrants from the Indian subcontinent is the very recent consequence of the introduction of H1-B visas (1990 Immigration Act) to respond to the need for qualified labor in the IT industry. This flow peaked at 100,000 admissions in 2000–01, just before September 11 precipitated a wave of return migration (BtoB = Back to Bangalore). Influx continues, however, and there were already 1.35 million citizens in the US in 2000 who were born in India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh. Besides legal immigration, there is also the issue of illegal immigration. Despite the large number of residence permits issued, many Latin Americans, as well as others, stay illegally in the United States. Estimated at three million people in 1980, this population, generally employed in the service industry and in agriculture, was estimated at 4 million people in 1986, a year when naturalization measures included 2.7 million illegal immigrants. These naturalizations took place in 1990 and 1991 (Immigration Reform and Control Act). Since then, it is estimated that the population of illegal immigrants once again exceeded the level of four million in 1993, to reach 8.5 million in 2000. Economic growth is one reason federal authorities tolerate this illegal practice which ensures the functioning of many agricultural, commercial and construction businesses. Meanwhile, refugees and asylum seekers are relatively few in number (421,000 in 2004) due to the distance of the US from zones of geopolitical instability (Africa, Middle East). Net migration is currently estimated by the UN at an average of 1.3 million people annually over the period 2000–05.


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Today, the United States is the temporary residence of at least 20% of the world’s expatriates. Following the 2000 census, and according to the latest population estimates, 12% of the US population was born abroad. This strategy of systematic immigration since 1965 serves multiple purposes, including economic, demographic and strategic ones. First, it serves the goal of supplying the labor market by maintaining low wages for unskilled workers (competitiveness and anti-trade union policies). Just as in the years 1880–1915, the African-American community was the first victim of the immigration of Latinos who became their competitors for unskilled jobs. It also serves to fuel scientific research, innovation, and American technological leadership (H1-B visas, PhD programs, etc.). The brain-drain from other countries, which began in 1945, is a constant in the geopolitical and geoeconomic strategy of US authorities. Immigration also boosts the fertility rate, which had fallen to the low rate of 1.8 children per woman between 1975 and 1985. The laws of naturalization for children born in the US protects the illegal immigrant who has had a child on American soil from expulsion. The TFR increased to 2.04 children per woman, making the US population the youngest of the developed nations and the country with the highest population growth. Women of Hispanic origin (15% of women aged 15 to 49 years) had 19% of the births in 2003. Immigration reduces the average age of the population and renews the working age population since immigrants are mostly young adults. The replacement ratio of the working age population (ratio of 15–24 year olds as compared with 55–64 year olds) was 159% in 2000, compared with an average of 140% for all developed countries. More indirectly, immigration extends the influence of the United States around the world. The Diversity Immigrant Visa program promotes a Green Card lottery (to obtain permanent residence) for nationals of countries that have sent less than 50,000 immigrants to the United States within the five preceding years. The Refugee Act of 1986 serves similar purposes. Since September 11, 2001, immigration to the United States seems to depend more heavily on the contribution of Latin America. The percentage of the US population born in Asia has begun to decline. After rising steadily until 2002, the number of foreign students has dropped since 2004.

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3.5. The country’s gateways North America is an island of the world. In the past, European migrants arrived in the United States by boat, and New York was the territory’s main gateway. San Francisco served as a back door to immigration for Asian immigrants in the second half of the 19th century. Since the 1960s, the era of cheap air travel has multiplied the number of gateways. When considering the nine official regional divisions of the United States, all nine regions have a net migration surplus, but the states that border the Pacific Ocean have become the main gateway to the US, especially California (see Figure 3.8 and Table 3.1).

1

9 2 4

3

8 6 5 7 U.S.A. Divisions Nb. States 1 : New England (6) 2 : Middle Atlantic (3) 3 : Great Lakes (5) 4 : North Central (7) 5 : South Atlantic (9) 6 : South Central (4) 7 : South West (4) 8 : Mountains (8) 9 : Pacific (3)

0

500 km

Source: US census bureau


Figure 3.8. Statistical divisions of the United States

While these states account for 19% of the total population, they also contribute 26% to the migration surplus. The “mid-Atlantic region” (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) is now a secondary gateway with 14% of the population and 17% of overall net migration. The states of the Southwest (including Texas) and the mountains of the West attract relatively more people than the national average. The central plains are the least attractive today. The central southern states are in second to last position, behind the central northern Great Plains. Generally, the Northeast is


59

less attractive today than the South and West. This is easily understood considering the origins of immigrants, mainly from Latin America and Asia. Immigration contributed to 42% of US population growth between 2000 and 2005. This contribution is much greater in the states of the Megalopolis region (“Atlantic Seaboard”), which stretches from Boston to Washington, including the numerous states of the Northeastern Atlantic Seaboard. The population of the midAtlantic region declined without the demographic contribution of international immigration. Immigration is also important for maintaining population growth around the Great Lakes. It contributes to the majority of the population growth along the Pacific coast.

Population 2000 census

Contribution Mean annual Estimated Net of immigration rate net population migration to regional international 2005 2000–2005 growth migration

1. New England

13,922,517

14,239,724

278,100

88%

0.39%

2. Middle Atlantic

39,671,861

40,402,171

1,059,671

145%

0.53%

3. Great Lakes

45,155,037

46,156,447

627,825

63%

0.28%

4. North Central

19,237,739

19,815,527

210,941

37%

0.22%

5. South Atlantic

51,769,160

56,179,519

1,200,038

27%

0.44%

6. South Central

17,022,810

17,615,260

113,997

19%

0.13%

7. South West

31,444,850

33,710,634

741,828

33%

0.46%

8. Mountains

18,172,295

20,291,305

443,289

21%

0.46%

9. Pacific

45,025,637

47,999,817

1,658,252

56%

0.71%

Total US

281,421,906 296,410,404 6,333,941

42%

0.44%

Region

Table 3.1. Recent immigration to the United States (Source: US Census Bureau)

In order to more accurately assess the contribution of migration to recent changes in the US population, another perspective must be used.

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Recent Immigrants (%) 0

-

0.69

0.69 1.27 1.96 2.92

-

1.27 1.96 2.92 6.94

0

500 km

Metropolitan Population 2005 22,000,000 11,000,000 2,200,000

Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing – Bandwidth: 96 km

National avg. share 2.1%

Immigrants Others

Source: US Census bureau


Figure 3.9. Proportion of immigrants in the population in 2005

New immigrants who arrived between the 2000 census and July 1, 2005, represent 2.1% of the population of the United States. In some places, this percentage may rise to 7% of the population (see Figure 3.9). This percentage is an indicator of a dynamic economy, but it is also influenced by spatial factors, as can be seen on the Mexican border in the Rio Grande Valley.

M ia m i

Yo rk Fr an ci sc o Sa n

w

el es Ne

n Lo

sA

ng

sto

s ou H

al la D

.A . Ph oe ni x

.S U

an s Bu ffa lo

rle O

w Ne

Pi

tts b

ur gh

8% 7% 6% 5% 4% 3% 2% 1% 0%

Figure 3.10. Share of recent immigration in the current population of several large cities


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California is the main gateway today – 3.9% of the state’s estimated population on July 1, 2005, immigrated in the past five years, a proportion which is nearly twice the national average. Nowadays, the San Francisco metropolitan area is the city that is most attractive to immigrants, before Los Angeles, which ranks only second. Immigration is an urban phenomenon. While 81% of new immigrants live in one of the 52 cities with one or more million inhabitants in the US, only 58% of the total population lives in big cities (see Figure 3.10). Considered separately, Miami is the city most affected by immigration today. In the Northeast, New York continues to be a magnet to immigration. Among the new big cities of the South, the Texas cities of Dallas and Houston gain the most economic benefits from immigration, followed by Phoenix, Arizona. At the other end of the scale, the least dynamic cities of the United States are Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New Orleans, Louisiana. At a regional level, the Appalachians, the Mississippi Valley, and the northern High Plains are practically exempt from any recent immigration. Immigrants represent only 0.2% of the population of the states of Montana and West Virginia. Immigration contributes increasingly to maintaining the demographic growth of cities. Between 2000 and 2005, half of the population growth of metropolitan areas with one million or more inhabitants was due to immigration. Among these megacities, only three lost any population over this period – Cleveland, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. They are among the least attractive cities to immigrants, which represent less than 1% of their populations in 2005. Three other big cities of apparently little interest to immigrants are the Great Lake cities of Rochester, Milwaukee and Detroit; all three lost population, having experienced no new immigrant arrivals. At the other end of the scale, the three cities most attractive to immigrants, Miami, San Francisco, and New York, would also have lost population if it were not for the contribution of immigration. The metropolitan areas of Boston and Los Angeles are in similar situations.


Chapter 4

A Multi-ethnic Nation

The diversity of the US population, as well as the social inequality, discrimination, and white domination of its past, help us to understand the importance of community issues in this country. For historical reasons, Americans have no problem using the term “race” to distinguish blacks from whites. The concept of race is a reference for identity which structures private and public life [GHO 03]. All censuses conducted since 1790 divided the US population into different races. At the time of the first US census, there were 3.1 million whites and 0.75 million blacks (19% of the population), who, for the most part, were slaves working on the cotton and tobacco plantations of the South. Slavery was abolished in 1860, triggering the Civil War. The slave states of the South finally surrendered in 1865, but even though black Americans officially became free men and citizens, secret societies such as the Ku Klux Klan made every effort to prevent blacks from exercising their civil rights. Openly racist policies (Jim Crow laws) maintained segregation in schools and public transport until 1954. Under the leadership of the charismatic Reverend Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement led the social, political and legal battles which ended in the late 1960s with a number of antidiscrimination laws, the implementation of which required that federal statistics reflect the ethnic diversity of the US population and be capable of monitoring educational disparities and inequalities in income, employment, housing conditions, etc. Since 1980, the “races” of the US census are no longer imposed categories, but the reflection of community identities. They form a rather diverse group, not to be confused with the population’s ethnic origins, a concept which is based on a person’s ancestry. The five main categories reflect America’s past. At a time when the election of Barack Obama as the 44th US President promises to turn the page of racial tensions in this country, we cannot forget that American history was shaped

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by centuries of white domination and racism and that African-Americans and Native Americans were the most frequent victims. Even though the integration of immigrants and the promotion of people of color continue to progress significantly today, segregation and discrimination remain a hot topic in the United States. 4.1. Native peoples

0

500 km


Figure 4.1. Indian reservations in the United States

The “native” American group of the population is made up of Inuit, Aleuts, Hawaiians and Native Americans whose ancestors preceded European settlement on American soil. Some of these “natives” continue to live on Indian reservations which are unevenly spread over the territory, and on which they benefit from certain legal autonomy and special rights, such as the right to run casinos. The policy of reservations was inaugurated in 1851. There was question at the time of making Oklahoma an “Indian Territory,” but the state was finally opened for settlement in 1889. Today’s reservations were established after the law of 1887 which followed the Indian wars. There are approximately 300 reservations which span 225,410 km² in all, or 2.3% of the country’s total surface area (see Figure 4.1).


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The location of reservations across the country is based on historical events. Eastern tribes were driven from their ancestors’ territories in the early nineteenth century. The Indian Wars between 1830 and 1890 left behind reservations which were mere shreds of infertile land in the western inlands. Placed under the supervision of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Native Americans lived in miserable conditions until the Second World War. President F.D. Roosevelt tried to put an end to this injustice by restoring the traditional authority of tribes (Indian Reorganization Act 1934), but he faced very strong political and administrative resistance. The official policy of assimilation continued until 1966. The 1960 census counted only 500,000 “Indians”. Today, there are over 2.5 million. This increase is not natural, but rather the result of the emergence of an “Indian pride” which leads a growing number of people to claim a Native American ancestry, sometimes even if the lineage is doubtful. Today, in the conterminous United States, only a quarter of Native Americans live on reservations.

0

Amerindians (%) 0.1

-

0.9

0.9

-

5.0

5.0

- 15.0

15

- 51.1

National avg. share 0.9%

500 km


Source: US Census bureau


Figure 4.2. Proportion of Native Americans in total population in 2000

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The “urban Indian” lives mainly in the big cities of the West. Los Angeles has the largest Indian community of the United States with nearly 100,000 people. The largest community in the East lives in New York (50,000). With over 100,000 Native Americans, Inuit, and Aleuts, Alaska is the only state where “natives” represent more than 10% of the total population. In descending order, the states with the largest community of Native Americans after Alaska are California, Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico. The proportion of Native Americans in the total population of New Mexico reaches 9%. Tensions between Indians and whites over land matters have not disappeared, particularly in Alaska where litigation primarily concerns mineral rights. Native Americans continue to suffer from white domination. They are the poorest inhabitants of the United States. The average per capita income of the Native American community was only 60% of the national average in 1999. Nearly 30% of the population lives below the poverty line. The Native American community is the only community that still lives for the most part outside of metropolitan areas in the United States (see Figure 4.2). This is why, although they do not represent 1% of the total population, Native Americans are relatively “visible” in the West and in the High Plains, and they even dominate some counties of the Southwestern desert inlands where the largest reservations are located (Hopi, Navajo, etc.). Although relatively large (112,500 people in the 2000 census), the Indigenous Hawaiian community, a group originally from Polynesia, accounts for only 9% of the population of Hawaii. It is now widely integrated into the population, to the point where two-thirds of the community is dispersed throughout the rest of the United States.

4.2. A nation of immigrants Over 99% of the population of the United States is of immigrant descent. The America of 1920 was very concerned about ethnic origins and the linguistic and religious diversity of recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. This led Congress to take restrictive measures against immigration. Different communities of European descent melted into the American “melting pot” however and all now belong to one “race” – white “non-Hispanic”. Their religious diversity persists, but their linguistic diversity has disappeared, and all speak English as their mother tongue with very few exceptions, such as the Louisiana “Cajuns”.


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Populations of European descent form the largest group, with almost 198 million people, or 67% of the total population. Within this group, the core of Protestant immigrants of British descent (the WASPs1) is only a small minority whose culture and politics have influenced other groups of more recent immigrants. Among the largest of these communities, there are still some groups who claim different origins with certain pride, for example, the Irish or Italians. Religion is another factor of differentiation among communities, as is the case, in particular, of Jews or some Protestant sects like the Mormons, some of whom voluntarily settled together in the state of Utah. Victims of a long history of racism, black Americans, or rather “African Americans” in politically correct terms, are the most visible and self-conscious minority. Present since 1619 in Virginia, blacks represented 17% of the population of the United States in 1840 at the end of the transatlantic slave trade. Despite significant population growth, their relative importance declined after the Civil War due to the waves of incoming European immigration, dropping to less than 10% of the total population in 1920. Higher fertility rates helped them jump back to 13.4% of the population with 39.2 million people in 2004, of which only 1.7 million are of mixed race. The “Asian” category made its appearance with the 1890 census to refer to all people from the Asian continent, against which the United States had just established an immigration ban. The Chinese were already the largest ethnic group among established Asian Americans.2 The presence of Asians remained very discreet until 1950. The Cold War changed the situation with the wars in Korea and Vietnam. The United States has since reopened their borders to immigration from Asia. Communities of Asian origin went from 300,000 people in 1950 to 1.5 million in 1970, 7.3 million in 1990, and nearly 14 million in 2004 (4.8% of the total population). Originally coming exclusively from countries bordering the Pacific, these communities have since widely diversified with immigrants from South Asia. According to the demographic survey3 conducted in 2004, among the 12% of residents born abroad, one in four comes from the Asian continent.

1. White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. 2. Fewer than 110,000 “Asians” were counted in 1890, representing 0.17% of the population

at the time. 3. American Community Survey.

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The “Hispanic” category does not appear before the census of 1940. It is not a “race”, but an indication of a person’s origin. It refers to immigrants from Spanishspeaking countries in Latin America, against which the quota laws of 1924 foresaw no restriction. The rise of Mexican immigration, however, led the government to take control starting in 1932. Although they were unprejudiced in appearance, the Johnson laws of 1965 in essence established a quota against Mexican immigration. This explains the tide of illegal immigration ever since. The Hispanic minority is an emerging community in the United States and one that is increasingly aware of its linguistic individuality and the economic discrimination from which it suffers. It is beginning to organize itself politically like the black community. In 2004, more than 18.3 million US residents were born in Latin America. This represents 53.7% of the group of first generation immigrants. Add to that second generation Hispanics and the descendants of older waves of immigration and a community of more than 41.3 million people (14.1% of the total population) in 2004 is formed. “Latinos” have thus become the first minority in the country since the 2000 census. 4.3. The African-American question The case of black Americans is unique. Their presence preceded the country’s independence, and with 1 million people, they represented one fifth of the population of the United States in 1800. Centuries of slavery explain that from the outset, censuses classified the population as a “race”. Even if it is a symbolic ethnicity, since black Americans originally came from very different parts of West and Central Africa, the hardship imposed on them forged unparalleled community awareness. For a long time, the “African-American question” remained a regional issue. Although the National Association for the Advancement of Color People was founded in 1909 in Springfield, Illinois, on the occasion of the centennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, 81% of the 9.8 million Afro-Americans still lived in the 11 “seceded” southern states according to the census of 1910 (see Figure 4.3).


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Figure 4.3. Percentage of African-Americans in the total population in 1910

The black population was mainly rural and linked to the plantation economy which had developed in the South starting in the 17th century with the use of slave labor. At that time, blacks accounted for more than 42% of the population of the five major Cotton Belt states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina), with the state of Mississippi leading with over 56%. In the West, the black population was very small (see Figure 4.4).

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40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

U.S.A.

South Manufacturing Belt & Middle West

West

Figure 4.4. African-Americans in the overall population, by region, in 1910

The Great Migration of blacks to the cities of the Manufacturing Belt started during the First World War. Heavy industry lacked unskilled labor as massive European immigration was diminishing. While school segregation had been made mandatory in 17 southern states and optional in 4 other states (Maryland, Indiana, Kansas, and New Mexico), northern cities reacted to this wave of immigrants by sending some of them to ghettos through the illegal practice of Red Lining (de facto segregation). The bigger the ghetto became, the more attractive it was to new immigrants. In the North, just like in the South, areas inhabited by blacks grew to become the poorest in the United States. The Carnegie Foundation asked the Swedish Economist Gunnar Myrdal [MYR 44] to prepare a report on the situation of blacks. Published in 1942 under the title “An American Dilemma”, this report was a milestone in the fight against racial inequality. The report stated that “the treatment of blacks is the largest and most obvious of all scandals”. By proposing the idea that “blacks in their struggle for equality have an ally in the consciousness of the white man”, the report marked an important step in the awareness of this scandalous situation. In 1948, President Truman declared the laws of segregation illegal. The fight for civil rights lasted 20 years, with highlights such as the Supreme Court decision in 1954 in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education which prohibited school segregation, the 1963 march on Washington (“I have a dream”), as well as tragedies, such as the Watts riots in 1965, the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, etc. The civil rights fight led to the implementation of a policy of positive discrimination (affirmative action), the purpose of which is to help to reduce poverty among blacks.


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Figure 4.5. African-Americans in the overall population in 1970

25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

U.S.A.

South

Manufacturing Belt & Middle West

West

Figure 4.6. African-Americans in the overall population, by region, in 1970

The 1970 census came at a crucial time for African Americans. With 22.6 million people, the African American community still represented 11% (22.6 million) of the total population of the United States, but the community was more evenly distributed across the country (see Figures 4.5 and 4.6). Only 45% of

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African-Americans lived in the South. There were more blacks in the North than in the South. Only the western inlands and Alaska were mostly without any black population. The great migration to Manufacturing Belt cities ended when the Taylorist industry crisis broke out. After leaving the poverty of the rural South, blacks found themselves in the dilapidated inner cities of northern industrial cities in crisis. The rise of the Sunbelt then attracted new white populations to the South. The arrival of “Yankees” and Latin-American immigrants explains how blacks made up only one-fifth of the population of the South. Meanwhile, their population in the Manufacturing Belt was closer to their average percentages on a national level. Having finally obtained legal recognition of their rights, African-Americans were more divided than ever between supporters of full integration and the more radical proponents of “black pride” separatism, at least in cultural terms and following the Nation of Islam movement, the most famous member of which was the radical leader Malcolm X, who was assassinated in 1965. Violence from 1965 to 1968 discredited the most radical movements at the political level, but the economic, cultural, and social gap between blacks and whites drastically aggravated residential segregation. This segregation can only be understood on a very small scale. The total population is divided into 225,000 basic “block groups”. A census block group is the smallest territorial unit for statistics defined by the federal Census Bureau for the distribution of results of the decennial census. Block groups (BGs) generally contain between 600 and 3,000 people, with an optimal size of 1,500 people. Some BGs are uninhabited. These entities are equivalent to the quartiers IRIS 2000 used for the distribution of census results in France. These territorial units enable an understanding of residential segregation. They use Duncan’s index of dissimilarity (1955), as popularized by Massey and Denton [MAS 88], for the analysis of segregation in American cities.

D

m

¦

n i 1

ti xim X 2TX 1 X

[4.1]

The index of dissimilarity (D) [4.1] can be interpreted as the proportion of the total group studied (m), whether ethnic, social or racial, which would need to change its unit of residency in order to obtain a perfect mix of population in all of the area’s statistical units.


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m

For a collection of statistical territorial units n, the dissimilarity index D is the sum of all these territorial components, in which ti represents the total population m residing in the territorial unit (I) and xi represents the local portion of the observed minority. The total population of the area in question is noted T, while X is the average proportion of the minority for the entire area. The dissimilarity index ranges from 0 (perfectly mixed residential population, in which nobody would need to move), to 1, in the case of total residential segregation, in which the minority must be redistributed to achieve desegregation. The index is now commonly used in research in the United States in order to understand residential segregation in urban areas [GLE 01]. In 1970, the value of this index was 0.825 for the African-American population for the entire United States, as observed at the small scale of block groups. This means that 82.5% of African-Americans needed to change their area of residence in order to achieve racial desegregation. In 1970, over one-third of black Americans (35.5%) lived below the poverty line, a rate two and a half times the national average at the time (12.6% of the population below the poverty threshold). The 2000 census provided for an understanding of the evolution of the conditions of blacks in the United States following the implementation of affirmative action policies. The number of poor people continued to progress at the same pace as that of the general population in the United States between 1970 and 2000. More than 12.4% of Americans were considered poor by official standards, according to the structure of households and their income in the year 1999. Growth of the African-American population was slightly faster than the national average, and 34,658 million people claimed a “black” identity at the turn of the millennium, 53% more than in 1970. In 2004 the black community represented 12.1% of the US population. The conditions in which blacks live have improved. Their poverty rates fell to 24.9%, which is more than 5 points of progress since 1970. This does represent a greater number of poor blacks than in 1970, however, and African-Americans continue to be the majority among the poor population, of which they represent onequarter (24%). Residential segregation is declining, but it is still very strong. The Massey and Denton D index calculated for blacks at the scale of the country’s 208,669 BGs is 0.687.

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Figure 4.7. African-Americans in the overall US population in 2000

At a macro-regional level, the decline of the labor-intensive industries of the Manufacturing Belt triggered the reverse migration of black Americans to the South. This “return South” is not fast enough, however, for the black population of the South to progress as fast as the total population of that region. Of AfricanAmericans, 48% lived in the South in 2000, making the population of blacks in the South once again larger than in the North (see Figure 4.8).


20% 18% 16% 14% 12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0%

U.S.A.

South

75

Manufacturing West Belt & Middle West

Figure 4.8. African-Americans in the overall population of major census regions in 2000

The black population of the North, however, is progressing faster than the overall regional population and African-Americans represent a proportion of the population of Northeastern states which is slightly higher than their national average. Meanwhile, the black population progresses slowly in the West, where only 9% of African-Americans and 22% of the total population reside. 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15%

sto n Cl ev el an d

k Yo r

ou H

w

Lo

ui s Ne

i

o St

Ch ic ag

ia m M

an s At la n W ta as h Ba ing lti to m nor e D et ro Ph it ila de lp hi a

rle O

w Ne

M

em

ph i

s

10% 5% 0%

Figure 4.9. Metropolitan areas with the largest African-American communities in 2000

It is essential to remember that 85% of black Americans lived in metropolitan areas in 1999 compared to 79% of the total population, and that the 52 cities with one million or more inhabitants accounted for 67% of the African-American community compared to 58% of the total population (see Figure 4.9). Now largely city dwellers, many African-Americans live in eastern cities, as well as in Los

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Angeles, where more than 1 million African-Americans live. It is in the former plantation regions of the old rural South that the proportion of black population remains the highest with African-Americans making up over half of the population of the Yazoo River basin along the Mississippi or in the “Black Belt” of Alabama, two regions which are symbolic of the old Cotton Belt. Among metropolitan areas, Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana, are the two cultural capitals of American blacks (see Figure 4.7). While the most pessimistic statements made in the Kerner Report of 1968 on the separation and hostilities between two societies – white and black – may now be considered outdated, animosities and inequalities among the two communities still persist today (see Chapters 8 and 9). The average per capita income of AfricanAmericans was still only 67% of the national average in 1999. The success of Democrat Barack Obama, the “post-racial” presidential candidate in 2008, who is of mixed race with an immigrant father from Kenya and a white mother originally from Kansas, reflects the progress of the promotion of people of color in American society and appears to realize the dream that Martin Luther King proclaimed 45 years ago. President Obama is rather atypical, however, of the African-American community, the territorial, demographic, and cultural isolation of which remains visible. Today, multiculturalism is preferred to assimilation and African-Americans are now encouraged to develop strong community identities. Comparing the US to Brazil, one may note the low share of population of multiple racial ancestry in the US (US 2% in 2005 vs. 43% in 2006 for Brazil).One relevant issue in US society on the first decade of the 3rd millennium, might be the inability of communities to “mix”. In our opinion, this fact would seem to be “cultural” in a society of Protestant tradition after nearly four centuries of cohabitation. The fact is that only 4% of black Americans acknowledge having ancestors of another “race”. The “black issue” is still a current one, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) continues to be very active. 4.4. America and Mexico There is a tendency today to draw a parallel between the Hispanic community and the black community because of the generally lower social status of Hispanics and the fact that they are another visible minority. This is, however, an oversimplification since the situation of Hispanics differs from that of AfricanAmericans. The label “Hispanic” is not a racial one, but it refers to the geographical origins of the population, as well as certain cultural features such as their native language. Hispanics are recent immigrants from a variety of very different countries. For a long time, there was no awareness of a Hispanic community, and the Cuban


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community, for instance, rejects to this day any association with the situation of immigrants of Mexican origin. Inspired by the movements of black activists, a panHispanic movement has attempted to emerge in recent years, but it is still weakly rooted. The emergence of a Hispanic community appears inevitable, however, because the use of the Spanish language by many communities which are concentrated in certain geographic regions is fed by a continuous influx of new immigrants. The opportunity for assimilation within the American culture is challenged by the sheer size of the minority. Current controversy includes the question of making English the country’s official language and its use mandatory. This was not the direction chosen by the Bush administration. Originally from Texas, a state heavily influenced by the presence of Hispanics, President Bush sought to promote the Hispanic community (while allegedly continuing to firmly combat illegal immigration). For the most part, immigration from Latin America dates back to the two World Wars when agricultural and manual labor industries were looking for alternatives to European immigrants who had ceased arriving in large numbers. The Census Bureau only began keeping records of Hispanics living in the USA in 1940. In the Southwest, some were there before the westward expansion (California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas). Most Hispanics have very different origins. Some are the fruit of America’s colonial heritage. The status of Puerto Ricans is unique since American citizenship was granted to them in 1917; there exists in the island a movement in favor of joining the United States, which would make Puerto Rico the 51st state of the federation, but no strong majority in favor of this option has manifested itself so far. Other countries formerly part of the Spanish Empire all provide a number of immigrants, the number of which is more or less significant. Cubans make up a large community, particularly in Florida, but naturally the Mexicans outnumber all the other Latin American countries of origin. Nearly 3,150 km long, the border between the United States and Mexico is very difficult to control. It marks a wide economic, demographic, and cultural divide, which is reflected in the increasingly large movement of people across the border as Mexico changes demographically and as the Mexican community continues to grow in the United States. US authorities have been concerned about illiterate Mexican immigration since 1924, which was the year when they created a border patrol force to combat illegal immigration. It was at this time that the meta-statistical category “person of Hispanic origin” was invented. The category is not a racial category, meaning that there can be white, black, and even Native American Hispanics, which complicates the analysis of US census statistics.

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The number of Hispanics counted in 1940 was 1.85 million, representing 1.4% of the total population of the United States. Their geographical distribution was already unique (see Figure 4.10).

Hispanics (%) 0 0.3 1.4 10.0 25.0

- 0.3 - 1.4 - 10.0 - 25.0 - 41.8

0

500 km

Source: US Census Bureau


Figure 4.10. Hispanics in the US population in 1940

The Hispanic population is concentrated along the Mexican border in the states of the Southwest which were seized from Mexico between 1835 and 1848. Texas has over 730,000 Hispanics, representing 11.5% of its population. The presence of Hispanics reaches its peak in New Mexico, state where they make up 41.8% of the total population. In the East, the only significant Hispanic communities found are the Cuban community in Miami, the Puerto Rican community in New York, and the Hispanic community in Chicago. The increase in immigration started after the Second World War.


0

79

500 km

Hispanics (%) 0.1 1.0 4.7 10.0 25.0

-

1.0 4.7 10.0 25.0 32.5

Metropoles Census 1970 12,000,000 6,000,000 1,200,000

Hispanics Others

Source: US Census Bureau Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 4.11. Hispanics in the US population in 1970

35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

New Mexico

Texas

Arizona

California

Colorado

New York

Florida

U.S.A.

Figure 4.12. States with the largest percentages of Hispanic population in 1970

The Hispanic population multiplied by five between 1940 and 1970, to eventually exceed a total of 9.5 million people (see Figure 4.11). Latin American immigration contributed to the growth of the Sunbelt. Approximately 30% of Hispanics live in the South, mostly in Texas and Florida, with a very discreet

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presence in other states of the region (see Figure 4.12). More than 39% live in the West where they account for 9% of the total population. California has become the epicenter of Mexican immigration, as well as the leading Hispanic state in the country. With just under 1 million Hispanics (nearly 14% of the metropolitan population), Los Angeles is the city most marked by the presence of Hispanics. Less than 31% of Hispanics live in the Northeastern United States where they represent only 2% of the population. The metropolitan area of New York still has the highest concentration of Hispanics in the country with over 1.2 million people. Bordering Mexico, the state of New Mexico still has the most visible population of Hispanics. Between 1970 and 2000, the Hispanic population continued to grow rapidly, due to both massive immigration and high fertility rates. According to Census Bureau estimates, nearly 18.3 million American residents were born in Latin America in 2004, which represents the majority of the American population that was born abroad, but barely half the Hispanic population of the US. With nearly 39 million people, the Hispanic population quadrupled in 30 years to represent 2004 approximately 13.7% of the US population and, therefore, to become the largest “minority” in the country.

Hispanics (%) 0

500 km

0 2.5 2.5 5.0 Metropolitan population 5.0 - 10.0 Method: Quartic 22,000,000 10.0 - 20.0 Kernel density 11,000,000 smoothing – 20.0 - 50.0 Bandwidth: 96 km 2,200,000 50.0 - 81.6 National avg. share 10% Source: US Census Bureau

Hispanics Others


Figure 4.13. Proportion of Hispanics in the US population in 2000


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The Hispanic population tends to spread widely in the US, but the Hispanic community presence is mostly perceptible in the same areas as in the past (see Figure 4.13). The West is still home to more than 39% of this population, which now represents 18% of the total population of the region. One-third of Hispanics live in the South, where they represent 11% of the regional population, and the Northeast is only home to 27% of the population, representing 6% of the region’s population. A smoothed map showing county-based data illustrates what happens in border regions. Hispanics are the majority in the population of border counties in Texas, but also in some counties of southern Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, and southern California. The Hispanic presence in a large southwestern part of the country where Hispanics form a very visible majority, but in the vast Northeastern area, there is a limited Hispanic population outside of New York and Chicago. At the state level, New Mexico remains the state where Hispanics represent the largest proportion of the total population; but the largest community – 8.1 million people – lives in California, and Texas is the second largest Hispanic state in the country (see Figure 4.14).

. .A .S U

Yo r

k

a

w

do

id Ne

or Fl

ra lo

Ne va da

na izo Ar

Te xa s

a ni or lif

Co

Ne w

Ca

M ex ic o

45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

Figure 4.14. States with the largest percentage of Hispanic population in 2000

Au sti n Ph oe ni x D al la s La sV eg as Ne w Yo rk O rla Sa nd n o Fr an ci sc o

go D ie n

Sa

H

ou

sto

n

es ng el

ni o

sA

An to

Lo

Sa

n

M

ia

m i

45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

Figure 4.15. Metropolitan areas with the highest percentages of Hispanic population in 2000

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At the level of metropolitan areas, Los Angeles is the leading Hispanic city of the United States, with 5 million people; but the Hispanic presence is proportionally greater in Miami. Many cities in the West exceed the national average (see Figure 4.15). Along with Native Americans and African-Americans, populations of Hispanic origin are particularly affected by poverty. Average income per capita within the population of Hispanic origin was only 55% of the national average in 1999, and over 22% of the population lives below the poverty threshold (national average 12%). Residential segregation is common, but it is still lower than for black Americans. The Massey and Denton dissimilarity index calculated for Hispanics for the 208,669 block groups in the country in the 2000 census was 0.547, compared with 0.687 for blacks. Despite this social dimension, there does not exist a Hispanic “issue” as there does a Native American or black “issue”. Controversy surrounding the “Hispanic minority” continues to increase, however, due to the question of language which reinforces the debate on the issue of integration in the country, as well as on the complicated topic of illegal immigration.

4.5. Geography of the population of Asian origin Just like Hispanics, the population of Asian origin is the result of recent immigration as they arrived, for the most part, after 1950. More than 10.1 million people residing in the United States claimed Asian origins in the 2000 census, representing 3.6% of the total population (see Figure 4.16). Of the five major panethnic categories that are meant to reflect the diversity of the US population in the census, the “Asian community” is the most heterogenous, ranging from descendants of the Chinese immigrants who went to California to try their luck during the 1848 Gold Rush, to Japanese immigrants who went to Hawaii before the establishment of the American protectorate in 1898, to Indian computer scientists from Bangalore recently arrived on an H1-B visa. Although the “Asian” category was introduced in the 1880 census, their numbers in the US population were long limited by laws prohibiting their entry into the United States in the late nineteenth century, with the exception of Filipinos.4 The US military engagement in the Pacific during the Cold War led to the lifting of restrictions. There were just under one million residents of Asian origin in 1960 (0.5% of the total population), 3.5 million in 1980 (1.5% of the total population), and over 10 million in 2000.

4. Due to the protectorate imposed by the US on the archipelago between 1899 and 1942.


0

Asian – American pop. (%) 0.2 1.0 1.9 3.6 10.0

- 1.0 - 1.9 - 3.6 - 10.0 - 17.7


500 km

Metropolitan population 22,000,000 11,000,000

Asian – Americans Others

2,200,000

National avg. share 3.6% Source: US Census Bureau Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 4.16. Asians in the US population in 2000

ie W go as Ba hing lti to m nor e Se at tle H ou sto n La sV eg as Ne w Yo rk Po rtl an M d in ne ap St oli Pa s ul

D n

ge An

ci Lo s

Fr an n Sa

Sa

sc

le

o

s

20% 18% 16% 14% 12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0%

Figure 4.17. Metropolitan areas with the highest percentages of Asians in 2000

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Almost all of these immigrants live in a metropolitan area (see Figure 4.17). In general, the largest communities live on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. With 0.5 million residents, nearly 42% of the population of the state of Hawaii is of Asian origin. There are 3.7 million Asians in California, representing nearly 11% of the population of the state. San Francisco, former gateway to the Pacific, is the city where their presence is most visible. The largest community, however, is in Los Angeles. In the East, New York is the city with the most Asians. Unlike Hispanic populations, communities of Asian immigrants blend easily into American society despite their more distinctive physical and cultural features. This reflects the relative prosperity of these populations. The average income per capita of the population of Asian origin was equal to 102% of the national average in 1999. The five “communities” presented in this chapter are only very broad categories, used to aid understanding the diversity of the population of the United States. Until the 1960s, US authorities were concerned about the assimilation of different communities with the dominant culture based on British heritage and Protestant tradition. The turbulence associated with the struggle for black civil rights shattered that consensus and fostered the development of a “multicultural” ideology which prevails today. Starting with the 1980 census, statistics had to adapt to the voluntary assertion of identity, a notable evolution from the imposed categorizations of the past. Naturally, the number of categories of origin continues to grow, and it was possible to claim up to a combination of six communities of origin in the 2000 census. The question today is how to define a Middle Eastern category. American cultural or ethnic statistics have become an inextricable labyrinth which reflects the paradoxical need for identity in an ultra-capitalistic and individualistic society. Obviously, this raises the question of the American identity today. While it is not yet the idea of the white majority to claim a “Euro-American” identity, some communities are rather endogamous. This is the case for the Amish in Pennsylvania, the Cajuns in Louisiana, and the Old Believers of Russian descent in Alaska. How would one distinguish symbolic identities such as those of Irish or Italian descent from the more or less sectarian communities? Regardless, the cultural diversity of the American people should not hide the seriousness of the American-Indian and African-American issues inherited from a long history of imperialism, racism, and slavery. The concentration of poverty in some communities is particularly important and the anti-discrimination policies remain relevant, even though they should probably now extend their scope to the Hispanics.

Chapter 5

Regional Dynamics

From the Atlantic to the Great Lakes, 16 Northeastern states and the District of Columbia form the “core” of the national territory. In 1930 the population of that core was half the population of the United States, though only 12% of its area. In the second half of the 19th century, this part of the country went through rapid industrialization and earned the nickname Manufacturing Belt. The 20th century was characterized by a gradual redeployment of the US population to other parts of the territory, making the country’s settlement more polycentric. This chapter describes the reconfiguration of the United States. A division into regions does not apply easily to the United States because of the country’s recent settlement and the high rate of mobility of its population. Some large groups of states, however, constitute clearly identified regions with a firmly established image. Several proposals for divisions have been suggested, each with its own justification, but none is really satisfactory, since no region has clear boundaries, and there are no visible changes as one travels from one region to another. Consider a division into five large regions based mostly on cultural criteria, solely for the purpose of simplifying the description of the dynamics of the settlement of the US. Two of these regions have an indisputable historical and cultural personality (see Figure 5.1). It is easy to identify the 11 states of the West, with its mountains, the history of its Westward expansion, and the Pacific coast, and which was the final destination of many internal migrants until the 1980s. The

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11 Secessionist states of the South (Dixie) also have a firmly established image, both from a historical and a cultural point of view.

Megalopolis Heartland West

So u t h

0

500 km


Figure 5.1. Organization of coterminous states into four regions. The fifth region, comprising the non-coterminous states of Alaska and Hawaii, is not displayed

Cutting through the Yankee heart of the states of the Northeast and North Central regions is more arbitrary, but the geographical criteria here are least questionable. The 11 states of the Northeastern Atlantic and the District of Columbia form what is called the Megalopolis. This region, identified by French geographer Jean Gottmann [GOT 61], forms the core of Yankee America – the founding region of the nation. The founding fathers who arrived on the Mayflower landed on the coast of New England in 1620, but the first English colony in Virginia dates back to 1584. The religious separatism of the Puritans, in conflict with the Crown of England, had greater influence on the cultural identity of the United States than the conformism of Virginians. This same region launched the 1775 uprising against British rule.

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Finally, in their victory over the seceded South in 1865, the Northeast imposed its final shape on the nation. This region forms a major interface between North America and the North Atlantic. As the gateway to Europe, it welcomed the large flow of people and goods that gave the country an irresistible momentum in the late 19th century. New York became its heart and symbol. New York is a “world-city” in Braudel’s1 sense called New York a “world-city”, with its global financial markets dominating the world economy, with it being the headquarters of the United Nations since 1945, and with it having been the symbolic target of America’s fierce enemies in 2001. The Megalopolis is the most densely populated and urbanized region in the country, and it is also the prototype for a new type of polycentric urban zone in which metropolitan areas come together in one coherent line of development. The 15 North Central states form the Heartland of the US, based on Mackinder’s [MKI 04] definition. It is both the breadbasket and the forge of America. The city of Chicago symbolizes the region. As opposed to the other three mainland regions, the Heartland shares no border with the ocean, but the Great Lakes and the St Lawrence Seaway, which opened in 1950, in the Northeast, along with other river channels coming from the South, the Mississippi and its tributary the Ohio River, provide navigable waterways towards ocean waters. This explains why this region does not suffer from the isolation characteristic of most other continental heartlands, but has benefited from excellent connections to the global economy from the very beginnings of its settlement. This region is today no longer in tune with the three ocean-bordering regions, however, and its growth has tended to lag behind ever since production ceased to dominate the US economy, which is now dominated by the service industry. Hawaii and Alaska make up the fifth region of peripheral states. Their relative weight in relation to the total population of the United States (less than 0.7% with 2 million inhabitants) explains why comparative tables do not dedicate a specific column to them. Settlement in the other four main regions has very distinct features (see Table 5.1).

1. Fernand Braudel (1902-1985), French historian, one of the leading figures of the French Annales history school. He is considered as one of the precursors of the World Systems Theory. His concept of “world-cities” was clearly exposed in lectures he made in 1976 at John Hopkins University, and that were later published [BRA 85].

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Region

Heartland Megalopolis

West

South

Total USA (including Hawaii and Alaska)

Area (km²)

2,289,290

450,775

3,042,141

1,881,736

9,161,924

Pop 1800*

350,553

3,049,541

—

1,908,389

5,308,483

Pop 1860*

10,629,088

11,468,613

618,976

8,726,644

31,443,321

Pop 1880

19,631,258

15,766,582

1,767,697

12,990,246

50,189,209

Pop 1900

30,229,369

22,698,192

4,091,349

18,975,665

76,212,168

Pop 1920

39,928,406

31,772,288

8,902,972

25,106,954

106,021,568

Pop 1950

51,644,471

42,941,250

19,561,525 36,550,115

151,325,798

Pop 1970

64,093,835

54,267,716

33,735,250 50,046,182

203,211,926

Pop 1990

68,292,990

56,863,765

51,127,810 70,767,036

248,709,873

Pop 2005 (estimated)

75,510,119

61,636,328

66,352,267 90,972,835

296,410,404

Table 5.1. US population trends for the main four regions (Source: US Census Bureau)

Today, the four main regions have similar population numbers. This has not always been the case. The Megalopolis was always denser than the other regions. In this region, the 10 inhabitants per km² mark was passed in the 1820 census. It was not until 1890 that the Heartland reached this level of density, and 1900 for the South. The West finally reached this density in 1970. Today, the average density in the Megalopolis is 137 inhabitants/km², and is 48 inhabitants/km² in the South. The density of the Heartland is only 33 inhabitants/km², while the West has an average density of 22 inhabitants/km². 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

1800 1860 1900 1930 Heartland

Megalopolis

West

South

Figure 5.2. United States population between 1800 and 1930, by region

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The Northeast (the Heartland and the Megalopolis) long dominated the country’s population charts (see Figure 5.2). The South was home to about one-third of the population of the United States in the early 19th century. Less attractive to new migration, the importance of the South had already decreased by 1860. Conversely, the Heartland experienced considerable growth and exceeded the South in population at the time when westward expansion was just beginning. Demographic and industrial imbalance was such that the “Confederate cause” became hopeless. At the turn of the century, the two regions of the Northeast were home to 70% of the US population. The population of the Heartland peaked at that time. Conversely, the importance of the South was reduced and the West, although still a sparsely populated region, had very strong growth. The percentage of the US population living in the South reached its historic low in 1930. 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

1930 1970 2005

Heartland

Megalopolis

West

South

Figure 5.3. United States population between 1930 and 2005, by region

This imbalance reversed afterwards (see Figure 5.3). The growth of the attractive regions of the Sunbelt contrasted with the decline of the industrial economy of what is sometimes called the Snowbelt or the Rustbelt. The relative importance of the two Northeastern regions continued to decline, although it should be noted that none of the major regions has ever experienced any decline in their population. It is the West that grew fastest between 1930 and 1970. Since 1970, growth has mostly benefited the South, while growth in the West appears to be stable, and that of the Northeast is significantly slower than the national average. 5.1. Main features of settlement in the US territory The following analysis focuses on the 48 conterminous states and the District of Columbia which are home to 99.3% of the population. It is necessary to use a very small scale to understand the main features of the settlement of the US territory. Change is observed based on three observation dates, each one generation apart: 1930, 1970 and 2005.

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5.1.1. The United States in 1930

Population 4,000,000 2,000,000 400,000

0

500 km



Figure 5.4. 1930 population by county

The decennial census of 1930 is our starting point for various reasons. The Great Depression, which put an end to the cycle of westward expansion and colonization of the Great Plains, began in 1930. The effects of the great wave of European immigration had dissipated and the early years of the decade were characterized by a pause in US growth. It was also a period marked by the transition from the paleotechnical era, where the railway (and its urban variant the tramway) and steamboats were the main methods of mechanical transport, to the neotechnical era during which the car would replace short-distance rail transportation and aviation would replace long-distance sea and rail transportation. New technologies had not yet been sufficiently tested and were not cheap enough to make any major changes to the territory. The geography of human settlement in the United States was dominated by the legacy of the Industrial Revolution and the development of the Manufacturing Belt (see Figure 5.4). As there little more than 122.4 million people, the population density of the conterminous states was still only 16 inhabitants per km². Almost 16% of Americans (20 million) lived in one of the country’s seven cities of one million or more inhabitants. Six of them were located in the Heartland

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or Megalopolis regions. With nearly 7 million inhabitants, the five boroughs of New York made up the leading city in the US. Chicago ranked second with just under 4 million. Only southern California’s city of Los Angeles began to compete with these leaders. No city in the South had yet reached this level of population. 5.1.2. America in 1970

Population 7,100,000

0

500 km

3,550,000 710,000



Figure 5.5. US population by county in 1970

The population of conterminous states increased by 64% between 1930 and 1970 to eventually exceed 200 million. This represented an average growth rate of 1.25% per year (see Figure 5.5). Various measures indicated a concentration of populations. The growth of metropolitan areas with one million or more inhabitants was the main indicator, but considering the population as a whole, a measure of concentration such as the Gini Index provided another index. The Gini Index increased from 0.37 in 1930 to 0.40 in 1970, reflecting an increasingly concentrated settlement. After the Second World War, the concept of metropolitan areas (Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)) was gradually developed in order to understand the reality of the changing characteristics of urban settlement. It was not until the census of

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1970 that the definition stabilized to include whole counties with two defining criteria: a population of 50,000 inhabitants and the presence of commuters (limited to 50%). Even with such a simple definition, the geography of metropolitan areas continues to change from one census to another. The 1970 census identified 232 metropolitan areas (including Honolulu in the Hawaiian Islands), covering 13% of the country, and representing 69% of the population. More than 81.5 million people lived in one of 34 metropolitan areas with over 1 million inhabitants. While 19 of these cities were concentrated in the Northeast, there were six in the South and nine in the West, including six in California. With more than 7 million people, Los Angeles had the second largest population in the country, just before Chicago. As Meinig [MEI 04] pointed out, widespread access to home air-conditioning, starting in 1950, completely transformed the conditions for settling in Southern cities. The coasts were attractive, with nearly 27% of the population living in a coastal county on the Atlantic or Pacific. The rise of the Sunbelt was not only due to the appeal of the sun and the beach; the militarization of US industry also played a key role. The US Navy was, naturally, based on the coast, and the successive wars of the Pacific, Korea, and Vietnam, strengthened the importance of naval bases on the Pacific coast. It was, in the main, the decision of the US Air Force (USAF) to be based in frost-free areas that explains the rise of the Sunbelt since the bases in that area preceded the arrival of the aeronautics industry. Having reached its maximum potential for domestic production, the US oil industry was another factor that explained the success of many cities in the production regions of the South and West (see Chapter 2). The attractiveness of the Sunbelt was also supported by population aging. New middle-class retirees in search of mild winters brought great profit to Florida, but it was in Phoenix, Arizona, that the first residential community reserved for seniors was created (Sun City, 1959). The population of small towns and predominantly rural areas (non-metropolitan areas), spanning 87% of the territory of conterminous states, had not increased by more than 10 million people in 40 years (+20%), with an average density of 9 people per km². The average population growth in the High Plains and mountains slowed down despite the development of some western cities such as Denver. About 74% of the population lived under the altitude of 250 meters.

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5.1.3. The United States in 2005

Estimated Population 10,000,000

0

500 km

5,000,000 1,000,000



Figure 5.6. 2005 population by county

Population growth is still strong today. The population of conterminous states increased by 47% between 1970 and 2005, approached 300 million, and averaged a growth rate of 1.1% per year (see Figure 5.6). Indicators show a contradictory trend in population densities. The progression of cities with over one million inhabitants continues, but if one considers the whole population, the Gini Index remains stable, from just over 0.40 in 1970 to slightly less in 2005, indicating that the growing population density within metropolitan areas is offset by the distribution of population towards the bottom of the hierarchy of metropolitan areas as well as by the urban sprawl which favors suburban counties located on the outskirts of cities. Consequently, the geography of MSAs was transformed between 1970 and 2005. The number of metropolitan areas increased from 232 to 276 (including Honolulu, Hawaii and Anchorage, Alaska), but many MSAs which existed in 1970 were absorbed into bigger MSAs as small satellite MSAs or following a “consolidation” in the case of a few major cities where work markets joined forces, such as with

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Baltimore and Washington, Dallas and Fort Worth, etc. As a result, many mediumsize cities exceeded limits and formed new metropolitan areas, often satellites of larger MSAs. In conclusion, and just in the territory of conterminous states, the total surface area covered by metropolitan areas went from 1 million km² in 1970 to 1.9 million km² in 2000, to represent 24% of the entire territory. Metropolitan areas are home to almost 81% of the US population. Using a constant definition for metropolitan areas, the population grew by 50% between 1970 and 2005. The population of predominantly rural areas (non-metropolitan areas) has increased significantly since 1970 (31%), although at a slower pace than in counties located within a metropolitan area. Population disparities are widening, however, with an average density of 9 people per km² for the counties outside metropolitan areas (definition used in 2000) compared to an average density of 126 inhabitants per km² for counties within a metropolitan area. Nearly 60% of the population, or over 175 million people, now live in one of 52 metropolitan areas with more than one million inhabitants. Today, only 22 of these cities are located in the North and East. There are now 19 in the South and 11 in the West. With over 17.6 million inhabitants, the consolidated metropolitan area of Los Angeles is no longer very far behind New York (21.6 million). The factors that started to influence settlement in the Sunbelt are still valid today, and they have even strengthened as a result of recent economic change. The United States has become the world’s pioneer in information technology and communication. This revolution first took place in the cities on the Pacific coast. San Francisco became its strongest symbol with the Silicon Valley. While cities in the South and West attract new technologies, the North and East suffer from the decline of old heavy industries based on steel and coal. The Rustbelt particularly affects the Heartland around the Great Lakes and Appalachian regions. The US economy is eliminating jobs in the goods-producing sectors (agriculture, industry) and creating new ones in the service industry. The greater benefit of this “dematerialization” of the economy is in the South and West. This explains why coastal populations continue to grow faster than average; nearly 29% of the population now lives in a coastal county along the Atlantic or Pacific. Population aging continues to affect the geography of settlement, particularly in Florida. The High Plains and mountains have an above average population growth, due to the development of big cities in the western inlands. The proportion of people living under the altitude of 250 meters fell to 73%.

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5.2. The dynamics of regional settlement between 1930 and 2005

1930 1930 1900 1950 1970

1990 2005

Change in density inh./km2 -6.4 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 80.0

0.0 - 10.0 - 20.0 - 30.0 - 80.0 - 248.7

0

SMSA (1970) 4,900,000 2,450,000 490,000

500 km

Pop. Mean Center Standard Deviation Ellipse 1930 74% U.S. population Standard Deviation Ellipse 1970 71% U.S. population

Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing in a flexible bandwidth of the 30 nearest counties Source: US Census Bureau Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 5.7. Population growth between 1930 and 1970

As the 19th century was marked by the migration of America’s center of gravity towards the west, the 20th century was marked by a shift in the population’s barycenter towards the Southwest (see Figure 5.7). Located 73 km south of Indianapolis in 1900, the country’s center of gravity moved 108 km westward between 1900 and 1930, then another 200 km west between 1930 and 1970, leaving Indiana in 1940 to enter Illinois. Its trajectory began to pivot southward. The central period of the 20th century also marked a certain decentralization of population, resulting in an enlargement of the standard ellipse of deviation of populations. This is an area bordered by the average distance at which a population lives from the barycenter in any given cardinal direction [ZAN 05]. This figure pinpoints the “center” of the US, taking shape around an east-west axis from Boston to Denver

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and a north-south axis from and Michigan to Atlanta. The standard ellipse of deviation spanned 3 million km² in 1930 and included 74% of the population. In 1970, the same ellipse spanned nearly 4 million km², but included only 71% of the total population. The US is therefore gradually becoming more polycentric, particularly through the growth of cities in California, but also of those in the Pacific Northwest, around the Gulf of Mexico, and Florida. Peripherally situated at the start of the century, the cities of Denver and Dallas were located in the “heart” of the US in 1970. While urban growth is widespread, some rural regions are losing population: the Appalachians, the Cotton Belt of the rural South, and the High Plains.

1900 1950 1930 1970 1990 2005

Change in density inh./km2 - 23,9 0 MSA-CMSA définition 2000 0 - 10 10 - 20 7 700 000 20 - 30 3 850 000 30 - 80 770 000 80 - 233,2 -770 000

0

500

Pop. Mean Center Standard Deviation Ellipse 1970 71 % U.S. population Standard Deviation Ellipse 2005 62 % U.S. population

Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing in a flexible bandwidth of the 30 nearest counties Source: US Census Bureau Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 5.8. Population growth 1970–2005

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Between 1970 and 2005, the barycenter of the population of the conterminous United States moved rapidly to the Southwest (see Figure 5.8). It moved 225 km, crossed the Mississippi and is now situated in the state of Missouri. Even more so than in the previous period, population growth has occurred mainly in peripheral metropolitan areas, in the Megalopolis, the Southeast Atlantic, Atlanta, the Carolinas, Florida, Texas, California and states bordering the desert, and the Pacific Northwest. In comparison, growth in central cities appears modest, and Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Cleveland are already declining. The depopulation of the Appalachians and the rural South is slowing, except in areas with particularly unfavorable economic specializations, such as the lower Mississippi Valley and West Virginia. The decline of the High Plains continues at a steady pace. The areas near Lake Erie, the core of the Rustbelt, have begun to decline. The decentralization of populations is ongoing, and the territory is becoming increasingly polycentric. In 2005, the standard ellipse of deviation spanned 4.7 million km², and included 62% of the total population. Its move to the South and the West has made Boston a peripheral city, closer to Ireland than to California, while the route of the ellipse gets closer to Salt Lake City in the West.


Chapter 6

Economic Change and Territories

We saw in Chapter 2 that agriculture does not influence the geography of settlements in the US. Over 80% of the US population lives in a metropolitan area, and agriculture accounts for about 2% of jobs. We also saw that demographic maps changed rapidly (Chapter 5). These changes are explained in two ways: first, the rapidly growing active population (Chapter 3) is strongly predisposed to geographic mobility, and, second, job opportunities are distributed unevenly in the US. These are the two points that are discussed in this chapter. Understood in terms of employment, economic changes have obviously played a decisive role in territorial dynamics over the long term. This chapter is devoted primarily to economic growth occurring between 1970 and 2000, and measured in terms of employment. The analysis pays particular attention to industrial change and internal migrations, focusing on recent movements measured between 1995 and 2005. 6.1. A changing economy The US economy has shown a remarkable capacity to create jobs. According to estimates of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were just under 135 million jobs in the United States in July 2000. Estimates made in July 2007, just before the current economic crisis, mention 146 million jobs. Despite the disparity of sources, the census estimates the annual rate of job creation between 1970 and 2000 at 1.8%, while BLS statistics report that employment grew at an annual rate of 1.2% between 2000 and 2007. Job growth, however, is not random and some regions and cities are

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growing faster than others. Geographic disparities are partly explained by the overall context in which the US economy has evolved. Since the end of the Second World War, the US economy has dominated the global economy with its enormous appetite for consumer goods which has oriented world production resources to its economic advantage. In the United States and in Europe, it is said that the economy is “dematerializing”, meaning that the activities of agricultural production and manufacturing tend to employ less manpower, either because companies replace labor with capital (mechanization, automation, innovation, etc.), or because they relocate production to low-wage countries like Mexico or the Asian countries. Following the Second World War, American capitalism took advantage of its dominant position to exploit disparities in the international allocation of production factors across a US sphere of influence, which was by then extended to AsianPacific Seaboard and the Pacific Rim and Europe. Benefiting from the gradual establishment of international rules of free trade that worked to their advantage, US companies had access to a system of low-cost maritime transport, as well as an international communications network to coordinate their activities across the world. Some multinational firms even transformed themselves into transnational corporations at the end of the Cold War, greatly expanding their scope of activities, in particular with the economic opening of China, and at the same time, reducing resistance to their multifaceted global presence just as the introduction of digital communication networks was enabling instant worldwide real time communications at a cost approaching zero. Foreign direct investment by American firms thus produced an increase in the import of manufactured goods, particularly cheap consumer goods, from Asia. Large transnational companies of American origin were significantly enriched in the process of globalization of the American economy. As consumers, Americans were able to increase their consumption while benefiting from a drop in real prices (expressed in number of working hours, for example) for a range of products. The US economy improved as households spent an increasing share of their budgets on leisure products and services. The globalization of the economy fueled the influx of savings from pension funds and Asian markets, and confirmed the impression that US household wealth lay in security holdings. The US economy was thus “financialized”. But globalization is not all positive. Inflated market liquidity made markets more volatile. Speculative bubbles and soaring real estate prices constituted two obstacles to the new financial economy, especially as US household debt remained at a very high level, and worsened over time as a result of unbridled bank competition. The


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stock market crash of October 1987 (Wall Street) and the collapse of NASDAQ1 in April 2000, which corresponded with the burst of the speculative bubble surrounding the Internet and the “New Economy”, amply demonstrated the illusory nature of wealth based exclusively on securities and the vulnerability of a system of computerized markets interconnected in real time. As a result of several years of excessive speculation on credit, successive stock market crises, each more serious than the preceding one (August 2007, January 2008, September 2008, etc.), have occurred since the decline of the housing prices which began in 2006. The “subprime crisis” that undermines today’s financial markets has, at least temporarily, put an end to American prosperity, given the large number of households struggling with insolvency and heavy mortgage debts and the large number of bad loans negotiated in financial markets. The current crisis is first and foremost a debt crisis, but it is also a crisis of urban sprawl (housing creep) and it probably brings to term the “neoliberal” economic and political cycle begun under the administration of President Reagan in 1981. Even so, the territory that we see today is largely the result of decisions that were taken during the last quarter of the 20th century. The prosperity of the years 1981–2005 was fostered by a series of contradictions. The price of food and basic goods and services were long maintained at exceptionally low levels. This stimulated consumption, while placing manual workers (farmers, laborers, service employees) in the United States and elsewhere at a disadvantage. While growth rates continued gyrating, a growing number of Americans found themselves below the poverty threshold. In fact, growth benefited only a minority, while the real hourly wage of less skilled workers decreased [KRU 00]. In Chapter 2 we saw how this policy bled rural America, forcing farmers to sell their produce at ever lower prices. While massive importing lowered the price of manufactured goods, it also forced the closure of many factories, or at least very significant restructuring and downsizing. Many areas whose economies were heavily exposed to competition from low-wage countries fell victim to economic restructuring and were forced to adapt or accept economic decline. The textile industry was the first to go. It was followed by the metallurgical and automobile industries. Today the computer industry is at risk. The rise of Asian economies is such that no industry should consider itself immune from competition and products coming from these countries. Moreover, huge Asian consumer demands are fueling structural price rises for agricultural products and raw materials that promise a new era for the global and American economies. We are witnessing today the decline of American hegemony over the world economy, a decline reflected in the fall of the

1. The National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations is an American virtual market for stock of the “new economy” which is based on IT, Internet, telecommunications, software, etc. It is based in Trumbull, Connecticut, near New York.

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US dollar which is gradually losing its stature as a global reserve currency, a status acquired after the Second World War. 6.2. Economic growth Over the long term, economic growth, measured in terms of job creation, covered virtually the entire US territory, but with volumes and intensities that differed among cities and regions (see Figure 6.1).

Relative Emplyment Growth % employment 1970 -9 35 70 105 140 210

-

35 70 105 140 210 432

0

Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing in a flexible bandwidth of the 30 nearest counties

500 km

Absolute Employment (MSA) Growth

National avg. change +70%

3,100,000 1,550,000 310,000

Source: US Census Bureau Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 6.1. Employment growth between 1970 and 2000

140% 120% 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0%

West

South

Heartland

Megalopolis

Figure 6.2. Secondary and tertiary employment creation between 1970 and 2000, by region


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The US population grew by 40% between 1970 and 2000. Over the same period, employment increased by 70%, excluding agriculture and mining, for a net increase of over 53 million jobs. Economic growth was particularly strong in the West and South, and slower in the North and East (see Figure 6.2). This does not mean, however, that employment deteriorated in the Northeast – only that population growth was lower so that population pressures on the labor market were less than in the West and South. At the state level, the correlation between the growth of nonagricultural economic activity and population growth was almost linear over the period 1970 to 2000. Statistically, 96% of the variance in population growth between the states was explained by differences in the rate of job creation. In absolute terms, the three states producing the lion’s share in terms of job growth are California, Texas and Florida. Nearly a third of US job growth (17 million, or 32% of new jobs) was in these three states. The share of total employment of these states went from 18% in 1970 to 24% in 2000. Population growth was proportionally even faster. Of American population growth between 1970 and 2000, 42% occurred in these three states, which that their demographic weight among the United States’ federation increased from 19% to 25%. We must then consider these states’ relative economic importance, especially that of California where the volume of employment nearly doubled in 30 years. As for Texas, a more detailed map shows a significant contrast between the strong growth of the metropolitan areas of the east and the relative stagnation in the west of the state. In relative terms, employment has more than doubled in 13 of 50 states. Employment nearly quintupled in Nevada and almost quadrupled in Arizona. The volume of employment tripled in Alaska. But the most impressive score remains that of Florida, both in absolute and relative terms. Florida created 4.6 million non-farm jobs, representing a tripling of jobs over 30 years. According to Nevada and Arizona state records, other states of the intermountain West – Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho – also experienced strong relative growth. Growth was also very strong, both in absolute and relative terms, for both states in the Pacific Northwest – Washington and Oregon – where employment figures rose at an average rate equal to that of the West. In the South, Texas and Georgia more than doubled the number of jobs between 1970 and 2000. Job growth in the mid-Atlantic states was slow. New York increased the number of jobs by 18% between 1970 and 2000, while the state of Pennsylvania added 25% new jobs over the same period. While these percentages appear modest, we should not neglect to consider that job volumes were nonetheless very significant. The number of jobs created over 30 years in New York and Pennsylvania were, respectively, 1.26 million and 1.12 million.

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The analysis would be incomplete without consideration of the metropolitan areas which are the real drivers of territorial growth. According to definitions in 1999, the 274 metropolitan areas (without Honolulu and Anchorage) occupy approximately 25% of the surface area of the 48 conterminous states. These metropolitan regions captured 83% of the total growth of non-agricultural employment and increased from 81% of total employment in 1970 to 82% in 2000. This performance can be viewed as relative, however, when one considers that these same territories accounted for 79% of the population in 1970 and 81% in 2000. So there are strong growth disparities between the South and West on the one hand, and the North and East on the other. Overall employment growth does not shed light on the chicken and egg argument when determining whether it is the higher demographic growth of Southern and Western metropolitan areas that drives job creation or whether it is economic growth that attracts population and drives demographic growth. In fact, the economic and demographic growth processes are cumulative and reciprocal. The United States is a consumer society in which 80% of employment is in the services sector, meaning that most jobs produce goods for local consumption, unless, that is, they are involved in activities related to social regulation (such as civil servants) or to social reproduction (for example, education). This implies that employment and population increase proportionally to one another. The wealthier a society, the greater the production of public goods (public administration, education, health, construction, culture). These non-quantifiable outputs are essentially relational and therefore virtually irreducible to commoditized treatments. It is therefore natural that the share of capital directly allocated to production processes should decline as capital is substituted for labor in the production process. Manufacturing is generally regarded as a core activity for a city. In contrast to many other activities, manufacturers do not rely on local consumption as their primary revenue source. Indeed, industrial activity brings along other activities. A number of industrial jobs simply meet local demand and a large number of service jobs exist to serve temporary residents, tourists, or students. Another part of service work is concerned directly with manufacturing. Investment in manufacturing services increases the value of industrial output, and insofar as the increase of outputs affects wages, multiplier effects increase with time. Industrial influence is also multiplied by the outsourcing of services to industrial companies. There is not, therefore, an exact relationship between industrial employment and the economic base of a city, but it is the best proxy indicator.


105

6.3. Industrial change Unlike most other economic sectors, manufacturing did not create jobs between 1970 and 2000. In fact, the sector declined by 3% between 1970 and 2000, from 19.7 million jobs to 19.1 million jobs. At the same time, industrial employment was geographically redistributed across the territory. This is probably the most significant factor in explaining long-term population and settlement dynamics in the United States during the last third of the 20th century.

Relative change % Employment 1970 300 or more 100 - 300 0 - 100 0 -3 -30 -3 up to -30

0

Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing in a flexible bandwidth of the 30 nearest counties

National avg. change -3%

500 km

Absolute change 1970 - 2000 110,000 -110,000 -550,000


-1,100,000


Figure 6.3. Industrial employment 1970–2000

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Sustainable Development in the USA 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% -10% -20% -30% -40% -50%

Heartland West

Megalopolis

South

Figure 6.4. Relative changes in manufacturing employment between 1970 and 2000 by census region

The first observation is that employment in manufacturing has decentralized. While metropolitan areas (definitions from 1999) account for 82% of jobs, only 78% of industrial jobs are located within a metropolitan area, down from 83% in 1970. Industrial employment in metropolitan areas fell by 9% (1.4 million jobs), but grew in non-metropolitan areas by 24% (0.8 million jobs) (see Figure 6.3). The second observation is that industrial employment is declining in the Manufacturing Belt states of the North and East. This is especially evident in the deindustrialization of the Megalopolis region (see Figure 6.4). The 12 states of the North Atlantic region lost 2.4 million manufacturing jobs between 1970 and 2000. The balance in the Heartland region seems more stable with a loss of only 300,000 jobs, but what is really happening is that industrial activity is shifting westward. The Great Lakes states recorded severe job losses, including –29% for Illinois and –22% for Ohio, while manufacturing employment rose in other, more traditionally agricultural Midwestern states. Finally, it is the state of New York that reported the highest losses both in absolute and relative terms. Its industrial activity in 2000 employed only half as many (–49%) workers as it did in 1970. Apart from local exceptions, industrial employment grew in the states of the South and West. Industrial employment grew by 1 million jobs in western states between 1970 and 2000. The increase in southern states was equivalent to 1 million jobs created in 30 years. These observations generally support the theory of industrial cycles. Early industrialization of the Northeast led to major restructuring beginning in 1973, whereas the industrialization of the cities of the South and the West began following the Second World War, and the post-Second World War industrialization specialized in the new technologies only now coming to maturity, such as the electronic and computer industries.


Seattle Portland Boston Minneapolis-St. Paul New York Philadelphia CMSA WashingtonBaltimore

Chicago Sacramento

Denver

San Francisco Raleigh-Durham Los Angeles Phoenix Atlanta San Diego Dallas-Fort Worth Austin

Houston

250,000 0

125,000 25,000

500 km

No or little industry Source: US Census Bureau Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 6.5. Employment in computer and information technology industries, 2000

Seattle

Portland

Boston Minneapolis-St. Paul Detroit CMSA Milwaukee New York Cleveland Philadelphia Pittsburgh CMSA Chicago WashingtonCincinnati CMSA Baltimore St. Louis

Denver San Francisco

Raleigh-Durham Los Angeles Phoenix

Atlanta

San Diego

Dallas-Fort Worth

Houston

Manufacturing Employment 130,000 65,000 13,000

0

500 km

No or little industry Source: US Census Bureau Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 6.6. Employment in the iron and steel industry, 2000

107

108


The manufacture of computer equipment and electronic components is not absent from the Manufacturing Belt (see Figure 6.5). The Boston metropolitan area has a prominent place in the American electronics industry, but it only comes in second place after cities on the West coast, of which San Francisco (including Silicon Valley) is by far the leader. The employment distribution map for metallurgical industries shows the opposite trend with an activity that remains largely concentrated in the Manufacturing Belt (see Figure 6.6). Thus, while the share of manufacturing employment fell from 22% to 15% between 1970 and 2000, industrial reorganization played a significant role in the general movement of internal migration in the United States.

6.4. A population on the move The residential mobility of the American population is one of the remarkable characteristics of this country, even right from its origins. We have seen how these migrations constantly redraw the country’s demographic map. Americans often live in unremarkable, undifferentiated, urban environments. In a living space which is culturally and linguistically homogenous, and characterized by a sense of universality and easy mobility, changing one’s metropolitan context and state of residence is relatively easy. Such mobility is a structural advantage in that the workforce adapts to economic opportunities, thus optimizing labor market adjustments. In this way, the United States differs profoundly from the “Old World”. The pattern of internal migration changes with the economic cycle. To simplify, one might speak of the period from the end of the First World War in 1918 to 1970 as “Fordist”, and the period since 1970 as contemporary. From its inception to the outbreak of the First World War, the US economy was driven by a pioneering cycle: development of new land and natural resources lured migrants to the West while the industrial cities of the Manufacturing Belt continued their development thanks to European immigration. Westward expansion was the logical outcome of internal migration during this period and California is the product of this trend. At the same time, the South, with its plantation economy and uneasy race relations between blacks and whites, remained outside of this great movement, even if Texas and a part of the Southwest also drew settlers. The First World War caused unprecedented acceleration of industrial growth, while the social institution of


109

family farming entered a period of crisis beginning in the 1920s. The economy of the years 1918–70 was dominated by large industrial groups pursuing economies of scale and manufacturing while making extensive use of abundant labor. In a context of restricted immigration and workforce redistribution, economic opportunity became increasingly dependent upon internal migration. The period was dominated by a trend toward population concentrations at the expense of the countryside and the towns. Cities located within the Manufacturing Belt became attractive in the years 1915–30, after which reverse migration developed as a result of industrial reorganization. The great western movement continued, however, and California finally emerged as the leading state in terms of population. The big cities of the South and West grew from 1940, due largely to the emergence of militaryindustrial complexes. The great migration of rural Southern blacks to Northern manufacturing cities was the other important movement of that period. Following the 1973 oil crisis, the US economy entered a new business cycle which might be described as post-industrial in that manufacturing employment declined to the advantage of the service sector, except for businesses which used computer and information technologies. During this period the US economy participated extensively in trade globalization and a growing share of manufactured goods consumed in the United States was produced elsewhere, especially in Asia, with direct consequences on the viability of Manufacturing Belt cities. The cities of the Manufacturing Belt thus became cities of the “Rustbelt”, especially in those areas that specialized in coal extraction and steel manufacturing. This crisis bypassed the cities of the South and West whose “new” industries, in aerospace and computer technologies for instance, were largely propelled by military spending and considerable technological advances over European and especially Asian competition, which ensured their continued viability and growth. The rise of the “new economy”, based largely on computer and information technologies, is without doubt the most significant economic factor of recent decades. The locations of these core technology production centers were largely influenced by locations chosen by the United States Air Force during the Second World War, which were choices determined by a general aversion to cold weather. From Seattle to Virginia, a peripheral growth ring emerged in the South and West, which was rapidly baptized the Sun Belt in 1969 by geopolitical analyst Kevin B. Phillips. This was met with considerable success. The metaphor of a continental “sunbelt” was effective, but it hid the diverse economic circumstances of the metropolitan areas concerned.

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Net migration between the Northeast and the South was reversed. The reverse migration of blacks was most remarkable. The fact is that migration flows always follow employment opportunities. Such opportunities are generally located in metropolitan areas where a service economy has emerged, driven by a technology, tourism, or financial “growth pole”. Cities compete with each other to attract investment and, inevitably, some are more successful than others. In geography, the idea of “amenities” wins growing success in this context of post-industrial development. Indeed, tourism development provides a comparative advantage to coastal areas blessed with sun, as in Florida, where nearly 1,000 new residents arrive every day. But tourist amenities may also be found in places like Colorado, where winter and mountain sports thrive (for example, in Aspen). Rural areas least affected by intensive agriculture also offer amenities and renew the traditional pioneering themes of the Far West. Such amenities are also found in northern New England. The question of amenities is particularly relevant to understanding the specific mobility of retirees. The migration of wealthy retirees to Florida began with rail access to coastal southeast Florida in the 1890s. However, it was not until the general prosperity of the 1950s that this type of migration became easily accessible. Older people who move generally do not do so because of economic growth, but in search of a better quality of life. Such migrations first benefit those regions which enjoy milder winters and permanent migrations are supplemented by seasonal migrations made by Snowbirds as they migrate to what might be called the “Frost-free Belt” instead of the “Sunbelt” (see Chapter 1). Considering the prospective aging of the population by 2030, the flows of senior migrations should be studied with particular attention. What are the dynamics of recent migration? In the 1980s, the Census Bureau developed a new methodology for understanding internal mobility. Long-form census questionnaires completed for each decennial census enabled the evaluation of migration patterns over the preceding five years. Using these questionnaires, statisticians were able to a create reliable migration tables by origin and destination broken by countries. The latest available migration table is therefore for the period 1995–2000. Light sampling midway between two decennial censuses is reinforced by questions relating to residence prior to the last census. The resulting estimates of net migration for 2000–05, although less reliable due to smaller sample sizes, can nonetheless be evaluated at the county level through data smoothing, which in turn can be aggregated for metropolitan and state units.

New

37,632

43,682

South West

Mountains

Middle

1,247,180

166,838

70,172

80,896

41,280

477,353

47,646

170,618

192,377

Atlantic

Great

1,809,824

269,596

156,746

190,756

186,876

441,350

273,619

223,118

67,763

Lakes

North

1,177,807

213,084

176,671

201,191

54,602

143,339

304,434

60,995

23,491

Central

South

3,998,646

476,278

209,234

398,906

397,415

193,754

718,773

1,268,291

335,995

Atlantic

South

1,216,613

107,594

55,842

193,967

410,382

66,062

281,464

78,643

22,659

Central

1,737,468

365,071

242,894

165,728

343,876

215,120

237,448

123,354

43,977

2,192,156 1,901,572

914,984

512,695

257,019 245,617

54,011 66,076

230,187 333,316

224,215 148,756

287,230 259,957

160,973 223,732

63,537 111,423

West Mountains Pacific

South

16,060,203

2,613,744

1,467,936

1,605,984

983,419

2,563,525

1,196,417

2,332,403

2,435,553

861,222

departures

Total

Table 6.1. Internal migration among United States census regions, 1995–2000 (Source: US Census Bureau)

778,937

17,431

South Central

Total arrivals

183,722

South Atlantic

100,299

27,245

North Central

Pacific

72,479

296,447

England

Great Lakes

Middle Atlantic

New England

1995 - 2000

O\D Matrix

Economic Change and Territories 111

112


The 2000 census showed that almost 113 million people aged 5 years or older, approximately 43% of this age group, changed their county of residence between 1995 and 2000. Of these, nearly 22 million, or 8.4% of this age group, changed their state of residence over the previous five years. Spatial differentiations are marked, and these population flows require further study to understand the principal characteristics of the current population redistribution across the US If we accept the nine statistical divisions of the US (see Chapter 3), we find that 16 million people changed regions between 1995 and 2000 (see Table 6.1). Four regions experienced a net migration surplus: the three census regions of the South, mainly the states of the South Atlantic, and the Intermountain West. Net migration for the Pacific region was negative, mainly because 2.2 million people left California when only 1.45 million settled there. The reversal of California migration flows in the 1990s is perhaps an accident, but also perhaps a reversal of past trends. Other than the Pacific coast, net migration was also negative for the four census divisions of the Northeast, mainly that of the Middle Atlantic. This is a continuation of trends observed since the 1930s. Four channels of preferred migration are to be noted, which is to say, four migratory channels appear to dominate internal population movements. One fairly obvious migration pattern concerns the states of the Atlantic coastal zone, and accounting for movements between the New England, Middle Atlantic, and South Atlantic census regions. The South Atlantic census region extends from northern Virginia and the Washington-Baltimore CMSA (Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area) to Florida, through Virginia, the Carolinas, and Atlanta. In this population exchange, the South Atlantic gained population from both northern regions, while New England gained population from the Middle Atlantic. The Great Lakes Region is a net exporter of population to the three census divisions of the South, and the Great Plains census division. It is the South Atlantic census division that benefits most. There is a southern migratory zone, made up of significant flows among the three southern census divisions. They are essentially balanced even if the South Atlantic is the net beneficiary. Finally, there is a great western zone extending to the North Central and Southwest census divisions, and which largely benefits the Intermountain West. It is best to use traditional analytical tools when considering migration flows at the state level, especially when the migration flows are too numerous to be of use in a comprehensive way. Following the methodology of the French Statistical Institute


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[BAC 01], we retain two key indicators: migration intensity and its relative attractiveness. Many people move and change their state of residence each year. A large proportion of those who settle in one state simply replace others who have left, so that a significant portion of residential migrations has no apparent demographic effect. From the standpoint of territorial administration, however, it would be important to fully comprehend the demographic changes brought about through outof-state relocation. From a territorial perspective, residential migration observes populations who settle in a given territory and those who leave the territory. The analysis of this migration begins by calculating an arrival rate and a departure rate. The intensity of migration is the sum of the arrival and departure rates, which is to say, the calculation of the total migration. This, then, becomes an indicator of population renewal for each state with respect to migration exchanges with other states. Low migration intensity would indicate structural stability and a more sedentary population. High migratory intensity would indicate structural transformations and high population turnover. Migratory attractiveness is the difference between the arrival rate and the departure rate. As such, it expresses net migration flows, i.e., the population changes that result from inter-state migration. A positive migratory flow indicates a region that is more attractive to migrants, while a negative migratory flow indicates a region that is less attractive to migrants. It is interesting to consider not only net rates, but the gross flows which allow an assessment of population redistribution among the states. The relative intensity of domestic migration flows is high for states with small populations, either because they have limited surface area thus increasing the effects of short-distance migrations which in fact correspond with suburban sprawl (District of Columbia), or because they have small populations (Utah, Montana, Alaska, Hawaii). Relative intensity is low for states with large populations, such as California and Texas. Beyond these geographical effects, domestic migration has had significant population effects along the Atlantic coast – especially in the South – and in the West, excluding California. Internal migrations have had a relatively low impact elsewhere in southern states and in the Great Lakes region (see Figure 6.7).

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Hawaii 0

500 km 0

500 km

Alaska Migration intensity % of pop. 2000

0

500 1 000 km

2.2 2.9 3.7 4.0 4.5 6.9

Migratory balance 1995 - 2000

- 2.9 - 3.7 - 4.0 - 4.5 - 6.9 - 10.7

880,000 440,000 88,000 -88,000 -440,000 -880,000

Source: US census Bureau Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 6.7. Internal migrations 1995–2000

For the most part, migration flows are balanced. Generally, only 10% of migration between states is “effective” in the sense that it reflects the relationship between net migration and the index of migratory effects. In absolute values, net inter-state migration redistributes population mainly from states in the Manufacturing Belt, from California (–0.5% per year), and from the state of Louisiana. The state of New York is particularly deficient (–1% per year), while net outflows from the states of the Great Plains, and from Alaska and Hawaii are relatively insignificant. With the exception of Vermont and New Hampshire, the states with a net migration surplus are all in the South and the West. The largest surpluses are


115

observed in the South Atlantic, where Florida leads with an annual migration surplus of 0.8% per year, followed by Georgia and the Carolinas. Most southern states are attractive to migrants. Outside of the Atlantic coast, Tennessee and Texas lead the ranks. In the West, the most attractive states to migrants are located inland from the Pacific coast: Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada. It is in the last state that internal migrations have had the largest effect, with a net migration surplus of 2.6% per year. The two states of the Pacific Northwest are also quite attractive to migrants. According to 2005 population estimates, recent migration flows have merely followed previously discussed trends which had already started (see Figure 6.8).

Migration balance avg. yearly % 1.00 - 5.33 0.50 - 1.00 0.0 - 0.50 - 0.50 0.0 -1.0 - -0.50 -3.54 - -1.00

0

500 km

Migratory balance CMSA - MSA Method: Quartic Kernel density smoothing – Bandwidth: 96 km


1,200,000 600,000 120,000 -120,000 -600,000 -1,200,000


Figure 6.8. Net migration figures for internal population movements, 2000–2005

116


Only estimated net migration can be studied. However, a recent change in the reporting scale now enables evaluation of data at the level of counties and metropolitan areas. Naturally, local data is considerably more variable than data aggregated at state levels, but data at the local level presents a patchwork of contrasting, local situations. Observing data at this level reveals other phenomena as well, such as urban sprawl, which is a phenomenon that is easily visible around Washington DC and Dallas, for example, but which is in reality widespread (see Chapter 7). One may also see a diversity of local situations within states, such as the fact that Texas is highly attractive to migrants due to urban growth in cities like Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio; meanwhile, the high plains of west Texas suffer from abandonment just as the rural states further north. The situation in Georgia is similar to that of Texas. Florida is very attractive to migrants, with the exception of the Miami metropolitan area which has experienced a net migration loss. The situation in California can be compared with that of Florida. In California, cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego actually contribute to the state’s migration deficit, while the inlands and northern part of the state remain attractive to migrants. The use of net migration rates enables demographers to identify the relative attractiveness of areas such as the uplands of the Ozark Mountains in southern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas, the Appalachians and New England in the East, as well as all the mountains of the West. The former Cotton Belt of the rural South continues to lose population, as do most of the rural counties of the High Plains. American expansionist tradition and settlement practices would have populations leave territories considered too dense in order to inhabit other less populated areas. There are two major exceptions to this rule: the depopulation of the High Plains and the influx of new residents to Florida. Considering all metropolitan areas in order to filter through urban sprawl, it appears that the country’s major cities are experiencing internal migratory deficits. Outbound migration from the New York metropolitan area continues on a massive scale, as it does for most cities in the Manufacturing Belt. Yet, the internal migration deficit of California’s big cities, a more recent phenomenon, is no less spectacular, while the trend in Miami reflects the limitations of the attractiveness of large cities, even in a state that is particularly attractive to migrants. The most attractive cities are the big cities of the desert, Phoenix and Las Vegas, while the success of cities in the Southeast Atlantic (with the exception of Miami) probably represents the most significant trend of the early years of the twenty-first century. The Texas triangle follows in third position. The comparison of the two previous maps showed a high level of continuity both before and after the turn of the twenty-first century. The boom in Utah, no doubt related to the build-up for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games


117

in Salt Lake City, has stanched and Utah has undergone a strong migratory surplus between 1995 and 2000 to a migration deficit between 2000 and 2005.

6.5. Migration of retired populations

0

Migration Intensity percentage of Seniors (65 y. or more)

500 km

Senior Migrations Balance

Hawaii

150,000 75,000

1.0

-1.5

1.5

-2.5

15,000

2.5

-3.5

-15,000

3.5

-5.7

-75,000

4.5

-5.7

-150,000

0

500 km

0

1 000 km

Alaska

Source: US census Bureau Conception et réalisation J Marc Zaninetti, université d'Orléans, laboratoire CEDETE

Figure 6.9. Migration of seniors 1995–2000

The attention generated by the residential mobility of retirees is not proportional to the retirement migrations’ share in total migration, of only about 6.7% of total migration flows (see Figure 6.9). Contrary to popular belief, the geography of retirement migration is quite similar to that of internal migration, except that destinations with migratory surpluses are more concentrated. Eight states of the

118


Sunbelt benefit from most of the migration surplus observed between 1995 and 2000. The main beneficiary of retirement migrations is Florida, where the “65 and older” group account for 14% of arrivals from other states. Arizona comes in second place with 11% of retirees among new residents from other states. The majority of these retirees leave the more urbanized states of the Northeast, among which New York is first, but also, and more surprisingly, California. This would indicate that the real and perceived disadvantages of urban environments, such as insecurity and congestion, are at least as important as climate amenities for seniors when making residential choices. This suggests that in the United States, as it is already apparent in Europe, aging populations could well produce a surge in population leaving the larger metropolitan areas for rural communities.

Chapter 7

A Suburban Nation

According to the 2000 census, the United States is a suburban nation, meaning that the majority of Americans live in suburbs. Metropolitan areas (Metropolitan Statistical Areas or MSAs) have a larger proportion of the total population than ever before: 81% of the population for 24% of the territory in the 48 conterminous states. Urban research has always been very active in the United States. The research of Robert E. Park (Chicago School of Sociology, founded in 1915) [PAR 25] in the fields of sociology, economics, and urban geography has proved useful in the study of what was, from the start, known as the urban question. Indeed, the city has always been perceived as a problem in the United States. America started out as a rural nation. C. Gobin-Ghorra [GHO 03] demonstrates that the American pastoral ideal has deep and old sociological and religious roots [BEE 1869] in transcendentalism and the Protestant ideology of domestic feminism. Compared to the ideal of a simple life in contact with nature and free from sin, the city always appeared as a den of iniquity with its immigrants from distant origins and exotic cultures. The shape of the American city was revolutionized by the start of the neotechnical era after the First World War. The very rapid spread of the automobile amongst Americans dramatically changed the scale of cities, enabling residential ideals to come closer to those social and moral ideals that were desired by most. The American city has a unique geography: it is strongly influenced by cars and capitalism. To understand the geographical reality of the population of the United States, it is necessary to examine it in the context of the metropolitan area.

120


The American metropolitan area is a city spread out like no other city in the world. Urban sprawl is an old phenomenon in the United States. It began with the arrival of mechanized transport when the first trams and railways were built, during the second half of the 19th century. Nowadays, housing is mostly individual and high density is seen as restrictive in metropolitan areas. These urban regions are also socially fragmented and polarized, with strong racial and community segregation (see Chapter 4). Social contrasts are often stark between one neighborhood and another, and this contributes to greater inequalities since high crime rates and low-quality education tend to coexist with poverty. Since crime and poor education services are two flaws that the middle class flee, unlimited and chaotic urban sprawl ensues. Generally, the American city is politically fragmented. Metropolitan areas usually have several suburban municipalities (incorporated areas), which compete fiercely with each other to attract high-income populations and non-polluting companies. Competition between a city’s center and its suburbs is one of the engines of urban sprawl, as well as a factor of the crisis of the American city that is emptied of its taxpayers by the flight of the white middle class towards the suburbs (white flight). This situation is not new to the United States [MAS 93]. One theory of research advocates returning to a model for a city that is closer to European ideals (Congress for New Urbanism). David Rusk recommends the annexation of suburbs as a political solution to the problem of the crisis of cities [RUS 03]. American cities are also very diverse. For David Rusk, the crisis of the city is more severe in the highly fragmented metropolises of the Northeast, with their older urban policies, than in what he calls the elastic cities of the South and West which were able to continue annexing wide stretches of land, thanks to more recent urbanization. It would be misleading, however, to say that the political unification of a county is enough to solve the problems of the city. First, the scale of urban sprawl is such that metropolitan areas now spread over several counties, sometimes even several states, increasing the complexity of political fragmentation and making the establishment of true metropolitan governance unrealistic. Second, even within the framework of a unified city government, economic, social, cultural, and racial polarization exists in all US cities; therefore the problems of poverty and neighborhood isolation, poor education, access to employment, and security issues actually concern all big cities. This issue is important enough to require two chapters. This chapter attempts to illustrate geographical diversity and general aspects, through a detailed study of urban sprawl, supported by a few case studies selected from major US cities.1 Chapter 8 focuses on the tensions that shape US cities.

1. This study was based on a sample of 20 consolidated metropolitan areas the populations of which exceeded 2 million inhabitants in the 2000 census.

A Suburban Nation

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7.1. Urban sprawl In 1947, the developer Levitt & Sons purchased a potato field on Long Island, 40 km from Manhattan, to build a new suburb of 17,500 houses. This new, suburban community was incorporated into a city of 82,000 inhabitants. The concept was not completely new. Llewellin Park (New York, 1853) was considered to be the original prototype of the garden city for upper-middle-class commuters, and which was made accessible by railways [JAK 85]. Yet the founding of Levittown symbolizes the extent of the impact that the postwar American way of life ideal had on the American city. Starting in the 1930s, the New Deal inaugurated fiscal policies to support home ownership (making loan interest tax deductible) and recovery programs that backed major construction projects, including the development of highway infrastructures. It was at this time that the models of suburban planning were designed: Broadacre City, by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935, and Democracity at the 1939 Universal Exhibition in New York, supported by General Motors. The model at the 1939 exhibition was based on a spread out city with a rural look (Rus in Urbe2) with only individual housing and a grid of highways. In this city, crime, health risks, and the worn-down housing of industrial cities would be gone forever. It was only in the prosperous years of the postwar period, however, that these models came to be truly reflected in the American city. Buying a big, new, stand-alone house with a double garage, built by a private developer, on the outskirts of the city, became more desirable than buying an old apartment in town, or, even worse, renting one. At the same time, the economic strategy of the neo-Keynesian government encouraged this development for economic growth through a program of public infrastructures, support for mortgage loans, tax deductions for borrowers, and the maintenance of very low tax levels on fuel. In addition, the federal program for the construction of free highways (interstate freeways), initiated in 1956, facilitated the extension of shuttle routes and the accessibility of business districts by car. This policy was encouraged by intense lobbying from the automobile and oil industries. Besides these economic factors, urban sprawl allowed middle-class, white neighborhoods to separate from their black neighbors when the struggle for civil rights pushed racial tensions to their peak. In the late 1960s, the American city was already a spread out city, pushing municipal administrations to a crisis situation. Despite rising criticism (the emergence of New Urbanism), the process of urban sprawl did not slow down until the burst of the housing bubble in 2006 (see Table 7.1).

2. Countryside within the city.

17,300

24,541

21,931

16,085

14,195

19,046

37,829

16,446

18,873

22,126

7,039

12,104

18,241

Detroit

Dallas - Fort Worth

Houston

Atlanta

Miami - West Palm Beach

Seattle

Phoenix

Minneapolis - St. Paul

St. Louis

Denver

Tampa – St Petersburg

Pittsburgh

Portland

2,265,223

2,358,695

2,395,997

2,581,506

2,626,411

2,968,806

3,251,876

3,554,760

5,004,308

4,112,198

4,669,571

5,221,801

5,456,428

6,188,463

6,488,420

1,264,790

2,683,853

1,104,944

1,325,233

2,471,223

2,026,715

1,035,438

2,038,533

2,236,645

1,763,626

2,181,315

2,432,706

5,309,922

5,673,378

5,501,319

4,751,989

5,396,463

7,952,044

9,972,037

19,421,870

69

222

157

60

131

123

27

107

158

110

99

99

307

353

230

242

212

438

113

697

Density 1970 (hab,/km²)

31.0

28.9

24.9

24.9

26.5

24.3

29.4

33.3

37.8

30.0

31.1

36.1

36.5

32.5

47.2

41.6

41.4

32.9

46.6

44.1

Standard Distance 1970 (km)

124

195

340

117

139

180

86

186

352

256

213

213

315

386

271

359

299

505

185

757

Density 2000 (hab,/km²)

Table 7.1. Urban sprawl in the main metropolises of the US, 1970–2000 (Source: US census)

16,037

Philadelphia

7,039,362

19,605

23,899

Boston

7,608,070

Washington - Baltimore 25,435

San Francisco

9,156,756

18,154

Chicago

16,373,209

88,486

Los Angeles

21,050,736

27,837

Metropolitan area

New York

Population Population 2000 1970 Area (km²)

32.0

30.9

28.4

27.8

32.0

28.4

28.9

37.5

40.1

34.2

34.0

37.8

39.1

37.2

51.4

46.7

45.8

36.1

54.6

48.6

Standard Distance 2000 (km)

122 Sustainable Development in the USA

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In order to understand the significance of urban sprawl in the United States, it is necessary to compare two big cities, one in the US and one in Europe. Let us take, for example, the areas of greater Chicago and greater Paris in order to compare cities of similar size and significance (see Table 7.2). Indicator

Paris 1968–99

Chicago 1970–2000

Population at the start of the study period (thousands) (density per km²)

9,602 (590)

7,949 (438)

Population at the end of the study period (density per km²)

11,500 (706)

9,156 (505)

+0.58 %

+0.47 %

Standard distance at the start of the study period (km)

21.3

32.9

Standard distance at the end of the study period (km)

24.8

36.2

Urban spread (km)

3.5

3.3

Annual average population growth rate (%)

Table 7.2. Comparison of urban sprawl in Paris and Chicago (Sources: US census and Instiut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE))

Chicago is dense and compact for an American city. It is, however, much more spread out than Paris, both in 1970 and in 2000. Standard distance corresponds with the average distance of the population from the city’s barycenter, thereby providing an unbiased indicator of the population’s dispersion. This indicator is useful for making synchronic comparisons between comparable geographic features or diachronic comparisons, in which case an increase in the standard distance in a constant territory would demonstrate increasing population dispersion or, in the case of a metropolitan area, urban sprawl. The bigger the city, the further it will expand. There is, therefore, a definite relationship between urban sprawl and the size of a city. In the case of the 20 largest US cities, we can establish a growing relationship, statistically evident, for both 1970 and 2000 (see Figure 7.1).

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60 2000 R2 = 0,66

55 50

Standard Distance

45 40 35

1970 R2 = 0,51

30 25 20 0

1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 Metropolitan population (square root) POP_2000 POP_1970

5,000

Linear regression (POP_1970) Linear regression (POP_2000)

Figure 7.1. Urban sprawl in major cities, 1970–2000

Equation [7.1] determines the linear relationship between size (measured by the square root of the total population) and sprawl (measured by the standard distance in kilometers) of the 20 major US cities in 1970. The correlation coefficient is r = +0.72, which means that most of the variation of standard distance in 1970 is directly proportional to the square root of the metropolitan population.

DS e

6,1e 3 POP 22,502 .

[7.1]

For 2000, equation [7.2] expresses a general intensification of the linear relationship. The highest slope, 8 instead of 6.1, shows that the sprawl is growing with a constant population and the correlation coefficient is now r = +0.81, which means that city profiles have been standardized. Two-thirds of the variation of standard distance in 2000 is directly proportional to the square root of the metropolitan population.

DS e

8e 3 POP 19,06 .

[7.2]

Given this relationship between the size of a city and how widespread its population is, and considering various indicators such as density and speed of this expansion, we come to understand that every major US city spread more in the last three decades of the 20th century. However, the speed and extent of sprawl varied from city to city.

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The center of an American city (Central Business District or CBD) is identifiable by the concentration of office tower blocks visible on the skyline, rather than by the concentration of its population. This rule has only a very few exceptions. The four main transactional metropolises of the US are New York on the Atlantic coast, Chicago on the Great Lakes, and the California rivals, San Francisco and Los Angeles, on the Pacific coast. These cities are characterized by extensive and complex urban areas, as well as unusually high urban density in central areas. Urban sprawl is active here, but these four cities differ from other US cities because of the existence of densely populated neighborhoods in their centers. A record 440 inhabitants/hectare can be found in a portion of East Side Manhattan in New York – a density comparable to that of eastern Paris. Otherwise, the maximum density is less than 300 inhabitants/hectare for Chicago, 170 for San Francisco, and about 120 for Los Angeles. In comparison, the average density of central Paris is 250 inhabitants/hectare. Apart from these major cities, the 100 inhabitants/hectare mark is only reached in a few other metropolitan areas of the Megalopolis region: Philadelphia, Washington and Boston. City centers have been emptied of their population since the end of the Second World War. Many US city centers have no neighborhood where residential density reaches 50 inhabitants/hectare. Among the bigger ones, Detroit has a density of 45 inhabitants/hectare, St. Louis: 43, Denver: 40, Pittsburgh: 38, Phoenix: 36, Portland: 33, Atlanta: 26, and Tampa-St. Petersburg: 22. As for Houston, Minneapolis–St. Paul, and Seattle, they barely exceed the threshold of 50 inhabitants/hectare. Urban-planning programs between 1945 and 1973 ripped through entire neighborhoods in order to make the CBD accessible by a network of penetrating highways. Huge parking lots replaced warehouses and abandoned factories. At the same time, many metropolises abandoned their tram systems. These urban renewal programs (slum clearance) only received their first criticism in the 1960s [JAC 61]. From the 1970s, urban ideologies gradually reversed, going back towards a more compact city as part of a postmodernist movement (school of Los Angeles). This movement was transformed into real urban policy in the 1980s (Congress for New Urbanism). Urban renewal operations were launched here and there, taking advantage of opportunities left by industrial wasteland, or the retreat of port activities (waterfront) away from the city center (brownfield redevelopment). Impoverished, despite slum clearance policies, city centers attempted to attract wealthy populations (Yuppies3). But the exodus of families from inner cities 3. Term created from the acronym YUP for Young Urban Professionals, a class of young workers in high-tech industries, media, and finance, with a high level of education and high wages, often single, who are looking for apartments (condominiums) rather than houses and are anxious to enjoy the cultural amenities and bustle of city centers.

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continued in major US cities between 1970 and 2000. In absolute terms, the most dramatic declines were seen in the densest cities (New York, Chicago, San Francisco) when publicly funded, old and dilapidated housing projects were demolished. Created after the Wagner Bill of 1937, these large social housing developments had become pockets of concentrated poverty and uncontrollable crime. Yet the same large metropolitan areas also benefited from urban renewal projects which attracted the highest density of new residents back to their centers. After losing its city center population over a long period of time, the city of New York finally experienced a rebirth, starting in 1980. 7.2. Big cities Each city is a specific case, and generalizations quickly reach their limits.

Pennsylvania

Connecticut

New Jersey

New York

0

25

50 km

Change in density inh./km2

Standard deviation Ellipse of 1970

-14,500 - 500 - 50 0 50 100 300 1,000

Standard deviation Ellipse of 2000

- - 500 - 50 0 50 100 300 - 1,000 - 12,180

County

State

Methodology : Map created by Kernel density smoothing of the Block Group’s Population. Quartic Function in a bandwidth of the 30 nearest neighbours. Calculated difference in density 1970 - 2000 Source: US Census bureau


Figure 7.2. Urban sprawl around New York, 1970–2000

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127

Even in the exceptional case of New York, urban sprawl is still marked by the decline of the inner city and the urbanization of new neighborhoods (greenfield development) (see Figure 7.2). The case of New York is particularly interesting because it combines urban sprawl and urban renewal of a scale and magnitude unparalleled within the United States. The city of New York was consolidated in 1898 with the annexation of four counties – beyond that of central New York itself – located on the island of Manhattan: the Bronx (only county situated on the mainland), Queens and Kings (Brooklyn) on Long Island, and Richmond County on Staten Island. The city spans approximately 790 km². In the 2000 census its population was close to 8 million inhabitants, with a density of a little more than 100 inhabitants/hectare. This is the densest city in the US. The city had already come close to these numbers in the 1950 census, just before a decline during which the population dropped to its minimum of nearly 7 million inhabitants in 1980. The population increased in all Boroughs starting in 1980, even though some neighborhoods in northern Brooklyn, Upper Manhattan and the South Bronx did lose population between 1970 and 2000. Unlike central New York City, the older suburbs are still losing population. The industrial and port cities of New Jersey, located on the right banks of the Hudson, have lost large numbers of people in some areas, even though urban renewal operations are underway in some cities like Newark. Similar movements are observed in counties adjacent to New York, like Nassau County on Long Island. Unlike densely urbanized city centers, the suburbs of New York are very spread out. The average density of the greater city is only 16 inhabitants/hectare. In the periphery of the metropolitan area, the population of medium-sized city centers has decreased, for example in Trenton, New Jersey, and New Haven, Connecticut, where urban growth has stayed outside the perimeters of the city centers. In Suffolk County on Long Island, new development began more than 60 km away from Manhattan. It only takes 50 km northwest to escape. To the northwest, the peripheral urban sprawl only extends for 50 km, but the greater city extends continuously for 140 km towards the east on Long Island. Moving southwest, the urban corridor of New Jersey does not stop at the limits of the metropolitan area of New York, and the city of Trenton, 85 km away from Manhattan, actually borders the metropolitan area of Philadelphia. Urban sprawl is even more considerable heading northeast into Connecticut; the metropolitan area of Hartford is adjacent to New York. Other major US cities also present interesting cases which merit further study. Greater Chicago is characterized by its compactness and the abrupt break between its declining inner city and its compact ring of growing suburbs, but there are also urban renewal programs underway in some neighborhoods (see Figure 7.3).

128


Extending over nearly 600 km², the city of Chicago has an average density close to 50 inhabitants/ha, making it the third densest city in the United States, after New York and San Francisco. Its suburbs are, however, very spread out, resulting in the average density of the greater city being only 14 inhabitants/ha.

Wisconsin

Illinois

Indiana

0

25

50 km

Change in density inh./km2 -10,520 - -500 -500 -50 -50 0 0 50 50 - 100 100 - 300 300 - 1,000 1,000 - 3,110

Standard deviation Ellipse of 1970 Standard deviation Ellipse of 2000 County

State

Methodology : Map created by Kernel density smoothing of the Block Group’s Population. Quartic Function in a bandwidth of the 30 nearest neighbours. Calculated difference in density 1970 - 2000 Source: US Census


Figure 7.3. Urban sprawl around Chicago, 1970–2000

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The Boston metropolitan area is characterized by very widespread urban sprawl, making it the second most spread out metropolis in the US today, after Los Angeles. The city of Boston is relatively small (143 km²) and quite dense (40 inhabitants/ha), but its suburbs are very spread out. The average density of the greater MSA of Boston does not exceed 8 inhabitants/ha.

0

25

Change in density inh./ km2

Standard deviation Ellipse of the population 1970

-870 -500 -50 0 50 100 300 1,000

Standard deviation Ellipse of the population 2000

-

-500 -50 0 50 100 300 1,000 5,460

50 km

County Methodology : Map created by Kernel density smoothing of the Block Group’s Population. Quartic Function in a bandwidth of the 30 nearest neighbours. Calculated difference in density 1970 - 2000 Source: US Census


Figure 7.4. Urban sprawl around Los Angeles, 1970–2000

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The very name Los Angeles has become synonymous with the concept of urban sprawl (see Figure 7.4). There is no doubt that the urban morphology of the Los Angeles plain is striking. The last 30 years of the 20th century were characterized by an almost general intensification of urban land use in this region. Measured using the standard distance of the population from the metropolitan area’s barycenter, sprawl progressed less rapidly than one might think, given the massive size of the population of this southern California city. It would seem that urban sprawl has reached its limits in Los Angeles, where it is difficult and expensive to urbanize the arid slopes of the region’s surrounding mountains. Population growth therefore continues with the densification of the existing urban fabric, which is gradually losing its typically suburban aspect, throughout the county of Los Angeles. Urban sprawl does continue, however, towards the east into the County of San Bernardino. Unlike the New York area, there is no depopulating inner city in Los Angeles. Growth is widespread, with the exception of a few, relatively limited neighborhoods. The case of Los Angeles should discourage the hasty assimilation of metropolitan statistical areas with cities. The metropolitan area of Los Angeles is larger than Ireland (88,500 km²), but the Mojave Desert is the largest part of its territory, to the extent that Figure 7.4 does not even include the entire Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA). The agglomerated part of the CMSA, which spans 7,725 km², includes 95% of the metropolitan area’s population. The average density of the greater city is therefore 20 inhabitants/ha, which is relatively high in the American context. Inside the greater city, the center of Los Angeles is very spread out (1,226 km²) and its average density is 30 inhabitants/ha. There are a number of other interesting case studies, which we must, nevertheless, try to summarize in order to draw some general lessons from the diversity of geographical situations. Among the major cities of the United States, Phoenix (Arizona) is the only one that did not spread out between 1970 and 2000, despite explosive growth. The population has more than tripled, but development simply built on unused land in a city that was already very spread out. Central areas, however, continue to lose population. The two-headed metropolis of Dallas–Fort Worth is also characterized by rapid growth, with a population which more than doubled between 1970 and 2000. Given its organization around two centers, the urban sprawl of Dallas is known for its moderation in comparison with the American standard. Unlike many other cities, no neighborhoods were emptied of their population, and urban growth tends to fill the gaps that existed in 1970, despite a tendency to sprawl towards the north. This is proof that there is not necessarily a causal relationship between population growth and urban sprawl. In the same way, urban sprawl has been very active around Saint Louis (Missouri) and Detroit (Michigan), despite a virtually

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static population. The metropolitan area of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) lost 12% of its population between 1970 and 2000, but it continued to spread over the hills on both sides of the Ohio Valley, while density decreased in the city’s center and in the industrial valleys. Conversely, the Atlanta metropolitan area is a model of economic success and population growth. Between 1970 and 2000, the population of today’s metropolitan area increased 230%. Atlanta can be considered as a prototype of the American city which expanded with urban sprawl. Chapter 8 therefore takes Atlanta as the starting point for the study of factors and problems that are associated with recent urban sprawl in the United States. Since Atlanta is a special case, in terms of its very strong growth, its example will be systematically compared to that of Detroit. Indeed, the capital of the US automobile industry is often labeled as the prototype of the American city in crisis.

7.3. Consequences of urban sprawl on sustainable development The problem with urban sprawl is urban connectivity. As demonstrated by Paul Claval [CLA 81], the real purpose of transactional metropolises is to optimize communication networks. Regardless of the density of neighborhoods, a metropolitan economy can only function effectively if its neighborhoods are connected by an efficient network of transportation and communication. US cities differ from those of the rest of the world by their very low population density and widespread distribution of jobs. This leads to an exceptional degree of car dependency [NEW 89]. The urban sprawl that occurred throughout the 20th century in the United States led to the inexorable decline of public transportation to the sole benefit of the automobile. Urban connectivity now relies mainly on the network of urban highways. The economic efficiency of this model relied for a long time on its flexibility, and its ability to ensure access to affordable housing with relatively low commuting time [MER 95] for such big cities. Less than 4.7% of Americans used public transportation to get to work in 2005, and 77% of drivers commuted alone in their car. US cities are gridded by highway networks, free for the most part, but congestion is such that the average commuter loses 54 hours per year in traffic (2004). In the early 1980s, Americans traveled 2,400 billion km/vehicle per year. The time lost in traffic congestions accounted, at the time, for 12% of the average duration of the home–work commute during rush hour. Car traffic increased by 94% between 1982 and 2004. Time lost in traffic congestion has since increased by 167%, extending by 37% the average commuting time at peak hours. What was once an economic advantage is deteriorating with the increasing congestion of the traffic network, while consideration for the environment, affected by pollution, increases. The resulting overconsumption of fuel adds greatly to the country’s emission of greenhouse gases as well as to the increase in smog and ozone peaks in metropolitan

132


Percentage of commuting trips

areas. The number of cases of severe asthma continues to increase in the overall population, especially among children. Low housing density makes it difficult to increase the share of public transport. Despite increasing investments, bus, subway, and tram stations only allow limited access to housing and jobs. Regular urban bus service ceases to be profitable where there are less than 30 inhabitants per hectare, tram service (light rail transit) where there are less than 50 inhabitants/ha and the subway where there are less than 70 inhabitants/ha. According to Alain Bertaud [BER 02], this makes the success of Smart Growth strategies, based on the precepts of New Urbanism, unlikely in the short term due to the extensive time necessary to erase the consequences of 60 years of unbridled urban sprawl.

Figure 7.5. Home–work commute for several major cities, broken down by type of transportation, 2000

Currently, very few metropolises have a high enough population density in even a part of their city to promote the use of public transport (see Figure 7.5). This is the case in New York, where nearly 25% of home–work commuting is done via public transport, compared to 66% in cars, including carpooling. The rate of public transport use falls to less than 10% in San Francisco, despite the relatively high population density of the urban area (60 inhabitants/ha). This unusual situation is explained by the fact that the city is divided into several urban centers, scattered around the bay, and the actual city center, which is relatively small (122 km²), is home to only 11% of the population of the metropolitan area. Public transport use is lower than the national average in Los Angeles, as it is in Atlanta, where 93% of home–work commuting is done by car, of which 13% is done by carpooling.

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7.4. Urban sprawl is not only a big city phenomenon Contrary to the simplistic visions of Alonso’s model [ALO 64] and his byproducts of the New Urban Economy, urban sprawl does not happen in the United States through land and property auctions triggered by the scarcity of urban land in city centers. Urban sprawl in America is also not the result of the exile of middle classes towards peripheral areas because land is cheaper. Urban sprawl is the result of a lifestyle choice and cultural preference. The proof lies in the fact that urban sprawl is also very evident around small- and medium-sized cities with very low densities. We can briefly illustrate this point through the example of recent urban sprawl around Baton Rouge, capital of the state of Louisiana, which ranked as the 69th MSA in the national census of 2000, with 602,894 inhabitants living in an area of 4,356 km². This metropolitan area, of modest size for the United States, can be compared to a regional capital in France to better appreciate the relative nature of the topic of urban sprawl in Europe as opposed to in the United States.

Area (km²)

Population 1990 (density hab./km²)

Population 2000 (density hab./km²)

Baton Rouge City

203

215,457 (1,061)

216,177 (1,065)

Other incorporated areas (26 cities)

224

103,875 (465)

123,331 (552)

Unincorporated areas (4 counties)

3,929

208,909 (53)

263,386 (67)

MSA total (4 counties, 27 cities)

4,356

528,241 (121)

602,894 (138)

Central city share

4.7%

40.8 %

35.9 %

Study zone

Table 7.3. Population of the MSA of Baton Rouge, 1990–2000

Greater Baton Rouge is vast (see Table 7.3). Its population density does not exceed 2,700 inhabitants per km² in the university neighborhood, which is exceptionally low. The average density of central Baton Rouge is only 1,065 inhabitants/km², just about double that of its suburbs. With nearly 7,500 new

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inhabitants each year, the population grew rapidly between 1990 and 2000 (+14%). This growth, however, is very unevenly distributed among districts (see Figure 7.6). The fastest growth was in the peripheral ring which is not included within the incorporated city’s limits (the suburban rural areas which did not constitute a municipality) and is therefore directly administered by the county. The growth of surrounding suburban cities is very fast while the population of the city center remains static. Central neighborhoods and the northern part of the city of Baton Rouge are losing population. Massive population growth happened mostly on the southern and eastern fringes of the metropolitan area, especially south of Louisiana State University, along the corridor of the Interstate I-10 heading towards New Orleans, situated about 115 km away. This wave of growth overwhelmed the north of Ascension County all the way to the city of Gonzales. The other area of strong growth is in the isolated areas of western Livingston County, north of Denham Springs. The situation is more contrasted in the eastern part of the greater city, where declining and rising neighborhoods alternate, but these numbers are not related to the massive wave of urbanization which runs south and east. Finally, it should be noted that the urbanization of the three peripheral counties of the metropolitan area is very fragmented, so they retain a predominantly rural landscape. A comparison with the greater city of Orléans in France, considered locally to be a very spread out urban area, shows just how much urban sprawl is present in the United States (see Figure 7.6. and Table 7.4.). The metropolitan statistical area of Baton Rouge is about 80% larger than the greater city of Orléans. It is also somewhat less densely populated. Its population was only about 60% larger in 2000. However, its population growth rate has increased significantly faster. Study zone

Orléans*

Baton Rouge

Central city

+0.82% / year

+0.03% / year

Suburban communities* / other incorporated areas

+0.94% / year

+1.73% / year

Suburban communities* / unincorporated areas

+0.76% / year

+2.34% / year

MSA total

0.85% / year

+1.33% / year

Table 7.4. Comparison of the average annual growth rate of the population of Orléans and Baton Rouge

A Suburban Nation

Density Inh./ sq.km

0

10

10 100 200 500 1,000 10,000

20 km

100 200 500 - 1,000 - 10,000 - 22,240

Population Change 4,000 2,000 400 -400 -2,000 -4,000

0

10

20 km

BATON ROUGE

0

2,5

ORLEANS

5 km

0

2,5

5 km

Source: US Census Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 7.6. Urban sprawl compared in two intermediate cities, Orléans (France) and Baton Rouge (Louisiana), 1990–2000

135

136


2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500 0

0 to 10 km

10 to 20 km

20 to 30 km

Orleans

30 to 40 km

40 to 50 km

50 to 60 km

Baton Rouge

Figure 7.7. Annual net population growth according to distance from the center

About 72% of population growth remains confined within a radius of 10 km of Orléans, compared to only 10% of that of the MSA of Baton Rouge at the same distance from the center (see Figure 7.7). However, 78% of the growth occurs within 10–40 kilometers from Baton Rouge’s city hall. The consequence of these differences is that the population was denser and more concentrated in Orléans in 1999 than it was in 1990. Balanced by the number of inhabitants, we find that the standard distance from the center decreased slightly in Orléans between 1990 and 1999, while it increased slightly in Baton Rouge between 1990 and 2000 (see Table 7.5). Indicator

Orléans*

Baton Rouge

Standard distance 1990 (km)

11.84

17.21

Standard distance 1999*/2000 (km)

11.82

17.5

Inter-census urban spread

-0.02

+0.29

Table 7.5. Compared spread of the population, Orléans and Baton Rouge

While the distance to the center was a barrier to urbanization around Orléans in the 1990s, it played an amplifying role for urbanization around Baton Rouge. The capital of Louisiana is therefore a widespread city, a description that we cannot apply to Orléans during the same period, despite the conventional process of urban growth which involves a certain expansion of the territorial influence of urbanization. Even if there are some comparable elements in the statistics on suburbanization, housing, and cars, the phenomenon is incomparably stronger in the United States.

Chapter 8

Urban Fragmentation and Sprawl

This chapter is based on case studies that show the extent of geography, a discipline rooted in field observation. These case studies are chosen to illustrate two major aspects of the urban crisis in the United States: the territorial effects of social divisions on one hand, and the effect of these divisions when combined with the political fragmentation of metropolitan areas, on the other. We will see how urban fragmentation affects urban sprawl in metropolitan areas. Four cities are used to illustrate this study. The examples of Atlanta and Detroit will be studied first, then complemented and balanced by case studies of Houston and Portland.

8.1. Social divisions find expression in land use patterns Throughout American history, ethnic and cultural enclaves have been regular features of city life. Immigrants crowded into transitional neighborhoods in America’s major cities (see Chapter 3). As they made their way into productive life, they would then move on to other neighborhoods and other cities. America’s big cities have always been a patchwork of neighborhoods of very unequal social standing. Territorial disparities are not new, but it is only since the Second World War that a change of urban scale affected the footprint of segregation. The 20th century was marked by the massive migration of blacks from the rural South to the big cities. The influx of the rural poor further impoverished the already crowded transitional neighborhoods. The prosperity that followed the Second World War, together with vastly improved personal mobility, led to the abandonment of

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central cities in favor of suburban life and what has come to be referred to as “urban sprawl”, which is one of the United States’ thorniest urban problems (see Chapter 4). The flight to the suburbs further impoverished the core city, confirmed the relation between poverty and racial segregation and further concentrated urban poverty in center-city enclaves. In some instances, urban enclaves became superghettos covering entire cities. Uncontrolled suburban development – urban sprawl – directly encouraged the segregation of American society’s constituent communities at a time when racial issues were particularly pressing, so that by 1970 the spatial segregation of American cities was firmly established at a metropolitan scale. In recent decades the urban landscape has been further complicated by immigration from Asia and Latin America. In many cities of the West, the confrontation between whites and blacks gives way to a more complex multi-ethnic landscape, without, however, reducing social cleavages. Many factors can be used to study social divisions within urbanized spaces although a single economic indicator is often enough to tell the story: per capita income. The United States Census Bureau provides per capita income data at the neighborhood level according to census tract.1 This single indicator varies significantly among metropolitan areas of the United States and neatly summarizes the extent of social disparities within a geographic area. Per capita income is often highly correlated with racial segregation so that a significant relationship may be observed between these indicators and long term population dynamics. This is shown through the comparative study of Atlanta and Detroit.

8.1.1. Atlanta Headquarters for such iconic corporations as CNN and Coca-Cola, Atlanta is a prosperous and growing city. Atlanta was founded in the 1840s as a railway junction. The site was chosen because of its geographical location which enabled the circumvention of the Appalachians, and its pivotal position between the navigable waterways of that time, the Chattahoochee River that flows westward toward the Gulf of Mexico and the Ocmulgee River that flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

1. A census tract is a geographic region defined for the purpose of assembling decennial census results. Its average size is 4,500 inhabitants.


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The strategic position of Atlanta led to its near annihilation during the Civil War, but the city rapidly recovered, rising from its ashes to become a regional financial center and distribution hub for the southeastern United States. Atlanta’s lucky break came in 1941 when the United States Air Force established a major air base in the city. As for many other cities in the South and West, the airbase was soon followed by the aviation industry (Lockheed in 1951). A census survey in 2006 indicated that Atlanta is the city with the fastest growing population in the United States. The metropolitan area exceeded 5 million people in 2005 and grew by more than 0.9 million people between the 2000 census and 2006. Atlanta is a representative example of the development of the Sunbelt cities. Economic and population growth rank metropolitan Atlanta among the more prosperous Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Between 1970 and 2000, metropolitan population grew at an average annual rate of 2.86%, while average income per capita was 116% of the national average (see Figure 8.1).

$ / capita (1999)

26,000 25,000 24,000 23,000 22,000 21,000 20,000 19,000

USA

MSA

Central City

Suburbs

Figure 8.1. Atlanta, Georgia, average per capita income, 1999

The disparities, however, are enormous. One person in ten lives in a neighborhood where the average income is less than $15,000 per capita, while another 10% reside in neighborhoods where the average income is above $39,000 per capita, for an inter-decile ratio of 2.6.

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0

Median Income $ per capita

15

30 km

County limits

4,100

-

15,000

Incorporated Areas

15,000

-

18,000

Atlanta City

18,000

-

22,400

22,400

-

29,100

29,100

-

39,000

39,000

- 105,400

City Hall Atlanta MSA, Median Income per capita (1999) USA, Median Income per capita (1999) Disparities of Income per capita between Census Tracts

Discretization method: Quantiles of population (D1, Q1, Me, Q3, D9) Source: US Census Designed and made by JM Zaninetti, University of Orleans, CEDETE Institute

Figure 8.2. Atlanta, territorial inequalities, 1999


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For the 2000 census, the Atlanta metropolitan area was divided into 660 census tracts, enabling the comparison of the very prosperous northern suburbs to the impoverished neighborhoods of South Atlanta (see Figure 8.2). The center city, which represents 10% of the population and of metropolitan income, is deeply divided between rich districts in the north (Buckhead) and poor neighborhoods in the south. The contrasts are less pronounced for the rest of the MSA, although the suburbs are all relatively wealthy while center city neighborhoods are all relatively poor. Despite the presence of rich neighborhoods to the north, the poorest metropolitan neighborhoods are concentrated in the center city (see Figure 8.3). These social inequalities are closely related to racial segregation.

Population (%) (2000)

25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

USA

MSA

Central City

Suburbs

Figure 8.3. Atlanta MSA, population living below the poverty threshold, 2000

The southern United States continues to be characterized by a high percentage of African-Americans among the general population. In 1970, blacks accounted for 21% of the population of the Atlanta MSA, which then had a population of 1.7 million people (see Figure 8.4). While the overall population increased annually by 2.9%, black population, fueled by selective immigration, increased by 3.9% per year. The African-American community in Atlanta thus rose from less than 400,000 people in 1970 to about 1.2 million inhabitants in 2000. This population represents approximately 29% of the 2000 census metropolitan population. The population distribution map for the metropolitan black population in 1970 enables us to distinguish two phenomena: data aggregations for the surrounding countryside mask the disparities observed when census tracts cover smaller geographical areas; and segregation is clearly visible in metropolitan Atlanta at the level of census tracts. A compact group of neighborhoods south of the Central Business District has an almost exclusively black population, while blacks are virtually absent from other neighborhoods, particularly in the northern suburbs.

142


0

15

30 km

Black Population (%) 0 2 10 30 50 90

-

2 10 30 50 90 100

County limits Percentage of Blacks Atlanta MSA: 21.4%. USA: 11%

Incorporated Areas Atlanta City City Hall

Source: US Census


Figure 8.4. Atlanta, African-American ghetto, 1970


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