Neighborhoods neighboring neighborhoods: adjacency, relative position and tract-level racial change in the U.S. 2000 to 2010

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Due to wide-ranging demographic shifts over the last forty years, the United States has experienced increasing ethnic and racial diversity at the national level. This diversity, however, has not been expressed evenly across metropolitan areas and their neighborhoods: certain places have remained racially homogeneous while others are now comprised of multiple groups. This paper explores the relationship between national level diversity and neighborhood level diversity by (1) describing general patterns in the geographic distribution of segregated and diverse neighborhoods observed in 2000 and (2) investigating how this distribution of neighborhoods moderated neighborhood change between 2000 and 2010. Census race and ethnicity counts are used to classify a database of Census tracts in metropolitan areas using a thirteen-part typology measuring diversity and most prevalent race or ethnicity. The geographic distribution of tracts within this typology is assessed using a measure of relative centrality and the classification of adjacent tracts. A multinomial logit model is used to estimate the relationship between different neighborhood spatial contexts and neighborhood compositional change within the typology. Findings demonstrate support for traditional theories of segregation, including spatial assimilation and place stratification, but with considerable complexity: less central tracts have become increasingly diverse but elements of White flight and neighborhood succession to suburbs remain.