Racialized Reshuffling: Urban Change and the Persistence of Segregation in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

The literature on the persistence of racial residential segregation in the United States has made significant progress by moving beyond traditional explanations—socioeconomic differences, preferences, and discrimination—to focus on the complex ways in which these factors interact with the multistage process of residential sorting. Dramatic changes in metropolitan landscapes over the past two decades, however, demand an expanded theoretical framework that can account for stability and change. In this article, we review research on contemporary urban changes that offers insights for explaining segregation's persistence amid widespread change. We identify three broad categories of mechanisms that exacerbate inequities by race and class in residential sorting processes: resource inequality, hierarchy endurance, and consolidated power. We describe developments in measuring segregation and new data and methods for studying urban change that enable researchers to consider the contemporary mechanisms, forms, and scales of segregation in the twenty-first century.