Beyond the City: Exploring the Suburban and Rural Landscapes of Racial Residential Integration Across the United States

In recent decades, racial and ethnic diversity has expanded from the city into the suburbs, the rural–urban interface, and remote rural places across all regions in the United States. This study examines how these population trends shape the possibility of racial residential integration across the American rural–urban continuum and regions. Using the information theory index (H) and racial and ethnic composition thresholds, we identify integrated cities, suburbs, and rural towns and villages that are stably integrated between the 2000 and 2010 censuses. This study shows a substantial number of diverse places where people of different races and ethnicities live near each other. Further, the largest clusters of integration locate in suburbs, followed by rural places, while central cities show the lowest rates of integration. In addition, the West typically hosts larger numbers of integrated communities compared to other regions. Findings suggest that to better understand shifting patterns of American racial inequality, research must look outside the city and toward the West to investigate residential integration as a new form of twenty-first-century race relations.