Continuity and Change in the Restless Urban Landscape

Recent inquiry in urban studies highlights the dynamic restructuring of urban areas, with new elements of the landscape taken as reflections of sweeping economic and sociocultural change. American cities are portrayed as “galactic” and “restless” manifestations of global and national industrial restructuring, widening income inequality, demographic shifts, and the cultural sensibilities of new class formations. Yet the persistence of residential segregation and suburban development processes provide reminders of the historical continuity of American urban form. This paper critically evaluates continuity and change in the urban landscape, drawing on feminist urban research and theories of residential differentiation to analyze changes in spatial segregation among families and households. I apply the methods of the classical factorial ecology literature to a special census tabulation that controls for tract boundary changes between 1980 and 1990. The analysis focuses on Minneapolis–St. Paul, which exemplifies processes of industrial restructuring and suburban development and an unusually high rate of female labor force participation. Results indicate that urban demographic trends have inscribed increasingly complex patterns of neighborhood segregation. The delayed child-bearing, increased employment, and high household incomes of married women of the baby boom generation have altered the 1960s “family status” construct. I offer a theory of the “public household” to illuminate this transformation, which entails an erosion of the boundaries between markets and family life as households confront the contradictions of suburban built environments. The foundations of residential differentiation display remarkable continuity, and the public household is rooted in long-term demographic trends, widening inequality, and increasing consumption standards driven by postwar suburbanization and housing policy. Ultimately, restlessness in the urban landscape is a story of dynamic stability, as turbulent social and institutional change reflects the struggles of workers and families adjusting to the imperatives of life in a low-density urban environment.