"From Centralization to Deconcentration: People and Jobs Spread Out".

Carlino, Gerald A.

Business Review, November/December 2000, pp. 15-27.

During the first half of the 20th Century, the United States experienced a shift in jobs from rural to urban areas. In the later half of the century, the nation underwent three other important shifts in the distribution of people and jobs; the shift from the frostbelt to sunbelt, the movement from central cities to suburbs, and the relatively faster growth of jobs and population in smaller and less dense Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). The first two of these three shifts are common knowledge, while the last shift has been less publicized. The author attempted to answer three questions related to the third and less well-known shift: Has there been faster growth of jobs in smaller and/or less dense MSAs? Has there been faster population growth in smaller and/or less dense MSAs? Is there any difference in these trends between the frostbelt and sunbelt? The author found that jobs do indeed grow faster in less dense and smaller locations. This phenomenon is related to suburbanization, where many economic ac tivities moved out of the central city to peripheral communities. Denser areas also have utilized most of the capacity of their existing infrastructure, meaning the congestion associated with the central city will directly increase a...