Poorer Suburbs

For the first time in history, the number of poor people in the suburbs outnumber the number poor people in cities. And it isn't just because more people in general have moved into suburbs than into cities; the reason involves techtonic economic shifts in the workplace and a new flight of the affluent to the rurburbs for bigger houses and more land. Rather than problems of poverty, fiscal distress, poor schools, and low job growth being concentrated in urban neighborhoods with the suburbs acting as havens for the affluent, entire metropolitan areas are bifurcating with deteriorating conditions concentrating on one side across cities and suburbs and with affluence and growth concentrating on the other side, according to researchers at the Brookings Institute.