The stereotype of “chocolate city and vanilla suburbs” is fast eroding, argues William H. Frey in a new report, “Melting Pot Cities and Suburbs,” based on data from the 2010 United States census.
Minorities, especially Hispanics, are fueling population growth in a wider array of places, including suburbs in all parts of the country. Meanwhile, “black flight” from cities with large African-American populations is also changing the population mix of cities and suburbs. “These dynamics combined in the 2000s to produce more diverse “melting pot suburbs” and increasingly multi-hued cities, stark changes from the binary race/place images of the past,” Frey writes.
Frey’s report does not provide a metro-by-metro breakdown. But the narrative and infographics do contain nuggets pertaining to the three Virginia metro areas, Washington, Hampton Roads and Richmond, that are included among the 100 largest metro areas covered by the study. Among the nuggets:
Washington, D.C., was one of six individual cities that experienced an increase in the white share of population. The white share now stands at 35%, up 7% from a decade ago. Blacks comprise 50% of the population, down 9%. Hispanics and Asians grew their shares of the population by 1% each.
The suburbs of the Washington metropolitan area turned “majority minority” over the decade, with the white share slipping to 50% of the population. The growth rate was most rapid for Hispanics (6%) and Asians (3%) but modest for African-Americans (1%).
Extraordinarily, of the 20 exurban counties ranked by the rate of population growth, five are located on the fringes of the Richmond metro area — one out of four in the country! Even as white population growth slowed to a crawl nationally, whites predominated in these counties.
- New Kent County: Grew 37% over the decade. Whites contributed 82% of that growth.
- Louisa County: Grew 29% over the decade. Whites contributed 80% of that growth.
- Caroline County: Grew 29% over the decade. Whites contributed 69% of that growth.
- Goochland County: Grew 29% over the decade. Whites contributed 90% of that growth.
- Powhatan County: Grew 25% over the decade. Whites contributed 90% of that growth.
I’m not sure what that says about the white population of the Richmond region, but it certainly does confirm one thing I’ve warned about for years: Richmond is one of the fastest sprawling metro regions in the country.
