Can Suburbs Survive without their Central Cities?

Abstract

Based on recent findings that changes in average suburban incomes are positively associated with changes in average central-city incomes, some have concluded that disparities between central cities and their suburbs cause decline in metropolitan economic growth. The authors argue that causality runs in the other direction—metropolitan-wide growth narrows disparities. The authors argue that cities and suburbs are interdependent, that there can be healthy individual suburbs and weak central cities, and that there can be healthy suburbs in the aggregate and extremely poor central cities.