Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The Metropolitan Futures Initiative (MFI) is a research center at the University of California, Irvine School of Social Ecology. Using data from MFI, we examine the outcomes for persistently racially mixed neighborhoods in Orange County and within the greater Southern California area over a 40-year timeframe (1970-2010). This study builds on previous MFI research on the interaction between race and income as they affect access to different types of residential neighborhoods (Hipp, Kane, & Kim, 2017; Hipp, 2017). For this work, we will compare stable racially mixed neighborhoods with those that have not been stable over time to identify explanations for stability. Closer case study comparisons allow us to identify the effects of the stability of neighborhood racial diversity on a number of factors, including crime and unemployment, housing availability, educational attainment, and poverty. The research team defined case study locations based on census tracts and tracked changes in neighborhoods’ racial structure based on the 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 censuses.