For approximately five decades metropolitan areas in United States have been undergoing a process of decentralization of that is commonly referred as suburbanization. Initially, uneven rates of growth in metropolitan areas where the cause-central cities were growing less rapidly than their suburbs, so that their share of total metropolitan area population declined. More recently, suburbanization has occurred as some central cities have actually lost population while their suburban areas have continued to expand at a rapid pace.

Suburbanization of both population and employment has occurred in this period, for both growing and declining metropolitan areas.As a result, many central cities in recent years have experienced declines in both the number of residents and number of jobs they can claim, and this has forced them to struggle with declining tax bases while trying to maintain levels of service provision.Various remedies to shelter cities from these changes have been attempted, such as direct financial aid and economic development programs.Whatever degree of success or failure these measures have achieved, the process of suburbanization continues.We believe that the better understanding of the suburbanization process can better inform decision makers and help them to formulate better public policy for distressed urban areas.

This report is part of the collection of scanned historical documents available to the public.