Winter 1999 — Volume 1 Issue 4

Immigration: Fundamental Force in the American City

By Dowell Myers

Many factors have been important in shaping the 20th-century American metropolis, and others will shape the city of the next century. Surprisingly, one vital factor was virtually invisible to the panel of urban experts surveyed by Robert Fishman (see cover story). Immigration is a driving force behind many of the most important changes in the city. Although it may not be as visible as the interstate highway system, this social force has had profound economic and physical impacts.

Immigration is well recognized for its importance in building cities prior to 1920, but many experts and policy makers fail to perceive its continuing influence through the 1950s, its ebbing impact during the 1960s and 1970s, or its resurgence in the 1980s and '90s. The effect of immigration is to bring new residents to large cities, concentrating them in older gateway neighborhoods where they take root and invest their energies. The housing and retail markets at the heart of many of our large cities are sustained by these new arrivals. And the ready supply of willing workers encourages new job creation.

The outcomes of immigration were very different at the beginning and end of the last half century. At mid-century, immigration had devastating impacts on central cities by virtue of its withdrawal. A series of legislative acts in the 1920s virtually cut off the previously high flows of immigrants who had come largely from Europe. In 1940, Homer Hoyt prophesied the effects this sharply curtailed immigration would have on central-city neighborhoods. He saw cutting off the waves of immigrant residents as robbing central-city neighorhoods of the replacements required in the past to fill vacancies left by their upwardly mobile neighbors.

Often the withdrawal of a factor can become as important as its presence, but it does become harder to see in its absence.

Immigration undergirded a number of the factors on Fishman's list of important influences in the last half century. The urban crisis of population decline, decaying neighborhoods, and disinvestment (number 3 on the list) was due in large part to immigration's sharp curtailment. Indeed, urban renewal (number 4) was precipitated not simply by the withdrawal of upwardly mobile residents, but equally by the failure of replacements to arrive. Obsolescence of the aged housing stock was surely also important, and long-settled immigrants in the West End of Boston are a famous case of eviction, but urban renewal would have been far harder to pursue as a policy had large numbers of new immigrants been pressing into many cities. It was the vacuum created by curtailed immigration that made urban renewal possible.


The end of the century has been entirely different, reflecting immigration's dramatic rebound after decline at mid-century. The figure illustrates the collapse and recovery of immigration, depicting the percentage of the total U.S. population in each year that had arrived in only the past decade. The era of urban decline ushered in by the plunge in new arrivals-from 3 percent of the total population in 1920 to less than 1.5 percent in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s-was delayed by the Great Depression and World War II. From 1970 through 2000, the new arrival share surged upward from 1.4 to 4.5 percent of the population. The number of recent arrivals living in the United States soared from 2.8 million to 12 million in that time.

Magnifying the effects of resurgent immigration, the inflows are highly concentrated in many of the nation's largest and most important cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, Houston, and others. Increasingly, those effects are spreading to smaller cities across the nation. One of the most dramatic consequences is the revitalization of many depressed neighborhoods. Nowhere is this more important than in New York, a city subject to substantial outmigration and that would have sustained a population decline of 5 percent or more in just a decade but for the arrival of new immigrants from many lands. Neighborhoods across that city have been infused with new commercial vitality. The spectre of abandonment and the depression of the South Bronx has been erased from that city.

Looking toward the future, we can expect the impacts of immigration to continue and spread, both as new residents continue to arrive and as previous arrivals settle in. Research sponsored by Fannie Mae Foundation shows that immigrants will account for almost one-quarter of all new households nationwide, and this share will be much higher in port-of-entry cities. Much of this growth will come from immigrants who already reside in the United States but will be moving upward in the market.

Surely what was invisible in the past will become better recognized in the future. Once again, however, the panel of experts failed to detect the critical importance of this demographic trend. Instead, most of the panelists foresaw continuation and intensification of the old urban crisis, ignoring the reversal that immigration has already launched in many (not all) cities.

Demographic factors were identified as important by a small cluster of the experts, but the wrong factors were emphasized. The panel favored the importance of the aging of the baby- boom generation and shrinking household size. In many cities, however, household sizes have already slowed their descents and even increased, in part due to immigration's effects. Certainly the aging of the baby boomers deserves recognition, but even that widespread factor is outweighed by immigration. Thirty years into the new century, baby boomers will account for 18 percent of our population. At that time, the foreign born and their children will account for an even greater number of residents. If this population remains as concentrated in cities as it is today, immigrants' importance will be accentuated relative to that of baby boomers. Indeed, in Los Angeles, the foreign-born residents already account for 38 percent of the population, without even counting their children.

As a final thought, it might not be so surprising that these urban experts have underestimated the importance of immigration. My recent review of urban theory finds systematic neglect of immigration and related factors that I characterize as "demographic dynamism." Urban theory is guided by old concerns of race and class that were prominent in the 1960s, and that remain with us today. What is neglected and not yet comprehended are the new forces of immigration and demographic dynamism that will propel our cities into the new century.

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Dowell Myers is professor of urban planning and demography in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California.


He suggests the following as further reading to learn more about immigration and cities: