Community Satisfaction and Prospective Intra-Urban Mobility: Detroit, Michigan, a Case Study.

In this study an attempt is made to assess intra-urban mobility by race through a 1975 survey of residents in Detroit and surrounding suburbs. To accomplish this task several hypotheses are posed in the context of prospective mobility and tested quantitatively, primarily by employing multivariate nominal-scale analysis (MNA) and contingency tables. Results are displayed on numerous tables and are found throughout the text. Hypothesis I tests the proposition that there is no association between satisfaction with public services and plans to move. Tests of this hypothesis reveals that blacks in Detroit have both a higher level of dissatisfaction with city services and a greater propensity to remain city residents than whites. However the lack of a difference between these racial groups in plans to leave their current homes directs the analysis to the notion of self-selected place utility, particularly Hypothesis II: that metropolitan residents differ in their awareness of municipal alternatives for residential relocation; and Hypothesis III: that opinions about the influence of social and ethnic groups of which central city residents are members is directly associated with their mobility decisions. Results from testing Hypothesis I indicate that dissatisfaction with services directly affects the mobility decisions of central city residents. Though race is the dominant differential of residents who migrate from the city, tests of Hypothesis II reveal that municipal alternatives for services are more often acknowledged by city residents on the basis of socioeconomic status than on the basis of race. Tests of Hypothesis III support the contemporary conclusion that a decision to leave the city or to remain in the city is strongly associated with the low evaluation of own-group influence. The mobility plans of both black and white central city residents were found to have an association with the claim of lack of influence within the region on the part of both racial groups. Yet white residents of the city were more likely than blacks to seek resolution of their lack of influence by plans to move out of the city.PhDUrban planningUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159629/1/8324267.pd