Yet the Greater Washington study found the causes and consequences of growth more complex than generally portrayed. The region is starkly divided by race, income, jobs, and opportunity. Economic and residential growth have been highly uneven, favoring one portion of the region over another. Because the rough dividing line cuts through many counties and the central city itself, it is not simply a matter of strong suburbs surrounding a weak city, or even of strong outer suburbs ringing a weak urban and inner suburban core. The District of Columbia, for example, has within its borders both affluent neighborhoods richly endowed with jobs and the region's largest concentration of poor families and welfare recipients.
Many suburban counties face the same economic and social divisions.
And the divide is growing. The population of Greater Washington grew from 3.8 million in 1990 to 4.3 million in 1998, with most growth occurring in the region's western counties. Increasingly the region's jobs are located not just outside the central city but beyond the traditional urbanized area as well. While jobs have moved westward, lower-income and minority families have tended to stay in the east. In 1996, for example, the District of Columbia and Prince George's County had 70 percent of the region's black population and 57 percent of the nonwhite population, but only 32 percent of the total population.