These practices yield greater racial and economic integration within the big box itself, and, by extension, within its region. They tax wealthier city neighborhoods to help provide adequate levels of services and facilities in poorer city neighborhoods. Exclusionary zoning Despite all the racial and class divisions that still exist in most cities, big box city councils still have some concept of a broad, diverse, common constituency. The myriad little box suburban councils have no such notion. The nation s most segregated region, Metro Detroit, for example, has 239 local governments with comprehensive planning and zoning powers and 115 suburban school systems.
Southern schools are usually more integrated than southern neighborhoods.
Racial enrollment patterns in Northern schools, by contrast, generally reproduce neighborhood racial patterns. Table 5 illustrates these patterns, comparing residential segregation indices by census tract with school segregation indices by high school enrollment in 28 major metro areas for which data are available for both schools and neighborhoods. Though ordered originally by the federal courts, JCPS has been a community success story one of the most balanced and most stable integration programs in the country, as shown by Table 6. Frankly, that is a remarkable record. In fact, JCPS has the second most racially and economically integrated schools of any major central county school district that I have analyzed in the country.