Recently my office bought new software that allows you to plot data onto a map by any demographic. Literally, you can plot data of houses that were built before 1940 by every county in America. I am not sure why you would need to, but the point is you can (as pointed out below).
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| Number of houses built before 1940 in Washington, DC. Darker shades of red represent the larger number of house build before 1940. |
Once I learned how to use the new software, you better believe I had some fun with it. I have done a good amount of research looking at school segregation within the state of North Carolina among African Americans. The current literature attributes school segregation in large part to residential segregation. However, there is much discussion on the importance of geographic area and the number of students in a school district. Current research shows evidence that both geographical area of a school district and the number of students in the school district have direct relationships with levels of school segregation. However, I always believed there was a missing element that could bridge the gap between area and student enrollment. That variable is density, and until now, it was never tested in regards to school segregation.
I used North Carolina as a model to analyze the way density affects school segregation for a number of reasons. The primary reasons are that North Carolina contains countywide school districts (school districts and counties can be used interchangeably because the school district is countywide). North Carolina segregated its schools based on race during the Jim Crowe Era. After the abolition of “Separate but Equal,” North Carolina was involved in desegregation efforts via busing. The state has a rich history of school segregation, and it is interesting to see the effectiveness of the policies.
I ran some regressions on density and it showed that density was a significant contributor to levels of school segregation. It could be expected, from the regression model, that as the density of a school district increases by one percent, overall school segregation within the county should decrease by .186 percent.
If you look at the first map of North Carolina, it shows density levels in each measurable countywide school district (84 in total). The blue spots on the map represent high or low-density areas. The second map looks at school segregation levels.
As you can see from comparing both maps, school districts that are denser tend to be less segregated than less dense districts, which is also proven by the regression. There are good reasons why this finding is important. Demographic trends play a huge part in political outcomes. In the time between 1990 and 2000, the population of North Carolina grew by more than 21%, which means the state has become denser.
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| Map 1: Density by county. The darker the shade of red represents denser areas. |
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| Map 2: School segregation by County. The darker the shade of red, the higher level of school segregation within the school district. |
The purpose of this research was to analyze how dense areas (cities) and non-dense areas (rural areas) relate in terms of school segregation. Current demographics show that cities are becoming more populated. The problem that comes with a growing population is urban sprawl. What happens under urban sprawl is city limits expand to accommodate the growing population. There are a good amount of issues with this, including traffic congestion and environmental issues. However, along with urban sprawl comes school segregation. In order to have declining levels of school segregation, you need the number of students per square mile to increase. If the district enrollment/square miles (which is the formula for density) has growth in the denominator, even if district enrollment grows, you will not achieve desegregation because of the growing geographical area. The better way to alleviate a growing population is to build within the city. Renovating depressed areas, improving transportation in downtown areas and other ways to maintain a more dense population will alleviate the problems that are associated with growing populations.
