PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Kiara Wyndham-Douds
TI  - Suburbs, Inc.: Exploring Municipal Incorporation as a Mechanism of Racial and Economic Exclusion in Suburban Communities
AID  - 10.7758/RSF.2023.9.2.10
DP  - 2023 Feb 01
TA  - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
PG  - 226--248
VI  - 9
IP  - 2
4099  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/9/2/226.short
4100  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/9/2/226.full
AB  - This article provides suburban scholars with a starting point for considering how municipal incorporation contributes to suburban inequality. I conduct an exploratory empirical analysis of incorporation in 2010 and find that incorporated suburbs are less racially diverse, Whiter, and have smaller shares of Black, Latinx, and Native American residents than unincorporated suburbs, suggesting that incorporation and its related municipal powers enable greater racial exclusion than strategies available to unincorporated suburbs. However, incorporated suburbs vary, and racial exclusion is most apparent in suburbs incorporated during and after the postwar suburban boom. Further, recently incorporated suburbs are more economically exclusive than unincorporated suburbs. I end by calling for greater integration of incorporation into suburban inequality research.