Path of Urban Decline: The Twin Cities and Ten Other U.S. Metropolitan Areas. Second in the series, What the 1990 Census Says About Minnesota.

During the decade of the 1980s, areas within Minneapolis and St. Paul that are troubled with poverty, social problems, and a deteriorating built environment have expanded at alarming rates. Is the Twin Cities following the path of other American cities into urban decline? Using data from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 censuses, changes in the Twin Cities are compared with changes in ten other metropolitan areas: six that are similar to the Twin Cities (Denver, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and Seattle) and four that are different (Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix, and St. Louis). Besides analyzing measures of poverty, four other related vaiables are examined: people on public assistance, female-headed familes, high school dropouts, and unemployed men. The Twin Cities appear to be about average on most of these variables, but the gravity of the problems in troubled areas of the two cities reminds us that the fate of any metropolitan area is tied to the health of its central cities and the support it gives to those cities.