Ethnic division outside Boston

Metropolitan Boston became more racially diverse in the 1990s, but the booming growth of minority residents in so-called satellite cities outside the urban core occurred largely along segregated lines, according to a study to be released today by Harvard University's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.

Overall, the metropolitan region's 5.3 million residents continue to live in relatively segregated neighborhoods, according to the analysis of 2000 Census data.

The trends suggest that metropolitan Boston is at a crossroads, said the study's author, Guy Stuart, associate professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

''One road leads to the consolidation of segregation and the growing isolation of people of different races and ethnicities, with the region's satellite cities becoming ever more isolated minority ghettos," Stuart said in the report. ''The other road leads to integration, a diverse mix of populations throughout the metropolitan region."

In his study, Stuart found that:

The percentage of non-Latino white residents in metropolitan Boston declined from 87 percent in 1990 to 81 percent in 2000. The metropolitan area, as defined in the study, includes seven counties and stretches from Buzzards Bay in the south to the New Hampshire border in the north and to the western boundary of Worcester County.

Nonwhites and Latinos are moving to satellite cities in large and disproportionate numbers. While 15 percent of the region lived in satellite cities in 2000, for example, 34 percent of the area's Latinos resided there. The study listed the satellite cities as Attleboro, Brockton, Fall River, Fitchburg, Gloucester, Lawrence, Leominster, Lowell, New Bedford, and Worcester.

At 81 percent, the area's non-Latino white population is much larger than in comparable areas nationwide. Across the United States, non-Latino whites comprise 66 percent of the metropolitan regions.

The region's nonwhite and Latino communities are extremely diverse, with roughly equal numbers of blacks, Asians, and Latinos. Each group has a robust degree of ethnic diversity. About 26 percent of the black population, for example, is foreign-born. Nationwide, the figure is 6 percent.

Greater Boston's 6 percent population growth in the 1990s was due solely to the growth in nonwhite and Latino residents.

Stuart said in an interview that the comparably sized nonwhite groups in Greater Boston alter the stereotypical view of relations in the area.

''The images you have of Boston in terms of race relations often focus on black-white relations," the author said. ''Those are still important divides, but there's also a greater context."

An important part of that context is the dramatic population shift in the satellite cities, where a significant degree of white flight apparently occurred in the 1990s, Stuart said. In the satellite cities, whites who departed either moved to another community or shifted to blocks where whites already had been disproportionately represented.

''Boston gets a lot of attention," Stuart said, ''but people need to pay attention to what's going on in these satellite cities to make sure that government and private services are going to those cities in proportion to other places."

In Lawrence, for example, the Asian population increased 82 percent in the 1990s, the Latinos grew 47 percent, and black residents increased by 39 percent. The white population declined 36 percent in the decade.

In New Bedford, the Asian population increased 96 percent; Latinos, 57 percent; and blacks, 44 percent. The number of white residents declined 16 percent.

Stuart said that the growth of nonwhite residents in the satellite cities does not appear to be driven by cheaper housing costs outside the capital.

''There's obviously an immigrant network effect: People come and seek places where there are people from their country," Stuart said. ''We also need to look at the extent to which that network's effect is exacerbated by the practices of real estate agents."

Stuart's research found a trend in which more nonwhites and Latinos are moving to the predominantly white suburbs, but they appear to be clustering in similar blocks and neighborhoods.

In 1990, Stuart said, a black suburban resident lived on a block that averaged about 10.5 percent black; in 2000, the figure was 13 percent. For suburban Asians in 1990, their average block was just under 10 percent Asian; in 2000, the average was more than 14.5 percent.

Whites in the suburbs apparently have little exposure to nonwhite and Latino neighbors. In 2000, the average suburban block in metropolitan Boston was 93 percent white.

Even whites in the urban core -- defined as Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Lynn, Malden, Somerville, and Waltham -- lived on blocks that averaged 75 percent white.

In the satellite cities, Stuart found, Asians and Latinos are particularly isolated.

Although Asians make up 5 percent of the population in the peripheral cities, the average Asian in those communities lives on a block that is 25 percent Asian. For Latinos, who make up 15 percent of the satellite cities, the average Latino lived on a block that was 46 percent Latino.

In those cities, many blocks where whites had disproportionate representation in 1990 raised their share of white residents by 2000.

''If these trends continue," Stuart said, ''satellite cities will become more racially and ethnically divided, as whites either leave or move to enclaves that are already largely white, in the face of a rapidly expanding nonwhite and Latino community."