A Spatial Analysis of Socioeconomic and Demographic Change in the Lower

The U.S. economy has experienced dramatic economic changes since the late 1960's including a decline in low-skill manufacturing jobs that once supported a substantial middle-class. Many of these jobs have migrated south, out of the central cities of the Northeast. Many others have moved out of the U.S. entirely. According to much of the current urban poverty debate, these changes have adversely affected the welfare of populations living in central cities, particularly low-income Blacks and Latinos in the Northeast. As a result, these groups have grown increasingly more isolated, both physically and economically, from the mainstream. Using the Lower Merrimack Valley as a case study, a region located in the northeastem corner of Massachusetts, this thesis applies the thematic mapping capabilities of a Geographic Information System (GIS) and uses spatial analysis techniques to identify and describe socioeconomic and demographic changes in this region between 1980 and 1990. This regional analysis illustrates dramatic patterns of ghettoization and spatial isolation taking place in the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts relative to the surrounding working-class and high-income municipalities. The results of this analysis also indicate that growing poverty and spatial isolation in this small city are explained only in part by economic restructuring. Other complex forces behind these patterns include an enormous influx of Dominican and Puerto Rican immigrants to the region, uneven growth in the regional economy, and dynamics within the regional housing market. Thesis Supervisor: Lyna Wiggins Title: Associate Professor