Elizabeth Delmelle Talks Lower-Wage Jobs in the Suburbs
In the 1960s and ’70s, a hypothesis took hold among researchers that African Americans in poor neighborhoods in big cities did not have easy access to low-wage jobs that were quickly moving to the suburbs. It was called spatial mismatch hypothesis. There were transportation challenges and Black families often couldn’t move to the suburbs because of racial discrimination.
Fast-forward 50 years. Does the spatial mismatch hypothesis hold true in Charlotte? Elizabeth Delmelle, a professor of urban geography and transportation at UNC Charlotte, coauthored a research paper on that topic, and she joins WFAE’s “Morning Edition” host Marshall Terry as part of our series, Rebuilding Charlotte.