I recently read Jessica Troutstine’s Segregation by Design.  Like other commentators on segregation, Troutstine discusses segregationist policies such as exclusionary zoning and so-called "urban renewal."  But she also uses quantitative analysis to address factors that are associated with "segregation ... between cities rather than within them"—in other words, "white flight" to suburbs.  If I am reading her analysis correctly, she suggests that where central cities "elect minority mayors [and] when they spend more money" white flight increases, while "wealthy white residents choose to remain in the central city when budgets are more austere." Similarly, federal desegregation orders apparently led to more white flight.1

Today, progressives tend to oppose exclusive magnet schools (colloquially known as "exam schools") in my city and other American cities. These schools are limited to the most academically gifted students and as a result have reputations as good as those of suburban schools, thus making the city more attractive to middle-class parents.* Conservatives tend to favor continuing these schools in their current form, thus taking what seems to me to be a pro-urban position.

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• 1. Troutstine’s conclusions seem inconsistent with the conventional wisdom that liberals are pro-urban and conservatives are anti-urban. But in the name of equity, progressives sometimes favor policies that tempt affluent voters to move to suburbs. As Troutstine points out, high taxes do make cities less attractive to middle-class taxpayers (especially where the quality of government services does not keep up with tax rates). And in the 1970s, school desegregation policies favored by liberals made city schools less attractive because suburban schools were generally not subject to court orders requiring racially balanced schools. This meant that if you lived in the city, your children had to go to an allegedly desegregated school with lots of underprivileged children, while if you lived in the suburbs, you could go to a public school dominated by children from well-off households. On the other hand, when the Supreme Court refused to extend desegregation into the suburbs, the pro-suburb majority was dominated of the Court’s more conservative justices, while more liberal justices favored desegregation of suburban schools.  I suspect that had desegregation orders been extended into suburbia, suburban schools would have been less appealing to white parents.