Sunbelt

The Sunbelt is an innately geographical idea but one without a clear geographical definition. The term connotes a region (or regions) of the United States characterized by rapid post–World War II economic maturation and growth. In economic terms, two trends stand out. The first of these is the relocation of U.S. manufacturing employment from the Great Lakes region (“Rust Belt” or “Snowbelt”) to new industrial clusters in the warmer climates of the southeastern and southwestern United States. This shift was fueled in part by the comparative advantages of lower labor costs and proximity to raw materials (especially oil), as well as by the advent of air conditioning, which made tolerable the extreme heat and humidity that characterized much of the southern tier of the United States. The second, more recent, trend is the spectacular growth in producer services jobs in banking, insurance, information, and technology in the urban Sunbelt (metropolitan regions such as Charlotte, Atlanta, Austin, Phoenix, and San Diego; see Figure 1).

The “belt” in Sunbelt refers to a southern, balmy arc of the United States, stretching from the Carolinas to California. The origins of the term are commonly attributed to Kevin Phillips in his book The Emerging Republican Majority. Phillips argued that the Sunbelt region had evolved into a key geographical focal point for a conservative revolution in American politics, characterized by an unlikely coalition of disaffected Southern whites, Western libertarians, and California cold warriors. This thesis has been complicated by subsequent elections, most notably the 2008 U.S. presidential election, which highlighted how problematic it is to group together states such as Georgia, Florida, California, and Arizona politically.

Population growth in the contemporary Sunbelt has partly resulted from in-migration from northern, particularly Rustbelt, states. A large proportion of these in-migrants are retirees, although the demographic makeup of these new arrivals is by no means homogeneous. Furthermore, the southward shift in manufacturing and service jobs growth has been mirrored by a shift in major immigrant destinations from the traditional immigrant gateways of the major northern cities to places in the Sunbelt. Many of these “New Americans” have adopted the auto-centered, suburban lifestyle that is predominant in the Sunbelt, resulting in remarkably diverse and decentralized immigrant communities in some Sunbelt metropolitan areas. Places such as Chamblee, Doraville, and Norcross in the suburbs of Atlanta and places such as Irving, Garland, and Plano in the Dallas metropolitan area have attracted large non-native-born populations in largely suburban settings. Some observers [Page 2724]have argued that the essential qualities of a Sunbelt metropolis are that it is young, fast growing, auto centered, and sprawling, but the Sunbelt is also increasingly home to diverse groups of new immigrants.

Figure 1 Although its definitions and meanings are often nebulous, the Sunbelt (designated in blue) is generally taken to mean the balmier, southern reaches of the United States.

Source: Barney Warf.

Is all this enough to make the Sunbelt a coherent region? Attempts at defining the Sunbelt as a coherent geographical region fall short in several respects. First, it is not monolithic. The stereotypical image of the sun-drenched southern tier of the United States transforming from an economic backwater to a large swathe of nouveau riche fails to capture the spatial variability within the Sunbelt. First, much of the Sunbelt continues to struggle with the challenges presented by the pronounced urban-rural split in terms of spatial wealth distribution. Second, the term is relatively imprecise and geographically uncertain. Does Bend, Oregon, which lies in the high desert region in the rain shadow of the Cascades and has experienced explosive amenity-fueled growth qualify as part of the Sunbelt? What about other Sunbelt regions outside the United States, such as Australia's Gold Coast and England's M-4 corridor? Third, some have argued that the Sunbelt terminology was a construct that had been thrust on those living there. One of the most notable observers of American vernacular regions, Wilbur Zelinsky, noted as much when he wrote in a seminal article that Sunbelt was a “deplorable” term, because it was created by elites and handed down to the people rather than the other way around.

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