Abstract
Racial change in urban neighborhoods has often been attributed to the growth of Negro population to a critical “tipping-point”—a sufficiently large proportion of total occupancy to precipitate rapid exodus of white residents. Decisions to enter or leave an area, however, seem to be based more upon estimates of its future composition than upon the relative proportions of Negroes and whites within it at any given time. Decisions to move are also influenced by a number of characteristics of the housing market, which may be more important than the prevalence of racial prejudice in determining the rate and extent of racial change in a neighborhood.