Policy Studies Joumal, Vol. 17, No. 4, Summer, 1989 ARTICLES OF GENERAL II^TEREST PUBUC POUCY EFFECTS ON NET URBAN MIGRATION^ Steven G. Koven Mack C. Shelley, II Iowa State University Urban dectine is a reality facing far too many large cities in the United States today. Two migration trends in particular have nega- tively impacted upon urban centers. Both the movement from metro- politan central cities to suburbs and the movement from metropolitan areas to nonmetropoiitan areas have contributed to the deciine of iarge cities. The purpose of this paper is to expand the understanding of net migration into and out of iarge cities during the decade of the 1970s. A mix of service, public policy, ecological, and economic variables was investigated, to determine which of these factors were most closely related to these recent pattems of urban migration. Whether or not urt>an public policies affect the migration rates of cities is reiated to the question of whether individual municipai deci- sion makers can influence major patterns of migration. Public officials in large cities exert some influence over such public policy questions as taxing and sperxiing, but exercise less immediate control over eco- nomic factors such as the prevailing wage in a iocaiity, service issues such as the rate of crime, or ecological matters such as the population density of an area. The reiationship of each of these sorts of variables to urban migration is therefore of interest with regard to the controi- labiiity of population trends. REVIEW OF LITERATURE Migration fias traditionally been a viable option in the United States. Lineberry and Sharkansky (1978) daimed that American cities have been shaped by five great migrations: the urbanization of the American population, the 'blackening" of the central city, the ethnic clustering in cities, the suburbanization of metropolitan populations, and the so-called 'southernization' of the American population. This 'southemization" represents a pattern of migration quite relevant