Can anyone recommend any books (or even essays or articles on JSTOR and other sources) written in the past 1-10 years on the ongoing results of white flight from the early 1990s to the present, the rise of suburbia, but more importantly the current white return since the early 90s (I am interested in NYC in this context, but any city or examination of national trends is welcome) to urban centers throughout the United States? I want to read more about the return of American cities and their white populations. The reasons and why. Completely open to wild or even obvious hypotheses. Anything is open season here, from college debt, to the break down of national social safety nets, to various elections, to general disenchantment with suburban life and the skepticism to home ownership from the New Deal being a fraud. (just throwing all of that out there). Thanks in advance for your help on this.
For a start, you might want to check out The Gentrification Reader edited by Loretta Lees, Tom Slater, and Elvin Wyly which is a valuable introduction to various theories and approaches to gentrification, which often has a strong racial component along with economic aspects. These types of readers are often indispensable for expanding on research and familiarizing oneself with the major scholars in the field without having to read separate monographs.
Also, if you haven't already done so, post this question in /r/AskSocialScience - given that this issue has a strong sociological component there might be some interesting insights form the contributors there.
"Major Problems in American Urban and Suburban History" - Documents and essays. Edited by Howard Chudacoff and Peter Baldwin. You can purchase it on Amazon.
Even though it may not nail the exact specifics you are looking for, it will provide great insight to the topic you are asking about.
Hey, so from an academic, geography / spatial history perspective, I can recommend:
David Harvey is the most celebrated Marxist geographer today, and his analysis of how globalization and the logic of capital drives population shifts & underdevelopment on the level of the global and in the microcosms of modern cities themselves is both analytically rigorous and conceptually convincing. Harvey doesn't see one particular cause that explains the trends in urbanization we're seeing today - he locates the motor of this history (from suburban white flight to the gentrification of the modern city) in the structural logic of multinational capitalism itself.
Actually, now that I think about it, I can't remember how deeply Harvey focuses on cities in this particular book (this particular text may be more centered on a larger geographic scale [one that is still, of course, entwined with the fate of the city]); I recall reading it directly alongside the classic text of modern Marxist geography (after Lefebvre), which is a bit older than the period you're requesting but is still an absolute must-read & still gives insight into the questions you're asking:
Hope this helps!