In wave of new cities, promise and pitfalls for black middle class

Five years ago, Jason Lary attended a workshop on how to build your own city.

He had witnessed the sprawling metro Atlanta region (pop. 5.5 million) carve 10 medium-sized cities out of unincorporated county parcels like his own in south Dekalb County in just over a decade. The recasting of some of the most sprawling suburbs in the United States with new boundaries created a giddy Sim City-like atmosphere.

The bulk of new cities ended up whiter and wealthier than the largely minority areas they left in the dust. At the workshop, Mr. Lary, an insurance executive and part-time concert promoter, was the only black person in the room.

Saying he didn’t have time to fret about it, he set aside his misgivings and took notes. And now, as of May, Lary has completed his first year as mayor of Stonecrest, a 95 percent African-American city so new that it still registers as neighboring Lithonia on GoogleMaps. Its namesake is a mall.

With its population of 53,000, it and neighboring city

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