The suburbanization of employment is examined as a key change in metropolitan settlement structure. Settlement structure refers to the physical landscape of the city and the social landscape of boundaries and routes. The study seeks a middle ground between the breadth of a national study and the depth of a local study. Conditions that characterize contemporary urban policy in the United States are reviewed as a prelude to detailed information on the changing location of employment in a group of large metropolitan areas. A third section discusses the implications for antipoverty strategy of poverty concentration and job suburbanization. A powerful metropolitan pattern of poverty at the center, with opportunity only at the edge, is emerging, giving the search for antipoverty strategies a profoundly geographic character. The three basic strategies that have been attempted so far are dispersal of the poor from the city centers, development of the inner city, and providing for the mobility of inner city residents to enable them to reach jobs. The last alternative deserves a demonstration trial as part of a comprehensive approach to residence and employment patterns. (Contains 64 figures.) (SLD)