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Suburban exploitation of the central city was once a hotly contested issue, but the exodus of people and jobs from the city and the involvement of the federal government in urban service provision have moved it from the forefront of scholarly attention. Those same developments, however argue for more rather than less attention to exploitation, and the purpose of this paper is to offer some of that. Using data collected for 188 relatively comparable American SMS As for 1960, 1970, and 1980, the paper begins with a replication of an earlier study by Kasarda of suburban demands for city service spending. It then extends that research to 1980 and expands it to asses suburban participation in city retail sales generation as well. The results indicate a substantive narrowing over time of suburban demands for city services, but a sizeable and growing gap nonetheless between expenditures demanded and retail revenues provided. The paper than turns to an analysis that attempts to test empirically th relative merits of ecological and politicoeconomic explanation for these changes. The results of that test are more supportive of the former then the latter; hence, the paper concludes with an interpretation of them that links to underlying ecological processes the changing social psychological perspective on the city and its role in social life held by surrounding suburban dwellers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]