WASHINGTON – The nation’s racial and ethnic patterns are changing dramatically this decade, according to a study released yesterday: Many Hispanic and Asian residents have staked a claim to new metropolitan areas. Black Americans have accelerated their migration to the South. And many large regions are losing white residents to smaller ones.

The nation’s Asian and Hispanic populations, which are growing faster than those of whites or blacks, are less likely this decade than in the past to move to traditional immigrant centers, the study by Brookings Institution demographer William Frey found. Frey based his work on Census Bureau population race and ethnic group estimates for 2000 through 2004.

Instead of settling in Los Angeles or Miami, a sharply rising number of Hispanics are heading for Nashville or Indianapolis. A rising number of Asians are moving to Orlando and Phoenix instead of San Francisco or New York. The traditional immigrant centers, mainly in the Southwest and West, still are home to half of Hispanics and most Asian residents, but Frey found that the newer destinations are growing faster.

“What we see is a spreading out to these newer places because there is a demand for workers,” Mr. Frey said. “To the extent we continue to need these workers – the younger part of our age structure – it’s probably going to continue.”

Meanwhile, five of the 10 metropolitan areas with the largest growth in the black population since 2000 are in the South, according to Mr. Frey’s report, an acceleration of a migration trend that began two decades ago. Greater Atlanta was the top gainer, adding nearly 184,000 black residents, three times as many as greater Washington did.

“For those African-Americans who want to go South or return South, Atlanta has to be one of the most attractive magnets for a number of reasons,” a University of Maryland sociologist and author of “The New Black Middle Class,” Bart Landry, said. “It’s less in the deep South than Mississippi or Louisiana or Texas. It has had a larger critical mass of middle class blacks than anywhere else in the South.”

However, Mr. Frey also found that the fastest-growing black populations among large metropolitan areas were in Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Orlando. Mr. Frey said this indicates that the nation’s black residents, although still strongly drawn to the South, also are willing to move to places for the economic opportunity, not because of a family or racial ties.

Meanwhile, 111 of the nation’s 361 metropolitan areas had shrinking white populations from 2000 to 2004, with the biggest losses in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Mr. Frey said he believes the main reason for this is to escape the expensive real estate and congestion, especially in coastal regions. Many whites are nearing retirement age, seeking a less costly and calmer lifestyle, he said. The most rapidly growing white populations are in Phoenix and Riverside, Calif.

“It’s not as though they are trying to get away from minorities,” he said, “but they’re older and in a different place.”