Same Neighbourhood … Different Views? A Confrontation of Internal and External Neighbourhood Reputations

Residents and non-residents are likely to think differently about a neighbourhood's reputation. Relatively little is known about the similarities and differences between these internal and external types of neighbourhood reputation or the relationship between reputations and ‘real’ or ‘objective’ neighbourhood characteristics. This paper addresses two points: first, the extent to which neighbourhood reputations differ between and within groups; second, the extent to which these neighbourhood reputations are associated with measured neighbourhood characteristics. Data from a specially designed survey carried out in 24 neighbourhoods in Utrecht, the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, are used. Analysis of the data showed that neighbourhood reputations are rated higher by residents and estate agents than by other city residents. Within the group of other city residents, differences were found in how neighbourhood reputations are rated by socio-economic status, ethnicity and educational background. Further, it was found that neighbourhood reputations are correlated with measured social characteristics of the neighbourhood, while physical and functional neighbourhood characteristics are of less importance.     

Why do residents want to leave deprived neighbourhoods? The importance of residents’ subjective evaluations of their neighbourhood and its reputation

Many area-based initiatives in deprived urban neighbourhoods seek to reduce the number of residents who move away from the area. One common objective is to keep those with jobs or middle incomes in order to avoid further concentration of poor people and social problems. This paper is based on a study of how residents in 12 deprived urban areas in Denmark evaluate their neighbourhood and how this is connected to their wish to move or stay. The purpose is to expose the importance of residents’ subjective evaluations of the neighbourhood and its reputation for their inclination to stay or move away. Some conclusions are drawn for area-based initiatives that could reduce mobility. The study shows a strong connection between residents’ perception of the reputation of their neighbourhood and their plans to move, but it also shows that other factors have great importance too. Dissatisfaction due to social problems and crime are the main reasons for moving away from deprived neighbourhoods, especially among residents in employment. Strong social relations within the neighbourhood prove to significantly reduce the intention to move.     

Perceptions of Neighbourhood Disorder and Reputation: Qualitative Findings from Two Contrasting Areas of an Australian City

Within Australian cities, social and economic inequalities manifest themselves spatially. Perceived neighbourhood disorder and neighbourhood reputation are relevant to considering the ways in which social and economic inequalities translate into place-based inequalities. This article explores the ways in which residents of two socio-economically contrasting urban areas describe and explain neighbourhood disorder and neighbourhood reputation. It draws upon qualitative data from 40 in-depth interviews, in addition to quantitative data from a postal survey. The qualitative findings highlighted how issues of neighbourhood disorder and reputation were intertwined. In both areas, participants sought to portray themselves and their neighbourhoods in positive ways, by attributing responsibility for neighbourhood disorder to people who were unlike themselves, and by highlighting places that were perceived to have worse reputations and higher levels of disorder. The findings are considered in light of Bourdieu's theory of capitals. This article indicates that both neighbourhood disorder and reputation are pathways through which social, economic and health inequities are maintained in urban areas.     

Living through gentrification: subjective experiences of local,non-gentrifying residents in Leith,Edinburgh

The process of gentrification is often seen as having winners and losers; the debate frequently is centred on the gentrifiers and those being displaced by them. However, the process appears to be more complex, and in many gentrifying neighbourhoods, there are residents who do not fit into these categories. This paper explores the subjective experiences of those who have lived through the process of gentrification. By using interviews with local residents in a gentrifying neighbourhood in Edinburgh, Scotland, a new viewpoint has been uncovered that found residents who were simultaneously embracing of and cautious about the rapid changes taking place in their gentrifying community. This paper examines three elements: housing, amenities and social interactions, and how local residents, who are not incoming gentrifiers, perceive these changes in their neighbourhood. While many residents welcomed some of the changes, there also appeared to be a ‘not for us’ sentiment. This research sheds new light on an important element of the population involved in the process, and suggests that gentrification is more complex and nuanced than often portrayed.     

Social norms in distressed neighbourhoods: testing the Wilson hypothesis

Poverty or distressed neighbourhoods are assumed to have a negative impact on their residents, e.g. on deviant behaviour. This context effect is reviewed, in particular the work of Wilson (1987). Based upon his assumptions, the paper analyses the impact of distressed neighbourhoods on the acceptance of deviant behaviour by their residents in a sample of four neighbourhoods in Cologne, Germany. Findings support some of Wilson's propositions, in particular the impact of the neighbourhood on the acceptance of deviant behaviour, even when individual variables are controlled. In contrast, the assumed impact of exposure to neighbourhood on deviant norms, measured by time spent in the neighbourhood and total network size, are supported only in bivariate but not multivariate analyses. It is found, however, that total network size and annoyance about deviance are negatively related to acceptance of deviance.     

Territoriality and disadvantage among young people: an exploratory study of six British neighbourhoods

This paper aims to explore the sources, the characteristics and the impacts of territoriality among young people in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and to consider to what extent territoriality is a distinctive source of disadvantage. The essence of territoriality is that control is claimed by one group over a defined space and defended against others. The paper is intended as a contribution to the debate about the social dynamics that underlie neighbourhood effects, that is the question of whether there are independent effects on individuals’ life chances that arise from living in a particular neighbourhood. The evidence presented comes from semi-structured interviews and from focus groups with young people in six British cities. The findings are that territoriality is a part of everyday life for young people in the research sites. It is a cultural expectation, passed down to young people from older generations, often with deep historical roots. It emerges from young people’s close identification with small home neighbourhoods, and is often expressed in violent conflict with territorial groups from other areas. The impacts of territoriality behaviour include restricting young people to their home neighbourhood, cutting them off from opportunities in the wider city, and criminalisation. They fall most heavily on boys and young men who have a core involvement in territorial conflict. However, other young people, including those who had no active involvement in territorial groups also experience restrictions on their freedom to travel. There is also evidence in some areas that low level, routine territoriality could be a foundation for the formation of criminal gangs involved in drugs distribution and violent crime. In bringing to the surface this previously poorly documented form of social behaviour the paper adds to the argument that place matters to people’s life chances in poor areas.     

Residents’ preferences for walkable neighbourhoods

The ‘walkable neighbourhood’ is promoted by planners and designers as a normative goal yet resident responses to this environment, the ultimate occupants of these settings, remain unclear. Completing focus groups with 11 diverse residents’ groups, a critically understudied politically engaged population which often seeks to shape planning practice, this paper unpacks residents’ environmental preferences and examines their relationship to neighbourhood attributes commonly associated with walking. Five dominant preferences relating to local amenities, social interaction, noise, greenspace and density were identified. Positive interactions between these and the considered attributes suggest that groups might find much to like in the walkable neighbourhood. The implications for delivering walkable neighbourhoods are considered.     

Ethnic differences in realising desires to leave urban neighbourhoods

Selective mobility into and out of urban neighbourhoods is one of the main driving forces of segregation. Earlier research has found group differences in who wants to leave or who leaves certain types of neighbourhoods. A factor that has received little attention so far is that some residents will have a desire to leave their neighbourhood, but are unable to do so. If there are differences between population groups in the realisation of desires to leave the neighbourhood, this might lead to involuntary segregation. This paper uses a unique combination of register data and survey data. We combine data from a large housing survey in the Netherlands (WoON) with longitudinal register data from the Netherlands (SSD) which contains individual-level information on residential mobility histories. This allows us to study whether households with a desire to leave their neighbourhood do realise this desire and which households are successful in leaving which neighbourhoods. A more thorough insight in who wants to leave which neighbourhoods but is unable to do so will contribute to a better understanding of selective mobility and segregation. We find that ethnic minorities and low-income households are less likely to realise a desire to leave their neighbourhood. We expected that ethnic minorities would be especially unsuccessful in realising desires to leave minority concentration neighbourhoods; however, for none of the ethnic groups we found an effect of neighbourhood ethnic composition on the realisation of desires to leave.     

Natives’ opinions on ethnic residential segregation and neighbourhood diversity in Helsinki,Oslo and Stockholm

Nordic countries rank high on measures indicating tolerant views on immigrants. Yet, ethnic residential segregation is stated as being a major social problem in these countries. Neighbourhood flight and avoidance behaviour among the native born could be a sign of less tolerant views on minorities, but could of course be restricted to native-born residents in areas of high-ethnic concentration. So far, no research in these countries has explicitly focused on the majority population’s view on segregation, and we know little about how native-born residents in different neighbourhood contexts view ethnic segregation or how own residential experience shapes decisions on staying or leaving; this paper aims to help fill this research lacuna. In a survey targeting 9000 native-born residents in three Nordic capital cities—stratified into neighbourhood movers and stayers and into neighbourhoods having different proportions of non-Nordic-born residents—we answer three questions: do native-born respondents prefer a neighbourhood ethnic mix? Do they see ethnic segregation as a problem? Do they prefer lower, current or higher shares of ethnic minorities in their own neighbourhoods?     

Relocation Counselling and Supportive Services as Tools to Prevent Negative Spillover Effects: A Review

This paper aims to review the literature on negative neighbourhood spillovers connected to four voluntary housing mobility programs: Gautreaux 1 and Gautreaux 2 (Chicago), the Moving to Opportunity Fair Housing Demonstration (five cities) and the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program. Although these four programs involve voluntary moves, a great deal may be learned from them because of (1) efforts to forestall community opposition and (2) special counselling and supportive programs provided to ease adjustment into destination neighbourhoods. Unfortunately, the available research often falls short in providing evidence for or against negative spillover effects. Nevertheless, our review indicates that screening out multi-problem families, limiting the number of housing voucher families moving into particular neighbourhoods and providing both pre- and post-relocation counselling to program participants can minimize the risk of negative neighbourhood spillovers.     

The Wish to Leave Ethnically Concentrated Neighbourhoods: The Role of Perceived Social Cohesion and Interethnic Attitudes

This paper aims to investigate the motives behind people's wishes to move out of ethnically concentrated neighbourhoods. We focus on the impact of perceived social cohesion and negative interethnic attitudes and hypothesise on moving wishes of ethnic majority and minority residents in the Netherlands (i.e. Turks and Moroccans). Data were derived from the first wave of the 2009 Netherlands Longitudinal Lifecourse Study, collected in 35 municipalities covering 800 neighbourhoods. Taking into account household, housing and other neighbourhood attributes, multilevel logistic regression models show that ethnic majority residents are more likely to have a wish to move when they live in neighbourhoods with a large percentage of ethnic minorities. This can be explained by a lack of perceived social cohesion, but not by their negative attitudes towards ethnic minorities. Controlling for housing and neighbourhood conditions, the percentage of ethnic minorities neither increases nor decreases minority residents' moving wishes.     

Whites' neighbourhood racial preferences and neighbourhood racial composition in the United States: evidence from the multi‐city study of urban inequality

Within the housing segregation literature major disagreements have developed over two fundamental issues: (1) the role that whites' aversion to racially mixed neighbourhoods plays in causing modern segregation in the US; and (2) the factors that underlie this aversion, including the effects of inter‐racial contact on whites' neighbourhood racial preferences and whether these preferences reflect neighbourhood stereotyping as opposed to pure racial prejudice. Extant evidence on these issues is either old or indirect. This paper provides direct evidence on these issues using new data from the Multi‐City Study of Urban Inequality. The results suggest that (1) whites' neighbourhood racial preferences play an important role in explaining the racial composition of their neighbourhoods; (2) inter‐racial contact in neighbourhoods and workplaces leads to a greater willingness among whites to live with blacks; and (3) although younger and more educated whites express a stronger taste for integration than other whites, the magnitude of these differences leads to only a small increase in the black percentage of the neighbourhood. In addition, the results provide no evidence in support of the hypothesis that whites stereotype black neighbourhoods rather than blacks per se.     

The Impact of Residential Mobility on Measurements of Neighbourhood Effects

Neighbourhoods and cities are dynamic; their characteristics and relative positions change over time due to constant moves in and out. However, neighbourhood effect theory and most attempts to quantitatively estimate neighbourhood effects seem to treat neighbourhoods as if they were static. This paper argues that such a view is not only strange but may also result in biased estimates. Four methodological challenges are highlighted that are directly related to mobility: (1) measures of exposure time; (2) neighbourhood change; (3) selection bias; and (4) endogeneity. These are all topics worthy of scholarly interest in themselves, but also challenges that all neighbourhood effect studies must address to convincingly argue that their results are indicative of causal relationships—results of neighbourhood transmission mechanisms—and not just statistical correlations. The paper discusses how and to what extent these challenges have been met by the quantitative neighbourhood effect literature and gives directions to future research.     

Individual differences in the neighbourhood level determinants of residential satisfaction

Abstract

Residential satisfaction is a key variable in understanding residential mobility. Many researchers have studied the individual level and neighbourhood level determinants of satisfaction, however, very few have studied which neighbourhood characteristics affect satisfaction for whom. In this paper, ordered logit models are estimated, explaining satisfaction from neighbourhood characteristics, personal characteristics and interactions. These interactions test whether neighbourhood characteristics have similar effects on satisfaction for all individuals, or whether individual characteristics affect the size and direction of these effects. Satisfaction is found to be less affected by the share of ethnic minorities for ethnic minorities than for natives, because minorities are more satisfied in neighbourhoods with higher shares of their own ethnic group. Neighbourhood characteristics are found to have a stronger effect on satisfaction for owner-occupiers and parents with children than for others, however the impact of neighbourhood ethnic composition does not vary with tenure or household type.     

Why Won’t Downtown Johannesburg ‘Regenerate’? Reassessing Hillbrow as a Case Example

This paper argues that neighbourhood change in Hillbrow is not concomitant with the linear processes of urban decline and economic resurgence. Instead, neighbourhood change is shaped by situated histories, politics and economics, in addition to the activities of diverse local actors. It also argues that despite severe physical decay, a history of being redlined and limited public sector support for the provision of public services, Hillbrow remains a resilient port-of-entry neighbourhood to Johannesburg for many residents who desire to engage in local and transnational economies. Current debates on urban land markets, therefore, necessitate an awareness of the roles that port-of-entry neighbourhoods facilitate in (mega)cities, and alternative urban planning responses to conventional regeneration strategies that are based on liberal market rationalities alone.     

The impact of gentrification on ethnic neighbourhoods in Toronto: a case study of little Portugal

Despite extensive literature on the nature and impact of gentrification, there has been little consideration of the effects of gentrification on ethnic neighbourhoods. This study evaluates the negative and positive effects of gentrification on the Portuguese in west central Toronto. Details concerning the settlement patterns of the Portuguese, the characteristics of Portuguese residents and patterns of gentrification in inner-city Toronto were obtained from census data. Evaluations of neighbourhood change and attitudes of the residents towards gentrification were obtained from key informant and focus group interviews. The results suggest considerable ambivalence among the respondents, but most agreed that the long-term viability of Little Portugal as an immigrant reception area with a good supply of low-cost housing is in doubt.     

Local Social Networks and Social Resources in Two Dutch Neighbourhoods

Much research in neighbour relations is inspired by two research questions. First, it is necessary to know to which degree social contacts are local and in particular whether local social contacts in disadvantaged neighbourhoods bear an instrumental disadvantage. Second, it is necessary to know whether policies aiming at mixing people from different social and ethnic backgrounds result in more diverse networks and therefore in better opportunities for low-income residents. To address these questions, this paper compares the role of local relationships and the social resources they provide in a low-income neighbourhood and a socio-economic mixed neighbourhood in the Netherlands. Contrary to assumptions in the research literature, residents in the low-income neighbourhood do not differ from their counterparts in the mixed neighbourhood in the degree to which they receive social support for dealing with everyday problems. However, networks of low-income residents provided fewer resources in terms of accessed prestige.     

Neighbouring house transaction response to assisted living facilities and nursing homes

Abstract

Senior group housing that offers services signals that its residents have physical and/or cognitive limitations, which may be viewed as a neighbourhood disamenity. Buyers may discount house values near group homes due to negative perception of the residents or the structure. Most senior group home residents come from the surrounding community; therefore, residents of neighbourhoods with a large proportion of older residents may perceive nearby senior housing as desirable. We employ a system of equations to examine the influence of assisted living and nursing homes on single-family house sales prices and time-on-the market. The results indicate that the presence of a senior group home, especially a nursing home, within one-half mile has a significant negative effect on single-family house prices. The effect is most evident in neighbourhoods with few elderly residents. A clustering effect is present in non-distressed sales. The scale of a nearby senior group home contributes to a longer marketing duration, especially for distressed sales.     

Neighbourhood ties and employment: a test of different hypotheses across neighbourhoods

Abstract

This study examines to which extent neighbourhood ties relate to employment status for the less-well educated inhabitants of 71 neighbourhoods in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. Previous research has produced different expectations as to whether having contact with neighbours is either positively or negatively related to being employed and how this relation differs across neighbourhoods. Two waves from the Neighbourhood Profile survey (N?=?8507) were used, which included measures of the contact frequency with neighbours and their willingness to help. We find that for the less-well educated neighbourhood ties have a modest negative relation to employment. Moreover, this relation does not vary across neighbourhoods with different socioeconomic statuses, with the exception of part-time working men. Our research implies that neighbourhood ties in mixed neighbourhoods do not positively relate to employment for the less-well educated, thereby questioning policy assumptions about ‘social mix’. Contributions to the field of neighbourhood studies are made by employing measures of the social networks mechanism and taking into account the conditionality of effects across neighbourhoods.     

Meanings of housing qualities in suburbia: empirical evidence from Auckland, New Zealand

Housing research has mostly addressed notions of housing qualities either from a quantitative approach or through the provision and availability of housing. The literature has predominantly focused on physical structures, often neglecting residents’ experiences of the built environment. Including individuals’ perceptions of their dwelling environment can add insights valuable to planning and design efforts which are aimed at providing good ‘quality’ and need to be taken into account in concepts of housing quality. The present study considers the housing qualities of a suburban built environment as psychological and socio-cultural aspects that are experienced by residents. Owner-occupants’ perceptions of housing quality are illustrated through the use of ‘tag clouds’ that represent visual dwelling-quality profiles. They highlight which attributes of the occupants’ living environment are meaningful to them and how they achieve a greater sense of belonging in the dwelling as well as in the neighbourhood. This paper draws on results from in-depth interviews and brainstorming about housing qualities with 19 owner-occupants in the suburb of Farm Cove in Manukau City in the Auckland Region, New Zealand. Two predominant age groups were identified in this case study: the elderly long-term residents who moved to the area in the 1970s during the time of suburbanization; and families in their thirties and early forties who moved to the area in recent years. The paper reveals a shift in experienced housing qualities from tangible among the younger cohort towards more intangible qualities among the elderly. An assessment of the findings suggests a need for future planning which caters for more heterogeneous housing qualities.