WHAT'S THE 'HOOD GOT TO DO WITH IT? PARENTAL PERCEPTIONS ABOUT HOW NEIGHBORHOOD MECHANISMS AFFECT THEIR CHILDREN

ABSTRACT: During the past decade, a rapidly expanding body of empirical research has emerged that statistically links disadvantaged neighborhood environments with social and economic outcomes of low‐income, minority children. Nonetheless, the mechanisms by which neighborhoods putatively affect children remain poorly understood. This article examines the perceptions of low‐income parents regarding how their neighborhood might affect their children. We examine quantitative and qualitative data gathered from phone interviews with 246 parents who live in subsidized housing scattered across a wide variety of neighborhoods in Denver, Colorado. We supplement this information with data obtained through a series of focus group interviews with a subset of these parents. Our findings indicate that low‐income parents perceive the following primary neighborhood mechanisms: (1) the degree (or lack) of social norms and collective efficacy (24%); (2) influence of children's peers (12%); (3) exposure to crime and violence (11%); and (4) the presence and quality of institutional resources (3%). Approximately one‐third of all parents reported that their neighborhood had no impact at all on their children, citing that their children were either “too young” to be affected by these mechanisms or that parents had sufficient resources to buffer any deleterious effects of the neighborhood. Parents residing in high‐poverty neighborhoods were much more likely to perceive a neighborhood effect, however. Binary and multinomial logistic regression analyses were employed to identify the extent to which an array of demographic characteristics and neighborhood type correlated with parents' perceptions. Latino parents were significantly less likely than other low‐income parents to report a neighborhood impact mechanism. Relative to those who reported no particular neighborhood impact mechanism, those who identified: (1) safety issues were more likely to have a spouse or parent present, and have low self‐esteem; (2) peer influences were more likely to have higher levels of education and live in a high‐poverty but low‐crime area.     

Inadvertent and intentional partisan residential sorting

We present evidence for two mechanisms that can explain increasing geographic divide of partisan preferences. The first is “inadvertent sorting,” where people express a preference for residential environments with features that just happen to be correlated with partisanship. The second is “intentional sorting,” where people do consider partisanship directly. We argue that the accumulating political biases visible in many neighborhoods can be the effect of some mixture of these two mechanisms. Because residential relocation often involves practical constraints and neighborhood racial composition is more important than partisanship, there is less partisan segregation across the USA than there could be based on residential preference alone.     

The Quantified Community and Neighborhood Labs: A Framework for Computational Urban Science and Civic Technology Innovation

Instrumentation of the urban environment is not by itself sufficient to have a meaningful impact on the quality, sustainability, and resilience of cities – or more broadly on urban policy and planning. Understanding the social, economic, and cultural dynamics of urban life requires both an appreciation of the social sciences and a substantive engagement with communities across neighborhoods. The “Smart City” messaging is replete with claims of the potential for sensors and information and communication technologies (ICT) to re-shape urban life, although such rhetoric ignores the practical realities and constraints of urban decision-making and the social and distributional concerns of policy outcomes. Rather, significant progress could be achieved at the neighborhood scale by focusing diverse, intensive, and persistent real-time data collection and analysis on a “Quantified Community” (QC). The QC—a long-term neighborhood informatics research initiative—is a network of instrumented urban neighborhoods that collect, measure, and analyze data on physical and environmental conditions and human behavior to provide a rich resource to better understand how neighborhoods and the built environment affect individual and social well-being. The resulting unique experimental environment provides a testing ground for new physical and informatics technologies, policies, and behavioral interventions, allowing for unprecedented studies in urban planning and design, urban systems engineering and management, and the social sciences. Focusing on the neighborhood scale also allows for meaningful interaction with, and participation by, the people who live, work, and play in that space and shifts the emphasis of data-driven design away from top-down routinization to a human-centric problem-solving. This paper presents the conceptual framework and justification for the QC, built on the lessons learned from three initial deployments in New York City, and a networked experimental environment of neighborhood labs.     

Exploring the consequences of segregation through residents' experiences: Evidence of a neighborhood in the Tehran metropolis

The purpose of this article is to understand segregation consequences in one of the Tehran metropolis neighborhood through studying the lived experiences of segregated individuals. This study tries to examine the relationship between segregation as an urban phenomenon and residents instead of studying segregation solely. It investigates the lived experiences of residents who have been living in Razavieh as one of Tehran segregated neighborhoods through unstructured interviews. Findings suggest that Razavieh residents are usually segregated there involuntarily. Living in Razavieh as a segregated setting has affected residents' lives through managerial, economic, social, physical and infrastructure consequences. Residents' talks address a subjective belief among them called social distance which exists between them, citizens of other neighborhoods and city officials. Conceptions also indicate that the first two categories of consequences lead to the last three, and social consequences are more tangible than others. Surprisingly, the role of some institutions and their satisfactory performance in Razavieh has led to the social cohesion of people who are living there. In total, individuals' experiences reveal some hidden points of a phenomenon which may not be revealed through other methodologies.     

Geographies of whiteness and wealth: White,middle class discourses on segregation and social mix in Flanders,Belgium

While policy makers in different parts of the world are worried about the supposedly negative consequences of spatial concentrations of ethnic minorities and/or disadvantaged people, researchers continue the debate about the desirability and feasibility of social mix. In this article, we add to this literature by focusing on the often neglected, but crucial practices and discourses of the privileged in urban and suburban neighborhoods. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with 74 white, middle class residents of eight different neighborhoods of the Ghent urban region in Belgium, we demonstrate that few middle class whites actually want to live in a mixed neighborhood. We also make it clear that those living in diversity do not necessarily take up the roles they are expected to take up by the advocates of social mix policies. Drawing on these findings, we propose to broaden the research agenda of studies on segregation and social mix.     

Reprint of “Emergent public space: Sustaining Chicano culture in North Denver”

Vacant land located in deteriorating neighborhoods collects physical detritus and social malaise; overt signifiers of urban blight, these spaces often become gathering places for garbage instead of people, illicit activity instead of civility. This essay deconstructs what happens when community activists appropriate, develop, and continually manage vacant land in manners that align with and express their community’s culture. Moreover, it deconstructs the metamorphosis of vacant land into public space. Part of a larger research project exploring the roles public space plays in neighborhood change, this ethnography centers in Sunnyside, a gentrifying neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. Combining ethnographic and archival methods, I explore how the physical, regulatory, and cultural facets interrelate to form something rather remarkable—public space on private property. The “Troy” Chavez Memorial Peace Garden is at once a community garden, a pedagogical space, and a memorial to the 108 youths who died in Denver’s 1993 “summer of violence”. Twenty years later it is still cherished as a garden and a memorial, as a living artifact of Aztec culture, and as a publicly accessible space that contributes to the cooperation between neighborhood old-timers and newcomers. Turning scholarly discourse of the privatization of public space on its head, I unpack the processes contributing to the publicizing private space.     

Revisiting Rental Housing: Policies,Programs, and Priorities

The renovation of inner-city housing by middle- and upper-income residents who choose central-city neighborhoods may contribute to urban core rebirth. However, with the positive contributions made by such renovators may come unforseen policy and planning problems for city governments. Renovators, because of their higher socioeconomic status, may make different, unexpected, or more costly demands on local tax coffers than the more traditional urban residents. A profile of renovators in a southern city undergoing extensive inner-city rehabilitation is examined for support of such a “problem” thesis. Analysis emphasizes the renovators' socioeconomic characteristics, their neighborhood and political involvement, their evaluation and ranking of city services, and their expectations and preferences for neighborhood land use and racial and class composition.     

Mobile Design as Neighborhood Acupuncture: Activating the Storytelling Networks of South Los Angeles

Abstract

A delicate touch is required to empower neighborhoods using civic media. Funding is persistently scarce. Especially in marginalized neighborhoods, blunt designs can be counterproductive and even entrench complex problems. New metaphors may be needed to guide design and empower local neighborhoods. Urban acupuncture is used as the basis for this study, emphasizing a light-touch strategy that has shown success in Brazil with urban transit, and more recently in Europe with urban design. We specifically propose “neighborhood acupuncture” to address the local level, tapping the sociology of place-based communication. To investigate the implications for systematic design, a case study is probed in South Los Angeles using mobile media for community mapping. Using qualitative methods, three tactics were investigated for the potential to “poke” the network into action, including one to bridge diverse storytelling networks. Each tactic ultimately seeks to build the capacity for collective action around neighborhood issues. Acupuncture is broadly argued to sustain two design shifts: first to help approach neighborhoods as ecosystems, and second, to design for circulation rather than any single technology platform.     

Conserving Rental Housing A Policy Analysis

Conserving the existing stock of rental housing is a key part of any policy to house low-and moderate-income people and to revitalize their neighborhoods. Local governments, with their limited resources, have growing responsibility for the conservation efforts. But they have little information about what programs actually result in better maintenance and repair of rental housing. This article, based on studies of landlords' investments in repairs to their buildings, outlines policies for shaping effective programs to conserve rental housing. It focuses on six crucial issues: how to divide public actions between those that directly support housing improvements and those that indirectly encourage rehabilitation by improving neighborhood conditions; how much assistance to provide, and where to concentrate it geographically; how to involve other private parties, especially lenders; which owners to assist; what level of rehabilitation to support for a given building; and how to balance the use of “carrots” and “sticks.”     

PLACE‐BASED AND RACE‐BASED EXCLUSION FROM MORTGAGE LOANS: EVIDENCE FROM THREE CITIES IN THE NETHERLANDS

ABSTRACT: Do place and race matter in mortgage loan applications? This article presents evidence from mortgage markets in the Dutch cities of Arnhem, The Hague, and Rotterdam, suggesting that place, and to a lesser extent also race, do matter. In general, race and place are not factors of direct exclusion, but (1) zip codes are included in credit scoring systems, and (2) both place and race are significant factors in the assessments by loan officers because applicants who do not meet all formal criteria are more often accepted (“overrides”) for indigenous Dutch and low‐risk neighborhoods than for ethnic minorities and high‐risk neighborhoods. In addition, a “national mortgage guarantee” is compulsory for loan applications in high‐risk neighborhoods and thereby used as a substitute for redlining, comparable to the compulsoriness of private mortgage insurance in the United States. Some lenders also engage in direct redlining by rejecting low‐risk “national mortgage guarantee” loans in high‐risk neighborhoods, a practice potentially explained by transaction cost economizing. Since the high‐risk neighborhoods in all three cities accommodate relatively large shares of ethnic minority groups, they are hit twice: through place‐based and through race‐based exclusion. In other words, place‐based disparate treatment results in race‐based disparate impact. The neighborhood does matter; place‐based exclusion in the mortgage market has a neighborhood effect.     

“GOOD” NEIGHBORHOODS IN PORTLAND,OREGON: FOCUS ON BOTH SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS

ABSTRACT: We conduct an empirical investigation of the social environment of “good” neighborhoods in physical form in a model of the “compact city,” Portland, Oregon and discuss the implications for design and evaluation of policies inspired by smart growth and new urbanist movements that focus on the urban form and transportation dimensions of neighborhoods, and of housing assistance policies designed to change the economic mix in neighborhoods. We conceptualize the physical and social dimensions of the “good” neighborhood environment and develop an approach to operationalization that uses publicly available data. Our findings indicate that for the most part, Portland has been successful in creating neighborhoods at several economic scales that feature not only the connectivity, accessibility, mixed land use, and access to public transit that characterize “good” neighborhoods from a physical perspective, but also a “good” social environment indicative of strong ties and collective efficacy. However, there are signs that in the process, Portland may be creating poverty areas that lack connectivity, accessibility, and access to public transit and a mix of destinations.     

ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: SHIFTING PATTERNS OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES IN RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOODS IN FIVE DUTCH CITIES

Cities are oftentimes seen as undergoing a process of “emergence” in the “new economy.” However, this process has largely remained empirically underdetermined. This article examines the intra‐city geography of emerging businesses in newly dominant sectors of the urban economy. The change in dominant sectors coincides with a shift towards small‐ and medium‐sized businesses, creating new economic opportunities for urban residential areas. The residential neighborhood is introduced as a place where supply and demand side drivers operate to attract or limit such new economic activity. Allen Scott's perspective of the cognitive‐cultural economy is used to analyze which neighborhoods are flourishing sites of the cognitive‐cultural sectors. His perspective on industries that are on the rise in urban environments and their growth potential proves very valuable. Social demographic characteristics on the level of the neighborhood are used as predictors of the composition of the local economy. The analyses show that in particular wealthy, gentrified neighborhoods are more prone than others to becoming “hubs” of the cognitive‐cultural economy. However, disadvantaged neighborhoods may under certain conditions serve as incubators for business start‐ups as they offer low‐rent office spaces. This has important consequences for their future economic growth potential as well as the distribution of successful businesses in the city.     

Comment: The Greenbelt Towns and the American New Towns

Citizen participation in various forms has been a key element in the Kennedy Administration's Juvenile Delinquency Demonstration Program, OEO's Community Action Program, and now HUD's Model Cities effort. Each of these programs establishes a local planning agency to act as a conduit for federal funds, aims at local program development, and is “comprehensive” in scope. Each encourages organization of the affected citizenry as well as their participation in the policymaking process. This article traces neighborhood involvement from its minor place in the public-private policy coalitions of the Delinquency Program, through expansion of the policy coalition in the CAA's “three-legged stool” (including neighborhood representation), to the Model Cities Program, with its “adversary” relationships with city government and organized black neighborhoods—each possessing independent authority over planning and program development.     

The lost history of urban renewal

Contrary to common understanding, the US government's policy of “urban renewal” was conceived as an alternative policy to slum clearance. Bitterly opposed to public housing, conservative housing‐industry trade associations sought a way to reform the urban redevelopment formula of clearance and public housing established in the Housing Act of 1949. In the early 1950s, the industry groups seized on citizens' neighborhood fix‐up efforts, particularly the Baltimore Plan, to conduct a national campaign to popularize code enforcement, rehabilitation, and private low‐cost housing development as methods to restore and stabilize city neighborhoods. At conferences organized by House and Home magazine and in the President's Advisory Committee on Government Housing Policies and Programs, the housing industry associations fashioned policies, now named “urban renewal,” which were codified in the Housing Act of 1954. But private industry's venture in urban policymaking failed in implementation. Home builders proved reluctant to participate in the new programs, public housing hung on, and hundreds of thousands of homes fell to the wrecking ball. As urban renewal became synonymous with slum clearance, neighborhoods continued to decline. In the end, ironically, housing rehabilitation reemerged as a populist tool for reviving the inner city.     

Cross-local ties to migrant neighborhoods: The resource transfers of out-migrating Turkish middle-class households

Our research looks into the cross-local ties of Turkish middle-class households who have moved out of inner-city migrant neighborhoods. Whereas previous research has predominantly focused on social networks within migrant neighborhoods, less attention has been paid to the ties of leaver households back to their migrant neighborhoods. When middle-class households move away from a migrant neighborhood, do they cut all ties with the old neighborhood and do their social, cultural and economic resources really become lost to it? The paper draws on research conducted in two big cities in Germany. Findings are based on qualitative interviews with Turkish-origin second-generation households and social network analysis. In analyzing cross-local ties back to the old neighborhood, we focus on the role of social ties, co-ethnic infrastructures, public familiarity and social participation. Research findings illustrate cross-local social and institutional ties maintained over years and challenging place-based perspectives on residential segregation.     

“LISTENING THROUGH WHITE EARS”: CROSS‐RACIAL DIALOGUES AS A STRATEGY TO ADDRESS THE RACIAL EFFECTS OF GENTRIFICATION

ABSTRACT: Every month residents in a gentrifying Portland neighborhood gather for a cross‐racial dialogue in which the long‐term African American residents explain to the new white, middle‐class residents how neighborhood change, and their new neighbors’“white behaviors” are harmful. Through participant observations at these dialogues for over two years, as well as in‐depth interviews, I uncovered how the Restorative Listening Project (RLP) uses dialogue as a strategy for community formation and “antiracist place‐making” in Portland's Northeast neighborhoods. The RLP attempts to mitigate the relational effects of gentrification and construct “antiracist place” by (1) positioning people of color as knowledge producers about the institutional and interpersonal effects of racism in the neighborhood; (2) confronting the tactics of white denial; and (3) promoting consciousness about systemic racism. By doing so, the project promotes antiracist awareness that responds to—perhaps reduces—the racial‐relational effects of gentrification. However, it also reveals the limits of consciousness‐raising projects in the absence of action that resists structural inequalities.     

Deciphering the meaning and mechanism of migrants' and locals' neighborhood attachment in Chinese cities: Evidence from Guangzhou

The rising fluidity of the society in contemporary China has led to a restructuring of people's cognition and emotion toward their place of residence. Although a growing body of literature has attempted to identify place-based factors that influence residents' attachment to their neighborhoods in Chinese large cities, little effort has been devoted to unraveling the migrant-local distinction regarding the meaning and mechanism of neighborhood attachment. Using both questionnaire survey data and in-depth interview data collected in 23 neighborhoods of Guangzhou, China, this paper aims to explore the meaning and mechanism of neighborhood attachment through the combination of both structure equation modelling and qualitative analysis. The novelties of this study relate to the focus of migrant-local distinction and to the breakdown of place attachment into its social and functional dimensions. Results from structure equation modelling show that local residents have stronger attachment to their neighborhoods than migrants. Migrants' neighborhood attachment is more related to its social dimension, as measured by social contact and social trust, and locals' neighborhood attachment is more linked to its functional dimension, as measured by satisfaction with living environment of the neighborhood. This paper enhances our understanding of the nature of place attachment by taking into account the effects of institutional constraints and migration experiences.     

NEIGHBORHOOD ATTACHMENT,SOCIAL CAPITAL BUILDING,AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: A CASE STUDY OF LOW‐ AND MODERATE‐INCOME RESIDENTS OF WATERLOO,IOWA

ABSTRACT: This case study examines the importance of neighborhood identity and engagement in place‐based social networks within the neighborhood in fostering and stimulating neighborhood‐based participation in the urban political process. Scholars concerned with civic engagement have argued that there is a strong link between the informal ties known as “social capital” and citizen engagement in the larger community. If this linkage can be shown to exist in the neighborhood setting, then it can provide guidance to both scholars and practitioners in utilizing informal, place‐based networks to empower disadvantaged neighborhoods. Evidence presented in this essay, based on interviews with a representative sample of neighborhood residents in the small industrial city of Waterloo, Iowa, suggests that strong informal networks of social capital exist within neighborhoods, but that persons who are more strongly engaged in these networks are not necessarily more involved in the efforts of formal neighborhood associations. However, individuals who are involved in these formal associations are much more likely to be connected to the local and national political systems through voting and other forms of participation.     

LIMITED EXPOSURE: CHILDREN'S ACTIVITIES AND NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS IN THE GAUTREAUX TWO HOUSING MOBILITY PROGRAM

ABSTRACT: Housing mobility programs intend to improve the well‐being of low‐income families by changing the neighborhood environment in which they live, and thereby creating access to a new set of opportunities and resources. Using data collected in a study of the Gautreaux Two (G2) Housing Mobility program, which offered housing vouchers to public housing residents in Chicago to move to lower‐poverty and less segregated “opportunity” neighborhoods, this article explores families’ access to programs and services for their children in the neighborhoods where they move. The analysis is based on a sample of 46 families who moved through the G2 program. Qualitative in‐depth interviews were conducted with mothers in four waves, which started when the family still lived in public housing. The results show that almost three‐quarters of the families utilized activities for their children in the baseline neighborhoods, but mothers also expressed concerns about the safety and lack of program variety available in these disadvantaged neighborhoods. After moving through the G2 program, only one‐third of the children in these families are using activities. The decline in activity participation is especially steep for children in families that move to areas outside of the city. Although few mothers are concerned with safety or the variety of programs available, several report barriers to activities for children in the new neighborhood, including fewer programs for low‐income children, high cost, transportation difficulties, and issues finding daycare or preschool for younger children. Some children continue to use activities in the old neighborhood and some families end up making subsequent moves to nonqualifying neighborhoods. These findings suggest that activity participation is important for many low‐income families, and losing access to these activities upon moving through the G2 program may limit children's exposure to the new neighborhood and contribute to subsequent moves.     

NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT IN THE METROPOLITAN ECONOMY: A Policy Review

ABSTRACT: This article introduces policymakers and scholars to several issues in the development of city neighborhoods and their residents. It constructs a literature review around a tree diagram of problems and solutions, arguing that this is a more useful way to organize information than the social science questions that typically interest academics. Following this structured overview, I make the following arguments about space and scale in neighborhood policy: (1) Even if we adopt an individualistic model of economic behavior, we do not necessarily need to choose “people” over “place.” (2) The rationale for the development of neighborhood export jobs remains weak. However, we may be able to identify a “preferred policy scale” for job development and placement connections. This is defined as the scale at which the problem of spatial mismatch is not solved at the expense of broader economic development considerations, and vice versa. The research agenda underlying this simple idea would require more sophisticated and policy-relevant work on commuting patterns and on the interaction behavior and other competitive advantages of firms situated in intra-metropolitan space.