A Changing Electorate in a Majority Black City: The Emergence of a Neo‐Conservative Black Urban Regime in Contemporary Atlanta

In Atlanta, Georgia, many middle‐class blacks are migrating from the city to the suburbs. Simultaneously, middle‐class whites are moving into the city. These contrasting migrations contribute to a reduction in the voting power of black Atlantans, while increasing that of white Atlantans. One outcome predicted in the literature is the establishment of a progressive urban regime; another outcome suggested is the continuation of a black urban regime. The former emphasizes populist policies, while the latter promotes pro‐growth programs in a majority black city. This study seeks to determine the most appropriate explanation. Using a longitudinal opinion survey of Atlanta neighborhood leaders and secondary data, it was determined that a modified black regime identified as a neo‐conservative black regime exists. This governance supports conservative pro‐growth policies. A similar urban regime is predicted to emerge in several majority‐black cities.     

HAS EXURBAN GROWTH ENABLED GREATER RACIAL EQUITY IN NEIGHBORHOOD QUALITY? EVIDENCE FROM THE LOS ANGELES REGION

ABSTRACT: A wealth of data drawn from cities and their nearby suburbs show that, consistent with place stratification theory, African Americans live in poorer quality communities than similarly affluent members of other racial groups. Yet, few have examined whether these trends are playing out in the rapidly growing exurbs, places that emerged in the post‐Civil Rights era. Through a case study of African American migration to Los Angeles's exurban Inland Empire, this article tests the applicability of place stratification theory by triangulating evidence from interviews with 70 movers with U.S. Census and American Community Survey data. Both sources reveal that the gap in neighborhood conditions among similar income racial groups is much narrower in the exurbs than inner city Los Angeles or its nearby suburbs, an outcome that participants attributed to the region's rapid housing construction, relative lack of a history of who lives where, and resulting neighborhood diversity.     

POVERTY CONCENTRATION IN THE PRISMATIC METROPOLIS: THE IMPACT OF COMPOSITIONAL and REDISTRIBUTIVE FORCES WITHIN LOS ANGELES,CALIFORNIA, 1990–2000

Abstract: The degrees to which poor populations are spatially concentrated within metropolitan areas are influenced by two sets of forces. In this article, I refer to the first set of forces as redistributive forces, which includes intrametropolitan forces that redistribute populations among different neighborhoods. The second set of forces includes metropolitan‐wide processes that alter the relative poverty composition of the overall metropolitan population. These latter processes are referred to here as compositional forces. This research investigates the degrees to which these two sets of forces impacted poverty concentration among racial and ethnic groups within Los Angeles County, CA from 1990 to 2000. Both forces generally functioned to increase poverty concentration among all groups considered, with compositional forces having the stronger effect. Evidence suggests that the residential experiences of poor whites, African Americans, and Hispanics were strongly influenced by the migratory behavior of the nonpoor in Los Angeles. The Asian population, however, exhibited some evidence of ethnic (or racial) “self‐selectivity,” as this population exhibited less interclass segregation over time. Despite increased poverty concentration, findings demonstrate that Los Angeles became slightly less segregated by race and ethnicity during the 1990s.     

基于GIS空间分析的中小学学校区划和可达性研究 ——以汉中市主城区为例

学区规划的合理性和科学性是基础教育管理工作的重要内容之一.文中以汉中市主城区的中小学为研究对象,借助GIS(Geographical Information System)服务区分析和两步移动搜寻法,基于城市路网、居民区、中小学校数据和人口统计资料,分析汉中市主城区16所小学、5所初级中学的服务范围、时间和距离可达性....     

IMMIGRATION AND THE NEW METROPOLITAN GEOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT: In this article, we argue for understanding immigrant suburbanization as one outcome of the mass migrations associated with economic globalization, a process that has coincided with and shaped the decentralization and reconfiguration of the American metropolis. We contend, as well, that economic differentiation among the foreign‐born translates into distinctive residential patterns that reflect the diversity of new metropolitan geographies. Using individual and tract‐level data from metropolitan Philadelphia since 1970, we describe the intersection of spatial differentiation (suburban variety) with both demographic diversity (ethnic and racial differentiation) and linked patterns of ethnic and racial population growth and decline. We highlight the importance of immigration to population and economic growth, the diversity among immigrants, the inability of “suburb” to capture the region's residential ecology, and the surprising links between the growth of immigrant and African‐American populations in the same places. We clearly show how the residential experience of African Americans differs from that of both immigrants and native‐born whites.     

深圳城中村及正规居住区内儿童离校后活动情况调查研究

Afterschool is an important time period for children to improve their weekday physical activity. This study aimed at filling a gap in people’s knowledge of middle school children’s afterschool activity in China. In order to study afterschool activity of children living in urban villages and planned communities in Shenzhen, a questionnaire was applied in three schools located in the typical school districts in Shenzhen, aimed at a 100% sample of randomly selected classrooms. Complete data for moderate-to-vigorous physical activities (MVPA), cram schools, sedentary activities, and the itineraries of their school-to-home commutes were obtained for 5 weekdays in one week in an in-class survey, for a total of 366 complete surveys. It was found that a greater active commuting distance from school generated more MVPA, and there was a distance threshold for active commutes. Children residing in urban villages travelled farther and engaged in more MVPA than did children in planned residential areas. MVPA varied greatly among children but was unrelated to the number of cram schools or transport mode to school. Although these results showed greater levels of afterschool activity than that have been found generally in surveys in Western contexts, such active activity terminates in the final year of middle school when students devote nearly all available time to study for high school entrance exams. This study revealed the importance of social context and distance to school for children’s MVPA in China, and pointed out that the current urban planning contributes to active travel of children but needs further adjustment to mitigate the effects of increasing motorization, bigger roads, and physical barriers to movement.     

Minority Housing Segregation: A Test of Three Perspectives

Prior research on the residential patterns of minorities has generally found that relative to other minorities, African Americans are substantially less likely to reside in proximity to whites. These earlier studies, however, failed to consider whether preferences for integration with whites or household wealth played any role in shaping the patterns that were observed. The research presented here shows that both residential preferences and household wealth are important determinants of being able to achieve proximity to whites. Nevertheless, African Americans remain at a distinct disadvantage, compared to other minorities, even when accounting for residential preferences and household wealth.     

Challenges to surface water quality in mid‐sized African cities: conclusions from Awetu‐Kito Rivers in Jimma,south‐west Ethiopia

Rapid urbanization and industrialization, uncontrolled population growth, indiscriminate waste discharge and poor infrastructure are problems that African cities are facing. This paper describes an exemplary case study from Jimma, south‐west Ethiopia. A cross‐sectional study was conducted along the Awetu‐Kito drainage system in Jimma town to assess the level of pollution from urban dwellers and related activities. The study indicates that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) norms for biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), dissolved oxygen (DO) and orthophosphates are not met downstream of the major industrial and institutional activities. Small‐scale industries, Jimma University and residential areas contributed 50, 15 and 23% pollution load on the river, respectively. It can be concluded that the pollution effect in Jimma town is mainly as a result of the growing (uncontrolled) industrial activities and not to discharge of household wastewater. Given the same trends of urbanization and population growth, similar development (socio‐economic) indicators and similar climatic conditions, the key findings for Jimma are transferable to other mid‐sized African cities.     

The housing careers of black middle-class residents in a South African metropolitan area

Under apartheid, black African households could not own land or homes in most major urban centres in South Africa. This limited residential mobility and locked many households into state rental accommodation in townships. Homeownership for all South Africans was restored in the mid-1980 s and the Group Areas Act was repealed in 1991. Democracy opened up economic opportunities previously unavailable to black people. This paper investigates the effect on black middle-class South African households’ residential mobility and housing careers. A retrospective cross-sectional survey of 244 such homeowners in the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality determined their last five housing states. Changes in housing state indicated a steady improvement in housing quality, but tenure changes were not necessarily unidirectional—some had reverted to rental. More than 85% of the study participants had used mortgages to finance their housing career. Very few had financed their housing using own savings, an inheritance, or sale of a previous house, and not many had used the government subsidy. We found that housing careers are bridging the historical spatial racial divide in this municipality.     

Home touring as hospitable urbanism

This paper twins theories of urbanism and feminist hospitality in exploring the practice of historic home touring as demonstrative of hospitable urbanism, an ethical opening of self and neighborhood to strangers. In Phoenix, Arizona, the quintessential “ahistorical” sprawling metropolis, historic home touring is particularly evocative. With 35 residential historic districts covering much of the central city, Phoenix boasts an entire home tour season each spring. I consider the opening of private homes to the public a gesture of urban welcome critical in tempering the exclusionary tendencies of historic districts. Such seemingly minor practices are increasingly perceived as consequential in generating (or foreclosing) lived community amid difference (gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, migration status, religion, etc.). Without striving toward openness, vulnerability, and inclusion, urban communities risk becoming shuttered, sterile, and disconnected from public life. However brief or atmospheric, a gesture of urban welcome requires the consideration of strangers in the first place.     

太原市居住小区植物景观的应用

在现代化的城市当中,人们对居住环境的重视度越来越高,建筑行业也越来越关注居住环境,其作为城市当中与居民的距离最近、关系最密切的新型城市空间绿地,已经成为城市绿地系统中的重要的组成部分,结合太原市居住区景观的现状、典型社区和特点分析,提出适合太原市居住区植物绿化的发展方向。     

Grindsamhälle: the rise of urban gating and gated housing in Sweden

Sweden does not have gated communities, but this paper argues that processes of gating and the associated consequences are apparent in Sweden, particularly in metropolitan regions. Based on interviews, observations and analysis of previous research, the article identifies the rise of urban gating and gated housing. Urban gating restricts access to previously public land through material gating and results in a loss of the right to use-value of urban land. The rise of a new and exclusive form of gated housing associated with the lifestyles of the mobile middle class, referred to here, as the residential hotel, is spotlighted, prompting questions about the concentration of affluence in already privileged areas and the reinforcing effect of gating on existing patterns of socio-spatial polarization.     

What's Class Got to Do With It?Community Development and Racial Identity

Abstract: This research documents the importance of class and racial identities to urban community development activities. It explores the symbolic meanings of class and the nature of inter‐class relations within the black community. The research is based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in a Philadelphia neighborhood with an active grassroots community development agenda. The author concludes that the residents most active in the neighborhood's redevelopment activities display a particular middle‐class identity (“multi‐class”) that links them to lower‐class blacks and structures their vision of the neighborhood as a micro‐level racial justice project. The community development activities in this neighborhood are a product of the multi‐class residents’ attempt to articulate and affirm their racial identity and ideology. However, the unacknowledged class bias of these residents prevents them from creating the type of inclusive Black community that they envision.     

Displacement and urban restructuring in Amsterdam; following relocatees after demolition of social housing

Over the past decade, urban restructuring of segregated neighbourhoods has transformed many urban districts, in the Netherlands and elsewhere; middle class households have entered neighbourhoods which were previously inhabited by lower class. Some argue that this influx of middle class has happened at the expense of the displaced original population. We investigated this process of (forced) relocation from restructured neighbourhoods. In contrast with earlier studies, individual level data have been provided directly by one of the Amsterdam housing associations involved in this process. This offered the opportunity to analyse population data, not a sample, of all relocatees from four particular urban restructuring projects in Amsterdam. We investigated location preferences before relocation as well as actual residential location behaviour per household and relocatee type and compared characteristics of their old and new dwellings and neighbourhoods. One of the findings is that forced relocation often parallels preferences expressed by the displaced.     

CHANGING SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF BLACK AMERICANS, 1970–1980

Drawn by the attraction of economic betterment and less oppressive social conditions, over six million black Americans left the South between 1870 and 1970 for the major urban centers of the North and West. Over its course, the great migration transformed the black population from a predominantly southern and rural people into a highly urbanized, more nationally distributed, group. In the receiving cities, blacks were confronted with new forms of segregation and virtually excluded from suburbia. A number of important changes in black settlement patterns occurred during the 1970's. First, the century-long exodus out of the South came to an end as opportunities there improved and conditions in the North deteriorated. Second, the Northeast, which had been a major destination of southern blacks for over 100 years, itself became subjected to strong black outmigration tendencies. The Midwest experienced similar trends, but on a smaller scale, and the proportion of blacks residing in the region remained virtually unchanged over the decade. The West continued to draw blacks, and was the only region to register a proportional gain in their numbers. Third, there was a marked shift of blacks to suburban residency, the extent of which varied between metropolitan areas. The exodus was broad enough to produce a net outmigration of blacks from the nation's central cities, a number of which experienced an absolute loss of black residents. Nevertheless, because of the continuing white exodus, the number of large cities gaining black majorities more than doubled during the decade. While enhancing the exercise of black political power in both central cities and suburbs, the changes did little to alter existing patterns of segregated living.     

The Migrant Metropolis and American Planning

Problem: Immigration poses various problems for U.S. cities and regions, and the roles planners should play in migrant communities are not clear.

Purpose: I consider how practitioners and scholars have understood and addressed the planning challenges and opportunities presented by the major migrations of ethnic minorities to U.S. cities and regions over the past century.

Methods: I trace discussions of planning and migration at professional planning conferences over the past century and survey planning scholarship and practice related to immigration and migrant communities in three principal eras: early 20th century southern and eastern European immigration; the mid-century internal migrations of African Americans and Puerto Ricans; and immigration in the late 20th and early 21st century.

Results and conclusions: Over the past century, immigration has had physical, economic, and social effects on people and places that are legitimate concerns of urban planners. Yet, the planning profession has had an ambiguous and often ambivalent relationship with migrant communities and has struggled to define specific roles for planners within those communities while social workers and other community and economic development practitioners played larger roles. Planning scholars have not paid as much attention to migrants' adaptation and mobility in U.S. society or their impacts on receiving communities, labor markets, housing, and congestion as have other scholars and urbanists.

Takeaway for practice: Planners have engaged with migrants in a variety of ways. Understanding this history provides context for contemporary debates about immigration and helps frame challenges and opportunities in migrant and receiving communities as planning problems.

Research support: None.     

Parisian eco-districts: low energy and affordable housing?

This paper examines how policies and practices for affordable housing in Paris, especially ‘green’ housing for the poor, are being subverted to retain or attract the middle class: the ‘greentrification’ of lower-class neighbourhoods. From the 1960s onward, many middle- and working-class households have left Paris due to de-industrialization and the city’s high housing costs. To bring these middle classes back, the municipality initiated a policy calling for increased social diversity, using social housing as its main policy tool. In France the provision of public housing is legally mandated, and compared with international standards, the income ceilings for gaining access to it are high. Thus, municipalities may pursue urban renovation and construct social housing for the middle class to replace substandard buildings occupied by low-income populations. The Paris municipality has established ‘green’ residential eco-districts known as ‘eco-quartiers’. In the national eco-district programme, the neighbourhoods must meet environmental performance criteria, show potential for economic development, and provide social and functional diversity. Thus, housing location and price must fit the needs of the existing residents. However, most ‘green’ subsidized housing in Paris is for the middle class. Social diversity has become a means of redistribution: more middle class and fewer poor people.     

Reconstructing Bronzeville: Racial Nostalgia and Neighborhood Redevelopment

Much of the existing work on heritage tourism emphasizes downtown or citywide tourism development. Yet, an increasing number of African American neighborhoods are using racial heritage tourism to revitalize their long neglected inner‐city neighborhoods. This article examines the use of heritage in black neighborhoods and analyzes its use as a political resource. The development of heritage tourism encourages black communities to construct notions of authentic racial community, which they draw upon to legitimize both the processes of, and their role in, neighborhood redevelopment.     

Comparing apples with apples: how different are recent residential development patterns in Portland and Charlotte?

This paper compares Portland in Oregon and Charlotte in North Carolina to determine if recent residential development patterns in each area are as different as their existing policy framework and regulations might suggest. Using spatial data sets from local sources, we first perform a cluster analysis to develop a typology of census block groups based on built‐environment characteristics. This derived typology is coupled with data on single‐family residential construction for both study areas to assess the degree of similarity. We find that Portland and Charlotte present very different residential development outcomes in recent years. More specifically, single‐family residential development has occurred most frequently in the inner‐ and middle‐ring suburbs in Portland and most heavily in the urban fringe areas in Charlotte. Potential explanations of the observed difference are offered.     

城市更新视角下的老旧小区综合评估

城市更新是指对城市建成区城市空间形态和城市功能的持续完善和优化调整,是小规模、渐进式、可持续的更新.随着城市化进程的逐步加快,城市更新是城市发展的必然趋势,老旧小区更新改造将是城市更新的重要组成部分.本文基于城市更新视角,通过大量实地调研、理论研究、数据统计等定量科学的计算方法,结合北京市老旧小区居民生活进行综合评估实...