Keeping the Underclass In Its Place: Zoning, the Poor, and Residential Segregation
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It has become fashionable to argue that the preferences and choices of Americans living in metropolitan areas are changing.1 Contemporary middle and upper-class Americans, the argument goes, no longer want to live in suburban subdivisions, work in office parks, and shop in en closed malls. One-third of all homeowners now express a preference for living in compact urban settings or in older suburbs with an urban feel.2 The phrase demographic inversion has been used to suggest that the well-to-do are blending into the center-city while the poor are joining the middle and upper classes on the metropolitan outskirts.3 These descriptions of change in American metropolitan areas are at best only partially true. Gentrification, the process through which older parts of the center-city are redeveloped for condominiums, restau rants, and stores appealing to the middle and upper classes, has surely had an impact on many cities.4 However, while some degree of gentri fication has taken place in most downtown areas, the great majority of middle and upper-class Americans continue to live on the outskirts of the center-cities and even more so in the surrounding suburbs. In larger metropolitan areas the fastest population growth has occurred in the second and third rings of suburbs, in new communities that not longKeywords:
Upper class
Gentrification
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Central city
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Abstract It has been suggested that suburban “minicities” now provide the services necessary for working wives and mothers to balance the multiple demands on their time, leading women to prefer suburban over central city neighborhoods. Data from the 1983 national Annual Housing Survey verify that women prefer suburban neighborhoods, but fail to support the contention that suburbs offer the same services as central cities. Public transit, shopping, and schools are all more accessible in cities than suburbs, but perceptions of crime and poor schools are also more prevalent in cities than suburbs. There is little difference by sex in reasons for recent moves into neighborhoods, with both women and men ranking the search for lower rent as their most important reason for moving into the current residence. It is proposed that women and men weigh the disamenities of city life more heavily than its amenities in assessing neighborhood satisfaction.
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This article is an analysis of the characteristics and practices of middle class residents living in the old suburbs of Paris. It attempts to demonstrate the hypothetical specificity of their relationship with the neighborhood and their type of investment. The old center of Saint-Denis, one of the “red” blue-collar suburbs in the North of Paris, is deteriorating while it is also being reinvested in by middle class residents at the same time. By settling down in Saint-Denis’ center, middle class residents implement a residential strategy that allows them to combine central location and quality of housing, which can only be achieved by moving outside of Paris. Their daily practices and their investment in the neighborhood demonstrate that they are seeking a territorial foothold. Nevertheless, gentrifiers’ investment and residential diversity do not lead to a true social blend.
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The extent of building regulation in North American cities, and its impact on residential development, are poorly understood. By the early 1900s affluent suburbs, and most cities, were regulated in some way; extensive poorer suburbs and unincorporated areas were not. Toronto is a case in point. Over the period 1900–40 construction was quite strictly controlled in the city and one affluent suburb, but scarcely at all elsewhere. In these years lower‐income families settled in large numbers in the unregulated suburbs where many built their own modest homes. A comparison of the two halves of a district which straddled the city boundary shows that municipal controls, not relative location, was the critical factor behind this trend. As reformers argued, weak regulation created problems, but it is not clear that the likely alternatives were preferable.
Gentrification
Central city
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The intersection of gender, residential preference and dominance is examined with data from a national sample of adults from a survey conducted by the Louis Harris organization. The data show a gender gap in residential preferences and challenge the conventional wisdom about women's residential preferences for the city. There are important implications: the migration of women to suburbs and the fit of women's residential preferences with those of men. This paper deals with the intersection of three emergent themes in urban sociology. First, the introduction of women's worlds into the study of cities and suburbs resulting in major questions about the generalizability of conclusions drawn mainly from male perspectives. Second, the shift in residential patterns such that the largest portion of the population of the United States now live in suburbs. This resulted, among other things, in a suburban generation, ? the cohort of young people who were born and raised in the landscape which came increasingly to dominate the United States after the Second World War. Third, the change in cities themselves. Urban change with job and population loss, fiscal crises, and decaying infrastructure is well known but it has not been considered before in conjunction with women's worlds and the generation. Suburbs are changing, too. They are increasingly differentiated, with many areas having reached the critical mass of density, jobs, shopping, and support services that women need.
Dominance (genetics)
Sample (material)
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Desegregation
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This paper addresses the issue of how closely the fortunes of suburbs are tied to the fortunes of the central city. We use similarities in residential housing price dynamics as a measure of how closely the economies of cities and suburbs are related. We develop housing price indices for most of the zip codes in California, and use these in a clustering procedure to see whether cities and suburbs naturally aggregate together, or whether they move separately. We find that central cities tend to aggregate with their suburbs suggesting that the fortunes of the cities and suburbs are closely linked. We find evidence of a two-tiered structure to suburbs. While nearby suburbs continue to group with their metropolitan core, extended suburban economies comprised mostly of affluent neighborhoods, may be drifting away from the central cities.
Central city
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Restructuring
Central city
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The subject matter of this study is the consumption of suburban housing in Australian metropolitan regions between the two world wars. Specifically, it examines the distinctiveness of what was owned and occupied by whom in relation to later developments. Despite the period being of considerable significance in the growth of urban residential areas, it has not been well researched and this mainly involves two methodological problems. The first is the dearth of detailed data; the second is the lack of an established theoretical framework to guide investigations. Clearly the two elements are interrelated and therefore this study is as much about the development of a body of relevant information as it is about a conceptual interpretation of the findings.
Turning to the first difficulty, the problem is not only the availability of data for the period per se, but also to relate it to the overall development of suburbs. This has entailed a reworking of census data and to that end, growth groups were devised and found to be more sensitive than zones to portray trends within However, metropolitan areas. this still does not overcome the data gap, particularly between 1921 and 1947, and consequently a detailed study has been made of Victoria Park from the rate books and sewerage plans. This covers the period from 1900 to 1955 and thereby provides a wider time frame to assess the distinctiveness of the period between the two world wars. With regard to the second difficulty, many studies appear to seek direct cause and effect linkages which have shaped urban phenomena. In this study, following the ideals of structuration, the view is taken that suburban housing is interconnected with the wider social structure in a mutually responsive relationship. Within this framework, the proposition is that there has been a shift in emphasis from houses as places for the sustenance of labour to locations for the consumption of a widening array of goods and services, including the house itself; and that this emerged strongly between the two world wars.
While there are many facets to the study of suburban growth and development, two particular issues are used to direct this research. The first is the nature of occupancy, characters of dwellings and the relationships between them as indicators of changes in the consumption of housing. The second is the role of gender in these developments. The latter is considered to be significant because one of the apparent outcomes of suburbanization in the period was the segregation of males and females; and furthermore, while the suburbs were the domain of women, men appeared to control access to the means of consumption.
From an analysis of the data developed at the macro scale of the Greater Perth Metropolitan Region, based on 26 Local Government Areas, and the micro level of Victoria Park using more than 6000 dwellings, the following findings have been made. Firstly, home ownership was a significant, although obscured, element of the suburbs which developed between the two world wars. Secondly, while the depression had a devastating and prolonged impact on home ownership in working class areas such as Victoria Park, in so doing, the proportion of outright to mortgage ownership increased. Thirdly, the period between the wars was part of a longer term trend for homes to have more rooms, often at the expense of verandahs, and fewer inhabitants. Fourthly, despite the fact that established suburbs had a majority of females, men still either owned or were nominated as the principal occupiers of the majority of residences. However, between the wars, not only did the level of female ownership increase significantly, but joint ownership also emerged as a the major form of occupancy. Fifthly, during the same period, there was a marginal propensity for sole males to own slightly larger, more expensive, brick homes while sole females owned slightly smaller, cheaper, weather-board residences. However, there is no clear distinction in terms of either age of dwellings or distance to the closest tram stop or railway station. Finally, although Perth has been characterised as a brick city, initial housing in the new suburbs, particularly in the period which encompassed the two world wars, were usually constructed of cheaper, more easily transported and constructed materials. The emphasis on brick homes was usually a feature of later consolidation phases of urban development.
From these findings it is concluded that housing, as both a major item of consumption, and as the venue for increasing levels of household consumption, was well established in the suburbs which developed between the two world wars. As such, it is suggested that residential areas need to be seriously viewed as places of consumption and this consideration tied into any endeavour to plan future developments.
Optimal distinctiveness theory
Consumption
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Despite signs of decline, older inner suburban areas have not drawn much attention as declining central cities in the United States. In this paper, we study intrametropolitan residential mobility in the greater Columbus, Ohio, metropolitan area, focusing on older suburban areas. We organize our discussion around possible explanations for the decline of older suburbs associated with suburbanization, utilizing natural evolution and flight from blight theories. We found that there is a sequence of outward movement toward newer suburbs from older suburbs, and the households who moved to outer areas often cited the desire for a newer house. These results indicate that policies to help remodel older homes and/or construct new homes to replace older ones can be an initial step for those older suburbs to retain households. We conclude that natural evolution explains older suburban movers' outward movement, but there are signs that the flight from blight explanations may become more important in the future.
Suburbanization
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