Jürgen Friedrichs - Life in Poverty Neighbourhoods: European and American Perspectives

Do poor neighbourhoods make their residents poorer?

In contemporary European and American urban policy and politics and in academic research it is typically assumed that spatial concentrations of poor households and/or ethnic minority households will have negative effects upon the opportunities to improve the social conditions of those who are living in these concentrations.

Since the level of concentration tends to be correlated with the level of spatial segregation the debate on segregation is also linked to the social opportunity discussion.

This book explores the central question in urban and housing studies, Do poor neighbourhoods make their residents poorer? Does the neighbourhood structure exert an effect on the residents (behavioural, attitudinal, or psychological) even when controlling for individual characteristics of the residents? This issue has offered a locus for multi-disciplinary investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, and this volume demonstrates the rich geographical, sociological, economic and psychological dimensions of this issue.

This book is a special issue of the journal Housing Studies.

Jrgen Friedrichs is Professor of Sociology in the Research Institute for Sociology, University of Cologne, Germany. George Galster is Clarence Hilberry Professor of Urban Affairs, College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, USA. Sako Musterd is Professor of Urban Geography in the Department of Geography and Planning of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

LIFE IN POVERTY NEIGHBOURHOODS

European and American Perspectives

Edited by Jrgen Friedrichs,
George Galster and Sako Musterd

First published 2005
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016

Transferred to Digital Printing 2009

2005 Routledge

Typeset in Palatino by Infotype Ltd, Eynsham, Oxfordshire

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN10: 0-415-35363-7 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-415-56835-8 (pbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-35363-2 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-56835-7 (pbk)

JRGEN FRIEDRICHS, GEORGE GALSTER AND SAKO MUSTERD

JRGEN FRIEDRICHS AND JRG BLASIUS

ADE KEARNS AND ALISON PARKES

ELLEN VAN BECKHOVEN AND RONALD VAN KEMPEN

SAKO MUSTERD, WIM OSTENDORF AND SJOERD DE VOS

GEORGE GALSTER

XAVIER DE SOUZA BRIGGS

JRGEN FRIEDRICHS, GEORGE GALSTER & SAKO MUSTERD

In contemporary European and American urban policy and politics and in academic research it is typically assumed that spatial concentrations of poor households and/or ethnic minority households will have negative effects upon the opportunities to improve the social conditions of those who are living in these concentrations. Since the level of concentration tends to be correlated with the level of spatial segregation the debate on segregation is also linked to the social opportunity discussion. The central question is Do poor neighbourhoods make their residents poorer? (Friedrichs, 1998), i.e. does the neighbourhood structure exert an effect on the residents (behavioural, attitudinal or psychological) even when controlling for individual characteristics of the residents?

The issue of neighbourhood effects on social opportunities of residents possesses rich geographical, sociological, economic and psychological dimensions, and as such has offered a locus for multi-disciplinary investigations on both sides of the Atlantic. Such diversity is amply demonstrated in this Special Issue of Housing Studies, with economists, geographers, planners and sociologists, hailing from Germany, the Netherlands, UK and USA, represented among the contributors. These diverse perspectives often intersect in two realms: spatial relationships and selective household mobility.

The spatial focus of neighbourhood effect studies is clear, for example, in economic geographical studies about the spatial mismatch between demand and supply on the labour market (Kasarda et al., 1992). The thesis here is that economic restructuring has led to a situation in which the peripheral locations of suitable jobs for unskilled workers and inner-city residential locations of these potential workers have grown too far from each other to enable matching on a daily basis; this would aggravate the social conditions of those who live in inner-city areas. The spatial element is also evident in the research underpinnings of American housing policy aimed at changing the locations of low-income or minority households (Briggs, 1997; Del Conte & Kling, 2001; Katz et al., 2001; Ludwig et al., 2001; Rosenbaum, 1995; Rosenbaum et al., 2002). These American policies for changing the spatial distribution of the disadvantaged are related to European ideas about mixed neighbourhood policies that nowadays receive considerable attention and critiques (Atkinson & Kintrea, 2001; Kearns, 2002; Musterd et al., 1999, Musterd et al., this issue; Ostendorf et al., 2001). As an illustration, in this issue van Beckhoven & Van Kempen address the urban restructuring effects in two Dutch cities, focusing on the social relations and interactions of residents. They conclude that the neighbourhood restructuring plays only a limited part in the life of most of the residents.

Urban researchers from multiple disciplines also intersect each other when they pay attention to selective residential migration processes in relation to neighbourhood effects. One of the crucial issues in this regard is the increasing concentration of poverty in certain areas, which is exacerbated by middle-class households moving out to more affluent neighbourhoods. In many American cities the flight of these households towards suburban neighbourhoods expresses a process of leaving the cities behind (cf. Thomas, 1991; Wilson, 1987). As an effect, the service structure in poor inner-city neighbourhoods declines as the local tax base erodes. Vicious circles are expected to develop in extreme cases, implying a clear, pernicious neighbourhood effect. For example, one might start with the development of concentrations of poor inhabitants (frequently poor immigrants or ethnic minorities), followed by an erosion of public facilities and services, residential abandonment and rising crime, lack of opportunities and therefore again the attraction of those with the weakest positions. Racial factors may overlay class factors in creating a dual-feature segregation that intensifies poverty and constrains outward opportunity (Massey & Denton, 1993).

However, the fact that these kinds of mobility processes are encountered in American cities does not imply there are necessarily special neighbourhood effects. In their paper Kearns & Parkes pay attention to mobility in relation to neighbourhoods in the UK context. Their focus is on home and neighbourhood perceptions and residential mobility behaviour. They include poverty, anti-social behaviour and crime as key variables affecting perceptions and mobility. Nevertheless, their conclusion is that there is no evidence to support the notion of a distinctive culture in deprived UK areas, rather, residents in poor areas were responding to negative residential conditions in the same way as the rest of the population. It is also interesting to see that in several European cities the levels of segregation and separation are much lower compared to American experiences. This may imply that neighbourhood effects are less significant in Europe.