Deprived neighbourhoods in transition: Divergent pathways of change in the Greater Manchester city-region

Abstract

Many studies of neighbourhood change adopt a ‘bookend’ mode of analysis in which a baseline year is identified for a chosen outcome variable from which the magnitude of change is calculated to a determined endpoint typically over bi-decadal or decadal timeframes. However, this mode of analysis smoothes away short-run change patterns and neighbourhood dynamics. The implications of this practice could be far reaching if it is accepted that as neighbourhoods change they are liable to cross a threshold and transition from one state to another in the short- as well as longer-term. In a case study of deprived neighbourhoods in the Greater Manchester city-region, this paper aims to contribute to neighbourhood change debates in two ways. The first is by isolating transition pathways for individual neighbourhoods using annual change data. The second is by testing the thesis that the more deprived a neighbourhood is, the more likely it is to respond with greater volatility to short-run shocks when compared with less-deprived neighbourhoods. Four indicators collected annually between 2001 and 2010 are used to develop a typology of neighbourhood change and a subsequent typology of neighbourhood transition. The analysis exposed 260 different transition pathways that deprived neighbourhoods followed over the study period. Multinomial logistic regression was then used to determine the odds of a neighbourhood undergoing transition along a specific pathway owing to its level of deprivation. The model revealed that the most deprived neighbourhoods were likely to follow more volatile transition pathways compared with the less-deprived neighbourhoods especially during periods of economic difficulty.

Differentiating pathways of neighborhood change in 50 U.S. metropolitan areas

“…The absence of trajectories of socioeconomic ascent out of high poverty black, Hispanic and mixed black and Hispanic neighborhoods was conspicuous. Prior research has indicated that disadvantaged neighborhoods tend to undergo more volatile changes coinciding with the ebbs and flows of business cycles Hincks, 2015;Williams et al, 2013). These short-term changes may register as improvements or declines when analyzing neighborhood dynamics from one time period to the next via transition matrices, but when viewing the full longitudinal sequences, a clear pathway of ascent fails to register as a predominant trajectory during this 30-year time frame.…”

Understanding inclusive growth at local level: changing patterns and types of neighbourhood disadvantage in three English city-regions

“…If policymakers wish to encourage more inclusive economic growth across city-regions, an understanding of the ways that neighbourhoods are connected, or not, into wider markets could enable the development of policies to strengthen these links in deprived areas. Others have suggested that analytical tools, like the typology, could be used to differentiate between different types of deprived areas, to prioritise areas for policy intervention and to develop tailored policy interventions based on their existing residential connections (McKillop et al, 2009;Rae et al, 2016;Hincks, 2017). We find that analysis of typology changes can be used to develop ideas about how and why areas are changing, but other dynamics that affect neighbourhood change, including international migration, population ageing, and wider housing and labour market changes also need to be brought into view and could point to the need for a more interventionist agenda, or action on a different spatial scale.…”

“…An extensive literature describes the geography of deprivation and poverty in the UK, often drawing on data from the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), the census, administrative data and/or modelled estimates for small areas (Dorling and Woodward, 1996;Rae, 2012;Fenton, 2016;Hincks, 2017; and see Rae and Nyanzu, 2019 for a recent analysis of the geography of inequality), but relatively few quantitative studies trace the specific dynamics through which neighbourhood deprivation is created or sustained and fewer still relate these processes to the wider economic context in which a neighbourhood or area can be found. This makes understanding whether growth has been 'inclusive' and the extent to which it might be in future particularly difficult.…”

The Economic Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Ethnic Minorities in Manchester

“…Manchester scored slightly higher for resilience than the rest of the North West due to its strong employment growth, despite subdued productivity growth. However, Hincks's (2017) analysis of neighbourhood change, which focused on deprived neighbourhoods (LSOAs)…”