Neighborhood Change and Urban Policy

Abstract

The process of neighborhood change, to date, has not been analyzed from a multidisciplinary theoretical perspective. As consensus grows that one's neighborhood plays a large role in determining access to education, employment, and an improved quality of life (Anderson 1991; Galster and Hill 1992;Wilson 1987), it is unfortunate that our understanding of neighborhood change remains a prisoner of intellectual parochialism. A review of the literature indicates that scholars of neighborhood change tend to focus on variables which are easily analyzed within a single discipline's paradigm (Birch 1971; Bond and Coulson 1989;Hoover and Vernon 1959;Muth 1973). Economists, for example, often concentrate on the declining amount of capital stock embedded in a housing unit over time (Henderson 1985). Sociologists often stress a neighborhood's changing functional role within a larger urban area's system (Berry and Kasarda 1977). Geographers model neighborhood change as a spatial process, and so study border effects and other spatially related phenomena (Bailey 1959, Deskin 1981. Although separate disciplines have made significant contributions to our understanding of neighborhood change, calls for a multidisciplinary approach (Schwab 1987) have largely gone unheeded.Our goals, then, are to present a synthetic model of neighborhood change and to explore the implications of that model for neighborhood stabilization, upgrading, and deconcentration policies. Throughout this paper we assume a rather broad definition of neighborhood change which encompasses a variety of objectively measurable changes to a neighborhood's physical and social environment. Unlike previous models of neighborhood change, the theoretical framework developed here demonstrates how neighborhood change is not the result of seemingly inexorable ecological forces, nor is it solely a function of economically motivated individuals and institutions acting either alone or in concert. Over a given period of time, neighborhoods within a single city can follow one of three trajectories: stability, decline, or upgrading. We argue that a neighborhood's trajectory results from its ability to position itself favorably with external sources of financial, political, and social resources and that this ability is largely dependent on the physical, social, and locational characteristics of the community. Consequently, neighborhood stabilization policies that exclusively concentrate on the physical characteristics of a community (housing stock, commercial establishments, etc.) are likely to be ineffective, as they do not enhance a neighborhood's access to the resources needed to maintain a stable and attractive residential environment. Similarly, efforts designed to strengthen a community's political power via promoting either horizontal and/or vertical integration (Rohe and Mouw 1991 ; Warren and Warren 1977) may not be enough to forestall neighborhood decline if physical deterioration is an everyday concern of neighborhood residents. ABSTRACTTheories of neighborhood change have...

The Decline and Rise of Neighbourhoods: The Importance of Neighbourhood Governance

“…Moreover, within that environment, social relations not only can exert a reciprocal effect on the housing market and other institutions but also can counteract the effects of the political economy (whether these effects be negative, in terms of neighbourhood decline, or positive, in terms of neighbourhood rise) -cf. the discussion of Temkin & Rohe (1996) above. this complexity, but they have their limitations.…”

“…the issue of neighbourhood governance (or the lack of it) was not addressed.T P F 4 FP T Taub et al (1984) also noticed something else. They identified the possibility that different neighbourhood residents respond differently to similar neighbourhood attributes (see also Temkin & Rohe, 1996). The effect of this difference is to make…”

“…A number of the early critics of the Chicago School advocated a focus on a more behavioural approach, in which neighbourhood decline (and perhaps neighbourhood change generally) is not seen as an inevitable process but can be offset by people's conscious actions, and specifically also by the strength of social networks within neighbourhoods (see, e.g., Ahlbrandt & Cunningham, 1979;Varady, 1986;Temkin & Rohe, 1996;1998). Implicitly agreeing with this, Bottoms and colleagues (1992: 123), for example, suggested that the housing market 'interacts with a range of other aspects of social life to create the relevant social effects', for example, social networks, socialisation processes, social control agencies, reputations and labels, economic development, and the physical form of the locality.…”

“…Similarly, Temkin & Rohe (1996) stress the importance of the social fabric for encouraging or resisting neighbourhood change, where 'social fabric' is understood as a combination of 'intimate bonds' (of kinship and strong friendship) and 'neighbouring' developed through borrowing, visiting and helping activities (Ahlbrandt, 1984: 108). Although they give priority to economic and social forces outside the neighbourhood (e.g.…”

The Diversity of Trajectories of Large Housing Estates in Madrid, Spain

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