Chapter 12

Why has residential segregation presisted?

• physical distance restrictive - money and time
• maximization of conflict between social groups
• maximization of the political voice and influence resulting from spatial clustering
• greater degree of social control - possible with homogeneous residential groupings
• territorality

The Foundations of Residential Segregation in the US

1. Social status - an attribute of "gentrified" neighborhoods
2. Household type - adult communities/single room occupancies
3. Ethnicity - African American/Chinese/Jewish/Mexican/Puerto Rican/etc.
4. Lifestyle - familists/careerists/consumerists

Residential Ecology

1. Human Ecology
2. Factorial Ecology

Human Ecology

• Each as an ecological unit - a particular mix of people that had come to dominate a particular niche in the urban fabric
• adopted a view of the city as a social organism with a social interation governed by a struggle for existence
• social interaction seen as an expression of symbiosis

Factorial Ecology

• socioeconomic status, family status and ethnicity should be regarded as representing the main dimensions of social space
• physical space should not be thought of as independent of social space

Changes to the Foundation of Residential Segregation

• economic rearrangements in the 1980s due to occupational polarization, baby boom generation and ethnicity
• new class fractions, household types and new lifestyles
• increase materialism
• social isolation of vulnerable and disadvantaged (elderly, immigrants, single parent families, etc)

The New Mosaic - "Lifestyle" Communities

• New York City
• Los Angeles
• Washington DC
• Dallas
• Chicago
• Cleveland