City and Community article encourages new thinking on African American residential patterns before the Civil Rights Era
September 29, 2010 at 6:28 pm | Posted in cities, geography, housing, neighborhoods, race, what to read | Leave a commentIn the newly published article, “African American Locational Attainment Before the Civil Rights Era,” (City & Community, volume 9, September 2010), Lance Freeman challenges conventional wisdom that prior to the Civil Rights era, blacks of all classes lived side-by-side due to intense discrimination. According to this view, individual socioeconomic status did not translate into improved locational outcomes. By analyzing individual-level data from the 1910-1950 Public Use Microdata Samples, Freeman reveals how individual-level socioeconomic status translated into neighborhood-level outcomes for blacks. Among blacks, individual-level socioeconomic status played no role in determining residential proximity to whites. However, individual-level socioeconomic status for blacks was an important determinant of other neighborhood outcomes. His ground-breaking research suggests that upper-stratum blacks did indeed live in neighborhoods set apart from poorer blacks.
More information about this article available at:
Is the Harlem Children’s Zone a waste of money?
August 8, 2010 at 1:25 pm | Posted in childcare centers, education, geography, neighborhoods, organizational networks, social service agencies, youth | Leave a comment
Geoffrey Canada’s effort to transform the lives of low-income children in Harlem by providing a comprehensive array of services within a 100 block area has convinced many skeptics, produced a top seller, and inspired a presidential effort. A new controversial report by the Urban Institute suggests it may have been a waste of money, at least with respect to its effects on education. After comparing the test performance of children in the Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy to those in other New York City charter schools, the authors conclude, rather uncharitably, “that the HCZ Promise Academy is a middling New York City charter school.” Canada responds, calling the report “wrong-headed,” for, among other things, misunderstanding the point of the HCZ. Whitehurst and Croft promptly reply, standing their ground. Considering that Obama has requested $210 million for the initiative inspired by HCZ, and that Congress seems reluctant to provide it, we really ought to get the story straight.
A new frontier in the analysis of urban nightlife establishments
July 9, 2010 at 2:57 pm | Posted in amenities, cities, consumption, culture, geography, race, reading list, social capital, what to read | 1 Comment
In “The Nightly Round: Space, Social Capital, and Urban Black Nightlife,” sociologist Marcus Hunter uses participant observation and semistructured interviews to consider the ways in which nightlife is used to mitigate the effects of social and spatial isolation, complementing the accomplishment of the daily round. Through an analysis of the nightly round—a process encompassing the social interactions, behaviors, and actions involved in going to, being in, and leaving the club—Hunter demonstrates that understanding the ways in which urban blacks use space in the nightclub to mediate racial segregation, sexual segregation, and limited social capital expands our current understanding of the spatial mobility of urban blacks as well as the important role of extra-neighborhood spaces in such processes. Further, the article highlights the ways that urban blacks use space in the nightclub to leverage socioeconomic opportunities and enhance social networks. While Hunter found that black heterosexual and lesbian and gay patrons used space in similar ways, black lesbians and gays were more likely to use the club as a space to develop ties of social support. The article can be found in the June 2010 issue of City and Community (volume 9, number 2).
State of Metro America report finds dramatic transformations in U.S. cities
May 9, 2010 at 8:39 pm | Posted in data, economic development, geography, neighborhoods, race, what to read | Leave a comment
The report, by the Brookings Institution, argues that a decade of transformation and turmoil has resulted in “five new realities”: the rapid growth and outward expansion of metropolitan areas; a dramatic diversification of the nation’s ethnic composition; the sharp growth of the 55-64 year-old population; a highly uneven increase in educational attainment; and a continuing rise in income inequality. Bruce Katz and Judith Rodin discuss some of the implications of these trends.
Urban, rural areas battle for census prison populace
May 3, 2010 at 11:34 am | Posted in cities, geography, news, prison system | Leave a commentPrison are often in small rural towns, while much of the prison population originates from urban areas. The 2010 census considers the area in which inmates are incarcerated as their community of residence rather than the neighborhoods from which they originate. This increase in population for these small rural towns has significant implications for the largely white populations that reside there. The larger population count often leads to great political representation through the allotment of elected officials and increased funds for schools, roads, and infrastructure investments. Conversely, the plunge in population numbers for the urban, mostly black and Hispanic areas where many incarcerated individuals would normally be counted perpetuates the inadequate resources going to many of these communities. This raises a variety of questions for the viability of urban institutions and the resources that they have at their disposal.
View the following link for more information:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123663462
The shrinking of Detroit
February 25, 2010 at 2:19 pm | Posted in geography, housing, neighborhoods, poverty | Leave a commentFacing a $360 million smaller budget, a dwindling tax basis, and a substantially weakened ability to provide services, Detroit appears to have begun the process of downsizing. From the Detroit News: “… Mary Bing said Wednesday he “absolutely” intends to relocate residents from desolate neighborhoods and is bracing for inevitable legal challenges when he unveils his downsizing plan. In his strongest statements about shrinking the city since taking office, Bing told WJR-760 AM the city is using internal and external data to decide ‘winners and losers.’ The city plans to save some neighborhoods and encourage residents to move from others, he said. ‘If we don’t do it, you know this whole city is going to go down. I’m hopeful people will understand that,’ Bing said.” The reactions are predictable. One less ring in the city’s nested concentric circles?
Neighborhood patterns of Netflix rentals
January 9, 2010 at 1:31 pm | Posted in amenities, consumption, geography, NYT, personality, scenes, what to read | 1 CommentThe New York Times has an excellent interactive feature on the distribution of 2009 rentals of particular films across neighborhoods, for New York, Chicago, Boston, D.C., Los Angeles, Atlanta, and a few other cities. For example, in the Hyde Park zip code (site of the University of Chicago), the most rented film in 2009 was Slumdog Millionaire. Yet in 3 of the South Side zip codes that surround it, the most rented film was Tyler Perry’s The Family that Preys. MadMen Season 1 made the top 50 in many of the zip codes in Manhattan and in those sections of Brooklyn nearest Manhattan; it was virtually absent in the rest of the metropolitan area. Relationship to Terry Clark’s amenity-based scenes indexes? To the neighborhood distribution of personality types? Long live the spatial sociology of consumption….
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