Wiley: City & Community: Table of Contents

About the Authors

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

City &Community, Volume 19, Issue 4, Page 1143-1144, December 2020.

Understanding the Divergent Logics of Landlords: Circumstantial versus Deliberate Pathways

Doron Shiffer‐Sebba — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

Landlords are important gatekeepers in the rental market, and scholars have studied landlord perceptions across different markets. But differences between landlord logics within a market, which drive landlord behaviors, have been largely unexamined. Drawing chiefly on 30 in-depth landlord interviews and 20 observations with property managers in Philadelphia, I argue that landlords exhibit a range of logics. When faced with rental market decisions, some employ profit-maximizing criteria, whereas others consider social closeness with tenants or the meanings of properties. These differences relate to pathways into property ownership: landlords who obtain property circumstantially focus on profit maximization less than those who purchase property deliberately to pursue profits. This paper extends our understanding of landlords, connecting their pathways to a range of logics within a single market context. It also suggests that policies should consider the logics of landlords they seek to influence.

Geographic Specificity Matters: Centering the Perspectives of Community‐Based Stakeholders for a Holistic Understanding of Gentrification in the Twin Cities

Brittany Lewis, Molly Calhoun, Edward G. Goetz, Anthony Damiano — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

This paper highlights the qualitative component of a larger mixed methodological study that explores how community stakeholders, most impacted by gentrification pressures in the Twin Cities, understand neighborhood change as it impacts their daily lives. The purpose is to expand the current theorization of gentrification through examining the lived experiences of those most impacted. We illuminate where community stakeholders' experiences align with and diverge from the common narrative themes often cited in contemporary gentrification literature such as demographic change and physical displacement. Although common narrative frames emerged, narrative distinctions also materialized. This differentiation highlights how gentrification pressures not only influence the redevelopment of physical space, but also culture and belonging in ways that can be distinctly different even in neighborhoods of close proximity. The implications suggest the importance of geographic specificity in policy and program approaches based on distinct histories of neighborhoods and their residents.

Producing Diverse and Segregated Spaces: Local Businesses and Commercial Gentrification in Two Chicago Neighborhoods

Steven Tuttle — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

Gentrification processes may involve both racial and class demographic transitions. In these cases, questions about racial segregation and integration become particularly pertinent. Neighborhoods appearing racially diverse, according to quantitative neighborhood-level measures, may not necessarily exhibit sustained interracial contact. In these contexts, I ask: how do local events and businesses contribute to racial segregation or integration? Using qualitative observations and interviews, I examine racial segregation and diversity in two previously majority-Latino Chicago neighborhoods. Looking specifically at public and semipublic spaces, I identify patterns of segregation and diversity. I argue that racially or ethnically diverse or segregated spaces can be the product of design or circumstance, with some actively fostering diverse and integrated communities and others becoming integrated largely due to convenience or necessity (as may be the case in grocery stores and other retail outlets). Thus, neighborhood-level diversity may not necessarily foster integration, but additional actions can be taken by place-producers.

The Meaning and Content of the Concept of the Social in the Scientific Discourse on Urban Social Sustainability

Diego A. Barrado‐Timón — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

The introduction and progressive consolidation of the paradigm of sustainability, and specifically that of social sustainability, has led to changes in the content attributed to the idea of the social in scientific discourse on the city and urban contexts. In this article, discourse analysis methods are used to assess these changes quantitatively and qualitatively as well as to highlight the new scientific, political, and ideological content that the concept is acquiring. The conclusion is that two discourses currently compete in redefining the idea of the social in relation to the city: one that we may term traditional or “hard,” linked to ideological positions of the left, and another “soft” or emerging meaning that connects to a great extent with discursive neoliberal logic.

A Path Analysis of Socialization Model in Traditional Market: Behavior, Function, Visual Exposure, and Access and Communication

Rana Najjari Nabi, Jamaloddin Mahdinezhad, Bahram Saleh Sedghpour — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

Public spaces serve as an important site of social interaction. They allow people to gather and socialize away from home and work. This article discusses the meaning of urban public space and its role in the socialization of users in the market and the discussion of public space as a part of the socialization of businessmen and people who meet there for shopping, recreation, and establishing social relationships. The purpose of this study was to test a conceptual model, using path analysis to examine direct and indirect relationships among factors contributing socialization in the public traditional Iranian Bazaars. Included in a path analysis were 326 cases. As hypothesized, behavior, function, visual exposure, and access and communication of 12 components were found to be effective factors that positively influenced socialization of markets.

Housing Outcomes in Turkey: How Do Middle‐Income Households Fare?

Samantha Friedman, Aysenur Kurtulus, Ismet Koc — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

Despite the doubling in size of the middle class and the significant housing increase in Turkey, little research has examined housing outcomes of middle-income households, particularly relative to affluent households. The housing increase and 2007 Mortgage Law could have reduced housing differences between middle-income and affluent households, but the rise in gated communities could have increased these differences. Using data from Turkey's 2012 Household and Budget Survey, we find that middle-income households are significantly less likely than affluent households to own their homes and live in larger homes, and among owner-occupiers, in homes of higher value. Less pronounced differences are found in their residence in newer homes. Fewer differences in housing outcomes exist between middle- and lower-income households, particularly among owner-occupiers. These results suggest that the most affluent households, rather than the poorest households, are likely isolating themselves from other households, thereby affecting the future well-being of middle-income households.

The Neighborhood Context of Eviction in Southern California

Michael C. Lens, Kyle Nelson, Ashley Gromis, Yiwen Kuai — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

In the United States, soaring rent burdens and a dearth of affordable housing leave millions of renters at risk of eviction. The eviction epidemic is particularly pronounced in California where advocates estimate that approximately 500,000 renters are evicted annually. Research has looked at individual-level determinants of evictions, but we know much less about the spatial dynamics of eviction and associations across neighborhoods. This is largely because data on evictions are sporadic and incomplete. We utilize data from American Information Research Services, Inc., that consists of publicly available California eviction court records for Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego Counties between 2005 and 2015. We append eviction locations to two waves of the American Community Survey (ACS) to better understand the connection between concentrated disadvantage and neighborhood change and eviction. We find that evictions are much more likely to occur in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates and/or shares of African-American individuals than in neighborhoods with rising rent or income levels. These findings suggest that court-based evictions are much more likely to be found in areas with low-income households and racial minorities than in areas experiencing rapid neighborhood change as evidenced by rising rents or changing demographics.

Commercial Gentrification, Ethnicity, and Social Mixedness: The Case of Javastraat, Indische Buurt, Amsterdam

Bahar Sakızlıoğlu, Loretta Lees — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the ethnic politics of commercial gentrification. We discuss how ethnicity is conceived of, managed by, and integrated into urban policy; and how the changing ethnic composition of the neighborhood is perceived and lived by entrepreneurs with different ethnic and class backgrounds. We employ the notion of “mixed embeddedness,” coined by Kloosterman et al., to understand the changes gentrification brings about for ethnic minority entrepreneurs and to explain their responses to these changes. Using the case study of a gentrifying street in Amsterdam, namely, Javastraat in Indische Buurt, we draw on an analysis of ethnic packaging at the policy level as well as in depth interviews with ethnically Dutch and ethnic minority entrepreneurs. Our findings shed light on how ethnic minorities survive and manage commercial gentrification on their doorsteps as well as the complexity of social mixedness in gentrifying neighborhoods.

Gardening in Times of Urban Transitions: Emergence of Entrepreneurial Cultivation in Post‐Katrina New Orleans

Yuki Kato — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

Expanding scholarship on urban farming has not systematically examined what spurs the proliferation of cultivation practices, especially when the city is undergoing economic and social transitions. This study examines the development of the urban cultivation (UC) scene in New Orleans over the decade following Hurricane Katrina with a particular focus on entrepreneurial UC projects. By contextualizing in-depth interviews with the growers in the historical events in the city, the study finds that the dominant motives of cultivation projects shifted from social missions to economic interests over time, as the city transitioned from recovery to redevelopment. The study highlights the heterogeneity of UC practices, and questions the current scholarship's tendency to situate urban gardens in opposing theoretical frameworks: tools for neoliberal urbanism or food justice activism. The findings show that the distinction between socially motivated and economically motivated UC cannot be easily drawn. Most of the socially motivated UC projects began adopting market participation over time, while many of the economically motivated UC projects operated as social entrepreneurialism. While growers tended to view themselves as alternative to the dominant political-economic system, they also undoubtedly benefitted from the market-driven redevelopment of the city that expanded UC opportunities.

“You Soak It up Like a Sponge”: Urban African American Teens’ Perceptions of the Determinants of Dating Abuse Perpetration and Victimization

Heather L. Storer, Aubrey Spriggs Madkour, Carl Kendall — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

Background: African American (AA) teens endure disproportionately high rates of adolescent dating abuse (ADA). There is a limited understanding of the community-specific pathways that contribute to AA youth's higher risk. The purpose of this study is to investigate AA youths’ perspectives on the antecedents of ADA. Methods: Data were collected from interviews (n = 38) with AA teens. Thematic content analysis was employed to identify primary themes across the interviews. Analysis involved multiple rounds of iterative coding and the clustering of thematic constructs. Results: Interview participants described individual-level and intergenerational explanations of ADA. The majority of participants could not identify community-level factors. Discussion and Implications: Dating abuse perpetration and victimization were positioned as the product of personal deficits and exposure to abuse in individuals’ family environments. These findings underscore how structural and systemic determinants of dating abuse have not been translated to youth's meaning-making processes regarding abuse. Implications for diversifying the public discourse on dating abuse will be discussed, and consciousness-raising on the influence of upstream determinants of abuse will be presented.

Racial Inequality between Gentrifiers: How the Race of Gentrifiers Affects Retail Development in Gentrifying Neighborhoods

Mahesh Somashekhar — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

Research often links gentrification to racial inequality. Nevertheless, scholars know surprisingly little about whether the racial composition of gentrifiers moderates the consequences of gentrification. Few quantitative studies compare the effects of gentrification across different racial groups, and those that do tend to limit their outcome of interest to housing. This paper represents perhaps the first ever large-scale assessment of the ways in which gentrifiers’ racial composition is associated with local retail development. Using data on retailers in over 500 U.S. cities between 2000 and 2010, the paper shows that retail development was significantly slower in neighborhoods gentrified by Blacks rather than Whites. Put differently, White gentrifiers gained a disproportionate amount of the retail development associated with gentrification. Scholars must acknowledge that the consequences of gentrification vary depending on the racial composition of gentrifiers, which is likely one reason why the field struggles to appropriately operationalize and measure gentrification.

Contested Spaces: Intimate Segregation and Environmental Gentrification on Chicago's 606 Trail

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

The 606, a greenway in Chicago, has been lauded as a transformative revitalization project that provides diverse benefits and connects communities. However, the greenway has become a source of conflict among Latinx residents who question the trail's value and influence on their communities. Using observations and interviews with users and residents, this study examined potential consequences of The 606, including intimate segregation, which occurs when individuals use social and physical barriers to stratify themselves in a shared environment, and impacts of environmental gentrification. Results revealed division along The 606 with Latinx users isolating themselves in western trail segments, citing feelings of exclusion, discrimination, and resistance to gentrification. Conversely, white users were found to avoid western trail segments due to fear and pervasive stereotypes. The study highlights the urban park paradox, where green space provides benefits to communities while simultaneously generating unintentional consequences that potentially reinforce segregation and social inequities.

Confronting Scale: A Strategy of Solidarity in Urban Social Movements, New York City and Beyond

Amaka Okechukwu — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

Emerging attention to the spatial dynamics of political contention points to the spatially situated nature of mobilization, and, in turn, how space is socially produced through collective action. Drawing from interviews and archival research, this article examines an urban university social movement organization and its relationship to a larger social movement network in an urban context. In response to university administrators’ adoption of neoliberal policy reform, student activists challenged sociospatial boundaries in their organizing across scale—in their university, the city, region, and across the nation. By adopting a strategy of solidarity, student activists collapsed the boundaries of the university and transformed it into a hub of Leftist social movement organizing for the city and beyond, redefining scale. Findings suggest that the development of urban social movement networks can be understood as a scalar strategy of solidarity for building social movement persistence and power. This social movement network emerged in response to market and State redefinition of urban meaning at the transition to the 21st century. This article illustrates how the sociospatial formation of urban social movement networks challenges the boundaries of contention.

Neighborhood Diversity and Food Access in a Changing Urban Spatial Structure

Joowon Jeong, Cathy Yang Liu — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

Abstract

This paper examines food access disparity in relation to neighborhood diversity, especially race/ethnicity and poverty in a changing intrametropolitan spatial structure, using the Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) as a case study. With detailed grocery store data, this study finds a substantive change in food access between 2003 and 2015 in terms of both the number of grocery stores and the gravity-based accessibility indicator, although such access varies by neighborhood characteristics and spatial location in terms of central city, inner-ring suburbs, and outer-ring suburbs. While access to grocery stores for minority-concentrated neighborhoods in outer-ring suburbs is comparable to other neighborhoods, neighborhoods with a high share of African American residents in inner-ring suburbs and those with a high share of Latino residents in the central city have significantly lower access to food outlets. Neighborhoods with higher poverty rate tend to have more food outlets across the region except for in inner-ring suburbs.

Issue Information

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 01:02:05 -0800

City &Community, Volume 19, Issue 4, Page 809-810, December 2020.

Suburbs and Urban Peripheries in a Global Perspective

Xuefei Ren — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 00:42:15 -0700

Abstract

Herbert Gans’ classic book, The Levittowners, has inspired generations of urban sociologists studying American suburbs, but it has also confined the field's focus to studies of the local community. At the same time, however, outside the discipline of American urban sociology, an interdisciplinary field of global suburban studies has flourished. Global suburban studies address a wider range of topics that extends to infrastructural provision, governance, and popular resistance. By introducing the key debates in global suburban studies, this essay argues that it is time for American urban sociologists to broaden their analytical focus beyond community institutions and power relations, and that much can be gained by adopting an international and comparative perspective to learn about urban peripheries elsewhere in the world. A comparative vantage point can help U.S. sociologists better situate socio-spatial transformations in American suburbs among a world of cities (and suburbs), and mine new insights on topics involving poverty, segregation, and community life that have been at the center of suburban research in American sociology.

Reconceptualizing Segregation from the Global South

Marco Garrido — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 00:41:09 -0700

Abstract

In American sociology, segregation is usually conceived in terms of spatial concentration, social isolation, and the consolidation of race, place, and poverty. This conceptualization fails to capture the reality of segregation in many of the largest cities in the Global South. Studying segregation in these places presents an opportunity to “open up” the concept and reimagine it more expansively. In the paper, I compare segregation in Manila, Philippines, to the standard model. The case challenges the model in significant ways. First, we see a form of segregation characterized not by the concentration of poor black neighborhoods but by the interspersion of slums and enclaves, and thus are led to view segregation as relational. Second, we are led to emphasize not the isolation of people living inside segregated spaces but their unequal interactions with people outside them. Third, we are better able to identify the role of segregation in constituting, not merely consolidating, group difference through a process of spatialization. These aspects also apply to American segregation but tend to be overlooked. By looking at segregation in Manila, however, they come into focus. We are led to think about segregation in different ways and see American segregation in a new light.

Evictions: Reconceptualizing Housing Insecurity from the Global South

Liza Weinstein — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 00:40:24 -0700

City &Community, EarlyView.

Reconceptualizing Urban Violence from the Global South

Ana Villarreal — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 00:09:10 -0700

Abstract

Although urban violence is most often theorized in relation to marginality, violence affects wealthy and poor in Latin America, albeit in different ways. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork and media coverage of a gruesome turf war in Monterrey, Mexico, this paper illustrates how an increase in violence lead the upper class to “disembed” the municipality of San Pedro from the Monterrey Metropolitan Area, revamp the police, and attempt to create not only a “defended neighborhood,” but an entire “defended city.” Contemporary San Pedro reveals that violence and related fear can prompt not only the fragmentation of urban space into numerous gated communities, but also the simultaneous concentration of urban wealth and public security at a city level. Latin American metropoles call for a reconceptualization of urban violence beyond the margins and a closer examination of the invisible walls enclosing the urban wealthy around the world.

Globalizing the Sociology of Gentrification

Melissa M. Valle — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 00:09:03 -0700

Abstract

How can the gentrification scholarship of US urban sociologists be enhanced by expanding beyond the confines of the Global North to include empirical and theoretical analyses of Southern gentrifications? This article engages the debate around the utility of the gentrification concept outside of postindustrial Northern cities. It argues that, in contrast to geographers and other interdisciplinary urbanists, many US-based sociologists have unduly overlooked or minimized two aspects of gentrification that may be more clearly observed in the Global South: the roles of local political-economic forces and the state. This article also notes what the discipline of sociology can add to apt explorations of gentrification in the Global South. It marries the oft-disparate discourses of sociologists of gentrification primarily in North America and Western Europe with geographers and other urbanists conducting gentrification research in the Global South in order to globalize the sociology of gentrification.

Afterword

Victoria Reyes — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 00:07:44 -0700

City &Community, EarlyView.

Toward a Global Urban Sociology: Keywords

Marco Garrido, Xuefei Ren, Liza Weinstein — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 07:16:00 -0700

Abstract

Many cities in the Global South are structurally different from the Northern, particularly American, cities on which much of urban sociology's conceptual apparatus has been based. Thus, depicting them in terms of a standard urban vocabulary risks imposing an inappropriate way of seeing. We need a vocabulary that is able to accommodate their different urban experience. This special issue contributes to the work of building that vocabulary. We select five keywords in urban sociology—eviction, segregation, suburbs, violence, and gentrification—and reconstruct them in light of the places we study (India, China, Mexico, the Philippines, and South Africa). Our aim is to produce a set of keywords better equipped to travel South and, in the process, advance a truly global urban sociology.