Urban Sores

On the Interaction between Segregation, Urban Decay and Deprived Neighbourhoods

Hans Skifter Andersen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351753715
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Projections et prévisions

This title was first published in 2003. Most European cities have experienced problems in certain neighbourhoods that are termed deprived or excluded. Traditionally these were found in the oldest urban areas with lowest quality housing, but since the 1980s, such areas have emerged in housing estates built around the cities' edges. These neighbourhoods are marked by visible physical and social problems that disfigure the otherwise pleasant urban landscape, and can be seen as urban sores. This engaging and thought-provoking book provides a deeper understanding of why urban decay and deprived neighbourhoods appear in certain parts of cities, as well as how they affect residents and cities in general. Drawing on in-depth empirical research from Denmark, it compares this with other studies from Europe and the United States. The author combines theories and methodologies from the fields of geography (on segregation), economics (on processes of urban decay) and social research (on social exclusion and deprived neighbourhoods) to provide original, illuminating and invaluable insights.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Most European countries have experienced special problems that have emerged in certain more or less well-defined parts of cities called deprived or depressed urban neighbourhoods. These problems were initially found in the oldest urban areas with the lowest quality housing. Since the beginning of the 1980s, however, in Europe they have also emerged in newer social housing estates outside city centres.

These neighbourhoods display visible physical and social problems that can disfigure the perhaps otherwise attractive urban landscape. In severe cases they could even be termed sores on the face of the city. They are often perceived by the public as places that are not inhabited or frequented by decent people – they are seen as ‘places of exclusion’.

The purpose of this book is to contribute to a deeper understanding of why such neighbourhoods come to exist and the impacts they have on cities. Urban decay is a result of the interaction between social, economic and physical changes in cities, but one of my main views is that deprived neighbourhoods also constitute a very important element of and contribution to this interaction. These areas are not just a simple result of social inequality and segregational forces, as they also create new segregation and inequality. In these neighbourhoods, strong self-perpetuating processes have been started involving complicated mechanisms that draw the areas into a downward spiral from which they rarely recover unaided. Such forces also impact the rest of the city. The deprived areas act as magnetic poles that attract poverty and social problems, and repel people and economic resources in a way that influences other parts of the city. They are the visible signs that cities are subject to special socio-spatial forces that create social and physical inequality, unstable conditions and sometimes destruction – most clearly observed in slums in large American cities.

For this study, I have drawn on research from three main but different fields:

1research on segregation and its causes, carried out mainly by geographers and sociologists;

2research, mostly economic, on causes and mechanisms of urban decay, and studies of public policies against it;

3studies of deprived neighbourhoods and efforts to help them.

These three lines of research have followed their own separate courses and have rarely been combined. Studies of segregation have considered mainly spatial separation of different groups exclusively as a consequence of social inequality and cultural and racial differentiation, while characteristics of and changes in the urban structure have been less important. In contrast, economists, mainly Americans, have understood urban decay as a result of different households demanding different kinds of dwellings and surroundings that are located in different parts of cities. Finally, research on deprived neighbourhoods in Europe has either taken a very narrow look at the specific problems and circumstances in the studied areas or has seen this phenomenon as a general manifestation of what is called social exclusion in cities. Here, too, more profound analyses of the connection between the development of these neighbourhoods and the rest of the city are often missing.

However, comparing research from these different fields can provide a more thorough understanding of the interaction between spatial and social processes that lead to segregation, urban decay and deprived neighbourhoods. Much of the empirical material used in this book to illustrate analyses and qualify conclusions stems from my own research on Danish conditions during the last 10 years.

Exclusion of Places – the Interaction between Segregation and Urban Decay

Spatial segregation means that different social or cultural groups are separated in space and have settled in different parts of cities. In the literature, segregation is most often seen as a direct consequence of social inequality and cultural differences, as people from different social strata congregate or try to escape places of lower social status.

Some factors of importance to segregation are linked to public regulation of the central and local level of housing markets and of the location of housing. General housing policies and spatial planning implemented by local governments are of great importance. For example, it has been shown that two-thirds of the segregation in marginalised groups among sectors of Greater Copenhagen can be attributed to the localisation of different tenures in the housing market (see p. 41).

It has been a common notion that urban decay and the creation of deprived neighbourhoods can be understood as a more or less simple consequence of segregation. However, this book proposes the theory that the relationship between these phenomena is more complex and that to some extent the relationship is two-way in the sense that urban decay creates segregation.

An important basis for understanding urban decay and deprived neighbourhoods is the idea that cities develop due to the interaction between social and physical changes. The socio-spatial dialectic (Soja, 1980), as it has been termed, is a continuous two-way process in which people create and modify urban spaces while at the same time being conditioned in various ways by these changes.

The distribution of people in space is a product of both social differentiation and of the fact that cities consist of many different places that have very different qualities. This spatial differentiation is a product of the social, physical and functional structure of the city, a structure that is continuously changed by economic investments and disinvestments as a consequence of people and functions being redistributed in space. This results in cities that are divided into identifiable areas that can be relatively homogeneous but exhibit distinctive characteristics that are very different from other neighbourhoods. The preferences for living in different kinds of neighbourhoods can vary between households with different needs and lifestyles, but people will always share some common values that result in some neighbourhoods being seen as more attractive than others.

My main point here is that segregation is not a simple consequence of social inequality, but is a product of both social and spatial differentiation. Segregation, therefore, is influenced largely by the development of spatial differentiation in cities, and this is possibly more important than the development in social inequality and social exclusion. Segregation and increasing spatial inequality are mutually self-perpetuating processes because the status and cultural identity of urban areas are determined by the composition of the people living there. Spatial differentiation leads to segregation while segregation creates spatial differences.

Urban decay is a name for some of the most important processes that produce increased spatial inequality. In both Europe and North America, certain parts of cities have been observed to decline in quality, and some places have deteriorated to the extent that buildings have been abandoned.

Different explanations on a micro level have been offered; for example that buildings have a limited lifetime or – especially in Europe – that public regulations have ruined incentives for maintenance. But empirical evidence does not always support these assumptions, or indicate that they are important causes of urban decay. Studies define no clear, isolated technical-financial reasons for the deterioration of buildings and most modern rent control systems appear to have only a limited effect on maintenance. More crucially, perhaps, are the norms, motives and behaviour of property owners, especially private landlords, as shown in a Danish study described later in this book.

In the mostly economic research on the development of American city centres, urban decay is most often attributed to changes in the demand for housing and location (Grigsby et al., 1987; Rothenburg et al., 1991). As the demand for single family homes in the suburbs grew and housing in city centres became obsolete, the American middle class moved away from city centres and was succeeded by low-income groups with lower housing demands who were unable to pay for high-quality housing (downward succession). In response, property owners were expected to reduce maintenance, and deterioration and slums appeared. In short, urban decay has been explained as a consequence of economic inequality and spatial market processes that create segregation.

However, more detailed studies of the economy and behaviour of property owners, residents and other actors in American slum areas (see p. 59) raise serious doubts about this theory’s basic assumptions. They reveal that neighbourhood decay in the US cannot be explained simply as a result of segregation and succession. On the contrary, they indicate that succession is largely caused by urban decay. It is more appropriate to understand succession and decay as independent forces that interact and support each other.

Complex processes take place in American neighbourhoods in decay where three main factors interact: residents’ changing social composition; physical deterioration of buildings and open spaces; and falling property values and economic losses for many property owners. As the character of a neighbourhood gradually changes and physical signs of decay become apparent, middle class residents leave and are replaced by low income and excluded groups who cannot afford high-quality housing and neighbourhoods. As a consequence, property values decline, investments cease and the neighbourhood decays further. When the process has passed a certain point, crime and insecurity become common, and emigration speeds up. Dwellings and buildings become derelict and finally whole areas can be abandoned. These have been left as open wounds in the middle of the city that cannot be healed or cured. Urban decay in American city centres has therefore become the single most important urban problem in the US. The term ‘edge cities’ has been coined, which reflects that all growth is taking place in the suburbs while centres decline and collapse.

These processes of decay have appeared to be very strong and difficult to stop. As early as the 1930s, a theory was proposed about a ‘neighbourhood life-cycle’ (Babcock, 1932) that explained how residential neighbourhoods inevitably, over the course of time, develop into ‘poor blighted, or decadent districts’. This perception dominated American official thinking until the 1970s (Metzger, 2000). When gentrification began to occur in American cities at the beginning of the 1980s it became obvious, however, that the life-cycle theory of neighbourhoods was not a law of nature. Research on gentrification (see p. 65) has also revealed the crucial importance of the image of neighbourhoods and of expectations concerning their future social, economic and physical development. An ‘iron law’ of self-fulfilling negative expectations seems to have been a main factor behind the process of decay in American neighbourhoods, expectations that have been very difficult to change except in a few gentrified areas.

Better welfare systems and more extensive housing and urban policies in Europe have reduced the risk of hard-core slums, but problems have appeared in both older and newer urban areas. In the older areas, these problems have traditionally been attributed to the dominance of old and obsolete housing, while the appearance of problems on deprived social housing estates in suburbs has raised questions that demand new answers. Judging from the research literature, views seem to differ concerning the core problems of deprived neighbourhoods in Europe and vary even more concerning the main reasons for their occurrence.

Mainstream European research on deprived urban areas seems to be dominated by the view that the existence of slums is linked directly to and explained by general processes of segregation and social exclusion and impoverisation in cities. Deprived or depressed urban areas are seen mainly as ‘pockets of poverty’ – spatial concentrations of poor and excluded people (see Lee and Murie, 1999; Madanipour, 1998; Cars et al., 1998; Social Exclusion Unit, 1998). In this sense, the main reason that problem areas develop is the general processes that create inequality and poverty in cities, namely global and local economic restructuring processes and defective welfare policies (Musterd et al., 1999; Parkinson, 1998). Deprived urban areas are understood as just another aspect of deprivation stemming from the general exclusion of people in globalised cities.

In this theoretical context, the crucial question is whether the spatial concentration of poor people in itself results in an increase in the poverty and social exclusion of residents – the so-called social neighbourhood effects. If these effects are substantial, there are good reasons for considering spatial pockets of poverty as a special problem that should be countered through public measures. If social neighbourhood effects are small, however, it is difficult to argue in favour of special area-based initiatives. Instead, other more general measures should be used that generally reduce poverty and social exclusion.

Some researchers in this field (Friedrichs, 1997; Musterd and Ostendorf, 1998) conclude that some neighbourhood effects can be found, but that they tend to be smaller in Europe than in American. Musterd et al. (1999) therefore conclude that ‘in a European context, there are good reasons not to identify automatically social spatial inequality as such with “problems”’. Not surprisingly, these researchers are critical of area-based approaches used in many countries to solve problems in deprived neighbourhoods. Van Kempen and Priemus (1999), for example, conclude that:

The battle against segregation and concentration is fought on the basis of ideas that are questionable in the Dutch situation, and probably in other European countries as well (van Kempen and Priemus, 1999, p. 655).

Research based on this theory often concentrates on the connection between deprivation of neighbourhoods and general trends in Western societies that tend to increase economic and social polarisation. A lot of literature in recent years has discussed the spatial consequences of globalisation and changes in the labour market and tried to connect this with deprived housing.¹ However, it has been difficult to identify a clear connection between these phenomena, and the literature has often been quite speculative.

Signs that segregation in general and deprivation of certain places are not just explained by globalisation and social exclusion include the fact that no direct connection seems to have been found between these phenomena and general social and economic changes at a national or regional level. Plenty of evidence shows that segregation and deprivation of neighbourhoods continue in situations where the national or local economy is booming and social inequality is decreasing.

In a national context, Denmark and Finland are examples of countries experiencing increasing employment and decreasing social inequality while segregation is increasing and new problem estates are appearing (Skifter Andersen and Ærø, 1997; Andersen, 1999; Hjarnø, 1996; Kortteinen and Vaatovaara, 1999). Experience from the United States shows that slum growth in major cities has been most extensive in periods with the fastest growth in employment and incomes (Skifter Andersen, 1995b).

At a regional and local level, Mumford and Lupton (1999) conclude from their mapping of low demand for housing on problem estates in England: ‘there is no ...