Structural and Exchange Components in Processes of Neighbourhood Change: A Social Mobility Approach

Abstract

Neighbourhood socioeconomic change is a complex phenomenon which is driven by multiple processes. Most research has focused on the role of urbanlevel processes, which lead to an exchange of relative positions among neighbourhoods of a single metropolitan area. Consequently, the effects of structural processes on neighbourhood socioeconomic change, such as overall income growth or decline, and increasing inequality, have been neglected. This is reflected in the standard methodological practices; the common measures of neighbourhood change exclude the effect of overall growth or decline and confound the effects of urban processes with the effect of increase in inequality. This paper proposes a method that was originally developed for understanding income mobility of individuals, to decompose total neighbourhood socioeconomic change measured in absolute terms into its contributing components. The approach enables to take account of all processes that generate neighbourhood socioeconomic change, while distinguishing between them. The method is demonstrated in an empirical analysis of neighbourhood socioeconomic change across 22 metropolitan areas in the US. The findings indicate that structural processes can be most substantial in generating change. Neighbourhood socioeconomic change in 'superstar cities' is mostly generated by the growth in overall incomes, with a relatively low contribution of increasing inequality. Conversely, in declining cities it is mostly driven by overall decline and increasing inequality. An additional finding relates to the interaction between urban processes and increasing inequality. These processes work in opposite directions such that any increase in positions of low-income neighbourhoods can be totally offset by an income decrease due to increasing inequality.Appl. Spatial Analysis

Reordering, inequality and divergent growth: processes of neighbourhood change in Dutch cities

“…Specifically, it sought to assess the role of structural processes during a period characterized by a restructuring of the housing market. It used a decomposition method from income mobility research (Van Kerm, 2004), which was adjusted to study neighbourhood change (Modai-Snir & van Ham, 2018a). The method separated the contributions of three factors: (1) reordering of neighbourhoods within a given urban hierarchy of neighbourhoods; (2) increasing inequality among neighbourhoods of an urban area; and (3) growth or decline of incomes across the entire urban neighbourhood hierarchy.…”

“…Complex interactions between them were revealed in recent studies that used the decomposition method. An analysis of neighbourhood change across 22 metropolitan areas in the United States (1980-2010) discovered a large variation across metropolitan areas in the roles of the three factors (Modai-Snir & van Ham, 2018a), and a negative relationship between the growth and inequality factors. The trade-off between them is related to different spatial levels of inequalities.…”

“…However, changes in the sociospatial structures of cities are largely driven by structural processes. These structural processes can lead to changes in income compositions of an urban area, which can manifest themselves in increasing inequality among its neighbourhoods and in income growth or decline across all of its neighbourhoods (Modai-Snir & van Ham, 2018a). Part of the socioeconomic change that neighbourhoods undergo relates to those higher level processes regardless of their intrinsic characteristics.…”

“…We use a decomposition method from income mobility research (Van Kerm, 2004) that splits total change into contributions of separate distributional processes. This method has recently been applied to understand income-related change among neighbourhoods of a single urban area (Modai-Snir & van Ham, 2018a) and is capable of distinguishing between three change factors: (1) reordering of the relative positions of neighbourhoods within the urban neighbourhood hierarchy (defined as the 'ladder' of neighbourhood socioeconomic statuses); (2) increasing inequality among neighbourhoods; and (3) income growth or decline across the entire neighbourhood hierarchy (Modai-Snir & van Ham, 2018a). The latter two are considered 'structural factors' because they involve a change of the neighbourhood hierarchy of an urban area.…”

The Dynamics of Urban Neighborhoods: A Survey of Approaches for Modeling Socio-Spatial Structure

“…It could be very interesting and rewarding in terms of revealing hidden urban dynamics patterns to fully exploit the optimal matching algorithm and its variants widely used in other fields of social science (Studer and Ritschard, 2016). On the other hand, some recent research applied measures of income mobility to provide complementary insights in neighborhood change (Modai-Snir and van Ham, 2018). More specifically, the total neighborhood change is decomposed into exchange and structural effects similar to the income mobility tradition (van Kerm, 2004).…”