Vertical segregation: Mapping the vertical social stratification of residents in Athenian apartment buildings

Vertical segregation of apartment building dwellers during late state socialism in Bucharest, Romania

“…In constructing an appropriate set of independent variables, we isolate the sociodemographic and housing factors that were reported to significantly shape the patterns of vertical segregation in previous studies of Athens (Maloutas, 2007;Maloutas & Spyrellis, 2016) and socialist cities (Bater, 2006;Jerzy, 1986). We consequently select the following characteristics for individuals (household heads) and households: level of educational attainment, age structure, economic activity status, and degree of residential overcrowding (number of persons per room).…”

“…People who live here are seldom attracted by the housing units themselves or nearby amenities, but live there because they have few, if any, other choices (Maloutas & Karadimitriou, 2001). Finally, results of a study using 2011 data from Athens (Maloutas & Spyrellis, 2016) reveal a surprisingly regular pattern of socioeconomic vertical segregation: the social status of residents increases with a higher floor of residence. Moreover, apartments located on higher floors appear to be more spacious and more often occupied by owners rather than renters (ibid.…”

“…Due to limited information on the spatial locations of apartment buildings, we are unable to fully explore the intersection between horizontal and vertical segregation (cf. Maloutas & Spyrellis, 2016). Similarly, our technique for controlling for spatial heterogeneity in this analysis offers "population-averaged" results.…”

“…The social and spatial development of cities in the 20 th century, however, did not completely erase vertical divisions, at least not in Europe. Surprisingly, however, there are few studies of vertical social division in the late 20 th century or later except for select works (Bater, 2006;Leontidou, 1990Leontidou, , 1996Maloutas, 2007;Maloutas & Karadimitriou, 2001;Maloutas & Spyrellis, 2016), and the most comprehensive studies of vertical segregation in Europe are generally confined to the specific context of Athens, Greece.…”

“…Answering a recent call to refocus scholarly attention on the vertical dimension of urbanization (Graham, 2015) especially the call to shift scholarly attention to "ordinary" cities (Nethercote & Horne, 2016) and to investigate other threads in vertical urbanism than those of verticalized territorial violence (Harris, 2015) this article investigates the patterns of vertical segregation in Bucharest, Romania during socialism. Vertical segregationin contrast to horizontal segregationrefers to the social and/or ethnic stratification by floor of residence within apartment buildings (Maloutas & Spyrellis, 2016). Although the class (social) dimension of vertical differentiation has been at the core of inquiry since the mid-19 th century (Kohl, 1841;Maloutas & Karadimitriou, 2001), the very rare accounts of vertical divisions in socialist-era apartment buildingsprefabricated blocks of flatsemphasize the important role of demographic factors in differentiating vertical locations of residents.…”