Urban Segregation And The Welfare State

Urban Segregation and the Welfare State examines ethnic and socio-economic segregation patterns, social polarisation, and social exclusion in major cities in the Western world. Contributors from across North America and Europe provide in-depth analysis of particular cities, ranging from Johannesburg, Chicago and Toronto to Amsterdam, Stockholm and Belfast. The authors highlight the social problems in and of cities, indicating differences between nation-states in terms of economic restructuring, migration, welfare state regimes and "ethnic history".

This title was first published in 2002: Over the past fifty years, numerous geographical concepts and methodologies have been developed to study urban segregation. This volume brings together an international team of scholars, practitioners and policy makers to examine the latest of these. The first section of this fascinating book sees contributors proposing innovative ideas and new conceptual models for the study of segregation in cities that undergo globalization. They assess the idea that segregation should be studied for individuals in respect to different spatial resolutions, including the study of the formation of inter-ethnic spatial networks. This is followed by an examination of questions concerning the associations among segregation, poverty and policies. The final section highlights patterns of segregation in four countries: South Africa, China, Canada and the Ruhr area, each of them representing different multicultural and transformational aspects. They also emphasize the socio-historical context in which patterns of segregation and desegregation appeared.

The Handbook of Urban Segregation scrutinises key debates on spatial inequality in cities across the globe. It engages with multiple domains, including residential places, public spaces and the field of education. In addition it tackles crucial group-dimensions across race, class and culture as well as age groups, the urban rich, middle class, and gentrified households. This timely Handbook provides a key contribution to understanding what urban segregation is about, why it has developed, what its consequences are and how it is measured, conceptualised and framed.

Residential segregation is a key issue for good governance in Latin American cities. The isolation of people of different social classes or ethnicities has potential political and social consequences, including differential access to and quality of education, health and other services. This volume uses the recent availability of geo-coded census data and techniques of spatial analysis to conduct the first detailed comparative examination of residential segregation in six major Latin American metropolises, with Austin, Texas, as a US comparison. It demonstrates the high degree of residential segregation of contemporary Latin American cities and discusses implications for the welfare of urban residents.

Urban Segregation and the Welfare State examines ethnic and socio-economic segregation patterns, social polarisation, and social exclusion in major cities in the Western world. Contributors from across North America and Europe provide in-depth analysis of particular cities, ranging from Johannesburg, Chicago and Toronto to Amsterdam, Stockholm and Belfast. The authors highlight the social problems in and of cities, indicating differences between nation-states in terms of economic restructuring, migration, welfare state regimes and "ethnic history".

This open access book investigates the link between income inequality and socio-economic residential segregation in 24 large urban regions in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. It offers a unique global overview of segregation trends based on case studies by local author teams. The book shows important global trends in segregation, and proposes a Global Segregation Thesis. Rising inequalities lead to rising levels of socio-economic segregation almost everywhere in the world. Levels of inequality and segregation are higher in cities in lower income countries, but the growth in inequality and segregation is faster in cities in high-income countries. This is causing convergence of segregation trends. Professionalisation of the workforce is leading to changing residential patterns. High-income workers are moving to city centres or to attractive coastal areas and gated communities, while poverty is increasingly suburbanising. As a result, the urban geography of inequality changes faster and is more pronounced than changes in segregation levels. Rising levels of inequality and segregation pose huge challenges for the future social sustainability of cities, as cities are no longer places of opportunities for all.

"There are places where history feels irrelevant, and America's inner cities are among them," acknowledges Michael Katz, in expressing the tensions between activism and scholarship. But this major historian of urban poverty realizes that the pain in these cities has its origins in the American past. To understand contemporary poverty, he looks particularly at an old attitude: because many nineteenth-century reformers traced extreme poverty to drink, laziness, and other forms of bad behavior, they tried to use public policy and philanthropy to improve the character of poor people, rather than to attack the structural causes of their misery. Showing how this misdiagnosis has afflicted today's welfare and educational systems, Katz draws on his own experiences to introduce each of four topics--the welfare state, the "underclass" debate, urban school reform, and the strategies of survival used by the urban poor. Uniquely informed by his personal involvement, each chapter also illustrates the interpretive power of history by focusing on a strand of social policy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: social welfare from the poorhouse era through the New Deal, ideas about urban poverty from the undeserving poor to the "underclass," and the emergence of public education through the radical school reform movement now at work in Chicago. Why have American governments proved unable to redesign a welfare system that will satisfy anyone? Why has public policy proved unable to eradicate poverty and prevent the deterioration of major cities? What strategies have helped poor people survive the poverty endemic to urban history? How did urban schools become unresponsive bureaucracies that fail to educate most of their students? Are there fresh, constructive ways to think about welfare, poverty, and public education? Throughout the book Katz shows how interpretations of the past, grounded in analytic history, can free us of comforting myths and help us to reframe discussions of these great public issues.

Residential segregation is a key issue for good governance in Latin American cities. The isolation of people of different social classes or ethnicities has potential political and social consequences, including differential access to and quality of education, health and other services. This volume uses the recent availability of geo-coded census data and techniques of spatial analysis to conduct the first detailed comparative examination of residential segregation in six major Latin American metropolises, with Austin, Texas, as a US comparison. It demonstrates the high degree of residential segregation of contemporary Latin American cities and discusses implications for the welfare of urban residents.