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Over many decades, academics, policymakers and governments have been concerned with both the presence of inequalities and the impacts these can have on people when concentrated spatially in urban areas. This concern is especially related to the influence of spatial inequalities on individual outcomes in terms of health, education, work and income, and general well-being amongst other outcomes. In this commentary, we provide an overview of the literature on spatial inequalities and on contextual and neighbourhood effects. We address some of the main challenges in modelling contextual effects and provide evidence that no single study can definitively provide the answer to the question whether – and how much – spatial context effects are relevant for understanding individual outcomes. It is only when taken together that the rich body of research on spatial context effects shows convincingly that spatial context effects are relevant. The commentary ends with the presentation of the vicious circle of the segregation model and suggest some ways in which this vicious circle of spatial inequality and segregation can be broken.

An extensive body of research has documented the deleterious effects of community violence on adolescent development and behavior. Much of this research focuses on how exposure violence structures social interaction, and, ultimately, how it motivates youth to engage in troublesome behavior. This study builds upon this body of research to demonstrate how exposure to community violence strains relationships between adolescents and their caregivers, resulting in higher levels of interpersonal conflict. Drawing on five waves of longitudinal panel data (n=778; observations=3,458; 55% female), combined with police records of violent crime in Utrecht, the Netherlands, a hybrid tobit regression documents how exposure to local and nearby violence affects child-parent conflict. The results indicate that youth who experience high levels of neighborhood violence report higher levels of conflict with parents than youth with low exposure to neighborhood violence. These results are consistent across different levels of neighborhood aggregation.

Despite its egalitarian past, in recent decades Israel followed the footsteps of the United States in terms of growing inequality levels and reduced welfare arrangements. It is assumed, therefore, to have followed similar trends of increasing residential segregation between income groups. This study focuses on the metropolitan area of Tel-Aviv, Israel’s financial and cultural centre and examines the change in the spatial distribution of income groups between the years 1995–2008. It identifies trends in segregation between top and bottom income earners, as well as those between other income groups, given corresponding trends in income inequality. In addition, it examines spatial patterns of affluence and poverty concentration and assesses the influence of concentrated disadvantage among specific income and religious groups on overall segregation trends.

The book “Urban Socio-Economic Segregation and Income Inequality: a Global Perspective” investigates the link between income inequality and residential segregation between socio-economic groups in 24 large cities and their urban regions in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. Author teams with in-depth local knowledge provide an extensive analysis of each case study city. Based on their findings, the main results of the book can be summarised as follows. 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, which leads to a convergence of global trends. In many cities the workforce is professionalising, with an increasing share of the top socio-economic groups. In most cities the high-income workers are moving to the centre or to attractive coastal areas, and low-income workers are moving to the edges of the urban region. In some cities, mainly in lower income countries, high-income workers are also concentrating in out-of-centre enclaves or gated communities. The urban geography of inequality changes faster and is more pronounced than city-wide single-number segregation indices reveal. Taken together, these findings have resulted in the formulation of a Global Segregation Thesis.

Since the 2000s, Lima city shows important changes in its socio-spatial structure, decreasing the long-established opposition between the centre and the periphery, developing a more complex arrangement. Sustained national economic growth has allowed better socio-economic conditions in different areas of the city. However, high inequality still remains in the ways of production of urban space, which affects residential segregation. To identify possible changes in the segregation patterns of Metropolitan Lima, this study focuses on the spatial patterns of occupational groups, examining their causes and relation with income inequality. The analysis is based on the 1993 and 2007 census data, measuring residential segregation by the Dissimilarity Index, comparing with the Diversity Index. The results confirm trends towards increased segregation between occupational groups. Top occupational groups are concentrated in central areas, expanding into adjacent districts. Bottom occupational groups are over-represented in distant neighbourhoods. In-between, a new, more mixed, transitional zone has emerged in upgraded formerly low-income neighbourhoods. Areas of lower occupational diversity coincide with extreme income values, forming spaces of greater segregation. In the metropolitan centre–periphery pattern, the centre has expanded, while the periphery has been shifted to outer peripheral rings.

Previous studies have highlighted the importance of having long term data for the study of cities, but such sources are relatively scarce. This is especially the case for data about relations between cities, which is a crucial aspect of urban dynamics. Over the last two decades, many efforts have been made to digitalize texts, including books and newspapers, which are primary sources on most of our societies. Researchers have shown that these massive digital archives can be used to identify macroscopic trends related to historical and cultural changes. The wealth of geographic information in such digital archives has not been used much, while they are very valuable for the study of cities. In this paper, we present DIGGER, a newly developed dataset that we built on Delpher, the digital archive of historical newspapers of the National Library of the Netherlands, by extracting geographical information from a selection of 102 million of news items. This dataset allowed us to study the spatial diffusion of information on and between the Dutch cities from a corpus of 81 newspapers published in 29 different cities between 1869 and 1994. This paper presents the method developed to build the dataset as well as the validation steps for the accuracy of the place name recognition. This dataset can be used to study the evolution of the Dutch urban system as well as aspects related to the spatial diffusion of information and geographical bias in media coverage.

Funding: VIDI grant no. 452-14-004, provided by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Borrowed size refers to the idea that small cities nearby larger metropolitan centres are able to reap the advantages of large agglomerations, without the agglomeration costs. This study explores whether broadband internet helps such smaller cities to enjoy the labour market benefits of a larger city. Using Swedish micro-data from 2007-2015, together with unique data on broadband, we find suggestive evidence that broadband allows smaller cities to reap such benefits indeed. We find that borrowed size is primarily driven by the overall penetration of broadband in the place of residence, rather than by broadband availability at the residence. Publisher PDF

Teleworking may increase the willingness to accept a longer commute. This paper presents new evidence of the effect of teleworking on the length of commutes. We use novel panel data from the Netherlands, for the years 2008-2018, and find stronger effects compared to studies that use older data. Between 2008 and 2018 however, the effect was remarkably stable: workers that started teleworking increased their commutes by 12 percent on average. We analyse heterogeneity in the effect of teleworking on commuting across different levels of urbanization and across occupations. This study stresses the effects of teleworking on the geographical scale of labour markets, and provides important inputs for policymakers that aim to promote teleworking.

Research on neighbourhood effects indicates that neighbourhood poverty is related to educational outcomes of youth, however, much less attention is spend on studying neighbourhood and school effects simultaneously. Because the demographic composition of both contexts likely overlaps to some extent, it is possible that the effect both contexts have is not independent of each other. Throughout the early teenage years the neighbourhood and school contexts can vary, advocating for a life-course approach, including how the timing and duration of exposure to either contexts affect educational achievement. Using the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) birth cohort (N=4,502), we employed cross-classified multilevel models to examine the timing and duration of exposure to poverty in neighbourhood and school contexts between ages 10 and 16, to predict educational achievement of adolescents at age 16. Our results indicate that neighbourhood poverty impacts on educational achievement, independent of school poverty. Furthermore, we found that for neighbourhood poverty, especially enduring exposure impacts on educational achievement, while the timing of exposure does not play a role. However, for school poverty, both timing and duration play a role: longer exposure is related to lower achievement, but also exposure at an earlier age has a stronger impact than exposure at a later age. Finally, the lowest educational achievement was observed in adolescents who were exposed to poverty in both contexts for the full observation period. In sum, our analyses indicate that, when studying contextual disadvantage, it is crucial to consider how variations over time in different contexts might be related and how they might influence the study.

Since the 1990s, Lithuania lost almost one-quarter of its population, and some regions within the country lost more than 50% of their residents. Such a sharp population decline poses major challenges to politicians, policy-makers and planners. The aim of this study is to obtain more insight into the recent processes of socio-spatial change and the role of selective migration in Lithuania. The main focus is on understanding who lives in those regions which are rapidly losing population, and who is most likely to leave these regions. This is one of the first studies to use individual-level Lithuanian census data from 2001 and 2011. We found that low socio-economic status residents and older residents dominate the population of shrinking regions, and unsurprisingly that the most ‘successful’ people are the most likely to leave such regions. This process of selective migration reinforces the negative downward spiral of declining regions. As a result, socio-spatial polarization is growing within the country, where people with higher socio-economic status are increasingly overrepresented in the largest city-regions, while the elderly and residents with a lower socio-economic status are overrepresented in declining rural regions. This paper provides empirical evidence of selective migration and increasing regional disparities in Lithuania. While the sociospatial changes are obvious in Lithuania, there is no clear strategy on how to cope with extreme population decline and increasing regional inequalities within the country., A+BE | Architecture and the Built Environment, No. 9 (2017): Socio-spatial change in Lithuania

Facilitating ageing in place enables older people to remain in familiar places, namely their homes and neighbourhoods, as long as possible. However, urban redevelopment that includes the forced relocation of residents often makes ageing in place impossible. The present research examined how impending neighbourhood demolition affects the ageing in place of older people in Shenyang, China. Starting with the presscompetence model and related academic work concerning the influences of person– environment interaction on the wellbeing of older people, this paper discusses the impact of forced relocation and demolition on the meaning of home, the living arrangement and the role of family, and strategies to maintain the independence of older people. Transcript analysis of 54 semi-structured interviews with older residents revealed their ambivalent feelings towards the impending demolition. Long-term residence in declining neighbourhoods makes them feel rooted and enables them to develop their living strategies and plan for ageing in place. However, neighbourhood decline challenges their daily activities and they increasingly struggle to maintain their independence, which leads them to consider impending neighbourhood redevelopment as an opportunity to improve their living conditions. The impending forced relocation interrupts their place-based identity and living strategies and causes significant stress due to their lack of autonomy in the decision making on the relocation process, the move itself and their uncertainty regarding their post-relocation life. Implications for further research and policy are provided., A+BE | Architecture and the Built Environment, No. 11 (2018): Residents’ Perceptions of Impending Forced Relocation in Urban China

We use electoral data to analyze the ethno-political consequences that may arise from the fact that the region surrounding the city of Vilnius is dominated by residents with a Polish identity, while those who move to the suburbs are mainly ethnic Lithuanians. In the suburban ring we found increasing voting turnout, a decreasing share of votes for the Polish party, and an increase of the absolute number of votes for this party. The changing electoral behavior might be an indicator of growing ethno-political tensions and the zones of the most intense changes identify areas of potential social tensions between ethnic groups., A+BE | Architecture and the Built Environment, No. 9 (2017): Socio-spatial change in Lithuania

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 615159 (ERC Consolidator Grant DEPRIVEDHOODS, Socio-spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood effects). Selective intra-urban migration of ethnic groups is often assumed to be the main micro-level mechanism reproducing ethnic residential segregation. However, other demographic processes, such as natural change and international migration, also matter. This paper contributes to the literature by unravelling the impacts of different demographic processes to changes in ethnic segregation. It uses longitudinal individual-level register data on the complete population of the Helsinki region in Finland. We calculate observed changes in exposure indices, segregation indices in counterfactual scenarios, and decompositions of population changes. Results indicate that intra-regional migration is the main process affecting segregation between Finnish-origin and non-Western-origin populations, but whereas migration of the former increases segregation, migration of the latter decreases it. International migration and natural change among the non-Western-origin population are the main processes increasing exposure of the non-Western-origin population to other members of the group. No indication is found of a general tendency to "self-segregate". Publisher PDF

Mid-twentieth-century large housing estates, which can be found all over Europe, were once seen as modernist urban and social utopias that would solve a variety of urban problems. Since their construction, many large housing estates have become poverty concentrating neighbourhoods, often with large shares of immigrants. In Northern and Western Europe, an overlap of ethnic, social and spatial disadvantages have formed as ethnic minorities, often living on low incomes, settle in the most affordable segments of the housing market. The aim of this introductory chapter is to synthesise empirical evidence about the changing fortunes of large housing estates in Europe. The evidence comes from 14 cities—Athens, Berlin, Birmingham, Brussels, Budapest, Bucharest, Helsinki, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Moscow, Prague, Stockholm and Tallinn—and is synthesised into 10 takeaway messages. Findings suggest that large housing estates are now seen as more attractive in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe. The chapter also provides a diverse set of visions and concrete intervention measures that may help to improve the fortunes of large housing estates and their residents.

In the 1960s and 1970s, all over Europe housing estates emerged that were very similar with respect to construction methods and urban design. At the same time, housing estates across Europe did not all follow the same trajectory after their completion. This divergence occurred because the main reasons for their deterioration and social degradation are exogenous factors, not internal factors. Of course, it makes a difference whether the physical quality of the dwellings was good and whether the spatial planning was adequate. But even well-designed housing estates are subject to social degradation due to competition with newer neighbourhoods that are usually added at the top of the market and more geared to contemporary housing preferences. In Western Europe, this process of relative depreciation is further exacerbated by the prioritisation of owner-occupation leading to residualisation of the social rented sector. The social and ethnic transformation of large housing estates is not only the consequence of planning and housing policies but also of external factors like immigration and economic decline. Most European countries have witnessed a substantial inflow of immigrants in the previous decades, and many of these find their way to large housing estates. Next to that, the social decline of housing estates is often related to a shrinking local economy. Policies aimed at reversing the decline hurt the sitting population more often than it helped them.

Longer term exposure to high poverty neighbourhoods can affect individual socio-economic outcomes later in life. Previous research has shown strong path dependence in individual neighbourhood histories. A growing literature shows that the neighbourhood histories of people is linked to the neighbourhoods of their childhood and parental characteristics. To better understand intergenerational transmission of living in deprived neighbourhoods it is important to distinguish between inherited disadvantage (socio-economic position) and contextual disadvantage (environmental context in which children grow up). The objective of this paper is to come to a better understanding of the effects of inherited and contextual disadvantage on the neighbourhood careers of children once they have left the parental home. We use a quasi-experimental family design exploiting sibling relationships, including real sibling pairs, and "synthetic siblings" who are used as a control group. Using rich register data from Sweden we find that real siblings live more similar lives in terms of neighbourhood experiences during their independent residential career than synthetic sibling pairs. This difference reduces over time. Real siblings are still less different than synthetic pairs but the difference gets smaller with time, indicating a quicker attenuation of the family effect on residential outcomes than the neighbourhood effect.

While researchers are increasingly re-conceptualizing international migration, far less attention has been devoted to re-thinking short-distance residential mobility and immobility. In this paper we harness the life course approach to propose a new conceptual framework for residential mobility research. We contend that residential mobility and immobility should be re-conceptualized as relational practices that link lives through time and space while connecting people to structural conditions. Re-thinking and re-assessing residential mobility by exploiting new developments in longitudinal analysis will allow geographers to understand, critique and address pressing societal challenges.

In the last few decades, urban restructuring programs have been implemented in many Western European cities with the main goal of combating a variety of socioeconomic problems in deprived neighborhoods. The main instrument of restructuring has been housing diversification and tenure mixing. The demolition of low-quality (social) housing and the construction of owner-occupied or private-rented dwellings was expected to change the population composition of deprived neighbourhoods through the in-migration of middle and high income households. Many studies have been critical with regard to the success of such policies in actually upgrading neighborhoods. Using data from the 31 largest Dutch cities for the 1999 to 2013 period, this study contributes to the literature by investigating the effects of large-scale demolition and new construction on neighborhood income developments on a low spatial scale. We use propensity score matching to isolate the direct effects of policy by comparing restructured neighborhoods to a set of control neighborhoods with low demolition rates, but with similar socioeconomic characteristics. The results indicate that large-scale demolition leads to socioeconomic upgrading of deprived neighborhoods through the in-migration of middle and high income households. We find no evidence of spillover effects to nearby neighborhoods, suggesting that physical restructuring only has very local effects.

Malgrat el bagatge acumulat en altres països, a Espanya, les fonts de microdades disponibles en matèria de mobilitat han resultat insuficients per afrontar anàlisis de les històries individuals residencials i espacials dins de contextos urbans. Aquest treball permet fer una primera aproximació a l’estudi d’aquestes històries en un context metropolità espanyol. Basant-nos en una enquesta de Granada amb informació sobre el total de canvis domiciliaris i espacials —entre barris— realitzats en un període de deu anys, proposem un mètode de regressió de comptatge Hurdle per a l’estudi de les històries d’(im)mobilitat i descobrim la influència de quatre dimensions bàsiques (transcurs vital, estat en la carrera residencial, posició social i tipus de barri on es resideix) en la generació de trajectòries més (o menys) sedentàries. Els resultats d’aquest article indiquen que la immobilitat residencial i espacial respon a factors com el grau d’arrelament dels individus i de les llars. Tanmateix, la hipermobilitat està connectada amb perfils joves i amb poques càrregues familiars. La posició social i el tipus de barri on es resideix emergeixen com a factors explicatius rellevants a l’hora d’entendre trajectòries més sedentàries., Although there is a large international body of literature on residential mobility, the research on Spain is scarce. The main reason is that there is little suitable microdata which allows the analysis of individual residential and spatial mobility within urban contexts. This paper is one of the first to study mobility in a Spanish metropolitan context. We use data from a survey conducted in Granada with information on residential and spatial mobility between neighborhoods over a 10-year period and a Hurdle count regression method for the study of (in)mobility. The results show the effects of four basic dimensions (life course, stage in the residential career, social position and the neighborhoods where people live) on the generation of more (or less) sedentary trajectories. We found that residential and spatial immobility is associated with settled individuals and households. On the other hand, hypermobility is connected to younger age groups and those without children. The social position and type of neighborhood in which people reside emerge as relevant factors to understand immobility behavior., A pesar del bagaje acumulado en otros países, en España, las fuentes de microdatos disponibles en materia de movilidad han resultado insuficientes para afrontar análisis de las historias individuales residenciales y espaciales dentro de contextos urbanos. Este trabajo permite realizar una primera aproximación al estudio de dichas historias en un contexto metropolitano español. Basándonos en una encuesta de Granada con información acerca del total de cambios domiciliarios y espaciales —entre barrios— realizados en un periodo de diez años, proponemos un método de regresión de conteo Hurdle para el estudio de las historias de (in)movilidad y descubrimos la influencia de cuatro dimensiones básicas (transcurso vital, estado en la carrera residencial, posición social y tipo de barrio en el que se reside) en la generación de trayectorias más (o menos) sedentarias. Los resultados de este artículo indican que la inmovilidad residencial y espacial responde a factores como el grado de arraigo de los individuos y de los hogares. La hipermovilidad, sin embargo, está conectada con perfiles jóvenes y con pocas cargas familiares. La posición social y el tipo de barrio en el que se reside emergen como factores explicativos relevantes a la hora de entender trayectorias más sedentarias.

Concentration to disadvantaged neighbourhoods may hinder immigrants' opportunities for social integration, so equal chances of translating available economic resources into mobility to less disadvantaged neighbourhoods are important. This paper adds to existing research on exits from poor neighbourhoods by focusing on the effects of income increase on residential mobility. We analyse intra-urban residential mobility from low-income neighbourhoods into non-low-income neighbourhoods among immigrants and native-born residents in three urban regions in Finland. We use longitudinal register data for the 2004–2014 period for the full Finnish population, allowing a dynamic analysis of changes in income and neighbourhood of residence. Based on multinomial logit modelling of migration outcomes, we found that an increase in income is associated with moving both to low-income and non-low-income areas even when controlling for initial income level. Upward income mobility was connected to exit from low-income areas in a quite similar way among immigrants and native-born Finns. The findings suggest that policies e.g. improving the labour market opportunities of immigrants are effective in reduction of residential segregation. However, we were not able to completely explain the differences between native-born Finns and immigrants in moving patterns. The differences between the cities were opposite for immigrants and native-born Finns, corresponding to differences in immigration history and levels of ethnic segregation. Therefore, the local context matters for spatial integration outcomes.