Search

Recent advances in quantitative tools for examining urban morphology enable the development of morphometrics that can characterize the size, shape, and placement of buildings; the relationships between them; and their association with broader patterns of development. Although these methods have the potential to provide substantial insight into the ways in which neighborhood morphology shapes the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of neighborhoods and communities, this question is largely unexplored. Using building footprints in five of the ten largest U.S. metropolitan areas (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles) and the open-source R package, foot, we examine how neighborhood morphology differs across U.S. metropolitan areas and across the urban-exurban landscape. Principal components analysis, unsupervised classification (K-means), and Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis are used to develop a morphological typology of neighborhoods and to examine its association with the spatial, socioeconomic, and demographic characteristics of census tracts. Our findings illustrate substantial variation in the morphology of neighborhoods, both across the five metropolitan areas as well as between central cities, suburbs, and the urban fringe within each metropolitan area. We identify five different types of neighborhoods indicative of different stages of development and distributed unevenly across the urban landscape: these include low-density neighborhoods on the urban fringe; mixed use and high-density residential areas in central cities; and uniform residential neighborhoods in suburban cities. Results from regression analysis illustrate that the prevalence of each of these forms is closely associated with variation in socioeconomic and demographic characteristics such as population density, the prevalence of multifamily housing, and income, race/ethnicity, homeownership, and commuting by car. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings and suggesting avenues for future research on neighborhood morphology, including ways that it might provide insight into issues such as zoning and land use, housing policy, and residential segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks the question – who moves into what kinds of neighbourhoods and what kind of residential sorting is occurring in the ethnically diverse metropolitan region of Los Angeles. The study examines residential selections across a typology of neighbourhood types in the Los Angeles metropolitan region using residential mobility data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (LAFANS). Similar to recent work in the UK and Canadian contexts, ethnic groups demonstrate moderately strong relationships between their socio‐economic statuses and their neighbourhood contexts. Both behaviour, that is, actual moves and preferences, are consistent with a tendency to increased mixing and declining segregation in the residential mosaic. In particular, the expressed residential preferences and the choices of these households provide an explanatory context for the overall decline in segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preservation and promotion of neighbourhood identity is important in contemporary cities. Los Angeles, long known for its lack of both effective mass transit and, separately, local identity and cohesion among its neighbourhoods, is currently working to address each of these issues, yet little attention has been paid to the possibility that the two can be directly related. This paper investigates how rail transit line identification and station-naming decisions are not only important to community members but can have an impact on the neighbourhood identity. After introducing these ideas with the case of the identification of the Metro 'Expo Line' in LA, the paper turns to a comparison of naming logics for other local institutions and other major transit systems, arguing that cities could benefit from considering 'community supportive' transit design that promotes local identity in addition to more pragmatic wayfinding concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undocumented immigrants concentrate in ethnic enclaves, but little is known about the implications of living in such neighborhoods for children of undocumented immigrants. Using data on Mexican-origin children from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey and the decennial census, this paper examines the influence of co-ethnic concentrated neighborhoods on children's behavioral functioning, and the extent to which parental nativity and documentation status moderate the neighborhood effects. Multilevel linear regression models show that the proportion of co-ethnics in the neighborhood apparently has no influence on Mexican-origin children. However, cross-level interactions reveal that the neighborhood context has differential effects by parental documentation status. The higher the percentage of co-ethnics in the neighborhood, the lower (better) the externalizing scores for children of undocumented immigrants, a pattern not observed for children of US-born or documented parents. The mechanism through which co-ethnic enclaves benefit children of undocumented Mexican immigrants deserves future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessibility is a fundamental concept in theories of metropolitan spatial structure. Urban economic models explain urban structure as a function of access to jobs; accessibility is capitalised into land values, which in turn explain the population distribution. Studies of residential land values show that many factors contribute to the value of a given location: the characteristics of the housing unit, its location with respect to social and environmental amenities, as well as access to jobs, services and other economic opportunities. Empirical studies typically use job access as a proxy for more generalised access to economic activities. However, jobs represent many different activities, from retail shopping to heavy manufacturing, and the value of access to these activities may be positive or negative. In this paper, accessibility measures based on industry sectors have been developed, allowing the separating out of possible different effects. Their impacts are tested on residential land values using data from the Los Angeles region. A multilevel modelling approach is used in order to control for neighbourhood-level attributes common to multiple properties. It is found that the various access measures have different and significant effects on land values, but attributes of the dwelling unit, together with access to the coast, explain most of the variation. The multilevel model is confirmed; there is significant correlation among properties within the same neighbourhood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Analysis of neighborhood environments is important for understanding inequality. Few studies, however, use direct measures of the visible characteristics of neighborhood conditions, despite their theorized importance in shaping individual and community well-being, because collecting data on the physical conditions of places across neighborhoods and cities and over time has required extensive time and labor. The authors introduce systematic social observation at scale (SSO@S), a pipeline for using visual data, crowdsourcing, and computer vision to identify visible characteristics of neighborhoods at a large scale. The authors implement SSO@S on millions of street-level images across three physically distinct cities—Boston, Detroit, and Los Angeles—from 2007 to 2020 to identify trash across space and over time. The authors evaluate the extent to which this approach can be used to assist with systematic coding of street-level imagery through cross-validation and out-of-sample validation, class-activation mapping, and comparisons with other sources of observed neighborhood characteristics. The SSO@S approach produces estimates with high reliability that correlate with some expected demographic characteristics but not others, depending on the city. The authors conclude with an assessment of this approach for measuring visible characteristics of neighborhoods and the implications for methods and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the 2016–2020 point-in-time homeless count data, this study investigates neighborhood characteristics associated with the levels of and changes in unsheltered homeless population density in Los Angeles. The results show that unsheltered homeless people in the study area are heavily concentrated in and around the city center, and in neighborhoods with greater access to shelters and lower socioeconomic status. Notably, neighborhoods closer to the city center experienced a relatively large increase in unsheltered homelessness during the study period, implying a persistent spatial concentration of unsheltered homelessness. The results consistently indicate that residential land share, Hispanic resident share, and the number of bridges in the baseline year are significant predictors of relative changes in unsheltered homelessness in subsequent years, whereas access to shelters and poverty rates are not. This study's findings provide several important policy implications that could potentially help prevent and mitigate unsheltered homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the neighborhood seen as the ideal unit for participatory modes of governance, many cities in the United States have established formal systems of neighborhood councils to increase civic participation, improve service delivery, and enhance democracy. Los Angeles boasts the most extensive neighborhood council system, which was founded in 1999, in the country. Through a qualitative study of two neighborhood councils in LA, this study investigates how neighborhood councils influence land use and policy decision-making. It finds that political capital, negotiation, and associational leverage are the most important tools for these councils in exerting influence. In doing so, the authors suggest that the oft-cited justifications for pursuing formalized modes of participatory urban governance do not take into consideration the sociopolitical dimensions of urban regimes, and suggest three propositions for future research on neighborhood governance systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research has documented the contagiousness of violence. Some of this work has focused on contagiousness as operationalized by the spread across geographical space, while other work has examined the spread within social networks. While the latter body of work struggles with incomplete network data, the former constitutes a theoretical mismatch with how violence should spread. Theory instead strongly suggests that violence contagion should diffuse through everyday mobility networks rather than just adjacently through geographical space. Beyond contagion itself, I argue that neighborhoods connected through mobility networks should serve as useful short-term sensors in predicting imminent violence because these sets of residents tend to experience shared environmental exposures, which may induce synchrony in the likelihood of violence. I explore this topic and these relationships using violent crime data from the three largest U.S. cities: New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Using two-way fixed effects models, I test whether or not violence in mobility-connected alter neighborhoods in the preceding hour predicts violence in an ego neighborhood in the next hour. Across all three jurisdictions, I find that recent violence in the neighborhoods to which a neighborhood is connected through mobility ties can strongly predict that neighborhood's odds of subsequent violence. Furthermore, spatial proximity has no significant effect on the likelihood of violent crime after controlling for mobility ties. I conclude by arguing that mobility patterns are an important pathway in the prediction of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some housing researchers have criticized the United States housing subsidy scheme referred to as the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program for failing to promote better opportunities for low-income persons. In this study, therefore, we examine the socio-economic and built-environment characteristics of LIHTC developments at the neighborhood level. Specifically, we aim to investigate the characteristics associated with LIHTC developments compared to neighborhoods without this kind of development. We focus on California statewide initially and then narrow our focus to examine LIHTC developments in Los Angeles County (LAC). We then compare the results from the two levels of government. We compiled data from several sources including the U.S. Census Bureau, the State of California, the Southern California Association of Governments, and other secondary sources; used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to aid in creating several location-based indicators; and employed logistic regression for analyses. Our results show that LIHTC developments at the statewide and county levels tend to be in racially/ethnically diverse neighborhoods with higher levels of economic hardship, lower rents, a higher percentage of renters, and spatial clustering of LIHTC developments. With LAC removed from the state-level analysis, economic hardship is not more likely to occur in LIHTC neighborhoods. This finding suggests, except for in LAC, state policies may be having some level of success in locating LIHTC housing outside of hardship areas. Finally, in examining additional built-environment variables in LAC, we find LIHTC developments were more likely to be in a neighborhood with a park than other neighborhoods in the county. We discuss these results further and conclude with a brief recap of results, policy recommendations, and suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present results from measuring physical disorder in Los Angeles neighborhoods. Disorder measures came from structured observations conducted by trained field interviewers. We examine inter-rater reliability of disorder measures in depth. We assess the effects of observation conditions on the reliability of reporting. Finally, we examine the relationships between disorder, other indicators of neighborhood status, and selected individual outcomes. Our results indicate that there is considerable variation in the level of agreement among independent observations across items, although overall agreement is moderate to high. Durable indicators of disorder provide the most reliable measures of neighborhood conditions. Circumstances of observation have statistically significant effects on the observers’ perceived level of disorder. Physical disorder is significantly related to other indicators of neighborhood status, and to children’s reading and behavior development. This result suggests a need for further research into the effects of neighborhood disorder on children. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper we examine, in two separate analyses, actual and planned residential moves. Although we now have robust models and substantive empirical analysis of residential mobility, especially of the role of housing consumption and the variables that trigger residential moves, we are less clear about how the model applies to minority households and in diverse ethnic settings. We use data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study—a longitudinal study of mobility and neighborhood change in the Los Angeles region—to contrast the mobility outcomes for white and Latino households. In a separate analysis we examine planned mobility and extend the analysis of the role of neighborhood variables in explaining expected mobility. Through the incorporation of measures of neighborhood satisfaction and dissatisfaction we find, as hypothesized, that low levels of satisfaction and whether or not the neighborhood is perceived as ‘close-knit’ are modest predictors of the likelihood of future moves. However, the additive effect of neighborhood variables on intentions, beyond the structural effects of age and housing needs, is quite small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Researchers and policy makers have explored the possibility of restricting the use of housing vouchers to neighborhoods that may positively affect the outcomes of children. Using the framework of a dynamic model of optimal location choice, we estimate preferences over neighborhoods of likely recipients of housing vouchers in Los Angeles. We combine simulations of the model with estimates of how locations affect adult earnings of children to understand how a voucher policy that restricts neighborhoods in which voucher‐recipients may live affects both the location decisions of households and the adult earnings of children. We show the model can nearly replicate the impact of the Moving to Opportunity experiment on the adult wages of children. Simulations suggest a policy that restricts housing vouchers to the top 20% of neighborhoods maximizes expected aggregate adult earnings of children of households offered these vouchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Planning Education & Research is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The neighborhood effect averaging problem (NEAP) is a major methodological problem that might affect the accuracy of assessments of individual exposure to mobility-dependent environmental factors (e.g., air/noise pollution, green/blue spaces, or healthy food environments). Focusing on outdoor ground-level ozone as a major air pollutant, this paper examines the NEAP in the evaluation of sociodemographic disparities in people's air pollution exposures in Los Angeles using one-day activity-travel diary data of 3790 individuals. It addresses two questions: (1) How does the NEAP affect the evaluation of sociodemographic disparities in people's air pollution exposures? (2) Which social groups with high residence-based exposures do not experience neighborhood effect averaging? The results of our spatial regression models indicate that assessments of sociodemographic disparities in people's outdoor ground-level ozone exposures might be erroneous when people's daily mobility is ignored because of the different manifestations of neighborhood effect averaging for different social/racial groups. The results of our spatial autologistic regression model reveal that non-workers (e.g., the unemployed, homemakers, the retired, and students) do not experience downward averaging : they have significantly lower odds of experiencing downward averaging that could have attenuated their high exposures experienced in their residential neighborhoods while traveling to other neighborhoods (thus, being doubly disadvantaged). Therefore, to avoid erroneous conclusions in environmental inequality research and ineffective public policies, it would be critical to take the NEAP into account in future studies of sociodemographic disparities related to mobility-dependent environmental factors. • Ignoring human mobility may lead to the neighborhood effect averaging problem (NEAP). • This study examined how the NEAP affects assessments of sociodemographic disparities in people's ozone exposures. • We found that these assessments might be erroneous when people's daily mobility is ignored. • Non-workers constitute the doubly disadvantaged groups that do not experience downward averaging. • Studies on exposures to mobility-dependent environmental factors should consider the NEAP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suburbs have long been glossed over by critical urbanists for being culturally, even if not spatially, less than urban. In Los Angeles, it is the San Fernando Valley that has received such treatment as scholars have tended toward the metropolitan basin. In this article, I aim to help re-center the San Fernando Valley as a complex and conflictual cultural landscape through an autoethnographic exploration of four moments of urban restructuring in the Panorama City neighborhood. I provide a personal account of how a succession of events – the 1992 LA Riot, 1993 General Motors Plant closure, 1994 Northridge earthquake, and 1996 dismantling of the Aid for Families with Dependent Children welfare program – led to the disruption and partial destruction of a neighborhood. I situate these moments of crisis within the context of a civil gang injunction and outbreak of abject violence during this time period, which further destabilized the neighborhood and informed my own decision to pick up a gun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the disparities in access to various types of opportunities in ethnic neighborhoods, as compared to wealthy white neighborhoods (the reference). Focusing on the heterogeneity within ethnic neighborhoods, I distinguish between different types of neighborhoods based on their racial/ethnic makeup and median household income. The Los Angeles region provides an interesting empirical setting because of its racial diversity and its auto-centric spatial structure. The results show that the various types of ethnic neighborhoods differ not only in spatial patterns within the region but also in terms of relative access to opportunities. Nevertheless, I find that all types of the low-income ethnic neighborhoods have higher levels of access to jobs and non-work opportunities, except for access to parks/open spaces, than do the reference neighborhoods. This holds true regardless of accessibility measures and travel modes. However, the relative access to opportunities for middle-to-high-income ethnic neighborhoods varies by accessibility measure. Considering that each accessibility measure has its own set of meanings and planning implications, diverse measures should be taken into account for policy interventions. The present study also adds further evidence of modal disparities, which are much greater than spatial disparities, in access to opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The current study proposes an approach that accounts for the importance of streets while at the same time accounting for the overlapping spatial nature of social and physical environments captured by the egohood approach. Our approach utilizes overlapping clusters of streets based on the street network distance, which we term street egohoods. Methods: We used the street segment as a base unit and employed two strategies in clustering the street segments: (1) based on the First Order Queen Contiguity; and (2) based on the street network distance considering physical barriers. We utilized our approaches for measuring ecological factors and estimated crime rates in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Results: We found that whereas certain socio-demographics, land use, and business employee measures show stronger relationships with crime when measured at the smaller street based unit, a number of them actually exhibited stronger relationships when measured using our larger street egohoods. We compared the results for our three-sized street egohoods to street segments and two sizes of block egohoods proposed by Hipp and Boessen (Criminology 51(2):287–327, 2013) and found that two egohood strategies essentially are not different at the quarter mile egohood level but this similarity appears lower when looking at the half mile egohood level. Also, the street egohood models are a better fit for predicting violent and property crime compared to the block egohood models. Conclusions: A primary contribution of the current study is to develop and propose a new perspective of measuring neighborhood based on urban streets. We empirically demonstrated that whereas certain socio-demographic measures show the strongest relationship with crime when measured at the micro geographic unit of street segments, a number of them actually exhibited the strongest relationship when measured using our larger street egohoods. We hope future research can use egohoods to expand understanding of neighborhoods and crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explored associations between residential preferences and sociodemographic characteristics, the concordance between current neighborhood characteristics and residential preferences, and heterogeneity in concordance by income and race/ethnicity. Data came from a cross-sectional phone and mail survey of 3668 residents of New York City, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, St. Paul, and Winston Salem in 2011-12. Scales characterized residential preferences and neighborhood characteristics. Stronger preferences were associated with being older, female, non-White/non-Hispanic, and lower education. There was significant positive but weak concordance between current neighborhood characteristics and residential preferences (after controlling sociodemographic characteristics). Concordance was stronger for persons with higher income and for Whites, suggesting that residential self-selection effects are strongest for populations that are more advantaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's postindustrial economy, the extent to which cities and neighborhoods can develop and promote their cultural assets has become a key strategy for maintaining competitiveness by attracting tourism, investment, and job and population growth. These cultural modes of urban development fit the logic of the urban growth machine, in that they foster ideologies of place to encourage investment and enhance the profitability of the local economic base. This article examines the often-neglected role of the local newspaper in this process by focusing on how the Los Angeles Times represents one neighborhood—Koreatown, Los Angeles—over an approximately forty-year period. Through critical discourse analysis, this article unpacks four discursive frames used by the local newspaper and analyzes how these frames commodify cultural communities for consumption by the urban elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to test whether a compact neighborhood design is associated with trip-chaining behavior. Trip chaining is regarded as a growing phenomenon in travel and activity behavior because people seek to minimize the travel time and cost required to accomplish their daily activities based on the available time budget and other needs. In this study, trip-chaining patterns were examined over a survey day, giving insight into the association between land use and the planning of the trip and its distance, as well as the preferred mode of transportation. A tour consists of a combination of individual trips, including all of the stops that are made along the way. A series of multivariate models was used separately for different types of tours segmented into simple (one destination) and complex (more than one destination), and into work and nonwork tours. The results confirmed the idea that trip chaining diminishes the likelihood of using nonmotorized modes of transportation. In addition, local land use and walkability have a limited effect on work-related tours, but these factors are significantly related to nonwork tours. A resident who lives in a more walkable neighborhood is likely to take simple, albeit more frequent nonwork tours and conduct their nonwork activities on foot or by public transport, which reduces their use of vehicles during the day. These findings lead to the conclusion that there is more opportunity to use urban design policies to influence nonwork tours than work tours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a means for neighbourhood improvement, cultural urban revitalisation seeks to draw business growth and investment by attracting a creative class of young urban professionals. Though criticisms abound that these strategies beneit the wealthy and displace low-income communities, there is little research focusing on how the efforts of social actors can shape or resist this process. The purpose of this study is to offer a micro-level look at the spatial and political contestations and negotiations that occur amongst a variety of community organisations and individuals in two adjacent neighbourhoods in downtown Los Angeles undergoing revitalisation. By approaching 'revitalisation' as an arena where different neigh- bourhood groups can compete to achieve their goals, it argues that we scrutinise prevailing notions of gentriication and seek to understand the values and actions of stakeholders involved in order to enable more equitable outcomes of urban revitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares urban landscapes in the Portland and Los Angeles metropolitan areas at the neighbourhood level by operationalising six smart growth indices and mapping their spatial distribution patterns and time trends. Analysis results show that the two metropolitan areas have both strengths and weaknesses in different aspects of smart growth. Most neighbourhoods in both regions do not excel in all six smart growth measures: they are at the high ends of some smart growth indices but at the low ends of others. Some smart growth features such as mixed land use and mixed housing are already pervasive in suburban areas. Density in some mature suburban neighbourhoods is also relatively high. A large number of neighbourhoods in suburban and exurban areas exhibit high levels of socioeconomic diversity. Time trend analyses suggest that in both regions, older neighbourhoods tend to be ‘smarter’ than newer ones, except for racial/ethnic diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, I examine the City of Los Angeles's first gang injunction, which was instituted in 1987 against the Playboy Gangster Crips (PBGs) in the Cadillac-Corning neighborhood. Through primary documents and interviews with the authors of the Cadillac-Corning injunction, I offer insight into the primary actors and political struggles behind the prototypical injunction. I argue that prosecutors and police targeted Cadillac-Corning because the neighborhood had undergone demographic change that threatened the boundaries of racial and class separation and control. Despite the sanitization of race in gang injunction policy, fear of black men and stereotypes about black families were central to the rationale of the injunction. The injunction was meticulously designed to control the movement of black youth by criminalizing activities and behavior that are unremarkable and legal in other jurisdictions. The Cadillac-Corning injunction sparked a high-profile court struggle that set the pattern for future injunctions. Today, a protocol is in place that allows the City Attorney's Office, in collaboration with the Los Angeles Police Department, to implement injunctions quickly and with little tailoring. The rules are in place but the politics that produced them have disappeared from view. What remains is the criminalization of racial groups and spaces under the guise of routine "race-neutral" policy protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey and its companion datasets, we examined how neighborhood disorder, perceived danger and both individually perceived and contextually measured neighborhood social cohesion are associated with self-rated health. Results indicate that neighborhood disorder is negatively associated with health and the relationship is explained by perceived cohesion and danger, which are both also significant predictors of health. Further, individually perceived cohesion emerges as a more important explanation of self-rated health than neighborhood-level social cohesion. Finally, neighborhood disorder and perceived cohesion interact to influence health, such that cohesion is especially beneficial when residents live in neighborhoods characterized by low to moderate disorder; once disorder is at high levels, cohesion no longer offers protection against poor health. We interpret our findings as they relate to prior research on neighborhoods, psychosocial processes, and health, and discuss their implications for intervention efforts that address disorder in urban communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we extend research on neighborhood social isolation by (1) examining residents of disadvantaged and advantaged communities and (2) considering the character of neighborhoods where people conduct routine activities away from home. We contend that social isolation is experienced by residents of both highly disadvantaged and highly advantaged neighborhoods because the two groups spend time in largely nonoverlapping parts of the city. Individual and neighborhood race-ethnic dynamics exacerbate such social isolation. Data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey show that social isolation is experienced by residents of all areas of the city, whether highly disadvantaged or advantaged. African Americans, Latinos and residents of areas with many Latinos suffer additional penalties in the social isolation of disadvantage in where they conduct routine activities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We use data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study (LAFANS) to examine the degree to which social ties and collective efficacy influence neighborhood levels of crime, net of neighborhood structural characteristics. Results indicate that residential instability and collective efficacy were each associated with lower log odds of robbery victimization, while social ties had a positive effect on robbery victimization. Further, collective efficacy mediated 77 percent of the association between concentrated disadvantage and robbery victimization, while social ties had no mediating effect. The mediation effect for concentrated disadvantage, however, was substantially weaker in the Latino neighborhoods (where it was 52%) than in the non-Latino neighborhoods (where it was 82%), suggesting that a 'Latino paradox' may be present in which crime rates in Latino neighborhoods appear to have less to do with local levels of collective efficacy than in non-Latino neighborhoods. Implications for future research bearing on both the Latino paradox and the systemic model of social control are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between school segregation and neighborhood segregation across school districts in Los Angeles County, and are school district outcomes on reading and mathematics scores related to levels of school segregation across these districts? We compute segregation scores using US tract level data for 2000 and use reading and mathematics scores from California State tests. Data from the Los Angeles family and neighborhood survey are used to track individual residential changes and differences in the associated Woodcock Johnson scores. We show that there is a close link between levels of school segregation and neighborhood segregation and that many suburban school districts are relatively integrated across both neighborhoods and schools. When we examine average school district outcomes on reading and mathematics scores we do not find any relationship with levels of segregation. At the same time there is clear evidence of spatial sorting with poorer and lower scoring children moving into school districts (or zones with poorer achieving schools). The multi-level models of segregation and achievement show that the variance in achievement levels across districts is significantly greater than across schools within districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are numerous instances in which researchers wish to measure the rate of intra- or inter-group interactions (whether positive or negative). When computing such measures as rates there is great uncertainty regarding the appropriate denominator: we analytically illustrate how the choice of the denominator when calculating such rates is not trivial and that some existing strategies create a built-in relationship between the computed rate and the group composition within the entity. Another strand of prior work only focused on the relative occurrence of intra- versus inter-group events, which does not account for the important theoretical possibility that both types of events might increase in certain social contexts. Our approach provides an advance over these earlier strategies as it allows one to take into account the relative frequency of interaction between members of different groups, but then translates this into per capita rates. We also provide an empirical example using data on inter- and intra-group robbery and aggravated assault events for block groups in a section of the city of Los Angeles to illustrate how our procedure works and to illustrate how other approaches can lead to dramatically different conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although scholars have long been interested in how context shapes racial attitudes, research in this area has fallen short of a consensus. Instead, the results span a wide range, with some studies finding that racial understanding is promoted by intergroup contact whereas others claim that racial and ethnic outgroups are perceived as a threat to economic and political interests. These varying results arise from research rooted in different conceptualizations of context. Our analysis is unique in the attention we pay to the measure of context for our particular data set. Employing a sociodemographic definition of neighborhood social context, we find that contextual socioeconomic status plays a critical role in mediating the effects of intergroup contact on racial attitudes. These contacts are more likely to produce racial harmony in high-status neighborhoods than in neighborhoods marked by low income and low levels of education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Theory suggests that in the long term, gentrification-which I define as the phenomenon where wealthier individuals move into lower-income areas-should decrease neighborhood crime. In the short term, however, anecdotal evidence indicates that gentrification actually increases crime, perhaps due to the relative difference in status between newcomers and existing residents, and to increased opportunities for criminal behavior. Further, consumers' choice of residential location depends on crime rates, creating simultaneity that likely biases estimates that overlook this concern. I exploit the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles and subsequent short-term government-sponsored home financing incentives as an instrument to control for this endogeneity. The exogenous event induced middle- and upper-income individuals to purchase homes in earthquake-affected low and moderate-income neighborhoods, which I argue is independent of the influence of crime. The results show that in the short term, gentrification increases assaults, robberies, automobile thefts, and thefts from automobiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can grassroots government succeed on its own without state involvement? By comparing approaches in two metropolitan governments—neighborhood councils in Los Angeles and resident committees in Shanghai—Bin Chen of the City University of New York at Baruch College, Terry L. Cooper of the University of Southern California, and Rong Sun of Shanghai Tongji University underscore the need to understand the interrelationships among the political and administrative structures where these specific reforms are implemented. Their analysis points out that the efficacy of a government-initiated civic engagement program depends on a balanced combination of state involvement and community self-organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: The aims of this study were (1) to examine the association between neighborhood alcohol outlet density and individual self-reported alcohol-related health outcomes in the last year—sexually transmitted infections (STI), motor vehicle accidents, injury, liver problems, hypertension and experienced violence; (2) to determine whether the relationship between morbidity and alcohol outlet density is mediated by individual alcohol consumption; and (3) to explore the role of alcohol outlet density in explaining any observed racial and ethnic differences in morbidity. Method: Hierarchical models from a random sample of Los Angeles, CA, and Louisiana residents (N = 2881) from 217 census tracts were utilized. The clustering of health and social outcomes according to neighborhood varied by health problem examined. Results: There was substantial clustering of STI (intraclass correlation coefficient, ICC = 12.8%) and experienced violence (ICC = 13.0%); moderate clustering of liver problems (ICC = 3.5%) and hypertension (ICC = 3.9%); and low clustering of motor vehicle accident (ICC = 1.2%) and injury (ICC = 1.4%). Alcohol outlet density was significantly and positively associated with STI (crude OR = 1.80, 95% CI = 1.10–3.00), liver problems (crude OR = 1.33, 95% CI = 1.02–1.75) and experienced violence (crude OR = 1.31, 95% CI = 1.13–1.51) although not with other morbidity outcomes. Mediation analyses of morbidity outcomes revealed partial mediation of individual alcohol consumption in the relationship between alcohol density and STI and violence, and full mediation for liver problems. Conclusions: Findings support the concept that off-premise alcohol outlets in the neighborhood environment may impact health and social outcomes, either directly or indirectly, through individual alcohol consumption and these associations may be heterogeneous with respect to race and ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using a natural quasi-experimental pretest/posttest design, residents in randomly selected homes in a suburb of Los Angeles were surveyed about their perceptions of their neighborhoods with respect to cohesion and sense of community. Responses from the pretest surveys—administered before the construction of a freeway that would bisect the city—were compared to the responses from the posttest survey six years later, administered two years after completion of the freeway. Respondents living adjacent to the new freeway—residents who experienced a fourfold increase in the average decibel levels in their neighborhoods since the freeway opened—reported both a lower sense of community and smaller neighborhood areas as compared to residents not living adjacent to the freeway and as compared to the results from the pretest. The analysis of the data incorporated geographic information system (GIS) software to allow for the analysis of phenomenological neighborhoods—neighborhoods as defined by respondents. This Resident-defined Neighborhood Mapping methodology permitted us to analyze neighborhoods as the respondents outlined them, not as they were preconceived by someone outside the neighborhood. It is suggested that this new methodology may prove useful in advancing the field of neighborhood research by detecting neighborhood-level change that traditional methods may miss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. We sought to determine whether the association between neighborhood characteristics and health differs for people with and without a chronic condition. Methods. We analyzed data from 2536 adults from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey and evaluated the relationship between the presence of a chronic condition at the individual level, neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES), and self-rated health. We constructed multilevel models to evaluate the relationship between the neighborhood SES index and self-rated health for people with and without chronic conditions, after adjustment for other individual characteristics. Results. Having a chronic condition was associated with substantially poorer self-rated health among participants in a deprived area than among those in a more advantaged area. Conclusions. Residence in a disadvantaged neighborhood may be associated with barriers to the management of a chronic condition. Further work is needed to identify the specific characteristics of disadvantaged areas associated with poorer self-rated health for adults with chronic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modernist planners became thieves of memory. Faustian in their eagerness to erase all traces of the past in the interest of forward momentum, of growth in the name of progress, their drive-by-windscreen surveys of neighbourhoods that they have already decided to condemn to the bulldozer, have been, in their own way, as deadly as the recent drive by gang shootings in Los Angeles. Modernist planners embracing the ideology of development as progress, have killed whole communities, by evicting them, demolishing their houses, and dispersing them to edge suburbs or leaving them homeless. They have killed whole communities by not understanding the loss and grieving that go along with losing one's home and neighbourhood and friends and memories. (Sandercock 1998:208) When watching the news, you find that the government is only concerned with shack dwellers. What about us? We are sitting with big expectations that they will build us houses. We have grown so old sitting in the backyards. Backyard shack-dweller, Johannesburg, 1999 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a substantial literature on the residential mobility process itself and a smaller contribution on how households make neighborhood choices, especially with respect to racial composition. We extend that literature by evaluating the role of income and socioeconomic status in the neighborhood choice process for minorities. We use individual household data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study to investigate the comparative choices of white and Hispanic households in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. We show that income and education are important explanations for the likelihood of choosing neighborhoods. But at the same time, own race preferences clearly play a role. While whites with more income choose more white neighborhoods, Hispanics with more income choose less Hispanic neighborhoods. One interpretation is that both groups are translating resources, such as income and education, into residence in whiter and ostensibly, higher status neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to explore the changing geographical distribution of high-poverty neighbourhoods both between and within American metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2000. Of particular concern is the relative shift in the number of high-poverty neighbourhoods between central-city, inner-ring and outer-ring suburbs. A classification scheme is developed for identifying these three types of area. The results indicate that there has been an increase in the number of high-poverty neighbourhoods in the urban cores of economically stagnant old industrial cities of the Northeast and an increase in the number of high-poverty inner-ring neighbourhoods in Los Angeles, metropolitan areas in California's Central Valley and a few selected rapidly growing Sunbelt metropolitan areas. The analysis indicates that an increase in the number of urban core high-poverty neighbourhoods is linked to the general health of a metropolitan area's economy and that an increase in the number of inner-ring high-poverty neighbourhoods is linked to rapid population growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the history of multiracialism in the Boyle Heights neighborhood in East Los Angeles, California. Transformation of community from Jewish enclave to predominantly Mexican community; Neighborhood's commitment to multiracialism in the 1950s; History of Jewish Boyle Heights in the late twentieth century.

Discusses the figure of the neighbor in the Los Angeles, California community. Reiteration of power of local place; Multifaceted nature of the construct of the neighbor; Brief excursions to provisional neighborhoods.

This article describes the experiences of a Los Angeles inner-city neighbourhood in its attempt for revitalization. The authors headed a Community–University Partnership and worked with graduate students to offer technical support to a neighbourhood-based coalition. The students, local residents, merchants and neighbourhood institutions attempted to follow an asset-based consensus building approach to community development. The article describes the different components of their strategy for physical, economic, cultural and social revitalization, and analyzes the lessons learned from the successes and setbacks of this effort. Finally, the authors discuss some apparent limitations of the asset-based consensus approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Redistribution relative to metropolitan growth of Negro, other non- white and Spanish name populations is examined in Los Angeles County from 1940 to 1960 for a comparable grid of subareas. The subareas are defined relative to their maturity at different time points in order to partially control for population redistribution effects of neighborhood life histories, the spread of older subareas, and the persistence of neighborhood patterns. Shifts in ethnic concentration are shown for both older and newer subareas. Concurrent changes in neighborhood social structures and ethnic populations are described. Findings are categorized under three themes: First, ethnic population increments and redistribution were generally restricted to expanding older subareas. Ethnic populations did not spatially expand at a rate equal to the spread of the metropolis or of older subareas. Second, segregation is greater in both older and newer neighbor- hoods for Negroes than for other ethnic populations. Negroes experienced the largest proportional increments in both older and newer subareas, as well as the greatest stability in subarea occupancy. Finally, the spatial separation of ethnic populations impedes assimilation in that unique pat- terns of neighborhood structure come to characterize different ethnic populations, and changes in ethnic composition are reflected in changes in neighborhood social structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on neighbourhood effects has stressed the importance of adopting a dynamic approach by incorporating residential mobility into analyses of neighbourhood change and individual outcomes. This study uses longitudinal data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighbourhood Survey to examine how changes in residential neighbourhood conditions shape two dimensions of place attachment—neighbourhood satisfaction and neighbouring—for people who leave the neighbourhood and for residents who remain in place. Results from fixed‐effects regression models present a nuanced picture of the ways in which changing neighbourhoods intersected with residential mobility shape individuals' attachments to place. Stayers tend to become less satisfied when their neighbourhoods are becoming more disadvantaged and diverse but also when they become more residentially stable, whereas movers are more satisfied when relocating to neighbourhoods with higher levels of ethnoracial diversity. Moreover, neighbourhood fear and victimisation reduce satisfaction for both movers and stayers, but stayers' neighbouring declines in response to heightened fear whereas movers neighbour less when victimised. These findings suggest that investigations of the effects of neighbourhood change on place attachment should examine movers and stayers separately to account for differential neighbourhood selection processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]