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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.

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.

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.

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.

Despite increasing attention being paid to the temporal dynamics of childhood disadvantage, children's neighborhood characteristics are often measured at a single point in time. Whether such cross-sectional measures serve as reliable proxies for children's long-run neighborhood conditions depends on the stability in children's neighborhood experiences over time. We investigate the temporal stability in children's neighborhood environment, focusing on two of the most commonly studied neighborhood characteristics: The ethnic composition and mean income of the neighborhood. Using Dutch population register data, we follow an entire cohort of children from birth up until age 15. We use year-to-year correlations in the percentage non-Western minorities and the mean income in the neighborhood to evaluate the temporal stability of children's neighborhood experiences. Children's neighborhood characteristics were found to be more stable over time with regard to ethnic composition than with regard to income. Children who had moved at least once were found to have lower stability in neighborhood characteristics than children who never moved. Finally, neighborhood experiences were found to be more stable over time for ethnic minorities than for the native Dutch, although differences were small with regard to income. Single point-in-time measurements of neighborhood characteristics are reasonable proxies for the long-run ethnic composition of children's neighborhood environment, but rather noisy proxies for the long-run income status of their neighborhood, particularly for those who moved.

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.

Despite the many negative aspects of life in cities, urban promises of economic prosperity, freedom and happiness have fuelled the imagination of generations of migrants, who have flocked to cities in search of a better life, invariably exaggerating the opportunities and neglected the potential disadvantages of their choice. This paper uses insights from psychological literature to better understand why people have such strong, positive and apparently overrated expectations about cities. We dwell into concepts of bounded rationality to describe the cognitive biases and heuristics affecting decision-making under uncertainty and apply them to the way individuals perceive and act upon the promises of urban life. By linking this literature to urban theory, we can better understand how individuals make their decisions about moving to and living in cities. We thereby offer an understanding of urbanisation and migration processes departing from economic rationality assumptions and explain the remarkable attractive force of cities throughout human history. Finally, we discuss the ways in which human biases in favour of city narratives and bright urban futures can be exploited by 'triumphalist' accounts of cities in policy and media, which neglect the embedded injustices and structural problems of urban life.

Studies of neighbourhood effects often attempt to identify causal effects of neighbourhood characteristics on individual outcomes, such as income, education, employment, and health. However, selection looms large in this line of research and it has been repeatedly argued that estimates of neighbourhood effects are biased as people non-randomly select into neighbourhoods based on their preferences, income, and the availability of alternative housing. We propose a two-step framework to help disentangle selection processes in the relationship between neighbourhood deprivation and earnings. We first model neighbourhood selection using a discrete choice framework and derive correction components to adjust parameter estimates in a subsequent neighbourhood effects model for the unequal probability that an individual 'chooses' to live in a particular area. Applying this technique to administrative data from the Netherlands, we find significant interactions between personal and neighbourhood characteristics in the selection model. This confirms individual differences in neighbourhood preferences; individuals non-randomly select into neighbourhoods. The baseline neighbourhood effects model reveals a significant effect of average neighbourhood income on individual income. When we include correction components for the differential sorting of individuals into specific neighbourhoods, the effect of neighbourhood income diminishes, but remains significant. These results suggest that researchers need to be attuned to the role of selection bias when assessing the role of neighbourhood effects on individual outcomes. Perhaps more importantly, the strong, persistent effect of neighbourhood deprivation on subsequent earnings suggests that neighbourhood effects reflect more than the shared characteristics of neighbourhood residents; place of residence partially determines economic well-being.

Previous research has reported evidence of intergenerational transmission of both neighbourhood status and social and economic outcomes later in life; parents influence where their children live as adults and how well they do later in life in terms of their income. However, interactions between the individual, the childhood family and neighbourhood context and the neighbourhood experiences after leaving the parental home are often overlooked which might bias estimates of neighbourhood effects. It is likely that part of the effects attributed to neighbourhoods, are actually effects of the family in which someone was brought up. This study uses a sibling design to disentangle family and neighbourhood effects on income, and synthetic sibling pairs are used as a control group. The sibling design allows us to separate the effects of childhood family and neighbourhood contexts, but also between childhood neighbourhood effects and effects of the adult neighbourhood experiences. Using data from Swedish registers we show that the neighbourhood effect from both childhood and adult neighbourhood exposure is biased upwards by the influence of the family context. This leads to the conclusion that part of what appeared to be a neighbourhood effect was in fact a lasting family effect. Interestingly, we find that there is a long lasting effect of the family context on income later in life, and that this effect is strong regardless the individual neighbourhood pathway later in life.

The neighbourhoods in which people live reflects their social class and preferences, so studying socio-spatial mobility between neighbourhoods gives insight in the openness of spatial class structures of societies and in the ability of people to leave disadvantaged neighbourhoods. We study the extent to which people move between different types of neighbourhoods by socio-economic status in different inequality and segregation contexts in four European countries: Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Estonia. The study is based on population registers and census data for the 2001–2011 period. For the UK, which has long had high levels of social inequalities and high levels of socio-economic segregation, we find that levels of mobility between neighbourhood types are low and opportunities to move to more socio-economically advantaged neighbourhoods are modest. In Estonia, which used to be one or the most equal and least segregated countries in Europe and now is one of the most liberal and market oriented countries, we find high levels of mobility, but these reproduce segregation patterns and it is difficult to move to better neighbourhoods for those in the most deprived neighbourhoods. In the Netherlands and Sweden, where social inequalities are the smallest, it is easiest to move from the most deprived to less deprived neighbourhoods. To conclusion, the combination of high levels of social inequalities and high levels of spatial segregation tend to lead to a vicious circle of segregation for low income groups, where it is difficult to undertake both upward social mobility and upward spatial mobility.

This paper examines ethnic differences in childhood neighborhood disadvantage among children living in the Netherlands. In contrast to more conventional approaches for assessing children’s exposure to neighborhood poverty and affluence (e.g., point-in-time and cumulative measures of exposure), we apply sequence analysis to simultaneously capture the timing and duration of exposure to poor and nonpoor neighborhoods during childhood. Rich administrative microdata offered a unique opportunity to follow the entire 1999 birth cohort of the Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, and Antillean secondgeneration and a native Dutch comparison group from birth up until age 15 (N=24,212).Results indicate that especially Turkish and Moroccan children were more likely than native Dutch children to live in a poor neighborhood at any specific stage within childhood, but particularly throughout childhood. Although differences became substantially smaller after adjusting for parental and household characteristics, ethnic differences remained large and statistically significant. In addition, the impact of household income on children’s neighborhood income trajectories was found to be weaker for ethnic minority children than for native Dutch children. Our findings are discussed in relation to theories on spatialassimilation, place stratification, and residential preferences.

Income inequality is increasing in European cities and this rising inequality has a spatial footprint in cities and neighbourhoods. Poor and rich people are increasingly living separated and this can threaten the social sustainability of cities. Low income people, often with an ethnic minority background, can get cut off from important social networks and mainstream society, and this can lead to social unrest. Increasing inequality and socio-economic segregation is therefore a major concern for local and national governments. Socio-economic segregation is the outcome of a combination of inequality and poverty, and the spatial organisation of urban housing markets. Poverty, and living in poverty concentration neighbourhoods is transmitted between generations and neighbourhood poverty is reproduced over time through to the residential mobility behaviour of households. Urban policy often focusses on reducing segregation through physical measures in cities, such as demolishing houses in deprived neighbourhoods and replacing them with housing for the middle classes. Such policies will not solve the underlying causes of segregation, but only redistribute poverty over cities. Policy initiatives should first of all focus on reducing inequality by creating equal opportunities for people and invest in education and training. Inclusive growth strategies should combine both people-based and area-based policy measures.

According to the neighbourhood effects hypothesis, there is a negative relation between neighbourhood wealth and youths' problem behaviour. It is often assumed that there are more problems in deprived neighbourhoods, but there are also reports of higher rates of behavioural problems in more affluent neighbourhoods. Much of this literature does not take into account relative wealth. Our central question was whether the economic position of adolescents' families relative to the neighbourhood in which they lived, was related to adolescents' internalising and externalising problem behaviour. We used longitudinal data for youths between 12-21 years of age, combined with population register data. We employ between-within models to account for time-invariant confounders, including parental background characteristics. Our findings show that for adolescents, moving to a more affluent neighbourhood was related to increased levels of depression, social phobia, aggression, and conflict with father and mother. This could be indirect evidence for the relative deprivation mechanism, but we could not confirm this, and we did not find any gender differences. The results do suggest that future research should further investigate the role of individuals' relative position in their neighbourhood in order not to overgeneralise neighbourhood effects and to find out for whom neighbourhoods matter.

This paper proposes a framework to assess how compositional differences at the neighborhood level contribute to the moderating effect of neighborhood context on the association between individual risk-factors and delinquency. We propose a neighborhood-based group decomposition to partition person-context interactions into their constituent components. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we demonstrate the extent to which variation in the association between impulsivity and delinquency can be attributed to (1) differences in mean-levels of impulsivity and violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods and (2) differences in coefficients across neighborhoods. The moderating effect of neighborhood disadvantage can be attributed primarily to the stronger effect of impulsivity on violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods, while differences in average levels of violence and impulsivity account for 14 percent and 2 percent of the observed difference, respectively.

Western cities are increasingly ethnically diverse and in most cities the share of ethnic minorities is growing. Studies analyzing changing ethnic geographies often limit their analysis to changes in ethnic concentrations in neighborhoods between two points in time. Such a static approach limits our understanding of pathways of ethnic neighborhood change, and of the underlying factors contributing to change. This paper analyzes full trajectories of neighborhood change in the four largest cities in the Netherlands between 1999 and 2013. Our modelling strategy categorizes neighborhoods based on their unique growth trajectories of the ethnic population composition, providing a longitudinal view of ethnic segregation. Our results show that the ethnic composition in neighborhoods remains relatively stable over time. We find evidence for a slow trend towards deconcentration of ethnic minorities and increased (spatial) population mixing in most neighborhoods. We show how residential mobility decreases segregation, while natural population growth tends to reinforce segregation. While the ethnic minority presence in cities grows, there is a substantial share of neighborhoods which can be identified as white citadels; characterized by a stable large native population, with high incomes and high house values. These neighborhoods seem to be inaccessible to ethnic minorities, which illustrates the spatial manifestation of exclusionary elitism in increasingly ethnically diverse cities.

In many European countries, community entrepreneurship is increasingly considered as a means to initiate small-scale urban regeneration. However, residents in deprived communities are often viewed to lack key entrepreneurial attributes and skills. This paper reports a unique experiment in the Netherlands with nascent community enterprises which received start-up support from a private foundation. This paper investigates how active citizens perceive the benefits and drawbacks of this support. In depth analysis of transcriptions of repeated semi-structured interviews (panel design with the same respondents) with representatives of established community enterprises and resident groups were analysed. While we find positive feedback on provided support, our research provides strong evidence for a 'support paradox': the support that was intended to overcome a number of entry barriers and difficulties on the road to community entrepreneurship has in fact significantly hampered progress among several of the studied CEs.

Through a review of the recent American community development literature, this paper tests the assertion that British community enterprises (CEs) are fundamentally similar to American community development corporations (CDCs), and therefore, that CEs can learn from CDCs. In the context of the current austerity regimes, CEs and community entrepreneurship are increasingly considered as a means to continue small-scale urban regeneration, not only in the UK but also in several other European countries. While the CDC sector has achieved a relatively successful record in affordable housing production in distressed areas, CDCs are fundamentally limited in terms of reversing the processes of community decline. Our comparison of CDCs and CEs reveals similarities, but also differences with regard to organizational characteristics, co-operation on multiple scales, comprehensiveness, targeting and community participation. Apart from outlining lessons that CEs can learn from CDS, we provide recommendations for further research that should cover the lack of empirical evidence in this field.

Most studies of the ethnic composition of destination neighbourhoods after residential moves do not take into account the types of moves people have made. However, from an individual perspective, different types of moves may result in neighbourhood environments that differ in terms of their ethnic composition from those in which individuals previously lived. We investigate how the ethnic residential context changes for individuals as a result of different types of mobility (immobility, intra-urban mobility, suburbanisation, and long-distance migration) for residents of the segregated post-Soviet city of Tallinn. We compare the extent to which Estonian- and Russian-speakers integrate in residential terms. Using unique longitudinal Census data (2000-2011) we tracked changes in the individual ethnic residential context of both groups. We found that the moving destinations of Estonian- and Russian-speakers diverge. When Estonians move, their new neighbourhood generally possesses a lower percentage of Russian-speakers compared with when Russian-speakers move, as well as compared with their previous neighbourhoods. For Russian-speakers, the percentage of other Russian-speakers in their residential surroundings decreases only for those who move to the surburbs or who move over longer distances to rural villages. By applying a novel approach of tracking the changes in the ethnic residential context of individuals for all mobility types, we were able to demonstrate that the two largest ethnolinguistic groups in Estonia tend to behave as 'parallel populations' and that residential integration in Estonia is therefore slow.

It is well-known that socioeconomic outcomes and (dis)advantage over the life course can be transmitted from parent to child. It is increasingly suggested that these intergenerational effects also have a spatial dimension, although empirical research into this topic remains scarce. Previous research from Sweden and the United States shows that children who grow up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods experience long-term exposure to such neighbourhoods in their adult lives. This study contributes to the literature by examining to what extent educational attainment can break the link between parental neighbourhood disadvantage and the neighbourhood experiences of children as adults up to 12 years after leaving the parental home. We use longitudinal register data from the Netherlands to study a complete cohort of parental home leavers, covering 119,167 individuals who were followed from 1999 to 2012. Using sequence analyses as a visualisation method, and multilevel logit models, we demonstrate that children who lived in deprived neighbourhoods with their parents are more likely to live in similar neighbourhoods later in life than children who grew up in more affluent neighbourhoods. We find that intergenerational neighbourhood patterns of disadvantage can be discontinued when individuals attain higher education over time. Discontinuation is however less prevalent among individuals from ethnic minority groups.

There is increasing evidence that our societies are polarizing. Most studies focus on labour market and educational outcomes and show a socioeconomic polarization of the bottom and top ends of the population distribution. Processes of social polarization have a spatial dimension which should be visible in the changing mosaic of neighbourhoods in cities. Many studies treat neighbourhoods as more or less static entities, but urban researchers are now increasingly interested in neighbourhood trajectories, moving away from point-in-time measures and enabling a close examination of processes of change. Sequence analysis allows for a visualization of complete trajectories, and is therefore gaining popularity in the social sciences. However, sequence analysis is mainly a descriptive method and statisticians have argued for the use of a tree-structured discrepancy analysis to examine to what extent outcome variability can be explained by a set of predictors. This paper offers a first empirical application of sequence analysis combined with a tree-structured discrepancy analysis. This paper contributes to the debate on urban renewal programs by offering a unique viewpoint on longitudinal neighbourhood change. Our findings show a clear pattern of socio-spatial polarization in Dutch cities, raising questions about the effects of area-based policies and the importance of path-dependency.

Contemporary cities are becoming more and more diverse in population as a result of immigration. Research also shows that within cities residential neighborhoods are becoming ethnically more diverse, but that residential segregation has remained persistently high. High levels of segregation are often seen as negative, preventing integration of immigrants in their host society and having a negative impact on people's lives. Segregation research often focuses on residential neighborhoods, but ignores the fact that a lot of interaction also takes place in other spheres of life, such as the workplace. This paper examines the role of residential segregation in workplace segregation among recently arrived immigrants. By using unique longitudinal register data from Sweden, we show that the role of residential segregation in workplace segregation differs in an important way for immigrant men and immigrant women.

Socio-economic inequality is on the rise in major European cities as are the worries about that, since this development is seen as threatening social cohesion and stability. Surprisingly, relatively little is known about the spatial dimensions of rising socioeconomic inequality. This paper builds on a study of socio-economic segregation in twelve European cities: Amsterdam, Athens, Budapest, London, Madrid, Oslo, Prague, Riga, Stockholm, Tallinn, Vienna, and Vilnius. Data are used from national censuses and registers for the years 2001 and 2011. The main conclusion is that socio-economic segregation in Europe has grown. This paper develops a rigorous multi-factor approach to understand segregation and links it to four underlying universal, partially overlapping, structural factors: social inequalities, globalization and economic restructuring, welfare regimes, and housing systems. The paper provides an in-depth discussion of these factors to come to a better understanding of the differences between the hypothesized and actual segregation levels measured. It is suggested that introducing time-lags between structural factors and segregation outcomes improve the theoretical model.

The aging population of European cities raises enormous challenges with regard to employment, pensions, health care and other age-related services. The housing preferences of the aging population are changing rapidly where more and more people want to live independent lives for as long as possible. At the same time governments need to reduce the costs of expensive institutionalized care. A precondition for 'ageing in place' is that elderly people perceive their neighbourhoods as familiar and safe places. In the Netherlands, many neighbourhoods with a rapidly ageing population have been subject to urban regeneration policies. Hence, an important question is to what extent these policies affect the housing situation, social support networks and socioeconomic position of elderly people, because these factors strongly assist the ability of elderly people to live independently. We answer this question through the analysis of a small but unique panel data set with 2007 and 2012 measurements from Hoogvliet, a district of Rotterdam. Contrary to claims about large, disrupting impacts of urban regeneration, the results show that – even in times of economic crisis – regeneration in Hoogvliet has enabled 'ageing in place'. There appears no relationship between the Hoogvliet policies and changes in income of elderly people and their ability to get by financially. Those who have moved home often report regeneration benefits, mostly related to accessing better quality housing in the same area. Finally, we found no clear evidence of decreased social support or increased loneliness through regeneration-induced disruption of social networks.

Selective mobility into and out of neighbourhoods is one of the driving forces of segregation. Empirical research has revealed who wants to leave certain types of neighbourhoods or who leaves certain neighbourhoods. A factor which has received little attention so far is that some residents will have a desire to leave their neighbourhood, but are unable to do so. The residential mobility literature shows that the discrepancy between moving desires and actual mobility is larger for ethnic minorities than for natives. This paper uses a unique combination of register data and survey data. We combine data from a large housing survey in the Netherlands (WoON) with longitudinal register data from the Netherlands (SSB), which contains individual level information on residential mobility histories. This allows us to study which households with a wish to leave their neighbourhood are actually successful, and to which neighbourhoods they move. A more thorough insight in who wants to leave which neighbourhoods but is unable to do so will contribute to a better understanding of the drivers of segregation, especially in the context of the debate on voluntary segregation versus segregation due to a lack of choice. We find that ethnic minority groups are less likely to realise a desire to leave their neighbourhood and that if they succeed in moving from an ethnic minority concentration or poverty neighbourhood, they are more likely to end up in another minority concentration or poverty neighbourhood than native residents.

Neighborhood decline is a complex and multidimensional process. National and regional variation in economic and political structures (including variety in national welfare state arrangements), combined with differences in neighborhood history, development and population composition, makes it extremely difficult to identify a unilateral process of neighborhood decline over time. Some scholars have tried to develop all-encompassing models to explain neighborhood decline; others have studied more deeply the relevance of a limited number of factors and developments in processes of decline. The literature has paid little attention to the influence of economic development on neighborhood development, and surprisingly, few studies have focused on the effects of the economic crisis on urban neighborhoods. The recent global economic and financial crisis affected many European and North-American cities in terms of growing unemployment levels and rising poverty in concentrated areas. At the same time, urban investments such as urban restructuring and neighborhood improvement programs have decreased, or come to a halt altogether. By reviewing existing literature, this paper aims to contribute to an understanding of neighborhood decline in light of the economic crisis. By formulating ten hypotheses about the ways in which the economic crisis might interact with processes of neighborhood decline, this paper aims to push the debate on neighborhood decline forward and calls for more contextualized research on neighborhood change. We will highlight challenges for future research and point to factors that need to be taken into consideration in a post-crisis society.

The selective inflow and outflow of residents by ethnicity is the main mechanism behind ethnic residential segregation. Many studies have found that ethnic minorities are more likely than others to move to ethnic minority concentration neighbourhoods. An important question which remains largely unanswered is to what extent this can be explained by own group preferences, or by other neighbourhood or housing market factors. By using longitudinal register data from the Netherlands, this study contributes to the literature on neighbourhood selection by ethnic minorities in two ways. First, it distinguishes between different ethnic minority groups where most studies look at the group as a whole. Second, it takes into account multiple dimensions of neighbourhoods where most other studies look at neighbourhoods one-dimensionally, which allows us to test the own group preferences hypothesis. Using a conditional logit model we find that housing market constraints can partly explain the selection of ethnic minorities into minority concentration neighbourhoods. Also own-group preferences are found to be important in explaining neighbourhood selection. There are, however, differences between ethnic minority groups. Own-group preferences and housing market constraints together explain why Surinamese and Antilleans select into minority concentration neighbourhoods. When these factors are taken into account, Turks and Moroccans are still found to select into concentration neighbourhoods of ethnic minorities other than their own ethnic group.

In the last few decades, urban renewal policies have taken firm root in many Western European countries. Underlying these renewal policies is a strong belief in negative neighborhood effects of living in poverty concentration areas, often neighborhoods with a large share of social housing. In Europe, great importance is attached to creating a more diverse housing stock (in terms of tenure and dwelling types) and as a means to establish a more socially mixed neighborhood population. Mixed housing strategies are stated explicitly by governments in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Finland and Sweden. The idea is that mixing homeowners with social renters will create a more diverse socio-economic mix in neighborhoods, removing the potential of negative neighborhood effects. By far the largest tenure mix operation in Europe is the Right to Buy (RTB) scheme in the United Kingdom. Since the 1970s, over 2.7 million social rented houses have been sold with large discounts, mainly to sitting tenants. In this paper we synthesize the outcomes of RTB with regard to neighborhood impacts: residualisation, neighborhood stability, tenure mix and social mix, social interactions, and dwelling maintenance. Although we acknowledge substantial socioeconomic benefits of the RTB for many individual residents, we find that the neighborhood outcomes of RTB are by no means solely beneficial.

The literature on neighbourhood effects suggests that the lack of social mobility of some groups has a spatial dimension. It is thought that those living in the most deprived neighbourhoods are the least likely to achieve upward mobility because of a range of negative neighbourhood effects. Most studies investigating such effects only identify correlations between individual outcomes and their residential environment and do not take into account that selection into neighbourhoods is a non-random mechanism. This paper investigates occupational mobility between 1991 and 2001 for those who were employed in Scotland in 1991 by using unique longitudinal data from Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS). We add to the existing literature by investigating neighbourhood effects on occupational mobility separately for social renters, private renters and home owners. We find that 'neighbourhood effects' are strongest for home owners, which is an unexpected finding. We argue that the correlation between characteristics of the residential environment and occupational mobility can be explained by selection effects: homeowners with the least resources, who are least likely to experience upward mobility, are also most likely to sort into the most deprived neighbourhoods. Social housing tenants experience less selective sorting across neighbourhoods as other than market forces are responsible for the neighbourhood sorting mechanism.

In the neighbourhood effects literature, the socialisation mechanism is usually investigated by looking at the association between neighbourhood characteristics and educational attainment. The step in between, that adolescents actually internalise educational norms held by residents, is often assumed. We attempt to fill this gap by looking at how educational commitments are influenced by neighbourhood characteristics. We investigate this process for migrant youth, a group that lags behind in educational attainment compared to native youth, and might therefore be particularly vulnerable to neighbourhood effects. To test our hypothesis we used longitudinal panel data with five waves (N=4179), combined with fixed-effects models which control for a large portion of potential selection bias. These models have an advantage over native OLS models in that they predict the effect of change in neighbourhood characteristics on change in educational commitment, and therefore offer a more dynamic approach to modelling neighbourhood effects. Our results show that living in neighbourhoods with higher proportions of immigrants increases the educational commitments of migrant youth compared to living in neighbourhoods with lower proportions. Besides, we find that adolescents with a resilient personality experience less influence of the neighbourhood context on educational commitments than do adolescents with other personalities.

While researchers are increasingly reconceptualising international migration, less interest is being shown in rethinking the geographies of short-distance residential mobility and immobility. Short-distance moves are crucial for the structuration of everyday life, the operation of housing and labour markets and the (re)production of social inequalities. This paper argues that a deeper understanding of residential mobility and immobility can be gained by exploring developments in longitudinal analysis while seeking theoretical innovations derived from extending life course theories. Rethinking the geographies of residential mobility around notions of 'linked lives' will allow us to understand, critique and address major contemporary challenges.

Most studies investigating residential segregation of ethnic minorities ignore the fact that the majority of adults live in couples. In recent years there has been a growth in the number of mixed ethnic unions that involve a minority member and a white member. To our knowledge, hardly any research has been undertaken to explicitly examine whether the ethnic mix within households has an impact on the residential choices of households in terms of the ethnic mix of destination neighbourhoods. Our study addresses this research gap and examines the tendencies of migration among mixed ethnic unions in comparison with their co-ethnic peers. We used data from the Longitudinal Study for England and Wales. Our statistical analysis supports the spatial assimilation theory: ethnic minorities move towards less deprived areas and to a lesser extent also towards less ethnically concentrated areas. However, the types of destination neighbourhood of minority people living in mixed ethnic unions varied greatly with the ethnicity of the ethnic minority partner.

Neighbourhood effects research is at a crossroads since current theoretical and empirical approaches do not seem to be moving the debate forward. In this paper, we present a set of ten challenges as a basis for a new research agenda which will give new direction to the neighbourhood effects debate. The ten challenges are: 1) Future work should concentrate on explaining what is in the black-box of the 'neighbourhood effect' by deriving and testing clear hypotheses on causal neighbourhood effect mechanisms; 2) Studies should explicitly investigate the relationship between neighbourhood context and individual outcomes; 3) Alternative outcome variables such as subjective well-being should be considered; 4) We should move away from point-in-time measures of neighbourhood characteristics and take into account people's neighbourhood histories; 5) More attention is needed for the intergenerational transmission of neighbourhood effects; 6) We need to understand neighbourhood selection and to incorporate neighbourhood selection explicitly in models of neighbourhood effects; 7) We need a better operationalization of neighbourhood; 8) Neighbourhood effects researchers need to broaden their horizon to include other spatial contexts which might matter, in addition, or in place of the residential neighbourhood; 9) We need bespoke data to investigate neighbourhood effects; 10) The tenth and final challenge is to combine qualitative and quantitative methods into one research design.

Studies of neighbourhood effects typically investigate the instantaneous effect of point-in-time measures of neighbourhood poverty on individual outcomes. It has been suggested that it is not solely the current neighbourhood, but also the neighbourhood history of an individual that is important in determining an individual's outcomes. The effect of long-term exposure to poverty neighbourhoods on adults has largely been ignored in the empirical literature, partly due to a lack of suitable data. Using a population of parental home-leavers in Stockholm, Sweden, this study is innovative in investigating the effects of two temporal dimensions of exposure to neighbourhood environments on personal income later in life: the parental neighbourhood at the time of leaving the home and the cumulative exposure to poverty neighbourhoods in the subsequent 17 years. Using unique longitudinal Swedish register data and bespoke individual neighbourhoods, we are the first to employ a hybrid model, which combines both random and fixed effects approaches, in a study of neighbourhood effects. We find independent and non-trivial effects on income of the parental neighbourhood and cumulative exposure to poverty concentration neighbourhoods. The intergenerational transmission and exposure effects suggest the need for a more dynamic formulation of the neighbourhood effects hypothesis which explicitly takes temporal dimensions into account.

In this chapter we investigate the process of ethnic minority segregation in English social housing. Successive governments have expressed a commitment to the contradictory aims of providing greater choice - through the introduction of choice based letting - for households accessing an increasingly marginalised social housing sector whilst also expressing a determination to create more mixed communities and neighbourhoods. We consider the concept of choice in the context of a heavily residualised social housing sector, arguing that, for social housing tenants at least, the concept of real choice is a misnomer. We draw on research that has utilised unique administrative data and analysed the moves of all entrants into and movers within the social renting sector over a ten year period in England. The conclusion is that the introduction of choice based letting has influenced the residential outcomes of ethnic minorities and resulted in highly structured neighbourhood sorting that has segregated minority populations into the least desirable neighbourhoods of English cities.

The extent to which socioeconomic (dis)advantage is transmitted between generations is receiving increasing attention from academics and policymakers. However, few studies have investigated whether there is a spatial dimension to this intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage. Drawing upon the concept of a neighbourhood biography, this study contends that there are links between the places individuals live in with their parents and their subsequent neighbourhood experiences as independent adults. Using individual level register data tracking the whole Swedish population from 1990 to 2008, and bespoke neighbourhoods, this study is the first to use innovative sequencing techniques to construct individual neighbourhood histories. Through visualisation methods and ordered logit models, we demonstrate that the socioeconomic composition of the neighbourhood children lived in before they left the parental home is strongly related to the status of the neighbourhood they live in 5, 12 and 18 years later. Children living with their parents in high poverty concentration neighbourhoods are very likely to end up in similar neighbourhoods much later in life. The parental neighbourhood is also important in predicting the cumulative exposure to poverty concentration neighbourhoods over a long period of early adulthood. Ethnic minorities were found to have the longest cumulative exposure to poverty concentration neighbourhoods. These findings imply that for some groups, disadvantage is both inherited and highly persistent.

Large scale suburbanisation is a relatively recent phenomenon in East Central Europe and responsible for major socio-spatial changes in metropolitan areas. Little is known about the ethnic dimensions of this process. However, large minority population groups, mainly ethnic Russians, remained into the former member states of the Soviet Union after its dissolution in 1991. We use individual level Estonia Census data in order to investigate the ethnic dimensions of suburbanisation. The results show that ethnic minorities have a considerably lower probability to suburbanise compared to the majority population, and minorities are less likely to move to rural municipalities - the main sites of suburban change - in the suburban ring of cities. Individual characteristics that measure strong ties with the majority population and host society exert a positive effect on ethnic minority suburbanization, and on settling in rural municipalities.

In addition to neighbourhoods of residence, family and places of work play important roles in producing and reproducing ethnic segregation. Therefore, recent research on ethnic segregation and contact is increasingly turning its attention from residential areas towards other important domains of daily interethnic contact. The key innovation of this paper is to clarify the role of immigrants' pre-hire exposure to natives in the residence, workplace and family domains in immigrant exposure to natives in their current workplace. The study is based on Swedish population register data. The results show that at the macro level, workplace neighbourhood segregation is lower than residential neighbourhood segregation. Our micro-level analysis further shows that high levels of residential exposure of immigrants to natives help to reduce ethnic segregation at the level of workplace establishments as well.

The number of people who have ever experienced a divorce, or a split up of a non-marital union, is rising every year. It is well known that union dissolution has a disruptive effect on the housing careers of those involved, often leading to downward moves on the housing ladder. Much less is known about the geographies of residential mobility after union dissolution. There are reasons to expect that those who experienced a union dissolution are less likely to move over longer distances, which could negatively influence the spatial flexibility of the labour force. This study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the occurrences of moves, distances moved and the destinations of moves after union dissolution. The paper also contributes to the literature by not only investigating the effect of divorce, but also splitting up, and repartnering on mobility. Using longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and logistic regression models we found that union dissolution has a significant effect on the occurrence of moves and moving distances.

The majority of modelling studies on consequences of internal migration focus almost exclusively on the labour market outcomes and the material well-being of migrants. We investigate whether individuals who migrate within the UK become happier after the move than they were before it and whether the effect is permanent or transient. Using life satisfaction responses from 12 waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and employing a fixed-effects model, we derive a temporal pattern of migrants' subjective well-being (SWB) around the time of the migration event. Our findings make an original contribution by revealing for the first time that, on average, migration is preceded by a period when individuals experience a significant decline in happiness. The boost that is received through migration appears to bring people back to their initial level of happiness. As opposed to labour market outcomes of migration, SWB outcomes do not differ significantly between men and women. Perhaps surprisingly, long-distance migrants are at least as happy as short-distance migrants despite the higher social costs that are involved.

The research reported in this paper examines the nature and extent of socio-spatial mobility in the United Kingdom. In contrast with previous studies, we do not only investigate who moves out of deprived neighbourhoods, but our models cover the entire spectrum of neighbourhoods and provide a more complete interpretation of the process of mobility across socio-spatial structures. We use the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) to classify neighbourhoods defined as small areas containing approximately 1500 people. We use the data from all available waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to trace moves between these neighbourhoods, classified into deprivation deciles. We define upward socio-spatial mobility as moving to neighbourhoods with lower levels of deprivation. The focus on residential choices and the outcomes - residential sorting - allows us to measure the fluidity of the British social structure. We show that restricted ability to compete for the better neighbourhoods combines with residence in neighbourhoods with relatively high degrees of deprivation to limit opportunities for social mobility. The analysis shows that education and income play critical roles in the ability of individuals to make neighbourhood and decile gains when they move. There are also powerful roles of being unemployed and being (and becoming) a social renter. Both these latter effects combine to seriously restrict the possibilities for socio-spatial movement for certain groups. The results suggest serious structural barriers to socio-spatial mobility in British society, barriers which are directly related to the organisation of the housing market.

In this paper, we review the evidence base for social mixing in neighbourhoods, which is used as a strategy to tackle assumed negative neighbourhood effects. We discuss in detail the theoretical links between neighbourhood characteristics, and outcomes of individuals living in concentrations of poverty. Through this we identify the theoretical case for promoting socially mixed communities. We then review the empirical evidence base, focusing on outcomes of the American poverty deconcentration initiatives including the Moving to Opportunity and HOPE VI programs. We identify that the evidence from these programs is at best inconclusive. Turning to the European experience we identify problems associated with using observational data to assess individual outcomes in relation to their neighbourhood context. We conclude by suggesting that the evidence base for social mixing is far from robust, and that many of the current empirical papers suffer from serious analytical shortcomings. Ultimately, the process of creating more socially mixed neighbourhoods is unlikely to create more opportunities in life for the original residents. Socially mixing neighbourhoods through tenure mixing will only change the population composition of neighbourhoods, increasing average incomes because more affluent (and employed) residents will move into the owner occupied housing replacing social housing.

Conceptually, adopting a life course approach when analysing residential mobility enables us to investigate how experiencing particular life events affects mobility decision-making and behaviour throughout individual lifetimes. Yet although a growing body of longitudinal research links mobility decision-making to subsequent moving behaviour, most studies focus solely upon examining year-to-year transitions. As a result of this 'snap-shot' approach, little is known about how pre-move thoughts and subsequent mobility relate over longer periods within the context of dynamic life course trajectories. Current research therefore fails to distinguish ephemeral moving desires from those which are persistently expressed. This study is one of the first to move beyond investigating year-to-year transitions to explore the long term sequencing of moving desires and mobility behaviour within individual life courses. Using innovative techniques to visualise the sequences of a panel of British Household Panel Survey respondents, the study demonstrates that the meanings and significance of particular transitions in moving desires and mobility behaviour become apparent only when these transitions are arranged into individual mobility histories. We uncover previously ignored groups of individuals persistently unable to act in accordance with their moving desires. Visualising mobility histories also highlights the oft-neglected importance of residential stability over the life course.

One of the goals of the Right to Buy (RTB) was to stimulate labour migration by removing the debilitating effect of social housing on geographical mobility. This is the first study to examine rigorously whether the Right to Buy legislation did indeed 'free-up' those in social housing who bought their homes. Using longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and panel regression models we show that the probability of a RTB-owner making a long distance move falls between that of social renters and owner occupiers. However, the difference between RTB-owners and neither homeowners nor social renters is significant. Social renters are significantly less likely to move over long distances than traditional owners. The results also suggest that RTB-owners are less likely than traditional owners to move for job related reasons, but more likely than social renters.

This paper seeks to unpick the complex effects of migration, country of birth, and place of residence in Scotland on individual success in the labour market. We pay specific attention to the labour force experience of English-born residents in Scotland, whom the cross sectional literature suggests are more likely to achieve high occupational status than the Scottish born residents. Using data from the Scottish Longitudinal Study - linking individual records from the 1991 and 2001 Censuses - and logistic regressions we show that those living in, or moving to Edinburgh, and those born in England and Wales are the most likely to experience upward occupational mobility.

This paper investigates the effect of different levels of neighbourhood housing tenure mix on transitions from unemployment to employment and the probability of staying in employment for those with a job. We used individual level data from the Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS), a 5.3% sample of the Scottish population, covering a 10 year period. We found a strong negative correlation between living in deprived neighbourhoods and labour market outcomes (getting or keeping a job). We found a small, but significant, positive correlation between living in mixed tenure (40-80% social housing) streets and transitions from unemployment to employment. In the conclusion we discuss the extent to which we think these results can be interpreted as 'neighbourhood effects' or selection effects.

We analyze the effects of regional structures on both females? willingness to work and the probability of being employed for those willing to work. Special permission was granted to link regional data to individual respondents in the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Results of a bivariate probit model correcting for sample selection show that high regional unemployment discourages women from entering the labor market. Those who are willing to work find it easier to do so if living in regions with low regional unemployment rates, short distances to the next agglomeration, and – for mothers – a high density of childcare provision.

We analyze the effects of regional structures on females? willingness to work as well as on the probability that non-employed women who are willing to work actually will engage in job search. Special permission was granted to link regional data to individual respondents in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Results of a bivariate probit model correcting for sample selection show that high regional unemployment discourages women from entering the labor market. Further, findings indicate that women with young children are willing to work, but that women with young children and mothers who are unhappy with the regional childcare provision are the least likely to look for a job. These findings indicate that high institutional and spatial barriers discourage mothers from entering employment.