Understanding Disinvestment and Decline
Tom Carter
Canada Research Chair in Urban Change and Adaptation
Chesya Polevychok
Research Associate
January 2006
Canada Research Chair in Urban Change and Adaptation
The Department of Geography
The University of Winnipeg
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Theories Explaining Neighbourhood Decline
2.1. Ecological Models
2.1.1. The Concentric Zone Model
1
1
2
2
2.1.2. The Sectoral Model
3
2.1.3. The Multi-Nuclei Theory
3
2.1.4. White’s Late Twentieth Century Model
4
2.1.5. Urban Realms Model
5
2.1.6. Social Area Analysis
6
2.1.7. Filtering
7
2.1.8. The Life-cycle Model
8
2.1.9. The Bid Rent Theory
11
2.1.10. The Border Models
11
2.1.11. The Vacancy Chain Hypothesis
12
2.1.12. The Cycles of Disadvantage
12
2.1.13. The Broken Windows Theory
13
2.1.14. Urban Underclass
14
2.1.15. The Pull and Obsolescence Hypotheses
16
2.1.16. Environmental Determinism
16
2.2. The Subcultural School
2.3. Political Economists
17
17
2.3.1. The Urban Growth Machine Thesis
17
2.3.2. Urban Structural Change
18
2.3.3. The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis
19
2.3.4. The Exploitation Hypothesis
20
2.3.5. The Fiscal Crisis Theory
2.4. The Social Capital Model
2.5. Theories Summary
3. Factors that Prompt Neighbourhood Decline
3.1. Poverty
3.2. Racial Conflict
3.3. Ageing of Population
3.4. Suburban Sprawl
3.5. The Spatial Distribution of Affordable Housing
3.6. Decline of Inner-city Schools
3.7. Creative Class
3.8. Unintended Policy Effects
4. Threshold Indicators
4.1. Definition
4.2. The United States Experience
4.2.1. Poverty, Unemployment, Female Headship, and School Dropout Rates
4.2.2. Housing and Homeownership Characteristics
4.3. The Canadian Experience
5. Conclusions
List of References
21
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30
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Causes of Decline
1. Introduction
Understanding the circumstances and advancing solutions to arrest urban decline
require a sound knowledge of the processes that initiate disinvestment and decline in
urban neighbourhoods. Many theories that contribute to an understanding of these
processes have been postulated. The explanatory processes include natural evolution,
ecological succession and down filtering, middle class flight, ageing of population,
obsolescence of the built environment, changes in urban form and the pattern of suburban
expansion, the unintended effects of public policy, structural economic change and class
and racial conflict among others.
This report will examine and explain many of the urban decline theories. The
discussion will contribute to a better understanding of the interaction and
interdependence of neighbourhood, city wide, regional, national and international
influences, and both macro and micro level processes that contribute to disinvestment and
decline in urban areas. This document is meant to be a background paper for those
interested in issues associated with urban decline and solutions focused on arresting
decline in urban areas.
2. Theories Explaining Neighbourhood Decline
Scholars generally identify three major schools of thought with regard to our
theoretical understanding of how and why neighbourhoods change – ecological,
subcultural, and political economy (Pitkin 2001, Ding and Knaap 2002). The following
sections will expand on these three schools of thought and the theories they incorporate.
Discussion in additional sections will complement these theories and add other concepts
proposed to explain neighbourhood decline.
Ecological models originate from the work of urban sociologists and economists
and focus on exogenous forces that shape the dynamics of neighbourhood change. Such
factors include ecological forces, analogous to those in biology, that cause invasion and
succession of people with different characteristics and different types of land uses during
the life cycle of a neighbourhood; filtering processes in the housing stock that cause
neighbourhoods to decline with age; and economic factors that shape the bid-rent
functions for urban land. Subcultural models are less deterministic and focus on factors
such as social networks, socially determined neighbourhood reputations, and sense of
neighbourhood attachment. Finally, political economy models focus on the forces of
capital accumulation and the institutions through which accumulation takes place. In
these models the type and location of capital investments are critical factors in
neighbourhood change (Ding and Knaap 2002).
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Causes of Decline
2.1. Ecological models
Ecologists have developed a series of models of neighbourhood change, which
has set the foundation for a better understanding of neighbourhood decline.
2.1.1. The Concentric Zone Model
Originated by Earnest Burgess in the 1920s, the Concentric Zone Model or
Invasion/Succession theory was fundamental for establishing neighbourhood change as
an inevitable, natural result of competition for space. The city, according to Burgess
(1925), is made up of six concentric rings: the innermost ring being the central business
district (CBD), surrounded by the industrial sector, slum housing, working-class housing,
higher-status dwellings and finally commuter housing. As the city grows, each ring
places pressure on the ring surrounding it to expand. For example the central business
districts expands into the industrial sector which in turn pushes into the area of slum
housing displacing people who seek housing in the working-class district. In general,
then, residential neighbourhoods deteriorate as land uses of a growing CBD invade the
next ring forcing lower-income residents to move and push the growth of the city
outward. This is presented as a natural process of competition and selection, similar to
theories of evolution in the biological sciences (Pitkin 2001).
This theory was more applicable to the pre World War II city which was monocentric in nature (one central commercial/retail district), developed at higher densities,
more reliant on public transportation, and less dominated by the automobile.
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Causes of Decline
2.1.2. The Sector Model
The Sector Model, usually attributed to Homer Hoyt (1939), considers the
direction, not the distance, as the key factor in determining the spatial organization of a
metropolis. It states that, while the growth is still outward, sectors as they expand
outward in a particular direction tend to maintain the original socio-economic
characteristics of more inner areas. The general picture is that different sectors have
different socio-economic and land use characteristics. The movement of high status
populations outward from the city centre along the main transport routes has been
accompanied by changes in the methods of transport, the shift from public transit to the
private automobile, for example. This has led to more expansive settlement patterns in
this model. For example the high-income areas where people prefer to use the private
automobile for transportation do not always grow out in a linear fashion but form fans
loosely centred on the transport links (freeways or major arterials) to the city centre.
Based upon a block-by-block analysis of changes in a variety of housing
characteristics in 142 US cities, Hoyt notes that:
The high rent neighbourhoods do not skip about at random in the process of
movement, they follow a definite path in one or more sectors of the city. ... the
different types of residential areas tend to grow outward along rather distinct radii,
and a new growth on the arc of a given sector tends to take on the character of the
initial growth of that sector (ibid.).
Controlling factors in this theory tend to be previous patterns of land use,
transportation arteries, physical features such as rivers, sites with attractive
physical amenities and the desire by some land uses to avoid other land uses.
2.1.3. The Multi-Nuclei Theory
The Multi-Nuclei Theory suggests that a city may have more than one
nucleus/centre apart from the CBD from which other zones of land use develop (Harris
and Ullmann 1945). While Harris and Ullman still saw the CBD as the major centre of
3
Causes of Decline
commerce, they suggested that specialized cells of activity would develop according to
specific requirements of certain activities, different rent-paying abilities, and the tendency
for some kinds of economic activity to cluster together. Separate nuclei include airports,
new industrial centres and trading estates, small towns that have become engulfed.
Specialized regions may develop, such as industrial clusters.
This theory marks the transition of cities from mono-centric to poly-centric urban
forms with commercial, retail, industrial and other business and employment nodes
outside the CBD. Employment and shopping nodes other than the CBD began to exert an
influence on land use patterns around them.
2.1.4. White’s Late Twentieth Century Model
There is an increasing shift of North American cities from mono-centric to poly-centric
urban forms in White’s Late Twentieth Century Model. In the model the city continues
to spread but there is also a growing diversity and separation of activities. Axial and
circumferential highways represent an extension of the transportation system.
Transportation corridors connect the axial system with all parts of the city. This
freeway/beltway network provides "easy and fast access" to all parts of the city by private
car, although increasing congestion makes "easy and fast access" a very relative concept.
Epicentres (suburban and regional shopping malls and big box development) rival the
traditional core. Often they are bigger in terms of retail space and number of functions.
There is still a zone of decline (stagnation). Middle class residential areas (MC) have
expanded significantly. Cars, which are relatively inexpensive for the individual, have
facilitated the growth of middle class suburbs but there are other factors that have
contributed to the spread and expansion of these suburbs:
•
an increase in housing demand, first from returning veterans following WWII,
then the baby boomers. This demand was easier to accommodate in "greenfield"
suburban development;
•
more flexible mortgage lending terms such as lower down payment requirements
which made home ownership accessible to more households;
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Causes of Decline
•
rising incomes relative to costs. More people could afford to own a single
detached family home;
•
the entry of more married women into the workforce also increased incomes;
•
new building technology that facilitated tract building in suburban areas at
affordable prices. Suburban building developed into an almost "cookie cutter"
approach; and,
•
the strengthening of the "North American Dream" - to own one's own house on a
plot of land in the suburbs.
White’s model characterizes developments in urban form that continued to
weaken the central business district and the surrounding older residential areas.
2.1.5. Urban Realms Model
The Urban Realms Model represents perhaps the most recent evolution of urban
form in North America. What has emerged as cities have evolved is a number of large
self-sufficient sectors, each focused on a downtown independent of the traditional
downtown and the central city. The entire metropolitan area becomes reorganized into a
set of independent urban realms. This is often called the "pepperoni pizza model." Each
urban realm is anchored by a major mixed use downtown core. Even in a city as small as
Winnipeg you can see elements of this model. St Vital Shopping Centre has certainly
become a mixed use "downtown area" that the residents in the south and south-east part
of Winnipeg frequent for many services and the same is true for Kildonan Place in the
north and north east, for example.
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Causes of Decline
The various realms are connected by major traffic arterials, often freeways and
circumferential links circle the entire realm. The automobile is the major form of
transportation. Public transportation (buses, subways) are difficult to introduce because
there is no particular focus of employment and services - there are many such areas
scattered throughout the city. Residential development is generally very low density. In
circumstances such as this, ridership on public transportation is so low that fares do not
even come close to covering the cost. These cities are designed to accommodate the
automobile.
The growth of “new” Urban Realms sets up push/pull forces that result in people
in the old original city moving to new realms, creating population and business loss and
decline in general.
These evolving forms of the North American city, in association with dynamic
processes that have created and accompanied this evolution, have collectively tended to
weaken the older central residential areas and the original central business district.
2.1.6. Social Area Analysis
Similar to the previous model is Social Area Analysis, developed by Shevsky and
Bell (1955) to relate changing urban social structure and residential patterns to the
processes of economic development and urbanization. The analysis concentrates on the
social characteristics of the urban population in attempting to explain land use. People
tend to cluster or concentrate in residential areas of the city according to: 1) economic
status, 2) family status and 3) ethnic composition of its residents.
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Causes of Decline
This clustering has an effect on the nature of residential development – dwelling
values, size, design and condition as well as the nature of institutions and type of retail
activity. Although clustering by socio-economic characteristics is still very much part of
the urban environment it can be argued that retailing trends that have marked the
dominance of large enclosed malls and big-box development have weakened the effect of
clustering on the diversity of retailing functions.
According to Driedger (1991), Canadian cities have a tendency to follow the
pattern of ethnic concentration described by Shevsky and Bell rather than the model of
neighbourhood change of Park and Burgess (1925).
These theories, although they do not in themselves explain disinvestment and
decline in neighbourhoods, establish land use patterns and urban form that when
combined with other processes can initiate or facilitate neighbourhood deterioration.
2.1.7. Filtering
Filtering is another influential theory and one that works in conjunction with some
of the theories already explained. Many researchers have used the income-succession
model as a basis for their studies of the “filtering” of housing stock though various
income and racial groups (Galster et al. 2003).
Hoyt (1933) expands Burgess's model by applying economic theory to argue that
neighbourhoods naturally decline as property owners invest less in ageing properties due
to rising maintenance costs and move to new housing on the periphery. He argued that
expansion outward was due, in part, to the attraction of new neighbourhoods on the
periphery, not as the result of a push mechanism from the inner circles as in the
invasion/succession model. Housing filters down from the rich to the middle class to the
poor. Housing deteriorates over time, so the rich periodically move to new housing that is
higher quality and incorporates more modern and preferred designs and amenities.
Middle-income people can either buy lower priced new housing or slightly used housing
that was occupied by the rich. Lower income residents can’t buy new housing, as they
can’t afford the cost of construction. They buy used housing that was previously occupied
by middle-income people. The price of used housing eventually falls to the point where
low-income people can afford it. Housing that used to be occupied by lower income
people can’t fall any lower in the income distribution. Often it deteriorates to the point
where it is abandoned. The filtering of housing and deterioration in quality and value as
housing filters down to lower income households is a contributing factor to
neighbourhood decline.
Smith (1963) builds on Hoyt’s model to argue that other factors such as the
existence of mortgage credit needs to be added to the equation of filtering (Pitkin 2001).
As housing declines in quality and price, and ages, it is more difficult to arrange
mortgage financing to purchase and renovate. When people cannot get access to credit to
purchase or renovate houses they deteriorate and are abandoned at an even more rapid
rate. Access to credit becomes more difficult in declining neighbourhoods and tends to
hasten neighbourhood decline.
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Causes of Decline
“Stage theory of growth” and the “Life-cycle Model” (see below) are well-known
applications of the filtering model, in which neighbourhood decline is viewed as part of a
linear, evolutionary process (ibid.). The basic assumption of filtering is also inherent in
many current discussions on urban sprawl. Opponents to spreading suburban
development argue that the social and spatial mobility brought about by development of
housing and transportation facilities on the urban fringe has contributed to the decline of
neighbourhoods in central cities (Temkin and Rohe 1996).
2.1.8. The Life-cycle Model
Researchers often use the invasion-succession model in combination with a Lifecycle Model of neighbourhood change to describe the decline of neighbourhoods. From
this perspective, neighbourhoods are born, age, decline, until they eventually are
abandoned and demolished (Galster and Krall 2003). According to this theory,
neighbourhood decline is inevitable, unidirectional, and not necessarily bad (Temkin and
Rohe 1996). The filtering of housing stock in a given neighbourhood provides an
opportunity for potential lower income in-movers to improve their housing conditions by
moving into this housing from worse housing (ibid.).
John T. Metzger (2000), in his article Planned Abandonment: The Neighborhood
Life Cycle Theory and National Urban Policy, presents the evolution of life-cycle theory
over the years (Table 1).
Table 1. The Stages of Neighbourhood Change: The Evolution of the Life-Cycle Theory, 1935 to
1975.
U. S. Home Owners’
Loan Corp.
residential security
maps (1935)
U. S. Home Owners’
Loan Corp.
Waverly: A Study in
Neighborhood
Conservation (1940)
First Grade “A”
Area (green)
Well- planned,
homogeneous
population
First Stage
Edgar M. Hoover and
Raymond Vernon
Anatomy of a Metropolis:
The Changing
Distribution of People and
Jobs within the New York
Metropolitan Region
(Regional Plan
Association of New York,
1959)
Stage 1
Real Estate Research
Corporation
The Dynamics of
Neighborhood Change
(U. S. Department of
Housing and Urban
Development, 1975)
New residential
construction
Single- family residential
development
Homogeneous housing and
moderate to upper income,
insurance and conventional
financing available
Second Grade “B”
Area (blue)
Completely
developed, stable
Second Stage
Stage 2
Normal use and
maintenance
Transition to higher
density, apartment
construction
Stage 2: Incipient Decline
Aging housing, decline in
income and education
level, influx of middleincome minorities, fear of
racial transition
Third Grade “C”
Area (yellow)
Third Stage
Stage 3
Stage 3: Clearly Declining
Stage 1: Healthy
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Causes of Decline
U. S. Home Owners’
Loan Corp.
residential security
maps (1935)
U. S. Home Owners’
Loan Corp.
Waverly: A Study in
Neighborhood
Conservation (1940)
Edgar M. Hoover and
Raymond Vernon
Anatomy of a Metropolis:
The Changing
Distribution of People and
Jobs within the New York
Metropolitan Region
(Regional Plan
Association of New York,
1959)
Downgrading to
accommodate higher
density through conversion
and over-crowding of
existing structures, spread
of ethnic and minority
districts
In transition and
decline from age,
obsolescence, lack of
restrictions, lower
household incomes
and housing values,
lack of homogeneity
Age, obsolescence,
structural neglect
Fourth Grade “D”
Area (red)
Final stage of decline,
mostly low-income
rental housing,
“undesirable
population”
Fourth Stage
Stage 4
Falling investment
and rent values,
neglect of
maintenance, districtwide deterioration
Thinning-out or
“shrinkage” characterized
by population loss and
decline in housing units
Fifth Stage
Stage 5
Slum area with
depreciated values,
substandard housing,
social problems
Renewal through public
intervention,
redevelopment and
replacement of obsolete
housing with new
multifamily apartments
Real Estate Research
Corporation
The Dynamics of
Neighborhood Change
(U. S. Department of
Housing and Urban
Development, 1975)
Higher density, visible
deterioration, decrease in
white in-movers, more
minority children in
schools, mostly rental
housing, problems in
securing insurance and
financing
Stage 4: Accelerating
Decline
Increasing vacancies,
predominantly low-income
and minority tenants or
elderly ethnics, high
unemployment, fear of
crime, no insurance or
institutional financing
available, declining public
services, absentee- owned
properties
Stage 5: Abandoned
Severe dilapidation,
poverty and squatters, high
crime and arson, negative
cash flow from buildings
Source: Metzger, 2000, p.9.
Neighbourhood life-cycle theories had an effect on public policy and
disinvestment. For example, according to Metzger (2000), a number of urban life-cycle
theories facilitated the decline of inner-city, low-income, predominantly AfricanAmerican neighbourhoods. Neighbourhood life-cycle theories caused financial
institutions to spurn neighbourhoods defined as "declining" because they constituted
risky investments, leading to a guaranteed spiral of decline. He argues that an alternative
paradigm of neighbourhood theory emphasizing collective action on the part of
community residents would have helped many urban neighbourhoods to avoid decline
and abandonment.
9
Decreasing (net)
Town house
conversions
c.
Low
Luxury highrise apartment
b.
Increasing (net)
Increasing (net)
High
Public housing
a.
Medium
Declining (net
densities may
be increasing)
Low
Non-residential
construction –
demolitions of
existing units
4. Thinning out
5. Renewal
Medium
(increasing
slowly),
population total
down
Very low
Conversions of
existing dwellings to
multi-family
3. Down-rading
Medium
(increasing
slowly or
stable)
Low,
decreasing
Multi-family
Low (but
increasing)
High
2. In-filling
Population
density
Level of
construction
Single-family (lowdensity multiple)
Dwelling type
Physical changes
1.
Suburbanization
Stage
Table 2. Summary of Neighbourhood Life Cycles. (adapted from Bourne 1976, p. 139)
Few children
Young families,
many children
Mixed
Older families,
few children,
non-family
households
Older families,
fewer children
Ageing families,
older children,
more mixing
Young families,
small children,
large households
Family structure
High net inmigr., high
turnover
Medium
Declining
Increasing
Low
Higher net
outmigration,
high turnover
Declining
Increasing
Low net outmigration,
high turnover
Low net inmigration,
low mobility
turnover
High net inmigration,
high mobility
turnover
Migration
mobility
Medium
(declining)
High
(stable)
High
(increasing)
Social
status
income
Social changes
The second
transition stage –
may take either of
two forms
depending on
conditions
Selective nonresidential
succession
Long period of
depreciation and
stagnation; some
non-residential
succession
First transition stage
– less homogeneity
in age, class,
housing
Initial development
stage; cluster
development; largescale projects
Other
characteristics
Other changes
Causes of Decline
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Causes of Decline
Bourne (1976) provides a concept of a neighbourhood life cycle that links
physical and socio-economic changes with residential mobility (Table 2). The concept
provides a useful explanation of urban residential structure, although it would be very
difficult to test its validity empirically.
The next group of ecological models focuses on residential location decisions,
predicting that households will move from small housing units in the central city to larger
ones in the suburbs as their incomes rise (Alonso 1960, 1964, Galster 1977, Lucy and
Phillips 2000, Pitkin 2001).
2.1.9. The Bid Rent Theory
According to the Neoclassical, or Bid Rent Theory, urban residents make a tradeoff between land, housing, and transportation costs, between being close to the city centre
- where housing costs are highest - and locating in a neighbourhood with relatively
affordable housing - that is farther from the centre (Alonso 1960). The residential bid
price curve is “the set of prices for land the individual could pay at various distances
while deriving a constant level of satisfaction” (ibid. p.59). Middle- and upper-income
people can purchase more land and housing at lower per unit costs toward the periphery
while affording the transportation costs. The poor occupy smaller and older housing
closer to work sites. It should be noted that in Bid Rent Theory a home in the suburbs
may cost more than a home in the inner city, however, given size, amenities and quality
the price is actually cheaper for the entire package of land and housing. Low-income
people often end up renting or buying smaller, poorer quality units with fewer amenities
in the inner city but actually pay more per square foot or per unit value. They pay more
per unit value for housing but perhaps less for transportation. Similar to other ecological
models, the bid rent model helps explain the outward expansion of cities, positing a linear
relationship between land costs and proximity to the centre: the more accessible the land,
the higher its value.
The idea that low-income households pay more per unit of housing in return for
reduced transportation costs that is postulated by the Bid Rent Model may be less
relevant in today’s North American city than it was in 1960. Low-income people used to
be able to access jobs in the inner city. The de-industrialization and loss of retail activities
in the inner city and the movement of many manufacturing and retailing jobs to the
suburbs, with the associated development of industrial parks and suburban shopping
malls, leaves low-income inner city people far from employment. Public transit is not
readily available to move people from inner city to suburban locations. This leaves many
people trapped in poor quality inner city housing because that is the best they can afford
while unemployed because they cannot access the suburban jobs without cheap adequate
public transportation.
2.1.10. The Border Models
The Border or Tipping Models also focus on the locational decisions of residents
but expand the explanatory variables to include social characteristics such as race.
Proponents of these models contend that the racial transition of a neighbourhood will
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Causes of Decline
have an impact on existing residents and increase out-migration. These changes will
affect how residents from surrounding areas perceive their own neighbourhoods,
especially along the “borders” of the neighbourhoods (Pitkin 2001). People often feel
uncomfortable when racial transition begins to occur and also fear they will experience
declining property values.
2.1.11. The Vacancy Chain Hypothesis
The Vacancy Chain hypothesis is consistent with the housing filtering model,
which explains the dynamic of new housing construction for wealthy households that sets
in motion a chain of vacancies. The vacancy chain causes households to move into higher
status neighbourhoods than the ones they leave, and housing units to be successively
occupied by lower and lower status occupants. At the end of the vacancy chain, in the
least desirable housing stock and the least desirable neighbourhoods, there may be
insufficient demand to sustain the housing stock and vacancies go unsatisfied, leading
ultimately to housing abandonment. If there is sufficient demand to fill the stock at the
bottom of the chain then there will be a group of people living in very poor quality
housing.
Orfield (1998) contends that the building of new housing at the periphery sets in
motion vacancy chains reaching far back into the central core. Thus, the more rapid
peripheral growth of middle-class sectors early on creates low demand at the centre of its
vacancy chain. Core middle-class neighbourhoods are the first to become impoverished
and ultimately ghettoized. As these neighbourhoods become poorer, social and economic
decline accelerate and push the middle class out of these neighbourhoods at the same
time the vacancy chain initiated by new suburban development is pulling them.
Ironically, as the various classes move up and/or flee from central city areas, all the social
and economic changes that occur in the core of their sectoral housing markets may
eventually follow them through the vacancy chains into the suburbs (ibid.).
2.1.12. The Cycles of Disadvantage
The Cycles of Disadvantage thesis had its intellectual origins in America in social
area analysis. The basic premise is that physical, economic and social handicaps reinforce
one another to ensure life-cycle and inter-generational multiple deprivation on the part of
the urban poor, who are often spatially concentrated in declining neighbourhoods. They
become an urban underclass.
Neighbourhoods do have the potential of shaping the present and future well
being of families and individuals in a variety of ways. Wilson (1987) argues that the
fortunes of the underclass are strongly shaped by the neighbourhoods in which they
reside. As indicated by Jargowsky (1997), the “spatial concentration of poor people acts
to magnify poverty and exacerbate its effects” (p. 2). Galster and Hill (1992) draw similar
conclusions with a focus on race. Following an extensive review of studies, Ellen and
Turner (1997) conclude that neighbourhood characteristics influence a variety of
individual characteristics such as educational attainment, criminal involvement, teen
sexual activity, and employment, although the mechanisms of causation remain difficult
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Causes of Decline
to identify. There are probably fewer educational opportunities, greater exposure to crime
and deviant behaviour, poorer quality of education, poor local infrastructure, difficulty in
establishing businesses, and lack of access to information-rich networks in declining
neighbourhoods. As noted by Carley (1990), the failure of direct massive environmental
intervention to resolve basic problems of poverty, poor quality housing and social
disadvantage set in motion more complex human, urban problems. These kinds of
interactions lead further to cycles of disadvantage and dysfunction.
The study, Deprivation in New Zealand: Regional Patterns and Changes (Maré et
al. 2001), also emphasizes the importance of neighbourhood effects. Similar sorts of
people tend to choose to live in similar sorts of places because they can only afford
similar housing, need similar social services, identify personally or culturally with others
in the area, or can provide each other community support. However, when groups of low
well-being people live together there may be negative spillovers or “neighbourhood
effects” that perpetuate social problems and result in even poorer outcomes for these
groups (ibid.).
Maré et al. (2001) have found that it is very difficult to document neighbourhood
effects empirically, in large part because of the difficulty of determining whether
disadvantaged communities appear because disadvantaged people choose to live together,
or because living together also worsens their prospects.
2.1.13. The Broken Windows Theory
Do areas gather their own momentum of decline, and how does this happen? One
of the best documented views of unpopular neighbourhoods is the Broken Windows
theory which attributes a loss of social control to the gradual growth in “incivilities”—
that is, the lack of informal social control through neighbourhood instability and poor
services leading to people tolerating broken windows and other minor damage. This
results in a disorderly environment from which more law-abiding people withdraw. The
resulting social space becomes increasingly disorganized until more serious crime and
disorder take over. At this point the neighbourhood ‘tips’ into steep decline (Glennerster
et al. 1999).
The theory comes from the article by James Wilson and George Kelling published
in the Atlantic Monthly in 1982, entitled The Police and Neighbourhood Safety: Broken
Windows. The authors argue that signs of physical and social disorder invite criminal
activity; disorder indicates to law-abiding citizens that their neighbourhoods are
dangerous places, making these citizens afraid to take an active role in promoting social
order in their communities and leading them to withdraw from community life or leaving
their neighbourhood entirely. Wilson and Kelling’s definition of “minor” disorder
includes such problems and crimes as littering, loitering, public drinking, panhandling,
teenage fighting on street corners, and prostitution. Also mentioned are signs of physical
disorder, including abandoned cars (with broken windows, naturally) and dilapidated
buildings (also with broken windows) (Wilson and Kelling 1982). Disorder invites more
disorder in a contagious process that progressively breaks down community standards
and ultimately invites criminal invasion (ibid.).
13
Causes of Decline
2.1.14. Urban Underclass
The most controversial interpretation of area conditions uses the idea of the
culture of poverty and transmitted deprivation to rationalize the existence of a so-called
Urban Underclass of people who cannot, or do not want to, help themselves or their
children. They have a life-style that conflicts with mainstream values and creates or helps
to drive area decline (Glennerster et al. 1999).
This underclass is characterized by multiple deprivations, reproduced
intergenerationally, and widely thought to be a consequence of the development
of a global economy characterized by the deindustrialization of the central city, a
polarized employment structure, and a bipolar distribution of wealth (Wilson
1987, Kasarda 1990). Without the skills of work-related experience or education,
the support of other adult family members and/or a stable income, members of the
underclass are thought to be marginalized from adequately paying jobs, good
educational programs, affordable and good quality housing in well-serviced
neighbourhoods. It is this isolation that is thought ultimately to bring about the
social interactions and norms that shape this subset of the urban poor into a class
of its own:
...the communities of the “underclass” are plagued by massive joblessness, flagrant
and open lawlessness, and low-achieving schools, and therefore tend to be avoided
by outsiders. Consequently the residents of these areas, whether women and children
of welfare families or aggressive street criminals, have become increasingly socially
isolated from mainstream behaviour. (Wilson 1987, p. 58)
Ley and Smith (1997) suggest that concepts of the underclass vary across national
boundaries. In the American context, the underclass have most clearly been defined as
those who live in extremely poor communities, marked also by high rates of
unemployment, welfare dependency, mother-led families, criminal activity, and deficient
education or work-related skills. American researchers defined “underclass
neighbourhoods” as census tracts with unusually high concentrations – either one
standard deviation above the national average or twice the metropolitan median – of lone
mothers, men not involved in the labour force, welfare dependants and high-school dropouts (ibid.). Jargowsky (1996) draws attention to the fact that there are certain stereotypes
in policy debate about the characteristics of the residents of declining neighbourhoods.
He indicates that high poverty areas contain an unexpected social and economic diversity:
while some residents clearly engage in “underclass” lifestyles, many of their neighbours
are not public assistance recipients and do participate in the labour market, although in
lower-skill occupations for fewer hours and lower wages (ibid.).
British researchers, rather than defining an underclass on the basis of overlapping
patterns of multiple deprivation, or on the spatial concentration of those patterns, have
focused on one particular factor – the experience of the long-term unemployed (Ley and
Smith 1997). Other European studies also view the creation of an underclass as a function
of long-term unemployment and continued exclusion from the labour market and other
avenues of upward mobility. But the European underclass, although homogeneous in
14
Causes of Decline
terms of labour market position, is socially, politically and culturally heterogeneous
(ibid.).
In Canada there is no empirical evidence detailing either underclass existence or
any critical discussion about whether the underclass provides an appropriate paradigm for
the Canadian experience of urban poverty (ibid.). To allow comparison with American
research, Ley and Smith define an “underclass” as the population of a census tract whose
rates of non-labour force involvement, female-led families, welfare dependency and high
school non-completion were notably high, setting thresholds at twice the current CMA
median for each variable (Table 3).
Table 3. “Underclass” Definition1.
American
Canadian Proxy 1991
High School Drop Outs
Lack of High School Diploma
Percentage of 16- 19 year olds who are not
enrolled in school and who are not high school
graduates.
Population 15 years or older whose highest level of
education is lower than a high school diploma.
Labour Force Activity
Male Unemployment
Prime- age males not regularly attached to the
labour force – males 16 years and over who are
not working regularly where working regularly is
defined as having a full or part time job for more
than 26 weeks a year.
Males 15 years and older who during the week of
enumeration were without work, actively looked for
work in the past four weeks and were available for
work; or were on layoff and expected to return to
their job and were available for work or had definite
arrangements to start a new job in four weeks or less
and were available for work.
Public Assistance Recipients
Government Transfer Recipients
Percentage of households receiving public
assistance income.
Composition of census tract total income from
government transfer payments.
Female Heads of Families
Female Lone Parent Families
Households with children, headed by women.
Lone parent families with children, headed by
women.
Source: adapted from Ley and Smith 1997, p. 46.
The identification of underclass as distinct from high poverty census tracts has
posed severe challenges for researchers. Some of the key data that would identify
“underclass” neighbourhoods – such as violent crime rates, drug abuse and rates of outof-wedlock childbirth – are not available on a census tract basis either in the USA or in
Canada (Hatfield 1997).
Hatfield comments on the article Defining and Measuring the Underclass by Erol
Ricketts and Isabel V. Sawhill (1988), indicating that they made the most careful attempt
to find statistically measurable indicators of distressed neighbourhoods. The authors
1
Ley and Smith (1997) define an “underclass” community as one in which all four of the Canadian variables score 2x
the current CMA median (1991 or 1971).
15
Causes of Decline
identify four proxy indicators of the presence of an underclass. These are very high2
incidences of:
1. High school dropouts (the proportion of 16 to 19 year olds who are not
enrolled in school and are not high school graduates);
2. Prime-age males not regularly attached to the labour force (the percentage of
males 16 and over who worked for pay less than 26 weeks in the previous
calendar year);
3. Welfare recipients (the percentage of households receiving Aid to Families
with Dependent Children or state or municipal public assistance); and
4. Female lone parents (the percentage of households headed by female lone
parents).
Hatfield (1997) concludes that it appears worthwhile to study both concentrations
of income poverty and concentrations of other indicators of social distress. The first helps
to understand the context for the formation of distressed neighbourhoods and, through the
second, it may be possible to identify the factors that encourage or act as counterweights
to their formation given high rates of income poverty.
2.1.15. The Pull and Obsolescence Hypotheses
The Pull and Obsolescence hypotheses interpret decline as an outcome of a
socially and physically declining inner city that people want to avoid, and an overriding
preference for suburban living. Michael Broadway (1995) insists that this explanation is
limited to U.S. metropolitan areas, since the Canadian inner city is still considered as a
desirable residential location for the elite as well as educated professionals:
Indeed, with a few exceptions, wealth in America has fled the city, but in Canada,
elite inner-city residential areas have persisted, and in some cases expanded, with
gentrification. Well-established elite neighbourhoods such as Rosedale in Toronto,
Westmount, Outremont and Mont Royal in Montreal, Shaughnessy Heights in
Vancouver and the South End in Halifax attest to the attractiveness of inner city
living. (ibid. pp.2-3)
Obsolescence in the inner city pushes people out. They dislike many of the
characteristics of the inner city, the characteristics of suburban development, on the other
hand, are viewed as attractive. The inner city characteristics push, the suburban
characteristics pull.
2.1.16. Environmental Determinism
The basic premise of Environmental Determinism is that control and manipulation
of the physical environment has a direct and determinate effect on social behaviour. The
theory implies that the physical environment is a major determinant of social patterns. It
implies a one-way process, in which the physical environment is the independent and
2
Ricketts and Sawhill defined “very high” as a rate more than one standard deviation beyond the mean for all urban
census tracts (1998).
16
Causes of Decline
human behaviour the dependent variable (Carley 1990). For example, poor quality
housing has a detrimental effect on the social well-being of residents. While
environmental determinism approaches contain important truths, if overstated they are
insufficient as an explanation of interrelated neighbourhood decline problems. They also
fail to consider the preferences of different social groups, or the importance of good
management and maintenance in housing. Most residential, as opposed to industrial,
neighbourhoods are complex social entities, best understood by those who live there
(ibid.).
2.2. The Subcultural School
The Subcultural School focuses on concepts such as resident confidence,
satisfaction, commitment and social networks and their role in the processes of
neighbourhood change. It rejects the economic determinism of the ecological models.
Places where people live can evoke sentimental ties that bind them to their
neighbourhoods, apart from simply economic factors (Temkin and Rohe 1996, Pitkin
2001).
Pitkin (2001) contends that the subculturalists object to the ecological way of
understanding neighbourhood change because of its almost exclusive focus on exogenous
forces. Whereas the ecologists contend that rational, economic choices related to the
metropolitan real estate market drive neighbourhood change, the subculturalists add
endogenous variables to the equation. While in many ecological models resident mobility
and neighbourhood decline are seen as inevitable, natural processes, the subculturalists
argue that neighbourhoods can remain stable or even improve if the social structure is
strong.
The subculturalists deny the ecological assumption that neighbourhoods are
homogeneous, contending that there are many subcultures that vary across
neighbourhoods. This viewpoint comes from in-depth, ethnographic studies of
neighbourhoods that emphasize the role of ethnic identity in helping stabilize
neighbourhoods. Other identity-based subcultures have also been shown to increase the
potential of residents to defend their neighbourhoods against outside threats (ibid.). At
this point the subcultural concept relates to the social area analysis model.
2.3. Political Economists
Political economists view urban development as a result of social, economic, and
political conflict. This has lead to two influential streams: one focusing on the role of
urban “growth machines” in neighbourhood change and another that recognizes that
cities have undergone a restructuring process over the past thirty years as the world has
become increasingly globalized (Pitkin 2001).
2.3.1. The Urban Growth Machine Thesis
The Urban Growth Machine Thesis states that coalitions of urban elites seek to
capture and retain economic power by promoting population growth and real estate
17
Causes of Decline
development (Jonas and Wilson 1999). Members of growth machines include people who
directly benefit from increases in population and land values. In a market economy, the
space that we inhabit and use every day is not only a human necessity (use value) but also
a commodity that generates revenues (exchange value) (Logan and Molotch 1987). A
fundamental component of the growth machine thesis is this distinction between
exchange and use values. Place is viewed as a commodity that is socially constructed
through competition between those who value the neighbourhood for the “rent” they can
gain from it (i.e. exchange value) and those who value it for non-economic reasons (i.e.
use value) such as their attachment to it. Growth machines seek to maximize the
exchange value of urban space, often leading to land speculation and the encouragement
of population growth to drive up property values and, consequently, their return on rent
(Pitkin 2001).
Another element of the theory is an ideology of growth, which promotes the belief
that growth will produce a common benefit for both residents and renters. This discourse,
most fundamentally, defines a common set of villains (economic and labour force
restructuring, and harsh global realities) and victims (the urban tax base, local culture,
and local civic health). Through use of this common discourse, coalitions aggressively
and successfully push their development agenda stressing that addressing the villains
requires hard choices and sacrifices in areas that often negatively affect the poor and the
marginalized (Wilson and Wouters 2003).
The growth machine’s exploitation of exchange values and creation of a “valuefree” growth ideology negatively impact neighbourhood residents’ use values. This can
lead to the displacement of vulnerable populations in poor neighbourhoods, as in the
cases of urban renewal of the 1960s and gentrification today. It also means that even the
rich neighbourhoods can decline, as their exchange value often overrides the use value to
the growth machine. Institutions working in real estate, such as banks and realtors, are
often complicit in this steering of certain people to certain neighbourhoods – especially
along racial lines – in order to serve the interests of the growth machine (Pitkin 2001).
2.3.2. Urban Structural Change
A second stream of the political economy’s understanding of neighbourhood
change is “urban restructuring” or “globalization.” Urban Structural Change has been
characterized by two interrelated developments. First, there has been a restructuring of
capital, as seen in a concurrent process of globalization and corporate concentration.
Capital investment has shifted to new sectors of the economy, to new areas of cities and
to new cities of the world. This process has been accelerated by new information and
communication technologies that have made it possible for large, dominant firms to
globalize production. Financial markets now operate on a global scale that leads to the
deregulation of financial institutions, their flexibility and ability to contend with foreign
competition. These processes have resulted in a new urban hierarchy in which economic
power is concentrated in “global” or “world” cities. In parallel with this restructuring of
capital, there has been a general restructuring of labour through mechanisms such as
subcontracting and self-employment (Pitkin 2001, Fainstein and Campbell 2002, Gertler
2001, Gregory and Hunter 2003).
18
Causes of Decline
There are at least five areas in which the restructuring process has had an impact
on urban neighbourhoods in the United States (Pitkin 2001):
employment of neighbourhood residents. There have been winners and losers,
depending on the skill sets of people;
the built environment; de-industrialization has left buildings vacant and areas
in decay;
social and economic inequality in cities as a result of re-structuring, meaning
that residents of low-income neighbourhoods have less access to affordable
housing;
the demographics of urban neighbourhoods: several studies have shown the
uneven impacts of restructuring along racial lines;
the social and political life of neighbourhoods has been weakened or
strengthened depending on their place in a globalizing economy.
Similarly, Structural Analysis focuses on factors such as economic turbulence, the
operations of multinational corporations, competition between developed countries and
underdeveloped countries, and between levels of government (Carley 1990). Although
the theory may seem removed from the daily reality of neighbourhood renewal, there is
no doubt that factors like de-industrialization, industrial shift, unemployment and
regional disparity are related to neighbourhood decline. There are both winners and losers
in structural change. Some cities have benefited while others have lost. Even in those
deemed winners there are certain sectors in society (the marginalized, the unskilled) who
have lost, creating pockets of decline in global or world cities that overall are
economically strong.
2.3.3. The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis
In the same vein the Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis posits that American cities are
undergoing transformations from centres of goods and production to centres of
information processing. The blue-collar jobs that once formed the economic base of cities
have either vanished or moved to the developing suburbs, if not overseas. Central-city
low-skilled manufacturing jobs are no longer available. In addition, neighbourhood retail
businesses that served the middle class have also, to a large extent, relocated to the
suburbs (Wheeler 1990, Orfield 1998).
The spatial mismatch theory states that it is not lack of jobs as such that is the
problem, since central-city population growth has been as slow as central-city job growth.
The problem is that the percentage of central-city jobs with high educational
requirements is increasing, while the average education level of central-city residents is
dropping relative to the rest of the city. In addition, the net growth in jobs with low
educational requirements is occurring mainly in the suburbs and in areas at the very
fringe of urban settlement. This low-skilled job exodus to the suburbs disproportionately
affects central-city poor people, particularly minorities, who often face a more limited
choice of housing location in growing areas.
19
Causes of Decline
Franke and Löhr (2001) show how economic structural change has brought farreaching changes in Germany. The consequences are serious: declining manufacturing
and the flexibilization of production have been accompanied by a loss of low-skill jobs.
As new industries have grown, for example in the hi-tech sector, both high-skill and lowskill jobs have been created in research, development, and management; and in
manufacturing. The booming service sector also exhibits a similar dichotomy between
high-skill jobs in producer services and low-skill jobs in personal services. Furthermore,
flexible employment contracts undermine income security in all sectors of the economy
(wages below agreed rates, contracts for works and services, fixed-term contracts, bogus
self-employment) (ibid.).
These developments tend to divide society in a variety of ways. Poverty and
social inequity are increasing, owing to the growing proportion of the long-term jobless
and recipients of transfer payments. The consequent fragmentation of social space risks
excluding whole districts from citywide processes, particularly inner-city or adjoining old
neighbourhoods and large new housing estates in peripheral areas exhibit a complex,
interdependent mixture of problems – developmental, ecological, economic,
infrastructural, and social. Such neighbourhoods lose their function as social networks;
they suffer from a negative image, which can go as far as stigmatization of the
neighbourhood and its people (ibid.).
Broadway (1995) suggests that Canadian inner cities might conceivably be
immune from the structural economic and demographic changes that have affected inner
cities in the US and areas of cities in Britain. His study failed to link increases in innercity deprivation with structural economic change, since such increases were not
associated with cities in central Canada, which lost manufacturing jobs due to foreign
competition and restructuring. This finding is in marked contrast to studies of British
cities that identify old industrial cities as having the highest deprivation levels (Robson
1988). In some cities in Canada, regional economic conditions and local perceptions of
the inner city as a desirable place to live are more important than a city's economic
structure in determining inner-city deprivation levels.
2.3.4. The Exploitation Hypothesis
Exploitation, along with structural change hypotheses, is often referred to as one
of the most applicable explanations of inner city decline for Canadian cities. The
Exploitation Hypothesis contends that urban change is an outcome of economic
manipulation by interest groups. The exploitation model is related to structural change,
since it views the abandonment of inner city as an inevitable consequence of industrial
capitalism processes including the shift from manufacturing to a service based economy
and decline in inner-city blue-collar employment, global economic competition,
technological advances, and the availability of cheap labour elsewhere. Cities served to
secure economies of urban agglomerations and once these economies lose their strength,
old inner-city districts are abandoned (Broadway 1995).
20
Causes of Decline
2.3.5. The Fiscal Crisis Theory
The Fiscal Crisis theory views inner-city decline as the product of a circular and
cumulative causation process: “As people and jobs leave the inner city, the tax base is
reduced along with the ability to meet the demands of an increasingly service-dependent
population, and so, in order to balance the budget and meet this demand, taxes are raised
and services cut, which in turn promotes further outmigration” (Broadway 1995, p. 3).
The fiscal crisis hypothesis is more pertinent to US cities. As Broadway notes, the
presence of some metropolitan governments in Canada, which share tax revenues
between inner city and suburbs, have produced a more equitable distribution of services.
2.4. The Social Capital Model
Figure 1. A Social Capital Model of Neighbourhood Change (adapted from Temkin and Rohe 1998)
Initial Status of
Neighborhood
Sources of Change
– Metro Area
– Neighborhood
Sociocultural Milieu
of the Neighborhood
Absent
Present
Ecological Change
Potential Defensive
Measures of Residents
Weak
Institutional
Infrastructure
Strong
Defended Neighborhood
Stable or Gentrifying
Neighborhood
Status of Neighborhood
Increases or Remains
the Same over Time
Defeated
Neighborhood
Downward Succession
Status of
Neighborhood
Declines over Time
21
Causes of Decline
Temkin and Rohe (1998) propose the Social Capital Model of neighbourhood
change that combines earlier discussed ecological, subcultural, and political economy
approaches and places those theories within a larger socio-political context that can
greatly affect a neighbourhood’s trajectory. The model integrates the concept of social
capital into an explanatory framework of neighbourhood change and theoretically
explains the observed difference in neighbourhood trajectories over time (Figure 1).
The social capital hypothesis suggests that two components of social capital –
socio-cultural environment and institutional infrastructure – are critical in determining the
evolution of neighbourhoods. Potential causes of change to the initial status of the
neighbourhood originate from two sources (ibid.):
Broad social and economic trends may alter a region’s employment base and
social structure. Trends such as the loss of manufacturing jobs or the influx of
a new ethnic group may have an effect on a metropolitan area’s economic and
demographic characteristics.
Changes occur within the neighbourhood: neighbourhood residents age,
marry, and experience other transformations as they move through their life
cycles. Therefore, even without large-scale structural changes,
neighbourhoods must deal with internal sources of change.
Temkin and Rohe (1998) argue that these forces of change do not have the same
effect on every neighbourhood. Their impact depends on the strength of the social capital
in the area. The two constitutive elements of social capital had positive and significant
effects on the measure of neighbourhood stability. Both loyalty and attachment to
neighbourhood are higher in neighbourhoods that remain stable over time. Similarly,
neighbourhoods where a higher proportion of residents believe they live in a good place
tend to remain stable. Thus, neighbourhoods with higher levels of social capital, as
measured by greater degrees of a socio-cultural milieu and institutional infrastructure, are
more likely to stay stable over time (ibid.).
The social capital model is strengthened by the growth of interest in, and the
development of, the social economy. According to Williams and Windebank (2001) a
strong social economy addresses the needs of those that neither the private and, in some
cases, the public sector can fulfill. The social economy possesses six characteristics that
can distinguish it from the private and public spheres:
-
it is based on co-operative or closely-related mutual principles;
-
it is based on not-for-profit principles in the sense that the initiative does not
seek to expropriate a profit from its operations;
-
it is private (non-public) in nature even if there is sometimes public sector
involvement, particularly funding to initiate social economy initiatives;
-
the tasks conducted by such initiatives include economic activities that seek to
fulfill people’s needs and wants through the production and/or distribution of
22
Causes of Decline
goods and services. Put another way, it produces and sells services of a
collective interest;
-
relative to associations between kin, neighbours and friends, it is a formal
association that provides an organizational framework for the pursuit of
collective self-help activities;
-
activities within the social economy should be structured to build social
capital, enhance social networking and build strong, sustainable communities
(Williams and Windebank, 2001).
An active social economy combined with strong social capital can be a definite
asset when trying to revitalize neighbourhoods.
2.5. Theories Summary
Summary of the theories aimed at explaining neighbourhood decline and the basic
processes that characterize them is presented in Table 4.
Table 4. Theories Explaining Urban Decline
Theories, Source
Processes
Concentric Zones or
Invasion/Succession
Concentric zone residential pattern in which lower-income people would
locate toward the centre and higher-income people would locate toward
the edge of metropolitan settlements:
the central business district,
the industrial sector,
slum housing,
working-class housing,
higher-status dwellings and
commuter housing
Burgess 1925, Lucy and
Phillips 2000, Pitkin 2001
Filtering
Hoyt 1933, Downs 1981,
Lucy and Phillips 2000,
Smith 1963, Pitkin 2001,
Galster et al. 2003
Sectoral Model
Hoyt 1939
Multiple Nuclei Model
Harris and Ullman 1945
Social Area Analysis
Shevsky and Bell 1955
Housing filters down from the rich to the middle class to the poor as
property owners invest less in ageing properties due to rising
maintenance costs and move to new housing on the periphery.
The direction, not the distance, is the key factor in determining the spatial
organization of an area. While the growth is still outward, areas growing
in the same direction tend to maintain the original socio-economic
characteristics of more inner areas.
Suggests that a city may have more than one nuclei/centre apart from the
CBD from which zones develop. Specialized cells of activity develop
according to specific requirements of certain activities, different rentpaying abilities, and the tendency for some kinds of economic activity to
cluster together.
The analysis concentrates on the social characteristics of the urban
population in attempting to explain land use. "Social areas" clusters of
city areas can be defined according to 1) economic status, 2) family
status and 3) ethnic composition.
23
Causes of Decline
Theories, Source
Processes
Neoclassical or Bid Rent
Theory
Resident’s location decision is a trade-off between land, housing, and
transportation costs. Middle- and upper-income can purchase more of
land and housing at lower unit costs toward the periphery while affording
the transportation costs. Poor occupy smaller and older housing closer to
work sites.
Alonso 1960, 1964, Pitkin
2001, Luger 1996, Morrill
1991, Muth 1969 in Lucy
and Phillips 2000
Border or Tipping Model
Leven et al., 1976 in Pitkin
2001
Life-cycle Theory
Also focuses on the locational decisions of residents, expanding the
explanatory variables to social characteristics such as race. The racial
transition of a neighbourhood will have an impact on existing residents
and increase out-migration; these changes will affect how residents from
surrounding areas perceive their own neighbourhoods, especially along
the “borders” of the neighbourhoods
Neighbourhood change is a life cycle ending in inevitable decline
Birch 1971, HUD 1975,
Bourne 1982, Metzger 2000
Vacancy Chain Analysis
Hartshorn 1992, Knox 1994
in Lucy and Phillips 2000
Subcultural Theories
Pitkin 2001
Social Capital Model
Temkin and Rohe 1998
Cycles of Disadvantage
Carley, 1990
“Broken Windows’
Wilson and Kelling 1982
Urban Underclass
Wilson 1987, Kasarda 1990,
Ley and Smith 1997,
Glennerster et al. 1999
Structural Change
Pitkin 2001
Structural Analysis
Carley 1990
When a household moves to a new unit at the periphery, it creates a
vacancy, which is filled by another household, which leaves a vacancy at
its old address and so on. The building of new housing at the periphery
sets in motion vacancy chains reaching far back into the central core.
Demand and price decline, which in turn leads to opportunities for the
region's poor.
Resident confidence, satisfaction, commitment and social networks are
important for understanding neighbourhood change. There are many
subcultures that vary across neighbourhoods and neighbourhoods can
remain stable or even improve if the social structure is strong.
The forces of neighbourhood change do not affect every neighbourhood
in the same way. The effect of these forces depends on the strength of the
social capital in the area.
Recurring cycles of socio-economic disadvantage. Households are locked
in these cycles.
A loss of social control is caused by the gradual growth in ‘incivilities’:
the lack of informal social control through neighbourhood instability and
poor services leads to people tolerating broken windows and other minor
damage. This leads to neighbourhood decline.
Area problems are created by the people who live there. An underclass is
people who have a life-style that conflicts with mainstream values and
cannot or do not want to help themselves or their children. Existence of
underclass creates or helps to drive area decline.
Economic re-structuring and labour force changes impact urban
neighbourhoods: employment of neighbourhood residents, social and
economic inequality, the built environment, the demographics: uneven
impacts of restructuring along racial lines, the social and political life.
Focuses on economic turbulence, the operations of multinational
corporations, competition between developed countries and
underdeveloped countries, and between levels of government,
deindustrialization, industrial shift, unemployment and regional disparity.
24
Causes of Decline
Theories, Source
Processes
Jobs and The Spatial
Mismatch Hypothesis
A spatial mismatch between central city residential location and suburban
job growth may result in poor labour market outcomes for inner-city
neighbourhoods
Wheeler 1990, Orfield 1998
Urban Growth Machine
Thesis
Pitkin 2001
Exploitation Hypothesis
Coalitions of urban elite seek to capture economic power by promoting
population growth and real estate development. Growth machines seek to
maximize the exchange value of urban space, often leading to land
speculation and the encouragement of population growth to drive up
property values and their return on rent.
Economic manipulation by interest groups
Bourne 1982, CMHC 2001
Environmental
Determinism
Carley, 1990
Obsolescence and Pull
Hypotheses
Focuses on the physical environment as a major determinant of social
patterns. It implied a one-way process in which the physical environment
is the independent and human behaviour the dependent variable. Control
and manipulation of the physical environment had a direct and
determinate effect on social behaviour.
Decline is interpreted as an outcome of a physically and socially
declining inner city and an overriding preference for suburban living.
Bourne 1982, Broadway
1995, CMHC 2001
Fiscal Crisis
Under-funding, declining tax base and concentrated poverty
Bourne 1982, Broadway
1995, CMHC 2001
3. Factors that Prompt Neighbourhood Decline
A considerable body of literature postulated numerous causes of neighbourhood
decline and tried to identify specific origins that initiate this decline. A CMHC (2001)
publication indicates urban decline does not have a readily identifiable starting point or
single isolated cause. Instead, decline is triggered by a set of circumstances that is
specific to particular cities. Once underway, decline and disinvestment tend to be
evolutionary and accretive. Indeed, urban decline is a complex, self-reinforcing
phenomenon in which symptoms of decline themselves become causes.
Based on the literature review, the following causes of inner city decline were identified:
Social
Poverty
Racial conflict
Perception of decline of inner-city schools
Increased inner-city crime
Mass in-migration to the inner cities of migrants and immigrants with weak
skill sets
25
Causes of Decline
Middle class preference for single-family home ownership on large suburban
lots
Loss of social capital, sense of community
Resident perceptions and expectations
Demographic
High percentage of elderly people
High percentage of Aboriginal people with weak skill sets
Unemployment
Physical Development
Urban sprawl
Deterioration of inner-city infrastructure
Chaotic subdivision of inner-city land, as characterized by irrational lot lines,
resulting in odd-shaped or small plots that impede parcel assemblage for
modern development
Ageing and obsolescence of commercial buildings
Decline of inner-city housing stock
The spatial distribution of affordable social housing
Parking problems and congestion in an increasingly automobile-oriented
society
The mixing of incompatible land uses, which ultimately blights the affected
area and reduces property values
Economic
Bank redlining
Low labour force skills
Investor perception of higher inner-city risk
Economic restructuring
Low “creativity” potential as high-tech industries need to be in entrepreneurial
environments that attract highly educated people
Public Finance
Reduced tax base and tax revenues resulting from disinvestment
Reduced quality of inner-city services and fiscal stress because of declining
revenue sources
Perception of lower suburban taxes
Infrastructure that is expensive to repair and/or replace discourages economic
development when left unattended through deferred maintenance
The following sections will focus on some of the factors that are commonly
considered to be the most important in triggering decline.
26
Causes of Decline
3.1. Poverty
The research on the effects of poverty shows that they have detrimental economic,
social, and physical consequences for individual households and neighbourhoods
(Jargowsky 1997, Wilson 1987, 1996, Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy 2000).
Poverty pushes away businesses and middle-class families, further undermining those
neighbourhoods and fuelling sprawl. As neighbourhoods become dominated by
joblessness, the residents become isolated from middle-class society and the private
economy. High poverty declining neighbourhoods require increasingly greater levels of
governmental and philanthropic resources that rapidly disappear when there is little sign
of improvement (Orfield 1998). A distinct society emerges with expectations and patterns
of behaviour that contrast strongly with middle-class norms.
Studies have found that poor individuals living in concentrated poverty are far
more likely to become pregnant as teenagers, drop out of high school, and remain jobless
than if they lived in socio-economically mixed neighbourhoods (Driedger 1991).
Washington's high-poverty neighbourhoods, for instance, face dramatically more severe
challenges with regard to education, employment, and welfare dependency than most
other neighbourhoods throughout the region (Turner and Hayes 1997). Specific impacts
of poverty concentration on families and children include low birth rates, infant deaths,
child misbehaviour, and child abuse (Glennerster et al. 1999).
The effects of poverty can also be seen by comparing the experience of the poor
living in high poverty areas to that of poor individuals living in mixed-income
communities. When poor individuals are freed from poor neighbourhoods and provided
with opportunities, their lives can change quite dramatically (Orfield 1998).
As the middle class leave, there are fewer customers for local retailers and the
assessed value of local housing declines precipitously. In the poorest neighbourhoods,
basic private services disappear. Vestiges of the private economy that remain charge
exorbitant prices allegedly justified by the "risk of doing business." Social needs and
hence property tax rates begin to accelerate on a declining base of property values. As a
combination of high local property tax rates and/or low spending on public services
concentrates in the most socially stressed parts of the metropolitan area, the flight of the
middle class and the private economy increases (ibid.).
Larger industrial and service businesses are disadvantaged by high taxes,
deteriorating public infrastructure, crime, loss of property value, and the cost of urban
environmental issues. Many of these businesses have also grown accustomed to large
greenfield sites where they can build huge parking lots, with immediate access to radial
highways. They have come to prefer doing business in that environment and must be
convinced that there is good business to be done in more transit-oriented, higher density
communities (ibid.).
Poverty also affects the “geography of opportunity” for those people who remain
in inner-city neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods of extreme poverty are isolated from
economic and educational opportunities elsewhere in the city. Poor residents often lack
27
Causes of Decline
the means – such as information about suburban jobs and reliable and affordable
transportation to work – to access those distant opportunities. As a result of this isolation
from opportunity, people who live in very poor neighbourhoods are more likely than
residents of moderately poor or non-poor neighbourhoods to drop out of school, become
a single or teenaged parent, and receive welfare payments. Living in a very poor
neighbourhood exacerbates the difficulties of being poor (Center on Urban and
Metropolitan Policy 2000).
The lack of the economic and social mortar necessary to hold neighbourhoods
together and build communities makes community development in concentrated-poverty
neighbourhoods difficult. Programs geared at job training or job creation must struggle to
incorporate the diversity of human resources and experiences of a social group that has
been isolated from the functioning economy and jobs; from adequate nutrition and
schools that succeed; and, from a supportive and economically stable family structure. To
the extent such programs succeed, individuals – even if they are employed in the
neighbourhood – often move to less poor areas. Physical rehabilitation programs, while
improving the quality of shelter and neighbourhood appearance, do not address the larger
tangle of barriers faced by many residents in areas of concentrated poverty. In some cases
such programs act as incentives for gentrification and result in the displacement of
existing low-income residents rather than improving their lives (Orfield 1998).
In terms of business development, areas of concentrated poverty have great
difficulty competing with developing suburbs that have middle-class customers with
more money to spend, lower taxes, less crime, cheaper land with increasing values, room
for expansion and parking, new highways, and no demands on companies to mitigate
previously created environmental problems. Thus, even when enormous financial
resources have been devoted to enterprise zones or inner-city tax abatements, it has been
very difficult to stimulate viable business opportunities that employ core residents (ibid.).
3.2. Racial Conflict
A strong correlation between geographic concentrations of people of colour
and geographic concentrations of decline in North American communities is evidence
that racism is still a significant factor in these patterns of development. When
communities of people of colour are also communities with high rates of poverty, the
effect of racism on employment options for individuals, the presence of jobs in local
communities and property value assessments are exacerbated by similar dynamics
associated with living in areas of concentrated poverty.
Wilson (1987) presents theoretical arguments that the social problems of
urban life are largely the result of racial inequality. Racism in the form of redlining by
banks and insurance companies, steering by real estate agents, exclusionary zoning
and related practices in many suburban communities has played a key role in the
dynamics of central city and inner suburban disinvestment and the development of
geographic concentrations of decline. White ethnic biases and class issues have
played similar, though perhaps less pervasive, roles (Orfield 1998).
28
Causes of Decline
Wilson (1999) indicates that discrimination in employment opportunities,
although representing elements of class bias against poor workers in the inner-city, is also
a matter of race. The job prospects of inner-city workers have diminished not only
because of the decreasing relative demand for low-skilled labour in the United States
economy, the suburbanization of jobs, and the social deterioration of ghetto
neighbourhoods, but also because of negative employer attitudes.
3.3. Ageing of the Population
Housing and neighbourhood deterioration are often accelerated if an area contains
a disproportionate share of elderly homeowners. A high percentage of seniors in a
neighbourhood may also lead to a sudden thinning of the area population. Elderly owneroccupiers are frequently unable to maintain their housing due to increasing physical
impairment and reliance on a fixed or declining income. Rather than relocating to a
smaller unit or one requiring less upkeep, many elderly owner-occupiers age in place. As
a consequence, their homes and properties can experience serious disrepair (CMHC
2001).
3.4. Suburban Sprawl
Linked to the problems of social polarization and spatial segregation is the
continued spread of commercial and residential development into the surrounding
countryside. Inherent in the natural evolution hypothesis, the pull hypothesis, the
obsolescence hypothesis and the preference structure of North American society for
suburban living is the idea that urban growth has created an inner city vacuum.
According to this argument, governments have validated suburbanization and created a
“vacuum” at the core, which leads to insufficient demand for land and declining relative
land values in the inner city (ibid.).
The negative consequences of urban sprawl are well known. Investment and
population shifts within the metropolitan region leave certain municipalities and
neighbourhoods, either inner city or older suburbs, with higher unemployment, reduced
revenues, and larger social service needs (Bradford 2002).
Downs (1999) contends that no statistically significant relationship exists between
sprawl and urban decline. The basic nature of the American urban development process
includes core area poverty concentrations even if more compact growth is enforced.
However, he also suggests that sprawl exacerbates growth-related problems, one of
which is inner city decline. According to Downs, sprawl contributes to the concentration
of poor households in certain high poverty inner-city neighbourhoods. These
neighbourhoods become high-crime areas, have poor quality schools, dysfunctional bigcity bureaucracies, and lack the fiscal resources to correct the problems. The lack of
regional tax base sharing and poor regional co-ordination of land uses are manifestations
of the problem.
Downs identifies ten characteristics of sprawl and several of these characteristics
contribute to inner city decline. These characteristics are:
29
Causes of Decline
1. Unlimited outward extension of development
2. Low-density residential and commercial settlements
3. Leapfrog as opposed to contiguous development
4. Fragmentation of powers over land use among many small localities
5. Dominance of transportation by private automotive vehicles
6. Lack of centralized planning or control of land uses
7. Widespread commercial strip development
8. Great fiscal disparities among localities
9. Segregation of types of land use in different zones, and
10. Reliance mainly on the trickle-down or filtering process to provide housing to
low-income households.
People living in the inner city want to find safer, more spacious neighbourhoods,
better schools, affordable housing on large parcels of land, and less traffic in the suburbs.
As people leave the city, those left are those who cannot afford to move and
neighbourhoods decay. As the suburbs gradually fill with more people, they bring the
problems of the city with them – increased traffic, noise, over crowded, crumbling
schools. The suburbanites again look for rural locations further out to escape the
problems and the cycle continues.
3.5. The Spatial Distribution of Affordable Housing
The spatial distribution of affordable housing plays an important role in shaping
urban decline patterns. Subsidized housing tends to be located in distressed inner city and
older-suburban neighbourhoods. The concentration of public housing within inner cities
can reinforce decline by concentrating the poor and disadvantaged in one area. This may
be the case particularly if the housing is provided without the necessary support services
that people in poverty, combined with other social problems, need. At the same time
wealthier suburbs practice exclusionary zoning and limit affordable housing within their
borders.
For example, in Atlanta, where low-income families live in the southern part of
the metropolitan area, there is almost no affordable housing elsewhere (Center on Urban
and Metropolitan Policy 2000). The lack of affordable housing in Atlanta’s northern
suburban communities clearly limits the educational and employment opportunities of
many working families, particularly minority families, in the region. Additionally, the
housing imbalance places enormous stresses on the region’s employers by limiting the
pool of workers who can live within a reasonable commuting distance (ibid.).
3.6. Decline of Inner-city Schools
Schools are both victims and one of the powerful causes of decline. Local public
schools often become socio-economically distressed before neighbourhoods themselves
become disadvantaged. Deteriorating inner city schools are a problem for the
neighbourhood for two reasons. First, the area's children do not get an adequate education
and reach adulthood without the skills to access acceptable employment. Second, middle-
30
Causes of Decline
class families, who live in these neighbourhoods will not tolerate poor quality schooling
for their children. Disadvantaged schools in inner city neighbourhoods push out families.
Poor public schools destabilize communities and have a very negative effect on
individual access and achievement. Schools are not just instruction and textbooks, but,
like neighbourhoods, represent a series of reinforcing social networks that contribute to
success or failure (Orfield 1998). Poor inner-city or low-valued suburban schools are
characterized as one of the trends moving toward failure, with features that reinforce
antisocial behaviour, drifting, teenage pregnancy and dropping out. The well-funded
suburban schools generally have more resources and a far lower percentage of their
students face a lack of stable housing; insufficient food and health care; lead paint risks;
and, a lack of visible job prospects to help motivate them to study and to graduate (ibid.).
Parents who are poorly educated are unable to help their children with school work,
further education or job choices, which make it difficult for both the parents and their
children, to be part of the school and neighbourhood community.
3.7. Creative Class
Due to economic restructuring, one of the keys to economic growth lies in the
ability to attract the creative class and to translate that into creative economic outcomes in
the form of new ideas, new high-tech businesses and regional growth (Florida 2000,
2002, Gertler 2001). Correspondingly, neighbourhoods with less creativity potential are
more likely to experience decline processes.
In the new economy, regional advantage comes to places that can quickly mobilize
the best people, resources, and capabilities required to turn innovations into new
business ideas and commercial products. Leading regions establish competitive
advantage through their capabilities… For these reasons, the nexus of competitive
advantage shifts to those regions that can generate, retain and attract the best talent.
This is particularly so since knowledge workers are extremely mobile and the
distribution of talent is highly skewed (Florida 2000, p. 8).
The Creativity Index was constructed to measure underlying creative capabilities
of cities and regions. The index includes four components: Talent index, Bohemian
index, Mosaic index, and Tech-pole index:
Talent index: the proportion of the population over 18 years of age with a
bachelor’s degree or higher.
Bohemian index: employment in artistic and creative occupations. It is a
location quotient that compares the region’s share of the nation’s bohemians to
the region’s share of the nation’s population.
Mosaic index: the proportion of the total population that is foreign-born.
Tech-pole index: local employment in technology-intensive manufacturing and
service sectors is calculated using high-technology employment data. The
index compares a region’s share of national employment in high-technology
industries to the region’s overall share of national employment.
31
Causes of Decline
Cities or regions that have a high creativity index have a high proportion of
people that are well educated with a high level of technical skills suitable for today’s
information, research and development, financial and technology jobs. They also have a
diversity of lifestyles and ethnic and racial groups that add interest and diversity to the
urban milieu, including attractive arts and entertainment functions and activities.
3.8. Unintended Policy Effects
The decline of the inner city can result from failed public policy. Examples of
policies that have weakened inner city neighbourhoods include the development of
freeways through inner city neighbourhoods to facilitate the flow of suburban commuters
or subsidization of suburban home ownership through tax differentials that attract people
from the inner city and older suburban areas robbing them of middle and higher income
residents (CMHC 2001).
Land use and zoning policies can, and have, added to inner city decline. In many
metropolitan areas, suburbs in the "favoured quarter" have exclusionary zoning policies.
These zoning regulations effectively ensure that only the wealthy can afford to live in
those communities. The most common example is mandatory large lot zoning, such as
the requirement that all single family homes must be on lots of, perhaps, 15,000 square
feet or larger. Another example is the prohibition of, or severe restrictions on, the
location of multifamily housing in a community. The effect of these types of zoning
regulations is to limit housing options to those who can afford a single-family home on a
large lot (Orfield 1998). In this way public policy has systematically favoured suburban
development at the expense of inner city strength and stability.
Similarly, zoning regulations and design guidelines which result in a development
pattern that requires one to have a car, or a family to have a second car, in order to
conduct daily business, has the effect of creating an economic barrier to that community
for some people. Zoning practices that segregate housing from retail and employment
centres require commuting (ibid.). If zoning and design guidelines dictate large lots on
many cul-de-sacs, crescents and bays it may be inefficient to provide adequate public
transit with such low-densities on street patterns that are difficult to service. Without
adequate public transit, households that cannot afford a car would find it difficult to live
in such areas.
In addition to burdening the inner city with marginal and even destructive uses,
exclusionary zoning may pose barriers for inner-city economic development. The
concentration in inner cities of establishments such as sex shops, massage parlours, and
pawnshops discourages the development of other economic activities, and entrenches the
transiency of these areas (CMHC 2001).
High quality standards for new housing and renovation projects contribute to the
growing obsolescence of older housing stock. The standards include minimum size
requirements for housing units, requirements for use of specific materials and
construction methods, minimum lot size and building space requirements, and new fire
32
Causes of Decline
code and safety standards. Any renovation requires that these standards be met, thus
driving up the cost of housing beyond that which low-income households can pay (ibid.).
Wilson (1999) notes that the passage of the recent welfare reform bill in the
United States, which did not include a program of job creation, could have very negative
social consequences in the inner city. Unless something is done to enhance the
employment opportunities of inner-city welfare recipients who reach the time limit for
the receipt of welfare, if the economy slows down they will flood a pool that is already
filled with low-skilled jobless workers.
Miller (2001) presents another example of unintended policy effect. He contends
that during the 1970s it became evident that the banking system was taking advantage of
low-income inner-city residents. In an effort to stimulate inner-city loans by banks,
Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in 1977. Under the terms of
this act, banks were directed to make extra efforts to solicit loans in older and lower
income neighbourhoods, so that residents of these areas would be able to participate in
the economic redevelopment of these inner-city areas. However, although the CRA was
intended to promote lending in low-income areas, its overall effect has been to actually
reduce rather than increase lending in America's inner cities and to discourage banks
from locating there (ibid.).
One of many examples of the law's impact on branch-banking decisions can be found in
the New York City area, where 14 percent of Brooklyn's bank branches closed between
1980 and 1994; most of those closures came in the lower income areas of the borough.
And in low income Bedford-Stuyvesant, there are only three bank branches to serve
129,000 people. In upscale Manhattan, meanwhile, banks are amply represented not
merely by their branches, but also by automated teller machines (ATMs) that at times
seem to populate almost every street corner (ibid.).
Interestingly, new policies sometimes emerge in dialectical opposition to
preceding policy sets (often of previous governments of different political persuasion)
and useful aspects of previous policy approaches are eliminated along with those parts
that are ineffective. As Carley (1990) notes, this failure of policy integration prevents
policy makers from grasping what has been called the wicked nature of urban problems,
where the problem is exceedingly complex, and therefore beyond the boundaries of
available knowledge and comprehension. The problem is compounded by the fact that
government departments that make policy are subdivided into discrete specializations
(housing, transport, employment), while the life experience of people in cities in poverty
is holistic (ibid.).
4. Threshold Indicators
4.1. Definition
Threshold indicators may be useful as planning tools, alerting community groups
and local planners in time to take steps to ensure these thresholds are not reached. This
section of the literature review intends to identify thresholds beyond which decline
33
Causes of Decline
reaches a “point of no return” – a point at which the neighbourhood begins a spiral of
inevitable decline in the quality of life it offers.
According to Galster and Krall (2003), beginning in the 1970s, investigators of
neighbourhood change began using regression analysis as the basis for empirically testing
theories and building predictive models. These predictive modelling efforts specify how
exogenous variables affect neighbourhood outcome indicators and estimate parameters
using linear multiple regression. Different models have been introduced, each addressing
changes of a specific neighbourhood indicator, such as population density, income or
social class, home ownership rates, female headship rates, and racial composition
changes.
Galster, Quercia and Cortes (2000) explored the threshold effects of different
aspects of the neighbourhood environment and found identifiable thresholds for
neighbourhood change. Threshold effects were defined as:
…threshold effects are a particular sort of causal relationship in which the magnitude
of the causal influence changes dramatically past some critical point. Expressed
graphically, a threshold effect involves an extremely non-linear relationship between
independent (X) and dependent (Y) variables past some value of X (Galster et al.
2000, p.703).
4.2. The United States Experience
4.2.1. Poverty, Unemployment, Female Headship, and School Dropout Rates
The most common threshold effect on neighbourhood decline found in the
literature was a poverty rate of at least forty percent of the population living in
households below the fixed poverty line. Both Wilson (1987, 1996) and Jargowsky
(1997) concluded that a forty percent cut-off reflected the point at which area conditions
became noticeably more difficult. Poverty tracts above this level tend to be clustered
together in inner city neighbourhoods, most often as part of sprawling ghettos, housing
overwhelmingly ethnic minority populations. Turner and Hayes (1997) note that
neighbourhoods with poverty rates below thirty percent share many of the problems faced
by high-poverty neighbourhoods, but at significantly lower levels. When poverty rates
exceed thirty percent, neighbourhoods have great difficulty sustaining the economic and
civic institutions essential for a healthy community. Poor education, joblessness, teen
parenthood, discrimination, and crime all reinforce one another in these high poverty
neighbourhoods, creating a vicious cycle of distress.
Galster et al. (2000) investigated threshold-like effects of four aspects of
neighbourhood environment: poverty rate, adult unemployment rate, female headship rate
for families with children, and secondary school dropout rate. The relationship between
the value of numerous neighbourhood indicators in 1980 and subsequent changes in each
of the four noted dimensions of neighbourhood quality from 1980 to 1990 was evaluated
to test for threshold-like processes. The authors used the following indicators of
neighbourhood quality of life for examining threshold-like effects:
34
Causes of Decline
Percentage of persons below the poverty level.
Percentage of households that have children (under 19) and are headed by a
woman.
Percentage of persons ages 16 to 19 neither enrolled in school nor graduated
from high school.
Percentage of persons over age 16 not employed (i.e., either unemployed or not
in the labour force).
Percentage of persons who moved into their dwelling since 1975 (a measure of
community transience and instability).
Percentage of workers not employed in professional or managerial jobs (a
measure of lower occupational status and potential for income growth)
Percentage of occupied dwelling units with no car available (a measure of
constrained accessibility to jobs and other vital destinations).
Vacancy rate for year-round housing units (a measure of weakened incentives
for owners to maintain their properties or, in the extreme, abandonment).
Percentage of dwellings specified as renter occupied (a measure of expected
lower home upkeep, attachment to the neighbourhood, and wealth).
Table 5. The Threshold-like Effects (adapted from Galster et al. 2000, p.724.)
Processes
Key Threshold Value(s)
Sign of Effect
None
None
< 12.1% female headship
12.1–52.7% female headship
52.7–70.7% female headship
70.7% female headship
negative
positive
negative
negative
< 6.9% poverty rate
6.9–18.8% poverty rate
18.8–36.8% poverty rate
36.8–53.3% poverty rate
> 53.3% poverty rate
negative
positive
less positive
negative
positive
83% nonprofessional employment
positive
Nonprofessional/nonmanagerial
employment
Nonemployment rate
74.2% nonprofessional employment
positive
Nonprofessional/nonmanagerial
employment
Poverty rate
83% nonprofessional employment
positive
Renter-occupied units
Female-headed households
with children
< 32% renter-occupied units
32 to 85.5% renter-occupied units
>85.5% renter-occupied units
positive
negative
positive
Endodynamic Processes
High school dropout rate
Nonemployment rate
Female-headed households with
children
Poverty rate
Exodynamic Processes
Nonprofessional/nonmanagerial
employment
Female-headed households with
children
35
Causes of Decline
Processes
Key Threshold Value(s)
Sign of Effect
Renter-occupied units
Non-employment rate
< 60% renter-occupied units
60 to 85.5% renter-occupied units
>85.5% renter-occupied units
positive
negative
positive
Renter-occupied units
Poverty rate
<85.5% renter-occupied units
>85.5% renter-occupied units
positive
positive
Findings of the study are the following (see Table 5 above). First, with regard to
factors correlated with greater changes in themselves once they reach certain values
(endodynamic relationships), no self-generating process appears to drive neighbourhoods
that exceed some threshold to ever-higher incidences of overall non-employment,
secondary school dropout rates, and the female headship rate for families with children.
There is a distinct threshold effect when neighbourhoods exceed a poverty rate of about
54 percent. For neighbourhoods above that threshold, there is a rapid and escalating
growth in poverty over time (ibid.).
Second, with regard to factors correlated with greater changes in neighbourhood
quality of life indicators (exodynamic relationships), the authors find two patterns. The
percentage of workers not employed in professional or managerial jobs in a
neighbourhood is found to be a strong predictor of threshold-like changes in three of the
indicators: female headship, unemployment, and poverty rates. The significant threshold
occurs when the percentage of non-professional employment reaches from 77 to 83
percent (ibid.).
The degree of renter occupancy is also a good predictor of threshold-like changes
in the same three indicators. In census tracts having more than 85.5 percent of their units
renter occupied, all three indicators rise two to four percentage points after this threshold
is exceeded. Higher rental rates are associated with larger subsequent increases in
neighbourhood poverty rates. By contrast, the pattern involving changes in the other two
indicators shows consistency with the conventional wisdom only at lower ranges of rental
rates. At these low ranges, the relationship is both direct and disadvantageous. However,
the relationship reverses itself at about sixty percent rental for overall non-employment
and at about 32 percent for female headship. In these intermediate ranges, higher rental
occupancy in 1980 is not associated with disadvantageous changes in neighbourhood
quality of life over the ensuing decade. The study also tested additional predictor
variables, including percentage of persons who moved into their dwelling since 1975,
percentage of dwelling units with no car available, and residential vacancy rate, but did
not find any threshold effects for them (ibid.).
The authors suggest that understanding of threshold effects can inform decisions
about cases in which neighbourhood interventions have the greatest chance for success.
The article proposes a general rule for maximizing the impact of intervention: allocate
scarce public policy resources to neighbourhoods where the reduction in the given social
problem indicator will be greatest (ibid.).
36
Causes of Decline
The study An Economic Efficiency Analysis of Deconcentrating Poverty
Populations (Galster 2002) attempted to aid in assessing the social efficiency of
alternative spatial distributions of low-income populations. It determined how the
percentage of poor residents in a neighbourhood affects all residents’ incomes and
problem behaviours.
Galster refers to findings of Krivo and Peterson (1996) who employed FBI crime
data for both violent and property crimes and matched them with 1990 census tract
poverty rates3 for the Columbus Ohio, metropolitan area. There is no significant
difference between high-and extreme-poverty neighbourhoods, but both have at least
twenty percent higher property crime rates than low-poverty neighbourhoods, suggesting
a threshold around the twenty percent neighbourhood poverty rate. In the case of violent
crime, there is a regular step-function across the three neighbourhood poverty categories.
Further Krivo and Peterson determine that there is a constant slope between
neighbourhood poverty rate and violent crime over the low-and high-poverty ranges, but
no further association once neighbourhood poverty exceeds forty percent (Galster 2002,
p.320).
The study suggests that both income and behavioural problems are related to
neighbourhood poverty rates. Net social benefits will be larger if neighbourhoods with
greater than roughly fifteen percent poverty rates are replaced with (an appropriately
larger number) of neighbourhoods having less than fifteen percent poverty rates.
However, net social benefits will be smaller if neighbourhoods with greater than about
forty percent poverty rates are replaced with (an appropriately larger number) of
neighbourhoods having between about fifteen and forty percent poverty rates. In policy
terms, unless very low-poverty neighbourhoods can be opened up for occupation by the
poor, de-concentration efforts should halt, because merely transferring the poor from
high- to moderate-poverty neighbourhoods is likely to be socially inefficient (ibid.
p.322).
In their research publication, The Fortunes of Poor Neighborhoods, Galster et al.
(2003) analyzed the factors correlated with 1980-1990 increases and decreases in poverty
rates4 across poor neighbourhoods (twenty percent or higher), and examined whether
factors vary by predominant racial/ethnic composition.
Galster and co-authors point out that only one study has explored empirically
what has occurred longitudinally in already poor neighbourhoods. Fogarty (1977)
examined predicting patterns of neighbourhood relative income change from 1960 to
1970 in ninety census tracts within Pittsburgh that had median incomes below the
citywide median. He included 1960 variables measuring tract income profiles,
demographic characteristics, housing stock features, and urban renewal indicators as
discriminators of whether a tract would demonstrate relative income increase or decrease
during the decade. Fogarty found that no single discriminant function adequately
3
Census tract were classified as low-poverty (less than 20%), high-poverty (20 –39%), and extreme-poverty (40% and
higher) rates (Krivo and Peterson 1996).
4
The authors define neighborhood poverty rate as the number of persons in poverty divided by the total population of
the tract (Galster et al. 2003).
37
Causes of Decline
predicted outcomes for all below-median income tracts, so he further stratified the sample
into four relative median income categories: 40-59, 60-79, 80-89, and 90-100 percent of
the city-wide median. Some consistent result patterns emerged:
Greater income inequality increased the probability of decline in all but the
highest relative income category of areas.
Percentages of elderly population and black population were directly related
to relative income decline in the 60-89 percent categories.
The percentage of blighted properties was directly related to decline in all but
the 90-100 percent category.
Residential urban renewal programs increased the probability of income
increases in all neighbourhood categories of sixty percent or more, whereas
non-residential urban renewal programs had the opposite impact.
Other patterns were less consistent:
Median income within a relative income category of neighbourhoods was
directly related to the probability of income declines in the 80-100 percent of
median income category, but illustrated the opposite relationship in the 40-79
percent categories.
The rental housing percentage variable predicted rising relative incomes in the
80-100 percent category, but falling incomes in the 60-79 percent category.
4.2.2. Housing and Homeownership Characteristics
Galster et al. (2003) examine how socio-economic, demographic, and
housing/home ownership profiles in poor areas might be predictive of their longitudinal
fortunes and explore variations among poor neighbourhoods with different racial/ethnic
profiles5.
Some of the research findings on Likelihood of Poverty Increase (ibid. pp.11-12)
include:
A greater percentage of renter-occupied units in 1980 was associated with
increasing likelihood of rising poverty.
Higher neighbourhood vacancy rates also predicted poverty increases.
Surprisingly, poor neighbourhoods comprised of older (pre-1940 vintage)
dwellings were less likely to experience poverty increases than those
comprised of some newer dwellings.
In poor Hispanic neighbourhoods, higher housing vacancy rates, higher
percentages of minorities, and fewer high-status households are stronger
5
The study grouped all census on the basis of their 1980 racial/ethnic composition (ibid. p.6):
Black neighbourhoods - 50 percent or more non-Hispanic black population.
Hispanic neighbourhoods - 50 percent or more Hispanic population.
White neighbourhoods - 90 percent or more non-Hispanic white population
38
Causes of Decline
predictors of increasing poverty than in either white or black poor
neighbourhoods.
In all strata, higher percentages of renters predict increasing poverty, but the
power to do so is greatest in white poor neighbourhoods, least in black poor
neighbourhoods.
Pre-1940 vintage poor black neighbourhoods are less likely to experience
increasing poverty than some newer ones; the opposite is true for poor white
neighbourhoods.
Local housing market characteristics predicted poverty decreases in roughly
opposite ways than they predicted increases. Poverty decline was more likely in older
housing of poor neighbourhoods and those having greater percentages of owner-occupied
dwellings (ibid.). As for other neighbourhood housing characteristics, poor black
neighbourhoods with more housing built from 1950 to 1969 were less likely to
experience poverty decreases, but the opposite was the case for poor Hispanic
neighbourhoods with more housing built during the 1960-1969 period.
The findings illustrated the benefits of targeting housing interventions. Higher
rates of homeownership are likely to be an obstacle to poverty growth in most poor
neighbourhoods, but the relationship is non-linear and variant across racial/ethnic strata.
The non-linearity suggests, for instance, that increasing the homeownership rate in the
average poor neighbourhood from eighty to ninety percent will reduce the chances of
poverty increase there over twice that of boosting it from forty to fifty percent. Moreover,
the impacts will be much more effective in poor white neighbourhoods than in poor
minority ones, regardless of the initial level of homeownership (ibid.).
4.3. The Canadian Experience
In Canadian context, instead of the forty percent threshold employed by
Jargowsky, a standard of twice the national family low-income rate was used by Hatfield
(1997) to identify high poverty census tracts. In 1990, using the 1986 base Low Income
Cut Offs compiled by Statistics Canada, the national family low-income rate was 13.2
percent. Therefore the threshold used in his analysis was 26.4 percent in 1990.
The five indicators chosen by Hatfield to identify distressed neighbourhoods in
Canada and the threshold levels for each were as follows:
1. A high individual poverty rate in the census tract – above 27.66 percent;
2. A high proportion of total household income in the tract coming from transfer
payments from government – above 17.36 percent;
3. A low proportion of the 15-24 population in the tract attending school fulltime – below 43 percent;
4. A low percentage of the male population 15 and over employed for pay fulltime (49 or more weeks in the previous year) – below 35.7 percent; and,
5. A high percentage of families with children at home headed by lone parents –
above 31.45 percent.
39
Causes of Decline
Using these thresholds, 106 (2.7%) of the 3914 census tracts in Canada met all five
criteria of distress. There were also sixteen tracts which did not meet the low-income
criteria, but which met all four of the other criteria of social and economic distress. Both
concentrated poverty and distressed neighbourhoods in Canada were highly concentrated
in 1991 in Montréal, Québec City and Winnipeg (38, 10, and 12 percent respectively).
These three centres accounted for nearly half of Canada’s distressed and near-distressed
urban neighbourhoods. Substantial proportions of the overall populations of these CMAs
live in distressed and near-distressed neighbourhoods. In Québec City almost one in ten
(9.8%) do. In Montréal the share rises to 11.8 percent and in Winnipeg to 12.3 percent of
the metropolitan population (ibid.).
5. Conclusions
Many large old cities in North America, Australia and Europe have experienced
population decline and increases in inner-city unemployment and poverty since the mid1960s, which have been attributed to such factors as de-industrialization and the “cycle of
poverty”. The processes leading to the inner-city decline and its characteristics are
common to many countries. These include poverty and segregation; vacant and
abandoned property; disinvestment and economic decline; changing land uses; and public
education decline. Deprived areas can slide into a cycle of decline, making it more and
more difficult for people who live there to take advantage of opportunities. As
neighbourhoods become less desirable, those who can move out do.
Based on a comprehensive literature review addressing inner-city decline, major
theories that have been used to explain urban decline were identified. These include:
1. The Ecological School - the concentric zone, the sectoral, the multi-nuclei
models, social area analysis, filtering, the life-cycle, the bid rent and the
border theories, the vacancy chain hypothesis, the cycles of disadvantage, the
broken windows and urban underclass theories, the pull and obsolescence
hypotheses and environmental determinism.
2. The Subcultural School.
3. Political Economists - the urban growth machine thesis, the urban structural
change, the spatial mismatch, the exploitation hypotheses and the fiscal crisis
theory.
4. The Social Capital Model.
The literature review provides evidence of the absence of a consistent trend in
support of any of the hypotheses. This can lead to the conclusion that, given the wide
variation between inner cities in their age, size, and economic structure, no one single
hypothesis can explain changes in decline levels throughout the urban system.
All the theories of neighbourhood decline are partly right, partly wrong, and
generally over-simplified. As Carley (1990) pointed out, one reason theories go in and
out of fashion is probably that there is no one correct answer to the urban dilemma; we
must therefore continually pick and choose among options which appear to work. For this
reason, in considering the potential for area-based neighbourhood renewal, it is important
40
Causes of Decline
to understand the advantages and constraints of areal approaches as compared with other
ways to tackle urban renewal. The analysis of these theories can provide a useful network
for better understanding which revitalization initiatives would aid declining
neighbourhoods. Based on their review of urban decline theories Temkin and Rohe
(1996) contend that physical, social, and economic factors can all have significant
impacts on neighbourhood quality. That is, in their framework, investments in housing
construction, homeownership initiatives, and investments in new establishments can all
potentially serve as policy instruments for enhancing neighbourhood quality.
Numerous causes triggering decline in inner cities were identified through the
literature review. Poverty, racial conflict, ageing of the population, suburban sprawl, the
spatial distribution of affordable housing, decline of inner-city schools, the creativity
factor, and unintended policy effects were discussed in more detail. In a similar vein, it is
possible to conclude that urban decline does not have a readily identifiable starting point
or single isolated cause. Instead, decline is a complex, self-reinforcing phenomenon in
which symptoms of decline themselves become causes. Once underway, decline tends to
be evolutionary and accretive.
The literature review also looked at threshold indicators beyond which
neighbourhood reaches a point of inevitable decline in the quality of life it offers.
Different threshold indicators have been used to measure neighbourhood change, such as
poverty, unemployment, school dropout, home ownership rates, female headship rates,
racial composition, and others.
In order to develop a more balanced understanding of neighbourhood change, it is
necessary to acknowledge the complexity of urban life, economic conditions and social
relations, to recognize forces from both within and outside of neighbourhoods, and to
analyze change at multiple geographic scales, taking into account both micro and macro
dynamics.
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