Tag Archives: neighborhoods

What happens when you let Boston residents crowdsource neighborhood boundaries

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Here is a fascinating online experiment: let residents of a city, in this case, Boston, illustrate how they would draw neighborhood boundaries. Here are the conclusions of the effort thus far:

Although we talk a lot about boundaries, this post included, the maps here should also remind us that neighborhoods are not defined by their edges—essentially, what is outside the neighborhood—but rather by their contents. And it’s not just a collection of roads and things you see on a map; it’s about some shared history, activities, architecture, and culture. So while the neighborhood summaries above rely on edges to describe the maps, let’s also think about the areas represented by the shapes and what’s inside them. What are the characteristics of these areas? Why are they the shapes that they are? Why is consensus easy or difficult in different areas? What is the significance of the differences in opinion between residents of a neighborhood and people outside the neighborhood?

We’ll revisit those questions in further detail in future posts, and also generate maps of other facets of the data. Next up: areas of overlap between neighborhoods. Here we’ve looked neighborhood-by-neighborhood at how much people agree, so now let’s map those zones that exhibit disagreement. Meanwhile, thanks so much for all the submissions for this project; and if you haven’t drawn some neighborhoods, what’s your problem? Get on it!

This gets at a recurring issue for urban sociologists: how to best define communities or neighborhoods. The best option with data is to use Census boundaries such as tracts, block groups, blocks, and perhaps zip codes. This data is collected regularly, in-depth, and can be easily downloaded. However, these boundaries are crude approximations of culturally defined neighborhoods. People on the ground have little knowledge about what Census tract they live in (though this is easy to figure out online).

So if Census definitions are not the best for the on-the-ground experience, what is left? This crowdsourcing project is a modern way of doing what some researchers have done: ask the residents themselves and also observe what happens. What streets are not crossed? Which features or landmarks define a neighborhood? Who “belongs” where? What are typical activities in different places? Of course, this is a much messier process than working with clearly defined and reliable Census data but it illustrates a key aspect about neighborhoods: they are continually changing and being redefined by their own residents and others.

Sociologist: 70% of murders in two high-crime Chicago neighborhoods tied to social network of 1,600 people

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Social networks can be part of more nefarious activities: sociologist Andrew Papachristos looked at two high-crime Chicago neighborhoods and found that a majority of the murders involved a small percentage of the population.

Papachristos looked at murders that occurred between 2005 and 2010 in West Garfield Park and North Lawndale, two low-income West Side neighborhoods. Over that period, Papachristos found that 191 people in those neighborhoods were killed.

Murder occasionally is random, but, more often, he found, the victims have links either to their killers or to others linked to the killers. Seventy percent of the killings he studied occurred within what Papachristos determined was a social network of only about 1,600 people — out of a population in those neighborhoods of about 80,000.

Each person in that network of 1,600 people had been arrested at some point with at least one other person in the same network.

For those inside the network, the risk of being murdered, Papachristos found, was about 30 out of 1,000. In contrast, the risk of getting killed for others in those neighborhoods was less than one in 1,000.

On one hand, this isn’t too surprising, especially considering the prevalence of gangs. At the same time, these numbers of striking: if a resident is in this small network, their risk of being murdered jumps 3000%.

I would be interested to know how closely the Chicago Police have mapped social networks like these. Do they use special social network software that helps them visualize the network and see nodes? Indeed, the article suggests the police are doing something like this:

Now, he wants to tap the same social networking analysis techniques that Papachristos, the Yale sociologist, developed to identify potential shooting victims, only McCarthy wants to use it to identify potential killers.

Police brass will cross-reference murder victims and killers with their known associates — the people projected as most likely to be involved in future shootings.

“Hot people,” McCarthy calls them.

Those deemed most likely to commit violence will be targeted first: parolees and people who have outstanding arrest warrants.

McCarthy said his staff estimates there are 26,000 “hot people” living in Chicago.

It would also be worthwhile to see how effective such strategies are. This isn’t the first time that organizations/agencies have tried to identify at-risk individuals. So how effective is it in the long run?

Three kinds of segregation in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty

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Sociologist Lincoln Quillian discusses three kinds of segregation that are present in minority neighborhoods of concentrated poverty:

Lincoln Quillian, professor of sociology and faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, analyzed data from the 2000 census and found that the disproportionate poverty of blacks’ and Hispanics’ other-race neighbors plays an important role in creating racial disparities in neighborhood poverty. The other-race neighbors of black and Hispanic families are disproportionately likely to be poor regardless for black and Hispanic families of all income levels.

Concentrated poverty in minority communities results from three segregations: racial segregation, poverty-status segregation within race and segregation from high- and middle-income members of other racial groups, according to the study. Past work has emphasized racial segregation and poverty-status segregation within race, but has missed the important role played by the disproportionately low-income levels of other-race neighbors of blacks and Hispanics…

“Nationally there is evidence that as racial segregation has been slowly going down that income segregation has been going up,” Quillian said. “Blacks and Hispanics often are co-residing with poorer members of their racial groups.”

White middle-class families overwhelmingly live in middle-class neighborhoods and send their children to middle-class schools. But many black and Hispanic middle-class families live in working-class or poor neighborhoods and send their children to high-poverty schools.

This seems like more evidence for the value of having mixed-income neighborhoods. This idea was behind the two-decade HOPE VI housing program from the Department of Housing and Urban Department which demolished public housing high-rises and moved some of the residents to new mixed-income neighborhoods with people of other races and income groups on the site of the former projects. Whether this program works in the long run is still up for grabs and also highlights how it is difficult to create such neighborhoods solely through the private sector.

Philadelphia fighting food deserts through fresh fruits and vegetables at corner stores

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Philadelphia is launching a new initiative to fight food deserts through existing corner stores:

The $900,000 investment in better health depends on apples and oranges, chips and candy, $1,200 fridges and green plastic baskets. The results could steer the course of American food policy.

Philadelphia is trying to turn corner stores into greengrocers. For a small shop, it’s a risky business proposition. Vegetables have a limited shelf life, so a store owner must know how much will sell quickly — or watch profits rot away. He also lacks the buying power of large supermarkets and is often unable to meet the minimum orders required by the cheaper wholesalers that grocery stores use.

With shelf space at a premium, shop owners must pick and choose the products they think will sell best. Chips and candy and soda are a sure bet. Eggplant? It’s hard to know…

The city has recruited 632 corner stores — of 2,500 overall — to its Get Healthy Philly initiative. Of those, 122 have gotten more intensive support, been supplied with new fridges to store produce and connected with wholesalers from whom they can buy at lower prices. It is also working with schools to improve nutrition and helping neighborhoods launch farmers markets, a multifaceted approach officials hope will improve public health.

As the article suggests, there is a lot riding on this project. It will be interesting to see if this could (1) substantively help improve health and (2) be profitable.

The advantage here seems to be that the stores are already established in neighborhoods and probably already have an established clientele. This program then puts healthier food in front of people who may already be visiting these stores. Working with existing infrastructure sounds like it would be more effective as well as cheaper in the long run.

Real estate wisdom: don’t build the nicest McMansion on the block

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An oft-cited piece of real estate wisdom is that you shouldn’t buy or build the nicest home in a neighborhood. Here is an update on that tale: especially don’t do this when you are building a McMansion.

For example, consider the fate of what became a conspicuously large house for sale in an Atlanta suburb.

A few years ago, at the top of the market, the owners purchased a small fixer-upper, then renovated and significantly expanded it. Once completed, the owners tried to sell their McMansion in one of the worst real estate markets ever. After a year without success, they had to lower the asking price multiple times — and ultimately walked away with a big loss.

The fact that they bought at the top of the market and tried to sell during a decline in values certainly didn’t help. But it wasn’t the only factor by any means. On one side of the house was an apartment building. On the other sat a home that was an eyesore.

The proximity of these two properties should have been a warning to the owners: Don’t super-size your house when it’s surrounded by properties that aren’t at least equal in value. Instead, the owners had gotten caught up in the market frenzy. They didn’t think about what would happen when it came time to sell…

A better strategy, no matter what kind of market, is to buy the worst house on the best block. You can always improve the property and therefore increase its value. And because it’s on a great block, improvements you make to the home will be practically guaranteed to give you a top return on your investment.

I wonder if there aren’t two factors here that could mitigate the reduced selling price of the McMansion:

1. The owners really really wanted to be in this particular neighborhood. And if they have the money to build the bigger home and absorb the loss more easily (the article doesn’t say), perhaps this was more about the block than the particular house. Sure, they may have not made the most money they could have on their property but perhaps that wasn’t the most important thing.

2. If one does pursue the strategy of buying the worst house on the block, might one have to pay more to buy into a nicer block compared to buying a nicer house in a worse block? In other words, this advice partly depends on the context of the neighborhood. To buy into a nicer neighborhood at the start, one is likely to have to overpay, particularly in neighborhoods that are really hot or where there is a lot of pressure to tear down the existing home and build something bigger and better.

Overall, I’m intrigued by the general logic here from real estate agents: all that matters is the spread between what an owner paid (plus what they end up putting into the house) and what they get when they sell the home. In a perfect real estate world, all homeowners are told that they too can make money off their homes. Is this really possible? Is it even realistic for most owners? There are other reasons people buy homes and wealthier homeowners have more financial latitude to do what they want.

Using the Internet to meet your neighbors

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The New York Times takes a look at Nextdoor.com, a website that privately allows neighbors to meet each other and interact online:

Nextdoor’s site provides a house-by-house map of neighbors who are members — although members can choose not to have their names attached to their addresses — as well as a forum for posting items of general interest; classified listings for buying, selling or giving away things; and a database for neighbor-recommended local services.

The company, which introduced its service last October, says it has set up more than 2,000 such neighborhoods in the United States, each containing about 500 to 750 households. These mostly follow boundaries defined by Maponics, a supplier of geographic data…

Neighborhood identity has not been destroyed by the Internet. Robert J. Sampson, a sociology professor at Harvard, says: “There’s a common misreading that technology inevitably leads to the decline of the local community. I don’t believe that. Technology can be harnessed to facilitate local interactions.”…

In his new book, “Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect,” Professor Sampson argues that worries about the supposed loss of community in cities are nothing new. In 1938, for example, the sociologist Louis Wirth described “anonymous” and “superficial” social relations as essential elements of urbanism. But Professor Sampson says that this ignores the way that a city was, and remains, ordered by distinctive neighborhoods — what he calls “the enduring significance of place.”

Sampson’s comments give me an idea (which I’m sure others have already discovered): the Internet itself is a place/space that is built upon existing places. Another way to think about this is that the Internet is another social layer that both interacts with existing places but also has its own places and rules of social conduct. People can interact more with those who live near them and/or they can choose to interact with people around the world (that were previously unavailable to them). This is not the same as places like “Second Life” – it seemed to me that a lot of academics were really interested in this idea as they were curious to see how people would handle being in a new realm they could help create – as programs like Facebook or Nextdoor don’t let people completely escape from their surroundings and may just enhance existing acquaintances and relationships. Going forward, should we think of Facebook as a new kind of extended neighborhood?

Sampson’s ideas also are an interesting reply to questions like whether Facebook is making us lonely. Sampson is not the only sociologist who is arguing that the Internet does not necessarily isolate people.

How important are long-time residents to a neighborhood or a community?

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A profile of a New York City woman who has lived 100 years in the same neighborhood (along a 1,200 foot stretch) raises an interesting question: how much do long-time residents contribute to a community?

Ms. Jacobs is already a demographic rarity: she was one of 2,126 city residents 100 and over recorded in the 2010 census. But even though very few New Yorkers can claim a century spent in essentially one place, the notion of maintaining roots on a street is not entirely uncommon, said Andrew A. Beveridge, a Queens College sociologist.

A decade ago, Professor Beveridge recalled, one of his students interviewed a man of about 100 who had lived his entire life in the same house in Richmond Hill, Queens.

Bruce D. Haynes, a sociologist at the University of California, Davis, who grew up in Harlem, said that his own father spent the better part of 65 years in a house on Convent Avenue in its Sugar Hill section, until his death in 1995.

“I’d argue that these are the people who make the city what it is,” said Professor Haynes, whose grandfather, George Edmund Haynes, was a co-founder of the National Urban League. “They are the character of the city.”

At first glance, it seems hard to argue with this: people who live in a community for decades are anchors and connect newer generations to what has happened in the past. However, doesn’t this presuppose that these long-term residents are active in their community, meaning that other people know who they are? Just because one lives long in a community does not necessarily mean one is active in it. Additionally, don’t the younger people have to want this connection? Bruce Haynes comments are a great example: his grandfather was involved in an important civic group. Particularly in their older years, might not some long-time residents end up isolated (an issue sociologist Eric Klinenberg discusses in Heat Wave)? Are there studies that have actually measured what the positive effects of having long-time residents in the community?

More broadly, this article celebrates Ms. Jacob’s rootedness. This is a common tension in American life: should people be rooted in their communities or should they be mobile, responding to changing circumstances? On the whole, we tend to be a mobile nation where on average people move at least once every ten years. Yet, we also like the idea that some people care about their community so much (or can’t afford to move?) that they stay put in one place.

 

Sociology grad student taking photos of Chicago’s demolished buildings

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The Chicago Tribune has an interesting profile of a sociology graduate student who photographs buildings that the city of Chicago is about to demolish:

Since January, Schalliol, who is working on a sociology doctorate at the University of Chicago, has been documenting the city’s demolitions with photographs…

But even the worst houses, the ones that aren’t worth the work to keep, give Schalliol pause.

“There isn’t a time,” he said, “when I look at a building that I don’t think, gosh, this is a waste.”

He feels that most acutely in wealthy neighborhoods, such as Lincoln Park and Lakeview, where nice old homes that in a different place or era would be coveted as vintage jewels are routinely torn down merely to make space for mansions and big condo developments.

He photographs them all with equal care, with appreciation and attention to detail, the way you might dress a corpse for burial.

“I want to respect the people who made the building,” he said, “who maintained it, who lived in it. I want to see the building not just how it is, but how it was.”

I wonder what Schalliol will do with all of this, particularly if it is for more academic purposes. I think there is a lot of potential here: buildings are a kind of collective memory. Styles of architecture, the people who live, work, and meet in them, and the collection of buildings in a neighborhood constitute particular social worlds. When the buildings disappear because of old age or disrepair, that social world disappears as well. For example, the demolition of the public housing high-rises in Chicago and many other American cities may be beneficial in reducing concentrated poverty but it also helps remove the concepts of poverty, race, and related issues from the immediate reach. (To be clear, this is likely exactly what some wanted – get rid of the high rises so the problems aren’t so visible. Unfortunately, this doesn’t deal with the root issues.) It can be easy to simply build something new in place of something old but this does help cover up what came before.

At the same time, I also don’t believe that all buildings should simply be preserved because they are old. Should Brutalist buildings be preserved to remind us of a particular architectural moment? Deciding what buildings should stay and go is a complicated process but at the least, I approve of people at least recording by photograph what buildings used to stand in particular locations.

Trayvon Martin case: social problems still present in gated communities

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An academic expert on “place-based crime prevention” talks about the role the gated community might have had on the Trayvon Martin case:

The answer is, according to Schneider, that there are no easy answers. “It’s hard to make a generalization,” he tells me, pointing out that there are many different types of gated communities catering to all parts of the economic and social spectrum. Some of them are walkable; some are not. Some are racially mixed (as is the Retreat at Twin Lakes), and some are not. Some are relatively affordable — you can find gated trailer parks – and some are filled with McMansions. Many of them are indistinguishable from any other suburban neighborhood. Did the built environment play a role in Martin’s death? Add it to the list of things we can never really know for sure about this terrible case.

As for whether gated communities deliver on one of their main selling points — protection from crime — Schneider says that research to date has been inconclusive. “It’s not a panacea,” he says about erecting gates. “You’re just as likely to be burgled by your next-door neighbor, especially if there are teenagers.” Criminals from outside are also quick to figure out how to get in. “They learn the code from the pizza guy,” says Schneider. “The effects of gating decay over time.”

Gated communities exploded in popularity in the United States during the end of the 20th century, but Schneider points out that they are an old phenomenon. “We used to call them castles,” he says.

Here is the conclusion to this article:

If the case of Trayvon Martin has shown us anything, it’s that a society’s problems — inequity, racism, and fear among them — have no problem getting through the gates.

Even if social problems do end up affecting gated communities, academics tend to argue that people buy into and want to live in these communities because they perceive them to be safer. This supports a classic sociological axiom: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” Realistically, while these communities are said to be “gated,” they are rarely as restrictive as castles could be and are often fairly open to people who want to pass through. I wonder if these communities would be better off to get rid of the gates (in whatever form they take) and simply build their development in a more inaccessible place, such as a location that only has an entrance to a busy road (cuts off pedestrian traffic) or is located in a wealthy or out-of-way area (which limits vehicular traffic).

YMCA survey: 58% of Americans would move if they could

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A new survey commissioned by the YMCA suggests that more than 50% of Americans want to move out of their current neighborhood:

The Y Community Snapshot found:

  • 58 percent of respondents say they would move away from their community right now if they could, but the economy and their financial situations make moving increasingly difficult and not an option. Unable to move, Americans are putting more responsibility on local governments and themselves to impact change;
  • 63 percent of respondents say they will get more involved in their communities this year and will contribute goods, services, facilities or other non-monetary resources to a worthy cause or organization;
  • 76 percent of respondents say they are concerned about crime in their community, and according to a recent Gallup poll, nearly half of Americans say there is more crime where they live today than there was a year ago. A safe environment ranked as the most important quality in building a strong community;
  • The vast majority of respondents (72 percent) reported that budget cuts by government, social services and non-profit community organizations have had a negative impact on themselves and their families, with 22 percent saying they’ve felt a big negative impact.

The results to the individual questions may make sense: Americans have always been a mobile people (though mobility is down in recent years due to the economic crisis), Americans tend to be worried about crime even when crime rates are down (how likely is it that major crime rates are down and more than 50% of Americans say crime is up in their particular neighborhood?), and people are unlikely to respond favorably to budget cuts that impact them.

But I’m intrigued by how you would put all of these figures together: do Americans think there are a lot of wealthy, low crime, service-rich neighborhoods out there? Is this simply a case of “the grass is greener on the other side” or is everyone truly aiming to reach these fantastic neighborhoods? Even if there are enough neighborhoods that might fit this bill, how many of these great neighborhoods would not throw open their gates but would instead hunker down and restrict access and new development that might change their paradise?