Bridging ties at the neighborhood level

This paper examines the relevance of the “strength of weak ties” model (Granovetter 1973) in devising community development strategies for urban neighborhoods. The policy implications of this model for activities designed to promote neighborhood identification and cohesion are outlined, and Granovetter's specific assumptions about the structure and functioning of urban neighborhood social networks are assessed in light of existing research. Little support is found for the presumed absence of bridging weak ties among urban neighbors, or for the assumption that strong ties create an obstacle to effective political mobilization in working-class neighborhoods. An alternative model of local-level integration is suggested, which retains Granovetter's concept of dense clusters of network ties linked by “local bridges”, but re-examines the role of weak ties in effecting such bridges.     

In the Mix,Yet on the Margins: The Place of Families in Urban Neighborhood and Child Development Research

In the 1990s, the most popular theoretical and empirical research issue concerning the local ecologies of families focused on the impact of family structures (e.g., household composition) and processes (e.g., child management strategies) on the relationship between urban neighborhoods and child and adolescent development. In this article, we synthesize and critically examine the decade's prevailing literature on the topic, organizing this review into three areas: (a) the research designs of quantitative and ethnographic studies of urban neighborhoods, families, and child outcomes; (b) the conceptual approaches used in these studies; and (c) the role of structural and behavioral features of family and parenting as factors that influence the relationship between urban neighborhoods and child development in ethnically and racially diverse populations. Results suggest that although family has been center stage in the neighborhood effects research question of the decade, it has remained on the margins in terms of theoretical and methodological specificity. Recommendations for future research are also offered.     

The effect of neighborhood on crime and safety: a review of the evidence

There is a growing, multidisciplinary body of evidence on the effects that neighborhoods have on family outcomes. This evidence is important for social workers as we work with clients and communities from a person-in-environment perspective. In this article the authors present findings from a systematic, integrative review of neighborhood effects specifically for crime and safety. Thirty-seven research studies using random samples from urban, U.S. areas between 2002 and 2008 are reviewed. Findings suggest socio-demographic characteristics of neighborhoods and neighborhood processes are both predictive of crime and safety. Further, some neighborhood conditions may affect crime and safety in unexpected ways. Implications for social work practice, neighborhood interventions, and evidence-based practice are discussed.     

There goes our family friendly neighborhood: Residents’ perceptions of institutionally driven inner-city revitalization in Buffalo,NY

This article examines residents’ perceptions of inner-city revitalization in legacy cities. The analysis focuses on neighborhoods undergoing revitalization in a legacy city, Buffalo, NY. The article draws from data for a larger research project called Turning the Corner which was sponsored by the Urban Institute. The focus of that project was to identify planning strategies to address negative externalities caused by neighborhood change and heightened risks of displacement due to revitalization. Data were collected through a series of focus groups with residents and stakeholders in working-class, minority neighborhoods which were identified as being in the early stages of revitalization. Two findings emerged from the analysis. First, residents perceived urban revitalization to have a destabilizing effect on traditional neighborhoods. Second, residents perceived revitalization as detrimental to the sustainability of family-friendly neighborhoods. Insights from the analysis are used to prompt planners’ advocacy for revitalization strategies aimed at protecting minority, working-class neighborhoods when institutionally driven revitalization occurs.     

“It was totally different than what we had before”: Perceptions of urban militarism under Rio de Janeiro’s Pacifying Policing Units

Scholars argue that military ideologies, discourses, and practices are increasingly deployed in poor urban areas to control populations deemed “dangerous.” However, very little research exists to document how residents in targeted neighborhoods experience these security interventions. This article addresses this gap by considering the case of Rio de Janeiro’s UPP Program, wherein the military police occupied several of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, or low-income marginalized neighborhoods. The intervention began in 2008 and aimed to expel drug traffickers who had controlled these areas since the 1970s and install permanent policing precincts. While many studies suggest that the urban poor tend to reject aggressive policing practices, the UPP received widespread approval by favela residents in the first years of the occupation. This article draws upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the City of God, one of the first neighborhoods occupied by the UPP, to examine the factors underlying residents’ positive assessment of the UPP. I found that support for the UPP hinged on (a) its deviation from the brutal and ineffective military interventions deployed in the past; (b) the UPP’s ability to subdue violent drug traffickers and restore public security; (c) state investments in social services and resources attributed to the occupation; and (d) the race, gender, and age profiles of participants, wherein women, the elderly, and lighter-skinned residents reported greater approval for the UPP than young Black men. Ultimately, these findings suggest that variability between security interventions, their impact on public security and social development, and demographic diversity within targeted neighborhoods must be considered if we are to fully understand how the urban poor experience militarized security interventions.     

Gated Communities in the United States: From Case Studies to Systematic Evidence

Scholarly research about gated communities is a recently established field of study, because the significant proliferation of these communities has occurred in the last couple of decades. In this article, I argue that the seminal work of Blakely and Snyder (1997, Fortress America: Gated communities in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.) gave the first impetus and the initial research directions in gated communities’ study. The subsequent research established it as a true interdisciplinary urban field and produced important knowledge across several different academic disciplines: sociology, political science, anthropology, urban policy and planning, geography, and legal studies. The article discusses this first phase of theoretical and empirical work, based mostly on qualitative and secondary data sources. A new methodological shift is proposed, which should determine the second phase of research based on hypotheses testing and collection of systematic empirical evidence. Such evidence is essential to understand the wider impact of gated communities on larger urban areas and society as a whole.     

Local Environment of Neighborhood Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs) in a Mid-Sized U.S. City

As the U.S. population ages, almost half of elderly householders have lived in their current home for more than 20 years, and a significant majority wish to remain in their current residence or community for as long as possible as they age. Concern with how communities will cope with these trends has led to a growing interest in naturally occurring retirement communities (NORCs), which are neighborhoods or housing complexes that house a concentration of older adults, and their potential to enhance efforts to support aging-in-place. In this article, we examine the local built and social environment of neighborhood NORCs in Tallahassee, Florida, a low-density mid-sized city. We found that a large proportion of NORCs are located in neighborhoods with an urban form, or physical design, that is presumed to be less supportive of active aging, and associated with poor access to amenities, such as grocery stores, pharmacies, and parks. Another substantial portion of NORCs are located in neighborhoods with some aspects of a supportive urban form. We also found that NORCs are over-represented in neighborhoods featuring low residential turnover and above average homeownership rates. This suggests a potential for collective action to facilitate aging-in-place, even in neighborhoods thought not to have supportive physical environments.     

Toward a sociology of global comparative placemaking

I call for a globally informed sociology of comparative placemaking that integrates historical and contemporary processes and includes the ephemeral, institutional, and personal. By placemaking, I am referring to the explicit or tacit cooperation among people to create, maintain, and give meaning to places in space through bodily occupation given differential resources and constraints. I review select place, space, and community-based literature about urban, Black, migrant, LGBTQ, and international populations to think about how we can build upon and integrate multiple theoretical, methodological, and epistemological insights to form an explicit placemaking research agenda. A US focus on neighborhoods contrasts with a comparative examination of global urban networks, social polarization, and transformation of the built environment in the interdisciplinary field of global urban studies (Ren, 2018). I argue for a placemaking research agenda that bridges insight from US Urban Sociology with Global Urban Studies to consider how various structures and actors constrain and facilitate place projects. With a globally reaching and comparatively informed sociology of placemaking, we can illuminate our multi-structured story of place and agency in context. We can answer questions about how and why we co-create and are simultaneously disciplined by the process of creation.     

Balancing required resources and neighborhood opposition in community-based treatment center neighborhoods.

This paper analyzes the compatibility of two characteristics of neighborhoods containing community-based treatment centers (CBTCs): the availability of resources that can be used in treatment and the likelihood of neighborhood opposition. Do CBTC neighborhoods having high levels of geographically based resources also have characteristics associated with low opposition to these centers? The findings suggest that among neighborhoods with centers serving adults, inner-city transitional neighborhoods where low opposition would be expected have significantly higher levels of treatment resources than do more affluent, suburban neighborhoods. The implications of these findings for selecting sites for community-based treatment centers are discussed.     

Middle‐Class Parents,Urban Schooling,and the Shift From Consumption to Production of Urban Space

Dominant approaches to the study of gentrification tend to attribute this process either to the production of urban space by elites or to the consumption of urban space by individual consumers. In this article, we take a preliminary step toward bridging this gap by illustrating how these groups may, in some cases, be the same actors. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with middle‐class parents in Boston, we explore the transitions that gentrifiers undergo as they age and have children. As young singles and childless couples, our respondents interacted with the city mainly as passive consumers. Years later, however, facing pressures to relocate in search of high‐quality educational options, these parents emerged as active producers of the urban landscape through their substantial involvement in their children's public elementary schools. This school‐based engagement reinforced their loyalties to their neighborhoods, dissuading them from moving to the suburbs. Since it is based on intense interactions with small local institutions, though, this strategy will likely be more difficult for parents to sustain in larger, less personal high schools. Thus, these parents may reconsider their dedication to city living as their children age. We discuss the implications of this research for urban theory and policy.     

Drug Trafficking and Urban African American Youth: Risk Factors for PTSD

This article examines how African American youths (ages 12–17) who are raised in neighborhoods that are centers for illegal drug trade and drug dealing (trafficking, running) cope with violent events such as shooting, stabbings and other intentional injuries. Using qualitative research methods, the study explores urban youths' perceptions of drug trafficking and related activities in their neighborhoods. The study then explores issues of personal encounters with traumatic events related to drug trafficking activities (shootings, stabbings, deaths, other violence) in their community. Finally, the study discusses implications of findings for risk and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) among these youths.     

Neighborhood context and racial/ethnic disparities in judicial processing

This article examines the importance of neighborhoods in shaping judicial processing and racial/ethnic disparities in court outcomes. Scholarship instructs that court actors—prosecutors, defense counsel, and judges—make legal decisions with local communities in mind. With the rise of geographic information in arrest records and mapping techniques, greater opportunities exist to evaluate the role of neighborhood context in the juvenile and criminal courts. This article synthesizes research on how the characteristics of neighborhoods where defendants live and/or offend influence judicial processing. Attention is given to how scholars define neighborhoods, identify key neighborhood conditions, and analyze the relationships among places and judicial decisions. Emphasis is also placed on unpacking debates on whether neighborhood conditions diminish or aggravate racial/ethnic disparities in court outcomes, such as incarceration decisions. Its analysis reveals findings of neighborhood effects as well as evidence of neighborhood characteristics widening racial/ethnic differences in judicial processing. This article thus encourages the consideration of community context in disparity studies and policy efforts to improve citizens' access to justice.     

Family and neighborhood welfare dependency and sons' labor supply

This article tests four models of how parental and childhood welfare use affects sons' labor supply: the correlated disadvantages model, Wilson's structural-environmental model, Mead's welfare culture model, and Murray's incentives model. Past research is extended by including measures of all seven factors that these models predict will shape sons' labor supply: parental welfare use, neighborhood welfare use, parental income, family noneconomic resources, neighborhood resources, labor market conditions, and state welfare benefits. There are four main findings. First, welfare use in the childhood neighborhood has no effects on sons' work hours. Second, only one group of sons is affected by parental welfare use: black sons' whose parents average $7,500 or more in welfare income per year. Third, black sons' adult work hours are strongly predicted by parental poverty and by labor market conditions; together these account for half the estimated relationships between heavy parental welfare use and black sons' labor supply. Fourth, parents' and neighbors' work hours strongly predict nonblack sons' labor supply. This research was supported by Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Department of Health and Human Services, by the Rockefeller Foundation, and by the Office of the Vice-President for Research at the University of Michigan. We are grateful to John Bound, Sheldon Danziger, Greg Duncan, Martha Hill, and an anoymous reviewer for helpful comments and advice, to Marguerite Grabarek and James Kunz for programming, and most of all to Wendy Niemi for her patient, accurate, and efficient typing. Her research interests include poverty, social stratification, and labor economics. His research interests include rural poverty, poverty neighborhoods, and intergenerational poverty.     

Cultural mechanisms and the persistence of neighborhood violence

Sociologists have given considerable attention to identifying the neighborhood-level social-interactional mechanisms that influence outcomes such as crime, educational attainment, and health. Yet, cultural mechanisms are often overlooked in quantitative studies of neighborhood effects. This paper adds a cultural dimension to neighborhood effects research by exploring the consequences of legal cynicism. Legal cynicism refers to a cultural frame in which people perceive the law as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill equipped to ensure public safety. The authors find that legal cynicism explains why homicide persisted in certain Chicago neighborhoods during the 1990s despite declines in poverty and declines in violence city-wide.     

Challenges and Opportunities for Research on Same‐Sex Relationships

Research on same‐sex relationships has informed policy debates and legal decisions that greatly affect American families, yet the data and methods available to scholars studying same‐sex relationships have been limited. In this article the authors review current approaches to studying same‐sex relationships and significant challenges for this research. After exploring how researchers have dealt with these challenges in prior studies, the authors discuss promising strategies and methods to advance future research on same‐sex relationships, with particular attention given to gendered contexts and dyadic research designs, quasi‐experimental designs, and a relationship biography approach. Innovation and advances in the study of same‐sex relationships will further theoretical and empirical knowledge in family studies more broadly and increase understanding of different‐sex as well as same‐sex relationships.     

A multi-level analysis of school racial composition and ecological correlates of academic success

Current policy and practice interventions have failed to address disparities in academic success by race/ethnicity or socio-economic status. In addition, as policy interventions to prevent racially segregated schools have stalled, progress toward reducing these achievement gaps has also slowed. This exploratory study employs multi-level modeling to examine how risk and protective factors in students' schools, homes, peer groups, and neighborhoods relate to behavior and academic performance. We examine whether these relationships depend on the racial composition of the school and, in particular, the concentration of African American students in schools. The findings indicate that protective school, home, peer group, and neighborhood environments characterized by social support and safety are associated with positive academic outcomes and behavior. Students attending more segregated schools in which the majority of students are African American report worse behavioral and academic outcomes than students in other schools, even when controlling for other important dimensions of the school environment, school climate, school safety, and poverty. In addition, school racial composition shapes how key protective factors relate to grades.     

城市政策转移与政策知识的全球性循环

本文提出了一种方法,可以用于研究在全球范围内循环的城市政策、政策模型和政策知识中有关空间、社会和相互关系的特性。基于那些被用来分析在更广泛的社会空间背景下特定的社会进程的政治经济地理文献,本文部分侧重于固定性和流动性的辩证分析。本文将该观点与通过仔细研究分析得出的,政策知识得以转移的具体实践、表述和专门知识等后结构主义论证结合到一起。作者认为,对＂流动性＂的定义提供了一个实施上述方法的规程,它可以实现城市政策移植中的＂本地化的全球性＂。本文介绍了利用这种研究方法的一个例子：位于加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省的温哥华市,是一个经常被其他地方的决策者引用为他们寻求＂热门＂政策思路的城市。该案例还表明,关于城市之间城市政策移植性的特点和推论,还有许多研究尚待进行。具体来说,本文认为,在保持对更广泛力量的侧重的前提下,研究城市政策的流动性必须认真对待政策模型转移过程中个别政策转移中介那些明显平庸的作为,同时也必须进行细致的定性研究,研究政策是如何从一个地方移植到另一个地方去的,如何从特定的环境中学习的,并且在移植过程中是怎样变化的。     

The role of neighborhood physical environment on mobility and social participation among people using mobility assistive technology

This paper presents a systematic literature review on the impact of the neighborhood physical environment on mobility and social participation among people using mobility assistive technology (MAT). Peer-reviewed articles from eight databases published in French or English from 1990 to 2016 were searched. Thirty studies were included in this review. Factors related to neighborhood environmental features, mobility in transit, and accessibility of homes and public buildings influenced mobility and social participation of MAT users. The majority of reviewed studies combined different types of MAT, which made the interpretation of the results challenging. Few studies included walker, cane, and crutch users. Definitions of mobility and social participation lacked consistency and were often simplistic. Future empirical research needs to examine the impact of neighborhood physical environment factors separately for different MAT users. Causality and links between mobility and social participation of different MAT users at the neighborhood level should be further explored.     

The legacy of disadvantage: multigenerational neighborhood effects on cognitive ability

This study examines how the neighborhood environments experienced over multiple generations of a family influence children's cognitive ability. Building on recent research showing strong continuity in neighborhood environments across generations of family members, the authors argue for a revised perspective on "neighborhood effects" that considers the ways in which the neighborhood environment in one generation may have a lingering impact on the next generation. To analyze multigenerational effects, the authors use newly developed methods designed to estimate unbiased treatment effects when treatments and confounders vary over time. The results confirm a powerful link between neighborhoods and cognitive ability that extends across generations. A family's exposure to neighborhood poverty across two consecutive generations reduces child cognitive ability by more than half a standard deviation. A formal sensitivity analysis suggests that results are robust to unobserved selection bias.     

Clean and green organizing in urban neighborhoods: Measuring perceived and objective outcomes

ABSTRACT

One way in which urban community organizations attempt to improve neighborhood health is through cleaning and greening efforts. Few studies have evaluated how such efforts are related to changes in both residents’ perceptions of neighborhoods and objective community-wide cleaning and greening indicators over time. Drawing upon quantitative and qualitative data collected during an evaluation of a community-building initiative in two communities, results show how neighborhood changes in cleaning and greening were reflected in perceived and objective measures and how these measures compare across different time periods and sub-groups of residents within the two target communities. We provide suggestions for additional ways that future evaluations of urban cleaning and greening efforts can examine the impact.