George C. Galster

Urban theorists have tried for decades to define exactly what a neighborhood is. But behind that daunting existential question lies a much murkier problem: never mind how you define them--how do you make neighborhoods productive and fair for their residents? In Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves, George Galster delves deep into the question of whether American neighborhoods are as efficient and equitable as they could be--socially, financially, and emotionally--and, if not, what we can do to change that. Galster aims to redefine the relationship between places and people, promoting specific policies that reduce inequalities in housing markets and beyond. Drawing on economics, sociology, geography, and psychology, Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves delivers a clear-sighted explanation of what neighborhoods are, how they come to be--and what they should be.

Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves

Using an extensive database for the nation's 100 largest cities, this report examines the relationships among the housing, mortgage, and labor markets; the local public sector; household location patterns; and crime, dropping out of school, and out-of-wedlock childbearing. In addition to its comprehensiveness, this is also the first work to examine how underserved areas, as defined by HUD, interact with the various components of the opportunity structure. Includes 3 appendices: a glossary of variables; estimation of housing price indexes; and reduced form estimates (standardized coefficients).

Cumulative Causation Among City Markets, Social Problems, and Underserved Areas

An Econometric Model of the Urban Opportunity Structure

Jerome Rothenberg

Richard V. Butler

John R. Pitkin

This powerful new theoretical approach to analyzing urban housing problems and the policies designed to rectify them will be a vital resource for urban planners, developers, policymakers, and economists. The search for the roots of serious urban housing problems such as homelessness, abandonment, rent burdens, slums, and gentrification has traditionally focused on the poorest sector of the housing market. The findings set forth in this volume show that the roots of such problems lie in the relationships among different parts of the market—not solely within the lower-quality portion—though that is where problems are most dramatically manifested and housing reforms are myopically focused. The authors propose a new understanding of the market structure characterized by a closely interrelated array of quality submarkets. Their comprehensive models ground a unified theory that accounts for demand by both renters and owner occupants, supply by owners of existing dwellings, changes in the stock of housing due to conversions and new construction, and interactions across submarkets.

Theory, Evidence, and Policy

The Maze of Urban Housing Markets

Confidence was at its highest in the 1960s that governments could solve many of the country's urban problems by commissioning social science studies and being guided by their findings. Here 11 studies critically evaluate the three decades of such policy analysis in a wide range of urban policy arenas, including community development, transportation and land use, education, housing, family support and social welfare, drugs, and racial discrimination. They find mixed results in different areas: sometimes the system worked wonderfully, sometimes the studies were excellent but ignored, and sometimes the studies were conducted merely to support policy adopted for other reasons. No index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

George C. Galster

About

Books

Join the club