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The physical condition of an occupant's home represents a significant factor in determining the dweller's overall quality of life. This paper provides a statistical framework for measuring housing quality in an urban area through a standardized index. This index is constructed using principal component analysis, incorporating demographic, geographic, and economic factors from the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey. This metric allows for investigating differences in housing quality based upon ownership status. Analysis of the index demonstrates that renters face more housing quality issues than owners. Several of the index's input variables driving these differences were found to exhibit varying effects on housing quality over time, possibly due to events such as the 2008 financial crisis. Implementing this novel statistical framework, housing quality indices can be constructed for other cities to examine housing disparities and inform policies aimed at improving quality of life for urban residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across a diverse range of urban geographical contexts, the provision and governance of public spaces frequently generates conflicts of varying intensity involving urban inhabitants and urban authorities. A clear moral and philosophically based argument and evaluative framework is necessary for both critiquing and informing the positions that are taken in public space disputes. In this paper, we develop a model of socially just public space that could inform analysis of, and interventions in, these conflicts. In dialogue with the literatures on urban public space and on social and spatial justice, we offer five propositions about what makes for more just public space. The five propositions concern distributive justice, recognition, interactional justice and encounter, care and repair, and procedural justice. The application of these five propositions is exemplified through brief reflections on the politics of the street in New York City, and ‘broken windows’ style policing of graffiti. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]