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This paper explores the long-term effects of Rio de Janeiro's slum upgrading, a key policy instrument of municipal housing since the 1990s, and an essential reference for housing initiatives worldwide. From a theoretical stance, this paper builds on the Political Sociology of Public Policy Instruments (PPI) and actor–network theory (ANT). The paper argues that Rio's slum upgrading instrumentation, that is, its constitution and use, has been key to the various housing policy oscillations over the past three decades. It also contends that this instrumentation contributed to the depoliticization of the municipal housing policy through the fostering of a 'community of practice' centred on slum upgrading, formed by a wide range of state and non-sate actors, and based on a technical rationality. This community and its practices have weakened the political control over Rio's housing policy in the past decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New energy technologies present opportunities for low-carbon housing but also significant upfront costs for house owners. Due to the long service life of such technologies, market valuation impacts on the feasibility of such investments. Yet, existing evidence on the market valuation of energy investments in private housing is inconclusive. Furthermore, despite significant policy efforts, energy performance certificates remain ineffective. This paper addresses these gaps with a study of real estate agents and the use of market devices, such as tools, databases, classification schemes, inspection protocols and market practices. Our analytical framework builds on the sociology of markets, actor network theory and pragmatist theories of valuation in order to highlight the material and discursive assemblages and arrangements that intervene in the construction of markets. Drawing on empirical evidence from Finland, the results point to asymmetries in market devices and valuation practices that disfavour energy investments compared to the other key quality attributes of housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the relationship between the ethnic concentration of a neighbourhood and multiple integration outcomes of ethnic minority groups in Dutch society. The data used are drawn from two large-scale surveys: the Survey Social Position and Use of Provisions by Ethnic Minorities (2002 and 2003), which provides information on the four largest immigrant groups (Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese and Antilleans) as well as five important refugee groups in the Netherlands, and the Attitudes towards Minorities Survey (2002), which contains extensive information on the indigenous majority. The paper examines whether ethnic concentration in neighbourhoods influences indicators of socio-cultural integration, i.e. inter-ethnic contacts, language proficiency and mutual stereotypical attitudes. The analyses show that social contacts between majority and minority groups are less frequent in ethnically concentrated neighbourhoods. However, a degree of mixing has a positive influence on the actual orientation of the indigenous Dutch towards ethnic minorities. The analyses also reveal that in neighbourhoods experiencing a sudden influx of non-Western citizens, inter-ethnic attitudes tend to be more negative. Social contacts play a mediating role in this relationship. These contacts are also important for a good command of the Dutch language among members of ethnic minority groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the significant characteristics of many poor neighbourhoods is that the schools which serve them are characterised by poor performance in terms of attainment and other measures. This feature is seen as critical in the reinforcement of disadvantage, its transmission between generations, and as a barrier to social integration. Government policies in the UK have increasingly targeted improved school standards and performance, while other policies on urban regeneration and housing may interact with this issue. This paper examines the particular role of homeownership tenure alongside the other factors (notably poverty) which affect school attainment. After reviewing existing literature it presents new analyses of attainment based on linked pupil, school and small area-level datasets for selected areas in both England and Scotland. This provides some evidence to support the contention that homeownership has an additional effect on school attainment, beyond that explained by poverty and other associated variables, although there is some uncertainty about how separable these effects are at school or neighbourhood levels. It also points out the significant role of changing tenure mix in housing regeneration in transforming the overall profile of neighbourhoods and schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an editorial entitled 'Living Room' for the journal Urban Geography (Vol. 25, 2004) Susan Smith made reference to the 'tired state of housing studies'. Smith argued that the 'post-social turn' in sociology and cultural geography has largely gone unnoticed by housing researchers and because of this, the radical implications of its epistemology have yet to be explicitly addressed. This post-social turn, elsewhere referred to as Science and Technology Studies, Actor Network theory, feminist technoscience and post-humanism, calls on researchers to decentre the human as the nucleus of social life and in turn recognize the significance of non-human actors (e.g. animals, technology and material artefacts) within social analysis. While in recent years housing scholars have begun to embrace post-structuralist accounts of social life, including discursive and constructionist theories, there has only been limited engagement with post-social assumptions and concepts. In view of this gap, this paper reviews recent developments in post-social theory with a specific focus on the implications of this approach for housing studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies attempting to estimate the relative importance of family, neighborhood, residential stability, and homeownership status characteristics of childhood environments on young adult outcomes have: (1) treated these variables as though they were independent, and (2) were limited in their ability to control for household selection effects. This study offers advances in both areas. First, it treats the key explanatory variables above as endogenously determined (sometimes simultaneously so). Second, to deal both with this endogeneity and the selection problem, instrumental variable estimates are computed for how childhood average values of neighborhood poverty rate relate to fertility, education and labor market outcomes in later life. The paper analyzes data from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) that are matched with Census tract data, thereby permitting documentation of a wide range of family background and contextual characteristics. For children born between 1968 and 1974, data are analyzed on their first 18 years and various outcomes in 1999 when they are between 25 and 31 years of age. The application of instrumental variables substantially attenuates the apparent neighborhood effects. Nevertheless, support is found for the proposition that cumulative neighborhood poverty effects averaged over childhood have an independent, non-trivial causal effect on high school attainment and earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using sibling data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics linked with US Census data, this paper examines the intergenerational nature of neighborhood quality. It is hypothesized that the quality of where one resides as an adult is a function of one's childhood neighborhood through the conditioning and constraining of adult residential choice. Further, it is posited that this relationship varies by race and is stronger for those living in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, especially blacks. Descriptively, the study finds that childhood neighborhood conditions of black and white children are vastly different. Few whites live in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, and few blacks live in the most advantaged neighborhoods. The sibling fixed effect regression results confirm the hypothesis that childhood neighborhood disadvantage has negative effects on adult neighborhood quality for those living in the lowest quality, race-specific neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the policy of promoting 'mixed communities' in the UK context. It describes the various policy instruments available for the pursuance of this goal and sets out the assumed benefits and underlying mechanisms intended to deliver beneficial outcomes, especially for disadvantaged areas. It goes on to analyse the effects of housing tenures and of housing tenure mix upon the incidence of serious problems and of the desire for local service improvements within neighbourhoods in England, using the Survey of English Housing. The findings indicate that the level of social renting is a more important influence upon neighbourhood conditions than the degree of tenure mixing. Furthermore, the findings provide more support for tenure dispersal policies than for tenure dilution strategies such as promoting a modest degree of owner occupation on social housing estates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What impact do neighbourhoods have on social mobility? For years, this question has received widespread international attention in scholarly debates and within society at large. This paper seeks to contribute to this discussion by presenting the results of an investigation into the relationship between household social mobility and the composition of the residential environment. The analyses are based on an extensive empirical longitudinal study conducted in the Netherlands. The most remarkable conclusion is that, in the Dutch context, the environment has only a modest influence on the social mobility of households with a weak economic position. It was found that the chance of a household living purely on welfare benefits at the beginning of the study period to escape the 'welfare trap' was barely dependent on the number of similarly challenged households in the immediate vicinity. Interestingly, the environment proved to have a more powerful effect on the social mobility of households with a stronger economic position. The probability that households with at least one paid job at the beginning of the research would still have a job at the end clearly decreases as the share of benefit-dependent households in the neighbourhood rises. A possible explanation for this is that for the first category (weak starting position) the negative effect of their own welfare situation is far more determinative for their future prospects than the compo sition of their environment. Because these negative individualistic conditions are absent for the second category (stronger starting position), environmental factors may play a relatively larger role. Another interpretation is that area-based policies are not just targeting the areas with bigger problems more intensively, but especially the long-term unemployed in these areas, and not so much the short-term unemployed (those who had a job at the start of the research period and lost the job afterwards). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the effects of micro-level contexts on human development and socio-economic 'opportunity' run the risk of excluding important factors, including the dynamism of those contexts and the effects of globalisation on local places. Comparative analyses are particularly demanding, since varied elements of an 'opportunity structure' may operate, some directly and others indirectly, to affect behaviour and outcomes of interest. This paper connects concerns about local place effects on human life to the larger global conversation about increased social inequality and sharper economic competition among localities, in effect, addressing sorting at macro, inter-local, and intra-local levels. The European studies presented in this volume are discussed, and a typology of interventions (actions to re-shape local place effects) is proposed for further debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While financial regulation became highly contested in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the specifics of such regulation is usually debated among professionals, in specialized fora. This article analyses an exception to this; the debate on the loan-to-value ratio regulation introduced in Norway in 2010. Newspaper articles are analysed, using Boltanski & Thevenot's pragmatic perspective on how actors legitimize their arguments and critique. Unlike other critical approaches (i.e., critical discourse analysis) this perspective focuses on actors own critical capacity and it is argued that the approach is useful in analyzing re-politicizing efforts of social actors. The main finding is that most arguments opposing the regulation are based in the civic "regime of justification", while arguments supporting the regulation are based in the industrial regime of justification. Few arguments enact the market regime as justification. The article discusses reasons why the regulation has not been repelled, despite the widespread criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one on the plan to reduce the economic segregation in the U.S. neighborhood and another on the aspect of neighborhood socioeconomic environment.