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This paper was originally prepared as the keynote address for a 12 April 2003 Research Symposium "Understanding Isolation and Change in Urban Neighborhoods", sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The conference sponsors provided the paper's title and in that way suggested the central theme. As often happens, however, considerable license was taken in interpreting and implementing the brief. For example, the phrase 'spatial mismatch' is used in two ways. First, the paper examines the origins of the spatial mismatch concept that was the central focus of the author's 1964 and 1968 papers. These papers were concerned with the effects of housing market segregation/discrimination on the employment and earnings of Black Chicago and Detroit residents. The spatial mismatch concept was then broadened to include a number of other, perhaps more important, ways in which serious restrictions on the residential choices of Chicago and Detroit Black residents affected their welfare. These included the effects of housing market discrimination on housing prices, home-ownership and educational opportunities. Reflecting the two-way linkages between the author's research on racial discrimination and involvement in on-going policy debates and civil rights litigation, the discussion of these issues was imbedded in something of a personal history of his involvement in these areas in the 30 years following the publication of the original spatial mismatch papers. The paper ends with a discussion of the author's research during the past 10 years into what may be the most serious example of spatial mismatch and its negative impacts on Black welfare—the continued concentration of Black children in low-achieving inner-city schools and the impact of these patterns on the achievement of individual Black children. This research, which is based on data for Texas public schools, provides substantial evidence that continued Black segregation and the resulting concentration of Black children in low-achieving schools accounts for a large part of the Black-White achievement gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a series of articles on exclusionary land-use regulations in the U.S. Effects of land-use regulations on the cost of housing; Effects on housing supply; Contributions of the regulations to income and racial segregation within metropolitan areas; Impact on the spatial mismatch in the labor market for low-skilled workers.

Poverty remains a persistent problem in central cities across the US and the government's approach to measuring it is not without shortcomings. This paper applies recently developed innovations in poverty measurement and presents improved estimates of central-city poverty across time. A broader and more comprehensive income concept is employed to measure family resources and important distributional aspects of poverty are incorporated by using the Sen index. In general, Sen indexes for the central city are significantly reduced when comprehensive income is used to evaluate poverty. Motivating these changes are the substantial reductions that occur in the depth of poverty and the relative income inequality among poor central-city residents. Regionally, the results suggest that the elements of comprehensive income have their greatest impact on estimates of poverty in Southern central cities, while the central cities of the West are least affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the literature on sub-national income convergence relates to states and regions. This paper focuses upon metropolitan areas as the germane geographical units for studying income convergence. Evidence of metropolitan wage divergence, the opposite of convergence, is presented. A theoretical basis for wage divergence is found in endogenous growth models and in two-sector trade models. Cross-section regression equations are estimated in which the level and the growth of metropolitan wages are related to variables that the empirical evidence and the theory suggest may be important sources of wage divergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The skills mismatch and spatial mismatch perspectives are often presented as competing explanations of the spatial distribution of unemployment within metropolitan areas. This paper argues that the spatial mismatch hypothesis addresses some of the shortcomings of the skills mismatch perspective, while not denying the importance of skills mismatch. The development of the spatial mismatch hypothesis in the US is traced, before considering its relevance in the British context. A framework in which to conceptualise and reconcile skills mismatch and spatial mismatch within metropolitan areas is developed, incorporating the operation of local housing and labour markets as well as the role of commuting. The paper concludes by arguing that skills and spatial mismatches reinforce each other and that the concept of employability offers some potential to help understand how job searchers and employers make decisions in situations of skills and/or spatial mismatch. The implications for future research are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the expansion of knowledge-intensive industries in the US, along with intensifying focus on workforce development policy as an economic development strategy, occupations are increasingly being used as basic units of analysis in applied studies of urban and regional economies. An heretofore underappreciated component of occupation-based regional analysis is the need to understand relationships, similarities and dissimilarities among occupations themselves, so that they may be aggregated or grouped in theoretically and empirically meaningful ways. This paper lays out a conceptual framework and empirical approach to identifying knowledge-based occupation clusters, or groups of occupations that share the same broad knowledge characteristics. Following an application of the clusters to a comparison of labour pools in a selected 38 metropolitan economies, the paper discusses the clusters' general value for regional economic analysis, especially their utility as an intermediate step in applied industry cluster analyses where necessary regional occupation data are limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a review of some of the key articles and research examining the relationship between planning regulation and its impact on the housing market in the UK and the US. In both countries, demographic change coupled with economic growth has increased demand for housing units and in the UK, over 4 million new units are estimated to be needed by 2016. Given these pressures, the interaction of the planning system and the housing market is critical. The articles reviewed below mainly adopt a mainstream economics approach to modelling the impact of planning on housing markets. They are concerned with outcomes. An additional or alternative approach is provided by behavioural analyses of the relationship between planning and housing development. These enable the more complex interactions to come to light. This paper indicates the differences that exist between the UK and US planning approaches; however, in both countries, planning constraints are seen to raise price, reduce supply, increase density and, in the UK at least, reduce choice. However, planning is also seen to provide certainty and reduce risk. Of key interest is the price elasticity of supply of housing. Post-war estimates suggest a value for the long-run elasticity to be between 0 and 1 for the UK, and 6 to 13 for the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the race-based, neighbourhood projection hypothesis which holds that, in choosing neighbourhoods, households care less about present racial composition than they do about expectations about future neighbourhood conditions, such as school quality, property values and crime. Race remains relevant, however, since households tend to associate a growing minority presence with structural decline. Using a unique data-set that links households to their neighbourhoods, this paper estimates both exit and entry models and then constructs a simple simulation model that predicts the course of racial change in different communities. Doing so, the paper concludes that the empirical evidence is more consistent with the race-based projection hypothesis than with other common explanations for neighbourhood racial transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial mismatch hypothesis is that "Serious limitations on black residential choice, combined with the steady dispersal of jobs from central cities, are responsible for the low rates of employment and low earnings of Afro-American workers" (Kain, 1994, p. 371). Despite a wealth of related empirical studies, there has been little work formalising the hypothesis. This paper presents a trade-theoretic model, with three regions (downtown, suburbia and the rest of the world), four goods (a tradable home good, untraded services, a tradable foreign good and land), and two factors (skilled and unskilled workers). Blacks are constrained to live downtown but by incurring commuting costs can work in suburbia. Several exogenous changes are considered (for example a fall in transport costs between suburbia and the rest of the world) which may lead simultaneously to a fall in the downtown unskilled wage and to job suburbanisation, and which therefore provide a theoretical basis for the hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary. This paper investigates the scope for alleviating poverty among elderly home-owners in the US by means of reverse mortgages. A reverse mortgage is a loan secured against the home equity owned by the borrower. This loan does not require monthly repayment and the elderly borrower is allowed to use the home as a principal residence for as long as she wishes. We compute monthly payments that can be obtained by elderly home-owners under a reverse mortgage by simulating the tenure plan of the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) reverse mortgage product which is sponsored by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. This study utilises data from the National File of the American Housing Survey of 1991. We estimate that 621 820 elderly home-owners in poverty could be raised above the poverty line if they obtained a reverse mortgage under the HECM tenure plan. These households constitute 29 per cent of all poor elderly home-owners. There appears to be considerable scope for alleviating poverty among elderly home-owners through reverse mortgages. We estimate that the poverty rate of elderly households in occupied units (both renters and owners) can be reduced by three percentage points (from 17 per cent to 14 per cent) by means of reverse mortgages. It is estimated that if home-owners in poverty had obtained reverse mortgages in 1991, the poverty rate for all elderly persons that year, 12.4 per cent, would have reduced by 2.4 percentage points to 10 per cent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an account of recent urban change and policy initiatives in the US. The paper describes how processes of global change have impacted upon economic activity and social life in the US, leading to the decline and isolation of inner-city areas. The urban, housing and community development policies of the Clinton administration, which aim to enable these communities to rejoin the economic mainstream, are then discussed. These strategies include: tackling homelessness addressing the problems of distressed public housing communities; the expansion of affordable housing (with an emphasis on home-ownership); opening housing markets to all Americans regardless of race and ethnic origins; and, increasing the economic opportunities of inner-city populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driven by negative externalities from suburban sprawl, many states in the US have adopted comprehensive growth management legislation in an effort to regulate land development more directly. Most extant scholarship evaluating the effects of growth management programmes employs a design that averages growth management's effect across all of the growth management states. Yet, this approach largely ignores descriptive analyses of individual state growth management approaches which show large variation in both the methods and intensity of means by which states manage growth. This paper seeks to ascertain if differences in growth management intensity yield different evaluative outcomes. Analysis of panel data for nine growth management states using fixed effects regressions, across eight different model specifications, shows that only states with the strongest growth management intensity experience consistent success at reducing the expansion of urban land and increasing population densities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates historical changes in economic structure and the spatial distribution of jobs and commuting patterns during a period of consolidating suburban decentralisation in US cities. The analysis of selected US metropolitan areas is based on data drawn from the 1980 and 1990 PUMS (public use microdata samples). First, the paper compares changes in employment composition between regions and between two geographical sub-divisions in each of the metropolitan areas: the suburb and the central city. A diversity index is then measured for suburbs and central cities and an intertemporal comparison is made. Finally, changes in travel characteristics are discussed and analysed by industrial sector and geographical sub-division. The analysis shows a strong growth of suburban cities compared with central cities in each region, increased urbanisation economies in suburban cities and the dominance of suburb-to-suburb commuting. The historical pattern gives urban analysts and planners in Europe and elsewhere much to think about: in particular, the self-reinforcing nature of suburban agglomeration economies, the influence of growing suburban employment centres on commute patterns, the growth of centre-to-suburb commutes and the dominance of suburb-to-suburb commutes; and the ability of cities to reshape themselves as individual firms and households adopt strategies that lower the costs of transacting labour, services and all manner of commodities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has suggested that cohesion at the neighbourhood level may not translate into greater cohesion for the broader community and may even have detrimental effects. Employing a sample from a recently developed 'new urbanist' community within a southern US city, the paper simultaneously explores the determinants of perceived cohesion with the local neighbourhood and with the broader community. It is found that there is indeed a positive relationship between the two in this sample. However, the determinants of the two differ: while both strong and weak informal ties in the neighbourhood increase perceived neighbourhood cohesion, only weak ties foster perceived cohesion with the broader community. No effect is found of residents' structural positions within local networks on perceived cohesion beyond the effect of strong and weak ties. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the broader literature viewing the effects of bridging and bonding social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical and empirical arguments suggest that fear of violence will cause consumers, employees and entrepreneurs to alter their routine activities in areas that experience a surge in violent activity. This paper argues that understanding how businesses respond to violence has important implications for understanding community crime cycles and offers further evidence of how crime impacts the choices individuals make with regard to where they live, shop and work. Using newly available longitudinal business data and homicide data disaggregated to the ZIP code level, an examination is made of the impact of violence surges on the creation, destruction and growth of business establishments in five large US cities between 1987 and 1994. Controlling for pre-existing levels of violence, it is found that increased violence has the greatest consequences for service-related establishments in low-crime neighbourhoods. This finding is consistent with the notion that the fear of victimisation imposes additional indirect costs to society through its negative impact on local business establishments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficacy of the urban regime and growth machine concepts beyond the US remains a matter of considerable debate. Some argue that these frameworks retain considerable value so long as they are 'properly' applied and that recent concerns about the limits to these frameworks result from no more than their 'misapplication'. I critically examine this argument through a review of recent work on the mobilisation of business interests in British cities. The central claim is that, even when focused on the 'right' issues and questions, US frameworks quickly exhaust their explanatory capacity. In the context of a widening diversity of alternative approaches, I suggest that it is time to move squarely beyond growth coalition and regime accounts. The paper makes a number of suggestions for ways in which this new phase of theory building might proceed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides new evidence on the effects of impact fees on housing prices, using an inventory of single-family housing sale transactions in the 38 cities and towns within King County, Washington, for the period 1991-2000. Although the effect of impact fees on housing prices has been examined previously, earlier studies have been limited by methodological deficiencies. This paper examines the effect of impact fees on new housing and their differential effect on housing price based on the quality of housing, and finds that the effect of impact fees on the price of new housing is quite significant and elastic, raising new home prices by about 166 per cent of the amount of the fee. The increase is 358 per cent for the higher-quality homes and is statistically insignificant for the lower-quality homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implementation of post-disaster US federal assistance programmes for residential reconstruction and investigates the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics of places and access to residential assistance following the Northridge earthquake that hit Los Angeles in 1994. The paper also examines the effects of the distribution of assistance on long-term recovery outcomes. Findings suggest that areas with high levels of socially marginalised populations were at a disadvantage in accessing federal residential assistance. Findings also show that the long-term effects of the earthquake differed depending on levels of assistance relative to damage. Areas that received less assistance experienced losses in population and housing units. These findings indicate that post-disaster recovery programmes in the US do not adequately address the wide range of housing needs that emerge in the case of a major disaster in a large metropolitan area. Implications for post-disaster planning as well as for planning under everyday conditions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can socioeconomic factors seemingly explain variation in suicide rates at large-unit aggregate levels only due to an ecological fallacy? This is what Kunce and Anderson (2002) suggest based on fixed-effects estimation of US state suicide rates, in which they find little evidence that socioeconomic factors matter. This paper demonstrates that this result does not hold true for other large-unit aggregate levels in an analysis of suicide at the cross-national level. It is found that many socioeconomic factors have a statistically significant impact. It is concluded that sociological and economic theories explaining variation in suicide rates at the large-unit aggregate level with the help of aggregate socioeconomic factors cannot simply be dismissed because of an alleged ecological fallacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an empirical examination of the process of 'super-gentrification' in the Brooklyn Heights neighbourhood of New York City. This intensified regentrification is happening in a few select areas of global cities like London and New York that have become the focus of intense investment and conspicuous consumption by a new generation of super-rich 'financifiers' fed by fortunes from the global finance and corporate service industries. This latest resurgence of gentrification can be distinguished from previous rounds of revitalisation and poses important questions about the historical continuity of current manifestations of gentrification with previous generations of neighbourhood change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant portion of the literature on gentrification has implied, if not explicitly described, a racial dynamic associated with the process whereby White households replace Black households as neighbourhood incomes rise. However, this racial dimension to gentrification rules out the possibility that the neighbourhood transitions that are a part of gentrification could be sparked by middle- and upper-income Black households. This paper re-examines this view of gentrification by establishing if Black home-owners were a gentrifying influence in US cities from 1970 to 1990. Based on findings from previous case studies, a new scoring technique for identifying gentrifying neighbourhoods is used. Evidence is found that Black home-owners were a gentrifying influence in the 1970s, but not in the 1980s. Changes in housing market racial dynamics during the period are a possible explanation for the divergent results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an assessment is made of the extent to which proximity to 38 dispersed public housing sites opening in Denver during 1992-95 affected post-development levels and trends in neighbourhood crime rates. A new econometric specification incorporating pre- and post-controls for selection bias as well as spatial autocorrelation was employed to test for statistical relationships between the development of dispersed public housing sites and subsequent increases in various types of crime. The findings suggest that proximity to dispersed public housing was not associated with any post-development increase in reported crime of any type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands on the school finance literature by using a political fragmentation index to calculate how political power affects educational spending in Virginia, USA. The methodology allows the comparison of different political voices relative to each other and the consideration of the role of the distribution of political power. Political fragmentation is considered across several different dimensions, including race, age, income and political parties. Using a demand for local public goods model, it is found that, along with traditional demand variables, the interest-group pressures dominated by the primary beneficiaries (teachers and students) increase educational spending while higher income and a larger percentage of AfricanAmericans in the population reduce educational spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares Malaysia's Multimedia Super-corridor (MSC) and New York's Silicon Alley to assess whether state-led development of digital districts is a viable alternative to neo-liberal approaches. The changing nature of east Asia's developmental states as they adopt neo-liberal elements (such as venture capital) casts doubt on the idea that east Asian cities are 'embedded' in developmental frameworks. Using actor-network theory to conceptualise the nesting of cities as processes of 'translation', the paper examines how state frameworks in the US and Malaysia shaped the respective efforts of district entrepreneurs to weave together ideas, resources and relationships. The findings confirm actor-network theory's claim that the significance of a particular element depends on the network it becomes enmeshed in. In the case of Silicon Alley, neo-liberal regimes did not directly participate but promoted devices (such as venture capital, options) that enabled venture capitalists to bring together myriad enterpreneurs. In contrast, the Malaysian state, which is deemed a 'developmental hybrid', devised a comprehensive plan for the MSC and itself used devices such as venture capital to enrol participants. While Silicon Alley was a temporary base for circulating capital, the MSC effort is creating an enduring foundation for digital industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research in this paper focuses on the housing career during a household's life-course. The housing career is the sequence of housing states defined in terms of tenure and the quality/price of the dwellings that households occupy while they make parallel careers in family status and the job market. The research brings out, more than the literature on separate residential moves, that many households are in a stable housing state over long stretches of their life-course. Housing careers are notable for having a relatively simple structure and, in general, an upward trend in quality, price and tenure of the sequence of dwellings occupied. As expected, there is a close relationship between the type of housing career and a household's income and income growth. Regional variation in tenure composition and the price of the stock have a strong influence on the development of the housing careers in different regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land-use initiatives represent a potentially effective tool for coping with the kinds of mobility pattern that North American cities faced in the 1990s and still face in the present century. As fine-grained data about land use and travel activity become available, they provide the opportunity to improve our understanding of the linkage between land use and transport. This paper examines in detail the neighbourhood characteristics that could affect mode choice on the work and non-work tour. Neighbourhood characteristics include land use, network and accessibility-related characteristics which are quantified through the use of geographical information systems (GIS). Ultimately, such measures could be used in conjunction with detailed surveys of travel behaviour to specify, calibrate and use models of modal choice and residential choice that are more sensitive to the fine-grained spatial structure of neighbourhoods and transport corridors in metropolitan areas. Micro-level data for the Boston metro area, together with a 1991 activity survey of approximately 10 000 residents, provide a rich empirical basis for experimenting with relevant neighbourhood measures and for simulating the effects on travel behaviour. We find that spatial characteristics do affect mode choice, both for the relatively (spatially) restricted non-work tour and the work tour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution of the immigrant population reflects a dynamic system that evolves over time and differs by arrival cohort and national origin. Government policies, new information, employment opportunities, housing, racism or other cultural effects may be responsible for subsequent migrations and changes in the population distribution of the foreign-born. Using data from the 5 per cent Public Use Microdata Sample, 1990, this paper compares settlement patterns of immigrant arrival cohorts within metropolitan Chicago, filtered through the lens of Zelinksy and Lee's heterolocalism framework. Cohorts are defined based on period of arrival in the US and by age. The spatial geography associated with each arrival cohort is constructed with respect to areas of relative concentration within the metropolitan area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand why secession movements gained momentum in Los Angeles and what their effect will be on regional governance. A brief discussion of liberal theories of secession demonstrates that they cannot explain secession movements at the urban scale, as they are exclusively focused on cases of nationalist secession from a nation-state. Furthermore, liberal theories of secession offer normative arguments on the right to secede. Following a change in California legislation granting municipalities the right to secede, the secessionist debate in Los Angeles is not so much concerned with normative issues, but more with devising an effective and revenue-neutral process for secession. Using a threefold theoretical approach based on theories of secession, regulation theory and theories of state rescaling, and theories of social movements, this paper argues that the 'political opportunity structures' provided by globalisation and the prevalent neo-conservatism, might explain how secession movements in Los Angeles were able to mobilise large efforts to their cause. We hold that globalisation has forced cities to re-open the debate on size and governance. Secession movements have been very successful in raising public awareness on the issue. Their strength lies mostly in their populism, well in tune with the prevalent wave of neo-conservatism. These movements use arguments well grounded in Southern California's complex history of regional fragmentation and consolidation. As a social project of the Right, they offer secession as a potential 'solution' to the problems of urban governance in the age of globalisation, in a context of simultaneous consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1994/95, the economic crisis in Mexico strongly affected not only the Mexican economy but also the everyday lives of the Mexican population. The weaker sectors of the economy and the poorer segments of the Mexican population were particularly affected. This paper attempts to link these global trends to a specific location: Mexico's fourth-largest city, Puebla. In order better to understand the relationship between international developments, like a financial crisis, and local issues, like employment and the household economy, relevant aspects of the political and social spheres must be considered. This relationship will be discussed on a theoretical basis employing regulation theory. The paper proposes that regulation is not only important at the macro level (government, parties and trade unions), but also at the micro level (households). Puebla serves as an example useful for portraying the conditions of human labour and the strategies of survival of people as 'micro regulation' in a Mexican urban environment. The households suffered greatly during the economic crisis in Mexico because the major actors in the government and the administration did not support the people very effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Households supply about three-quarters of US rental housing. The paper examines the real estate investment decision and the proportion of wealth invested in real estate. Hypotheses drawn primarily from the real estate finance literature about the role of wealth, expected inflation, human capital, income tax rates, race, health, risk aversion and inheritance are tested against data from the Health and Retirement Study. Wealth has a powerful non-linear effect on ownership of real estate, but ownership is negatively associated with human capital. Marginal tax rates, race and property gifts affect real estate investment; poor health, risk aversion and expected inflation do not seem to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In US municipalities, petitions for exception to the zoning code are thought to elicit 'not in my backyard' or 'nimby' responses from neighbourhood organisations concerned about potential negative externalities. This paper brings qualitative and quantitative data to bear on a theory arguing that municipal zoning boards provide incentives over time for neighbourhood organisations to come to consensus with developers. The findings suggest that neighbourhood organisations have greater success influencing zoning boards to deny zoning exception petitions after establishing reputations for coming to agreement with developers in the past. Further, neighbourhood groups that choose more oppositional strategies tend to face more noxious zoning petitions in the neighbourhood in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses US Census Bureau data from 1990 to identify employment centres in the five counties surrounding Cleveland, Ohio. The results indicate the extent to which the former dominance of downtown Cleveland has been eroded by the growth of suburban employment centres. Location quotient analysis is used to identify the specialisations of each of the employment centres. The results illustrate the extent to which the changes in urban form identified by researchers examining cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago have become the norm for cities throughout the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper develops a residential supply function for approved fixed-rate mortgages in US commercial banks as a first step to explain differences in origination patterns among groups of borrowers. It models the lender's decision to offer the borrower a risk-adjusted loan bundle relative to the terms on the credit application. The model includes multiple dependent variables that are risk-adjusted simultaneously to reflect accurately the loan officer's decision. Canonical correlation factor analysis is used to capture the lender's simultaneous decision. The loan-price ratio and contract interest rate are the most important variables in the lender supply function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many large US metropolitan areas, the San Francisco Bay Area has experienced rapid suburban employment growth since 1980, much of it concentrated in sub-centres. This paper shows that, contrary to the co-location hypothesis, employment decentralisation has not been associated with shorter average commute distances or durations in the Bay Area. Combining statistics on shifts in modal splits and average vehicle occupancy levels reveals that parallelling the region's sub-centring trend has been a substantial increase in average commute vehicle miles travelled (VMT) per employee between 1980 and 1990. The largest increases occurred in the fastest-growing and most remote suburban centres. Using decomposition analysis, we found that increasing commute distances contributed the most to rising commute VMT per employee, and the distance factor had proportionately the greatest effect on rising commute VMT rates in the most peripheral work centres. Since shifts in commute VMT per employee are thought to be strongly associated with transport externalities, we conclude that the social and environmental implications of the Bay Area's regional growth trends deserve more public policy attention than given to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continued advances in information and communications technology are fundamentally changing the structure of the workplace and the organisation of work. Temporary work and self-employment are increasing, while job tenure is declining. This paper examines how these changes may affect both commuting patterns and metropolitan form. The growing number of workers who do not have a long-term attachment to a specific employer are termed 'contingent workers'. Using 1990 Public Use Micro Sample data for the Los Angeles region, the paper compares the commuting and location patterns of contingent and non-contingent workers. Results are quite mixed: residential location patterns do not differ significantly across worker categories, but commute length varies by category, with the self-employed having the shortest commutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary. This paper applies geographical information system (GIS) techniques and a piecewise, non-linear model-spline functions-to analyse empirically the relationship between the jobs-housing ratio and urban commuting patterns in terms of vehicle miles travelled (VMT) and trip length. A dynamic buffering process in GIS is developed to measure the jobs-housing ratio within floating catchment areas of a 5-7 mile (8.05-11.27 km) radius as opposed to pre-defined and arbitrary jurisdictional boundaries. This study found a non-linear relationship between the jobs-housing ratio and VMT and trip length in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area. Only when the jobs-housing ratio is less than 1.2 or larger than 2.8 do VMT vary noticeably as the jobs-housing ratio changes. Marginal changes in VMT are small when the jobs-housing ratio is between 1.2 and 2.8. Since most areas in the study region have a job-household ratio between 1.2 and 2.8, any changes in the jobs-housing ratio will have little impact on VMT. Consequently, hardly any land use policy changes could affect the jobs-housing ratio enough to produce a significant change in VMT per capita, and jobs-housing policy will have limited impact on VMT at the regional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary. This study analyses trends in US male black-white earnings gaps by sub-metropolitan residence. Large suburban earnings gaps existed in 1979; however, central city gaps exhibited the largest increases during the 1980s. The increases are decomposed into changes in measurable characteristics, changes in the prices of measurable characteristics, changes in discrimination and/or unobservable skills, and changes in white earnings inequality. Changes in measured characteristics and their prices, and changes in inequality account for little of the increases in central city gaps. Either labour market discrimination worsened or racial differences in unobservable skills widened. A review of the literature suggests that this paper's evidence is more consistent with a worsening in discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing quality has improved dramatically for most low-income households, but they are paying much larger shares of their income for it. Many discussions of the bottom of the market focus on either the rising costs (the 'bad' news) or the rising quality (the 'good' news). Both points of view have some merit. This paper takes a positivist approach to the question: what's happening to the bottom of the housing market. We use a variety of indicators to look at whether the supply of low-cost units has fallen. We then focus on whether this dwindling supply reflects a market failure. If the market for low-income housing is indeed failing, we would observe: relatively high prices per unit of housing services provided by low-quality housing; obstructions to the supply of low-cost housing, which arises largely from filtering; and high vacancy rates. We find evidence of market failure in some markets but not in others. Finally, we focus on one possible source of market failure-excessive regulation-to see whether it is a common thread across those markets that have difficulty producing low-cost housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates some of the impacts associated with a metropolitan university. The impact of the university in the metropolitan arena is conceptualised as a series of backward (expenditure) and forward (knowledge-related) linkages. These relationships can be both positive and negative and can operate in both the short and long terms. Their correct identification requires that the counter-factual situation of the area without the university be adequately specified. On the basis of a case study of the impacts associated with Northwestern University on the Chicago metropolitan area, some of these issues are highlighted. The results emphasise the magnitude of the university expenditure links with the metropolitan economy and the importance of scale when comparing these with more localised negative impacts. The paper concludes with some public policy implications relating to the role of the university as a non-profit organisation competing with local businesses and as an export base sector in the metropolitan economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deterioration of public capital in the US has been reported to be in crisis since the mid 1970s. There is an argument which insists that the deterioration is caused by the shortage of expenditure on the maintenance of public capital. The budget allocation for maintenance is not a technological problem. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the following three issues by describing both local and central government behaviour. First, the optimal conditions for the allocation of maintenance expenditure are examined. Secondly, the impact of the differences in preference of residents for public capital used for amenity and maintenance is examined. Finally, we examine the condition for the case where provision of subsidy from the central government to a local government creates a large loss of efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of space and race/ethnicity on labour force participation outcomes among minority and immigrant youth in the Los Angeles metropolitan areas. This research contributes to the spatial mismatch literature by analysing the differences between firstand second-generation immigrants in addition to exploring the role of race and job accessibility on the likelihood of working. It does so by comparing the employment status of comparable youth (16-21 years of age) who reside in central cities, inner-ring suburbs and outer-ring suburbs using 2000 Census PUMS data. Finally, the decision to attend school and to work is modelled in a bivariate probit framework to discover how the correlation across decisions may change the estimated impact of race and space on employment. The results of this study suggest that both space and race play a role in the probability that a youth will work, but that the decision to attend school does not influence the estimated impact of space and race on employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has long identified racial differences in perceptions of criminal injustice. Given that race is confounded with neighbourhood context, it remains unclear the extent to which individual or neighbourhood attributes explain racial differences in these perceptions. This paper advances research on racial differences in perceptions of unjust police practices in the US by relying on a survey of 3000 residents in 53 Cincinnati neighbourhoods. A propensity score weighting approach is used to identify a model by which Whites and Blacks living in similar neighbourhood environments can be compared with each other. The results demonstrate that race remains a significant predictor of perceptions of unjust police practices, even after taking into account the ecological structuring of neighbourhoods and their perceived environmental context. These findings suggest that racial consciousness with regard to perceived injustices by the police is not purely a condition of personal or structural disadvantage. The implications of these findings for police reform efforts to mend minority relations in urban cities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, public policy-makers in the US have renewed support for mixed-income housing development as a means towards inner-city neighbourhood revitalisation and poverty amelioration. Yet, research to date finds that, while these mixed-income developments have promoted neighbourhood revitalisation, they have accomplished less for people in these areas who live in poverty. This paper theorises about the conditions that may in principle lead to these alternative outcomes. The approach emphasises the continuity in goal sets and capacities among four sets of urban actors - investors, local government, non-profits and community residents. To examine extant theory and an alternative model, case study evidence is offered from two comparable cities with different mixed-income initiatives and different configurations of goals and capacities among the four stakeholder groups. It is found that place-based outcomes (i.e. neighbourhood revitalisation) from mixed-income efforts hinge on the continuity of goals and effective capacities of investors, government and non-profits, but not community residents. It is also found that, with or without goal consonance and capacity, existing residents are relatively underserved by mixed-income initiatives while other stakeholders realise a variety of benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines sociospatial issues for two forms of school choice that are popular in the US, magnet schools and charter schools. It argues that geographical analyses can be taken up to expand understandings of such issues as the spatial organisation of race in public school choice plans, how rapidly increasing immigrant student populations impact classroom space in urban districts and parents' everyday challenges managing the distances between home and school. The geographical analysis of data from a two-year ethnographic study of a large school district in the Los Angeles metropolitan region found that, by offering choice to those who are unable to accomplish choice unless they have necessary resources such as time and supports such as transport, districts may inadvertently be perpetuating the historical inequities and inequalities that have stubbornly embedded themselves into the sociospatial relations of urban schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many agree that increasing physical activity will improve public health. This paper reports on empirical findings on the relationship between the density of the residential environment, walking and total physical activity. Using multiple objective and self-reported measures for 715 participants in the US, and improved techniques for sampling and analysis, it finds that density is associated with the purpose of walking (travel, leisure) but not the amount of overall walking or overall physical activity, although there are sub-group differences by race/ethnicity. Overall, higher densities have many benefits in terms of efficient use of infrastructure, housing affordability, energy efficiency and possibly vibrant street life. But higher densities alone, like other built environment features, do not appear to be the silver bullet in the public health campaign to increase physical activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional cost-of-living differences affect the quality of life that individuals and families experience in different metropolitan areas. Yet, lack of metropolitan cost-of-living indexes has left analysts without the ability to make accurate cost-of-living adjustments to measures of economic wellbeing. This paper evaluates alternative approaches to cost-of-living measurement and then applies the ACCRA cost-of-living index to various US metropolitan area datasets, including median household income, the number of people living in poverty, and family eligibility for the Free and Reduced Price School Lunch and Head Start programmes to illustrate some of the policy impacts of adjusting economic indicators of wellbeing for geographical cost-of-living differentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a comparative case study of residential segregation in three US ‘new towns’. New towns are distinct from older suburban and other master-planned communities in four regards: larger size, mixed use of land, existence of a master developer and phased planning. The study investigates whether the three new towns, which are considered highly successful in the field of urban planning, have broken the older patterns of racial diversity and residential segregation. Based on 2000 Census data, it is found that these new towns are much less segregated overall than their surrounding metropolitan areas and suburbs, although each community indicates different patterns of racial diversity and integration. By contrasting each community's planning visions and practices with the levels of racial diversity and segregation, the paper explores the contributions of urban planning to residential integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically evaluates the traditional metropolitan model of an urban core and a homogeneous suburban ring. Using place data from the US Bureau of the Census from 1980 to 2000, it examines 1639 suburbs from a sample of 13 metropolitan areas in the US. Poor, manufacturing, Black and immigrant suburbs are identified to show that metropolitan areas are less a simple dichotomous structure and more a mosaic of very diverse suburban places. The results suggest the need for more subtle frameworks in order better to understand the structure of contemporary metropolitan areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the discussion of the spatial Gini index proposed by Dawkins. Two spatial Gini indices, a nearest neighbour index and a monocentric index, are calculated for a sample of 237 US metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). For this sample of MSAs, an exploratory analysis is conducted to determine the relationship between the two spatial Gini indices and other traditional measures of residential segregation. Spatial segregation patterns across US census regions and selected US metropolitan areas are also examined. The analysis suggests that the Gini index provides a useful basis for a multidimensional investigation of residential segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite earlier attempts to evaluate the consequences of urban containment policy adoption, the transport implications of these policies have been overlooked. This paper examines the impact that containment policies have on population density and vehicle miles travelled per capita. An empirical analysis is conducted, relying on a fixed-effects model for panel data for the largest 25 metropolitan areas in the US during the 1982–94 time-period. Because the outcomes are endogenously related, instrumental variable regression is used to test hypotheses about the effect of the presence and age of containment policies on travel. The findings suggest that local containment policies and state-level involvement in enabling or mandating growth management are associated with higher population density and more miles travelled. The results uncover unanticipated relationships of containment policies and travel outcomes, and underscore the importance of a co-ordinated strategy to mitigate some of the potential travel consequences of containment policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]