David H. Kaplan

Cities Destroyed (Again) For Cash: Forum on the U.S. Foreclosure Crisis

In 2008, there will be at least 2.5 million new foreclosures in the United States. Record levels of mortgage delinquency, default, and foreclosure are causing widespread hardship in cities and suburbs across America, and causing repeated destabilization of global credit and investment markets. In this Forum, six housing specialists unravel the complex connections between urban geography, subprime lending, and foreclosure. Although a wide variety of view-points are represented, three common threads are evident. First, foreclosures are tightly linked to the lax underwriting standards and aggressive business practices of the subprime mortgage market. Second, the subprime-foreclosure linkage is a reflection of the steady deregulation of U.S. financial markets and the promotion of homeownership as the cornerstone of national housing policy. Third, deregulated mortgage market segmentation has created uneven new geographies of debt, risk, and default—superimposed atop existing landscapes of old-fashioned exclusionary discrimination. Low-income and racially marginalized neighborhoods, once redlined and excluded from mainstream credit markets, were at the center of the profitable wave of subprime abuse and equity extraction during the long housing boom, and are now at the center of the long, slowly unfolding catastrophe of the U.S. foreclosure crisis.

THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF URBAN ETHNIC ECONOMIES

Most studies of the economic activity of ethnic and immigrant groups have been conducted with little regard to their spatial conditions and consequences. At the same time, geographic concentration or clustering of residences and businesses is often cited as a significant element in the formation of ethnic economies. This paper argues that spatial location may operate as a defined resource in enhancing the prospects of ethnic businesses. Specifically, it examines how the geographical concentration of residences or the clustering of businesses may operate to incubate beginning businesses, foster linkages between businesses, increase the opportunities for the establishment of additional businesses, and serve as an economic and cultural focus for the ethnic community. The paper then speculates on how the spatial patterns generated by ethnic economic activity will vary depending on the type of resources utilized, the sectoral composition of the ethnic economy, and the maturity of the economy.

An Analysis of the Relationship Between Housing Foreclosures, Lending Practices, and Neighborhood Ecology: Evidence from a Distressed County

Residential foreclosures increased sharply during the 1990s and in the first years of the twenty-first century. These foreclosures have profound impacts on the households and neighborhoods involved. Although foreclosures occur everywhere, the geography of foreclosures displays a pattern tied to a metropolitan areas social, fiscal, and economic geography. We examine these correspondences as they exist within Summit County (Akron), Ohio, between 2001 and 2003. Foreclosures themselves often result from unfortunate financial events that can affect any household, but we found that the geography of foreclosures corresponds primarily to Summit Countys racial distribution, above and beyond any correspondence with income levels and housing fiscal stress. There also exists a clear coincidence of foreclosures with subprime lending, itself associated with Summit Countys racial patterns. Concentrations of foreclosures in particular neighborhoods can be tremendously harmful to the social and economic health of the neighborhood. These comparisons help us to better understand the neighborhood ecology of foreclosure rates and subprime lending.

RESEARCH IN ETHNIC SEGREGATION I: CAUSAL FACTORS

As a topic of study, segregation is both controversial and complex. Segregation is often seen to mark a failure of assimilation and a process that spatially victimizes certain minority groups. Eliminating segregation is a normative goal in many societies hoping to end the division of their urban areas on the basis of race and ethnicity. Research is often marshaled to uncover how segregation develops and how it may be mitigated. A second area of controversy involves the construction of the categories upon which segregation is measured. Current social scientific research articulates how racial and ethnic categories are formed and how these categorizations are then reified. The classification of some groups as “racial” and others as “ethnic” affirms the power of categorizations and the ascription of difference to groups of people (Boal, 2000). The basis by which we measure segregation often depends on categories delineated by official statistical agencies (see Berry and Henderson, 2002; Forest, 2002). The U.S. Census defines “racial categories,” ethnic categories based on Hispanic status, and categories based on ancestry data. Other countries officially designate groups on the basis of religion or nationality or choose not to distinguish some groups at all. Any study of segregation involves a group in a context. Most research focuses on one group/context dyad but some studies are more comparative. Groups vary considerably, not only in their cultural makeup but also in the financial, human, and other resources they possess. Context generally refers to a place and accordingly accounts for a wide variety of factors relating to history, culture, economic opportunity, and the political state. In any event, the group-context relationship ensures that the potential for variation is enormous. This progress report is the first of three dealing with segregation research in geography. We have decided to divide our overview of segregation into the factors that produce it, the varied meanings ascribed to it, and the manifold consequences of group separation. In this first report, we examine research related to the causes of segregation. The second report will focus more explicitly on the multiple meanings ascribed to segregation and the relationship between segregation and ethnic identity. The third report will look at the consequences of segregation.

Research in Ethnic Segregation II: Measurements, Categories and Meanings

The issue of spatial segregation, especially inasmuch as it involves ethnic and racial groups, has generated a tremendous amount of controversy. It has also spurred numerous studies across many social science disciplines. Geographers have long been involved in both measuring and explaining segregation. This makes sense considering that segregation is a primarily spatial phenomenon that often examines how specifically defined groups come to occupy distinct places. Non-geographers have also examined segregation, with many of them asking essentially geographic questions. For these reasons, we feel that it is appropriate to survey the status of current research in the field of segregation. This progress report is the second of three dealing with segregation research in geography and related disciplines. We separate our overview into three broad sectors: (1) the factors that produce segregation, discussed in Kaplan and Woodhouse (2004); (2) the measurement, categorization, and meanings of segregation, outlined in this current progress report; (3) and the consequences of segregation, which will be discussed in the third and last report next year. While these themes can and do overlap, we feel this is the best way to organize the current literature. What emerges most out of the current set of readings is the extent to which segregation is a contingent phenomenon. The meaning of segregation is dictated by the types of individuals, the political and social milieu, and the history of the region. Each country carries its own freight in regard to race, ethnicity, nationalism, and social status. All of these define how segregation is categorized, measured, and evaluated. We attempt to accomplish a few things in structuring this progress report. Our first goal is to observe how segregation is measured. Many years ago, Duncan and Duncan (1955) derived an index of dissimilarity as a way to empirically measure segregation, rather than relying on naive conceptions. Since then, the tools of measurement have become more sophisticated and many segregation studies now report on a variety of measures. Geographic Information Systems have furthered our ability to understand segregation patterns and render possible analyses that would have been extraordinarily labor intensive just a few years ago. Our second goal is to examine how segregation can be categorized, according to the groups involved as well as the patterns and processes of

Scaling ethnic segregation: causal processes and contingent outcomes in Chinese residential patterns

This paper advances a contingent perspective of residential segregation that recognizes it as a universal phenomenon of residential differentiation, yet one that results from different causal processes and which results in different spatial outcomes. The analytical separation of groups, contexts and scale is key to understanding the nature of segregation, i.e., what it signifies to the group and to the host society. We argue that segregation is created and maintained by different choices and constraints occurring across dimensions of production, reproduction and consumption. Spatial outcomes vary considerably, and may be arrayed in regard to the permanence of segregation, whether it facilitates identity maintenance, and whether segregation itself empowers or marginalizes the ethnic population. To demonstrate our approach, we analyze the segregation experiences of Chinese ethnics. Our argument is organized around the global, national and local scales at which causal processes shape the Chinese experience of segregation.

Conflict and compromise among borderland identities in northern Italy

Borderlands are dominated by the interplay, overlap and competition of larger national identities. This paper examines the interaction of separate national, regional and local identities in two borderland regions of Northern Italy: the Alto-Adige/Suudtirol region and the Julian region (which includes the city of Trieste). The main argument is that the histories of these two borderland regions have rendered a mixture of incompatible identities. While these identities continue to rival one another, there is a possibility that changes in ethnic attitudes and macro-developments, including the strengthening of the European Union, may allow for the creation of a distinct borderland identity. This identity would exist in conjunction with the identities that exist at larger and smaller spatial scales.

GOING ONLINE WITHOUT EASY ACCESS: A TALE OF THREE CITIES

ABSTRACT: Building on a national study that showed that concentrated poverty matters for the “digital divide,” this research compares the influence of the neighborhood-level context in three cities that vary in racial composition and income. We use a 2005 random digit-dialed survey of respondents in Northeast Ohio communities, and find unexpectedly that residents in areas of concentrated poverty demonstrate efforts to go online despite lacking home or work access. We analyze the results using regression models that include contextual “buffers” that create a unique geography for each respondent within a half-kilometer radius. Respondents who live in areas with a high percentage of African Americans or college graduates are more likely to go online even if they lack convenient Internet access, although the percentage of college graduates has a greater effect. At the neighborhood level, race and education influence the context for technology use.

How geography shapes National Identities

Geography is an intrinsic part of national identities, and the contributions to this journal have reflected this throughout its existence. In this essay, we discuss how geography has shaped National Identities in particular ways. Several of the journals articles have examined how would-be nationalists form a geographical image of the prospective nation in order to make it real or how they have turned various landscape elements into national icons. Other articles have specifically examined the vital role of geographical scale in mediating between national conceptions, subnational movements, supranational ideas, and globalization. Finally we look at those essays that specifically focus on the role of maps in constructing, displaying, and propagandizing national identity.

Placing immigrant identities

In this afterword to our special issue on immigrant identity and place, we explore the importance of place and context in forming immigrant identity, as well as the various ways in which immigrants make places. Discussions of immigrant adaptations often just consider reception at the national scale, whereas immigrants move into particular cities and towns. This article details some of the different ways that immigrants interact with their places, how the process of immigration introduces hybrid identities, and the differences in the immigrant experience by gender, status, and color.