Thomas W. Sanchez

Transit Mobility, Jobs Access and Low-income Labour Participation in US Metropolitan Areas

While policy-makers assert that increased public transit mobility can positively affect employment status for low-income persons, there is little empirical evidence to support this theory. It is generally assumed that public transit can effectively link unemployed, car-less, persons with appropriate job locations—hence the call for more public transit services to assist moving welfare recipients to gainful employment. Thus far, the available evidence is anecdotal, while general patterns of transit access in relationship to labour participation remain relatively unexplored. This analysis examines whether increased transit access is associated with the case status (employment status) of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients in the Atlanta, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Milwaukee, Wisconsin ; and Portland, Oregon metropolitan areas. Individual TANF recipient location data, transit route/stop data and employment location data were used in limited dependent variable regression analyses to predict the employment status of TANF recipients. The results of this analysis indicate that access to fixed-route transit and employment concentrations had virtually no association with the employment outcomes of TANF recipients in the six selected metropolitan areas.

Security versus Status? A First Look at the Census’s Gated Community Data

For most people, the term gated communities conjures up images of exclusive developments with fancy homes and equally fancy lifestyles. Much of the popular and academic literature on gated communities promotes this view. Yet the common perception of gated communities as privileged enclaves turns out to be only partly correct based on our analysis of the first ever census survey of these places. There are gated communities composed of mostly White homeowners with high incomes that have a secure main entry—the kind of classic gated community in the public mind. But there are also gated communities that are inhabited by minority renters with moderate incomes. We expected that this dichotomy reflects a divide between gated communities, one based on status versus one motivated by concern for security. Using the 2001 American Housing Survey (AHS), we attempted to explain the differences between gated homeowners, nongated homeowners, gated renters, and nongated renter households.

Urban Containment and Residential Segregation: A Preliminary Investigation

A fundamental purpose of traditional land-use controls is to exclude undesirable land uses from residential communities. However, such regulations have been shown to limit the ability of low-income households and people of colour to find suitable housing in decent neighbourhoods. Urban containment is an attempt to regulate land uses in ways that reduce if not eliminate social exclusion. This paper uses information from a nation-wide survey of metropolitan planning organisations to identify metropolitan areas with urban containment programmes in place. A theory is developed and a model is applied to 242 metropolitan statistical areas to test the hypothesis that areas with urban containment witnessed greater reductions in residential segregation than those without. Preliminary statistical investigations show this to be the case. Policy implications and an outline for further research are provided.

The Effect of Urban Containment and Mandatory Housing Elements on Racial Segregation in Us Metropolitan Areas, 1990–2000

ABSTRACT: Urban containment and state-imposed mandatory housing elements in comprehensive land use plans attempt to reshape development patterns. Urban containment programs reign in the outward expansion of urban areas by restricting development of rural land outside urban containment boundaries and focusing the regional demand for urban development areas within them. This article assesses the effect of urban containment and mandatory housing elements on the percentage change in racial segregation change among US metropolitan areas during the 1990s. Ordinary least squares regression analysis suggests that while metropolitan areas with strong urban containment efforts saw a higher percentage decline in Anglo/African American residential segregation during the 1990s than metropolitan areas without such policies in place, urban containment had no statistically significant effect on segregation between Anglos and other races. Mandatory housing elements made no difference in racial segregation change between Anglos and any other race. Policy implications are posed.

Race, Space, and Struggles for Mobility: Transportation Impacts on African Americans in Oakland and the East Bay

Abstract A long history of overt discrimination left an enduring racialized imprint upon the geography of the East Bay. While the benefits of a metropolitan decentralization of jobs, housing, and public investment fell to Whites, discrimination in employment and housing trapped African Americans in urban neighborhoods burdened by infrastructure encroachment and divestment. By circa 1970, overt discrimination succumbed to new, racially neutral, legal, and administrative forms, including regional planning processes. Using an environmental racism framework, we show that these new forms reproduced the existing racialized geography by means of new inequalities in representation and transportation service provision. These new regional transportation policies, like those challenged by a 2005 civil rights lawsuit, favored the mobility needs of more affluent suburbanites over those of African American East Bay bus riders. These policies, layered onto an existing racialized geography, reinforced existing inequalities by failing to address racial barriers to opportunity in the built environment. [Key words: transportation, race, segregation, Oakland]

The effectiveness of urban containment regimes in reducing exurban sprawl

During the 1990s, the exurban landscape grew faster and added more people than urban, suburban, and rural landscapes. In many respects, exurbanization is the quintessential representation of urban sprawl and the problems it poses. More than 100 metropolitan areas across the US attempt to manage exurbanization through various forms of urban containment at regional or subregional scales. In this article, we assess the extent to which urban containment is effective in managing exurban sprawl in the 35 largest metropolitan areas in the US. Through simple cross-section analysis, we found that relative to metropolitan areas without urban containment, those pursuing “strong” containment efforts performed best in reducing exurbaniza- tion. Strong containment programs are those that direct urban development into areas defined by urban containment boundaries and restrict development outside the boundaries. Metropolitan areas with “natural” containment, i.e., where development is constrained because of oceans, mountains, public ownership, and water supply, did not perform as well but saw less exurbanization than noncontained metropolitan areas. Least effective relative to other forms of containment were metropolitan areas with weak containment efforts, principally because such approaches do not substantially restrict development outside containment boundaries. Strong urban containment appears to be effective in reigning in exurban sprawl but without apparently dampening population growth generally.

Residential location, transportation, and welfare‐to‐work in the United States: A case study of Milwaukee

Abstract This article addresses two questions about spatial barriers to welfare‐to‐work transition in the United States. First, what residential and transportation adjustments do welfare recipients tend to make as they try to become economically self‐sufficient? Second, do these adjustments actually increase the probability that they will become employed? Analysis of 1997–2000 panel data on housing location and automobile ownership for Milwaukee welfare recipients reveals two tendencies: (1) to relocate to neighborhoods with less poverty and more racial integration and (2) to obtain a car. Results from binary logit models indicate that residential relocation and car ownership both increase the likelihood that welfare recipients will become employed. These findings suggest that policies should aim to facilitate residential mobility for low‐income families and improve their neighborhoods, rather than simply move them closer to job opportunities. The findings also suggest a critical role for transportation policy in reducing unemployment.

The Impact of Public Transport on US Metropolitan Wage Inequality

This article presents a wage inequality analysis for 158 large US metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). The analysis is concerned with whether public transport has a detectable influence on 1990 levels of wage equality. Because public transport systems are generally designed to link residences with employment locations, higher levels of service provision, all other factors being equal, should be associated with higher employment rates and more uniform distributions of earnings. Few analyses, however, have attempted to evaluate public policies that affect wage distributions. The results of this research provide a macroscopic view of the effectiveness of urban transport investments with respect to urban wage inequality.

INEQUITABLE EFFECTS OF TRANSPORTATION POLICIES ON MINORITIES

Americans are increasingly mobile and ever more reliant on automobiles for meeting their travel needs; this trend developed primarily as a result of transportation policies adopted after World War II that emphasized highway development over public transportation. These and other transportation policies have had inequitable impacts on minority and low-income populations and often restricted their ability to access social and economic opportunities, including job opportunities, education, health care services, and locations such as grocery stores. Transportation policies limit access to opportunities through direct effects, such as inequitable costs, and indirect effects, such as residential segregation. Some indirect effects are caused in part by the combined effects of transportation policies and land use practices. Areas where transportation policies have inequitable impacts are identified. In addition, existing research in the area is briefly examined, and highlighted is the critical need for more research and data collection related to the impact of transportation policies on minority and low-income communities.

Where Has Housing Policy Debate Been

Consider not only the volume of articles onhousing in these journals but also the range of topics in and the resulting scholarlyfootprint of these journals individually and collectively. The five housing journalspublished by Routledge (the publisher of Housing Policy Debate [HPD]) have acombined total of about 100 years of publication and, as of the beginning of 2015, havepublished a total of about 5,500 articles, or 25,000,000 words.