Xavier de Souza Briggs

Brown kids in white suburbs: Housing mobility and the many faces of social capital

Abstract Social capital has many faces in the geography of urban opportunity, and as such, particular housing policies might have positive effects on some forms of social capital and negative effects on others. The author defines social support and social leverage as two key dimensions of social capital that can be accessed by individuals. A sample of 132 low‐income African‐American and Latino adolescents is used to examine the early impacts of a Yonkers, NY, housing mobility program on social capital.1 Overall, program participants (‘’movers‘’) appear to be no more cut off from social support than a control group of “stayer” youth. On the other hand, movers are also no more likely to report access to good sources of job information or school advice— to leverage that might enhance opportunity. Adding just one steadily employed adult to an adolescents circle of significant ties has dramatic effects on perceived access to such leverage.

Moving Up versus Moving Out: Neighborhood Effects in Housing Mobility Programs

This article suggests ways to better design, conduct, and interpret evaluations of the effects of housing mobility programs on participants, with emphasis on how to isolate neighborhood effects. It reviews earlier critiques of neighborhood effects research and discusses the key assumptions of housing mobility programs—about the benefits of affluent neighbors, the spatial organization of opportunity for the urban poor, and the meanings of “neighborhood” to residents, researchers, and policy makers. Studying mobility contexts, especially in suburban areas, offers special challenges to researchers. More research is needed that looks at residents’ social ties and uses mixed-methods approaches. Ethnographic data, in particular, would enhance the validity of the quantitative data that now dominate studies of neighborhood effects. Adding substantially to what we know about the processes or mechanisms—the “how” of neighborhood effects—mixedmethods approaches would also make research much more useful to policy makers and program managers.

In the wake of desegregation early impacts of scattered-site public housing on neighborhoods in Yonkers., New York

This study examines the early effects of seven scattered-site public housing developments on the receiving neighborhoods in Yonkers, New York, where opposition to court-ordered desegregation was pa...

“Some of My Best Friends Are …”: Interracial Friendships, Class, and Segregation in America†

Ties among persons of different backgrounds, when such ties act as social bridges, play a vital role in diverse societies—expanding identities, opening insular communities of interest, containing intergroup conflicts, and reducing inequalities. Using a phone survey of 29 city–regions matched with census data, this study analyzes predictors of interracial friendships for Whites, Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics, with single– and multilevel path models. Results underscore the social significance of the workplace and of civic involvement. Those who report ties to other races tend to be “joiners,” in the broad sense: Involvement in nonreligious groups, socializing with coworkers, and having more friends are robust predictors for all racial groups. These are strongly associated with each other and with higher socioeconomic status, highlighting a powerful class dimension to accessing intergroup ties. But macro–level opportunity for contact (metro–level racial makeup) dominates the variation in friendship exposure patterns for Whites, whereas associations and other “substructures” are more predictive for minorities. Consistent with immigrant assimilation theory, among minorities, sharing neighborhoods with Whites remains an important—and apparently unique—social marker for the personal relationships of Blacks.

Doing Democracy Up-Close: Culture, Power, and Communication in Community Building

This article considers how democracy gets done, and undone, at the micro-level of the planning meeting. I use concepts of social performance to frame issues of culture and power that have received limited attention in earlier planning research. Drawing on three brief ethnographic accounts of a public interaction or “speech occasion,” I extend Foresters call for planners and policy professionals to understand and respond to the diverse communication styles and subtle power relations that shape public life. Informed responses are critical if planners aim to learn and get results while meaningfully involving various “publics” or stakeholders in decisions. Without such competence, many efforts to deliberate to “do” democracy in a diverse society will struggle along at needlessly high levels of confusion, distrust, and even resentment.This article considers how democracy gets done, and undone, at the micro-level of the planning meeting. I use concepts of social performance to frame issues of culture and power that have received limited attention in earlier planning research. Drawing on three brief ethnographic accounts of a public interaction or “speech occasion,” I extend Foresters call for planners and policy professionals to understand and respond to the diverse communication styles and subtle power relations that shape public life. Informed responses are critical if planners aim to learn and get results while meaningfully involving various “publics” or stakeholders in decisions. Without such competence, many efforts to deliberate to “do” democracy in a diverse society will struggle along at needlessly high levels of confusion, distrust, and even resentment.

Using Social Capital to Help Integrate Planning Theory, Research, and Practice: Preface

Abstract This symposium presents selected contributions to two panels held at recent Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) conferences to explore the potential usefulness to planning of the concept of social capital. Its purpose is to stimulate for readers of the Journal the kind of lively and fruitful discussion enjoyed by those who attended the conferences. The contributors summarize the development of the concept and consider alternative definitions of it. This lays the foundation for a broad conversation about whether and how planners can invest in social capital formation in ways that will improve the well-being of the disadvantaged. Mirroring the conference panels, the authors use the interplay of concept development and practical examples to test and illustrate the possible usefulness of different ideas about what social capital is. They discuss why it is important and how it functions in society.

Why Did the Moving to Opportunity Experiment Not Get Young People into Better Schools

Abstract Educational failure is one of the costliest and most visible problems associated with ghetto poverty. We explore whether housing assistance that helps low‐income families move to better neighborhoods can also improve access to good schools. Research on the Gautreaux housing desegregation program indicated significant, long‐term educational benefits, yet results from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment showed no measurable impacts on school outcomes for the experimental group. We use interviews and ethnographic fieldwork to explore this puzzle. Most MTO families did not relocate to communities with substantially better schools, and those who did often moved again after a few years. Where parents had meaningful school choices, these were typically driven by poor information obtained from insular social networks or by cultural logic centered on avoiding ghetto‐type school insecurity and disorder, not garnering academic opportunity. Those factors may not shift if poor families with less educated parents are served by a relocation‐only strategy.

Re-shaping the geography of opportunity: place effects in global perspective

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.

Struggling to stay out of high-poverty neighborhoods: housing choice and locations in moving to opportunity's first decade

Improving locational outcomes emerged as a major policy hope for the nations largest low-income housing program over the past two decades, but a host of supply and demand-side barriers confront rental voucher users, leading to heated debate over the importance of choice versus constraint. In this context, we examine the Moving to Opportunity experiments first decade, using a mixed-method approach. MTO families faced major barriers in tightening markets, yet diverse housing trajectories emerged, reflecting variation in: (a) willingness to trade location – in particular, safety and avoidance of “ghetto” behavior – to get larger, better housing units after initial relocation; (b) the distribution of neighborhood types in different metro areas; and (c) circumstances that produced many involuntary moves. Access to social networks or services “left behind” in poorer neighborhoods seldom drove moving decisions. Numerous moves were brokered by rental agents who provided shortcuts to willing landlords but thereby steered participants to particular neighborhoods.

After Katrina: Rebuilding Places and Lives

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, few observers—inside or outside the academy—seriously considered the question, “Should New Orleans be rebuilt?” As urban historian Lawrence Vale (2005) noted in The Boston Globe, some in the international media wondered immediately whether the city would become “the American Pompeii.” But as he concluded, “Regardless of whether [cities] have been flooded, burned, bombed, starved, shaken, or poisoned, we have long bypassed the age of ’lost cities.’” The emotional attachments of survivors, the political imperative to reassure citizens about building back “bigger and better than ever,” the financial investments—however uneven, frustrating, or conservative—of private insurers, the newly globalized charitable giving made possible by information technology, and other forces all favor rebuilding (Vale and Campanella, 2005). “From Banda Aceh to Biloxi,” said Vale, “cities are no longer left on their own to die.” But a modern city could certainly rebound as a shadow of its former self. Cities that fell victim to slow, unnatural disasters—Camden, New Jersey, or Gary, Indiana, for example— fit that bill. And those places were not developed, as the British newsmagazine The Economist defined New Orleans’ curious birthplace, on “low-lying, hurricane-prone swampland surrounded by water on three sides.”1 Furthermore, the questions of how to rebuild New Orleans and how to address the city’s staggering prestorm levels of racial segregation and geographically concentrated, persistent poverty, beg attention to the broader issue of what kind of economy and politics is possible in the new New Orleans. In this article, I briefly outline this context and develop two arguments about rebuilding: First, that debates about returning versus relocating families, including the poor, should be grounded in the realities of the city’s housing and labor markets and reflect informed choices, not anecdotes, about the preferences of the displaced; and second, that we should not rely on simplistic images of “community lost” to understand what the displaced stand to lose or gain by either moving back or moving on. In the final part of the article, I offer a more direct response to Susan and Sudhir’s rich arguments (also in this issue), addressing the question of what a public sociology of disaster and recovery should include.