Housing, Deprivation and Urban Change

Abstract

The theme of increasing dispersion continues in this chapter, in this case between urban and suburban areas. In Chapter 5, we suggested that urban structure was at least partly determined by household housing career patterns. The requirements of young, single person households are not the same as those of families with children. In one sense, this generates housing market segmentation. Here we provide quantitative evidence in support and demonstrate how processes of cumulative change lead to conditions of economic polarisation between areas. In order to show this, we need to construct joint models of housing, labour markets and industrial location. Although there are some similarities to models of spatial mismatch, discrimination as such is not, here, the primary mechanism generating polarisation and deprivation. Section 8.2 estimates a nested multinomial logit model of moving and location choice for London and South East England. Section 8.3 constructs a multinomial model of labour market activity, which is then joined to the housing model in order to demonstrate how the population trends described in Chapter 5 can arise. Section 8.4 looks at the relationship between housing and industrial location and suggests that, in a spatial model, crowding-out of industrial investment may not occur. Rather, in some circumstances, crowding-in may be the norm or, at least, the two may be jointly determined.