Inequality and Social Organisation in the City

Abstract

Social inequality is inherent within capitalist societies. In this chapter we will examine how capitalist inequalities based on social class relate to other inequalities — notably those based on patriarchal gender relations — and how these inequalities affect urban form, and how they are themselves shaped by urban processes. Traditional approaches to urban inequality were primarily interested in segregation, the spatial expression of inequality. This chapter begins, in section 4.1, by briefly considering this research, documenting entrenched patterns of segregation as exemplified by studies of Britain and North America. In section 4.2 we consider the extent to which urban inequality arises from unequal access to housing, focusing upon the work of neo-Weberians such as John Rex and Robert Moore, and, more recently, Peter Saunders. We show that processes of economic production and restructuring, whilst not determining patterns of segregation, nonetheless exercise a more powerful mediating role than these accounts would imply.