Middle-class Residents Research Articles

Spatial-temporal characteristics and factors influencing commuting activities of middle-class residents in Guangzhou City, China

The middle class in metropolitan Chinese cities has become an important social group. With the rapid development of urbanization and constant advancement of suburbanization, the middle class has increasingly come to influence city traffic. Research into middle-class commuting activities thus has practical significance for improving traffic congestion and reducing the commuting burden in metropolitan cities. Based on a dataset formed by 816 completed surveys, this paper analyzes the commuting mode, time and distance of middle-class residents in Guangzhou City using the descriptive statistical method. The results indicate that private cars are the main commuting mode, followed by public transport. Meanwhile, middle-class residents mainly undertake medium-short time and medium- short distance commuting. The study subsequently uses multilevel logistic regression and multiple linear regression models to analyze the factors that influence commuting mode choice, time and distance. The gender, age, number of family cars, housing source and jobs-housing balance are the most important factors influencing commuting mode choice; housing, population density, jobs-housing balance and commuting mode significantly affect commuting time; and transport accessibility, jobs-housing balance and commuting mode are the notable factors affecting commuting distance. Finally, this paper analyzes what is affecting the commuting activities of middle-class residents and determines the differences in commuting activity characteristics and influence factors between middle-class and ordinary residents. Policy suggestions to improve urban planning and urban management are also proposed.

Are neighbourhoods dynamic or are they slothful? The limited prevalence and extent of change in neighbourhood socio-economic status, and its implications for regeneration policy

ABSTRACTThis article describes what we know about neighbourhood change, and regeneration policy intended to encourage it, using the example of the past 15 years in England. Then it introduces new data on unemployed and middle-class residents as a proportion of all residents in all neighbourhoods in England and Wales over the periods 1985–2005 and 2001–2011. Neighbourhoods are generally slothful rather than dynamic. Thus, we should expect significant change for significant numbers of neighbourhoods only over the long term, and longer time periods than standard for regeneration policy time. This provides important new context for policymaking and evaluation. In this context, we could see the best of neighbourhood regeneration as remarkably successful in creating measureable change against the odds, and as a very valuable part of public policy. Alternatively, we could also see neighbourhood regeneration policy as generally doomed to fail to transform the relative position of neighbourhoods, and as not worth pursuing.

Housing market and class formation in the Colombo Metropolitan Region: a sociological aspect

The main focus of the study is on understanding the emerging relationship between state, market and social classes in the Colombo Metropolitan Region (CMR) in the context of emerging housing market and citizens’ access to a livable house in the Colombo city and its suburbs. This main objective is achieved through the questions of enquiry, listed as: to identify the role of state on formulating various housing policies and their implementation; to describe emerging institutional mechanisms, public or private in facilitating, developing and implementing land and housing properties; to investigate the housing market and its socio-economic impacts on the residents of three communities under focus; to examine residential patterns and formation of social classes in the communities; and to enquire into the nature and forms of relationship among the state, the market and the social classes in regard to urban housing. The main research question addressed in this study is to investigate the impact of recent neoliberalisation policy on urban housing, more so in the context of CMR. The commercialization of housing as a commodity by the private builders, whom the state has found impossible to exclude, due to its dwindling resources and infra-structure, has successfully manipulated the consumerist zeal of consumers, both rich and poor alike, obsessed with status consciousness. Three housing units have been studied in detail;Shahaspura (a heterogeneous public sector condominium housing complex inhabited by lower class residents), Mattegoda (a public sector housing complex inhabited by lower middle class residents), and Millennium City (a private sector housing complex inhabited by middle & upper middle class residents). In all, 325 households were selected randomly for a primary household survey. The sample survey was supplemented by qualitative data collected from respondents by contacting them for detailed informal interviews and non-participant observation. Secondary data presented by the research paper relates to the changing housing policies under various political regimes in the country; constituted institutional bodies to implement land development; housing and policy interventions; emerging public and private financial institutions for facilitating property development sector; role of private developers and promoters in developing lands and housing properties; and finally numerous housing schemes implemented by the public and private sector, in the CMR. The analysis reveals significant variation among these three study areas in terms of neighbourhood relationships and status enhancement. Shifting into these housing complexes signifies for the residents, not just an alternative residence, but more of a status enhancement. However, the study reveals that the rising demand especially among middle and upper income groups for private housing colonies, selling their products along with multiple amenities, has resulted into a steep rise in land prices, hence making the private housing out of reach for the low income groups, who then look for government housing schemes. Further, the study has shown the banking facilities for housing loans have further enhanced the interest of people in private housing societies, providing a big boost to the housing market. The whole process has led to the emergence of urban social classes very distinct from one another and drawing an identity from the housing structures. Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences 2015 38(1): 13-29

Materiality and the Recovery of Discarded Materials in a Buenos Aires <em>Cartonero</em> Cooperative

Materiality and the Recovery of Discarded Materials in a Buenos Aires Cartonero Cooperative Sebastián Carenzo (bio) Translated by Carl Good We are currently witnessing an interesting paradox in the social categorization of “waste.” Until about a decade ago, this term designated a vast and heterogeneous assortment of discarded materials that embodied the representation of antivalue: objects depleted of all use and/or exchange value. Today, however, few would hesitate to consider waste an unmistakable source of emerging value; some would even view waste materials as a kind of Holy Grail. These contemporary views have been stimulated by a variety of contributions ranging from theoretical conceptions of soft-core capitalism—such as calls for a “green economy” and/or a “circular economy”1—to the guidelines condensed in the new Integrated Solid Waste Management technocratic paradigm, which has become a dominant reference for governments, private companies, and nongovernmental organizations.2 One phenomenon that distinguishes the discussion of waste management in the large urban centers of the global South is the existence of sizable population groups devoted to the collection and sorting of recyclable materials as a livelihood. In Argentina, a vast body of literature is devoted to the work of the so-called [End Page 85] cartoneros (waste pickers),3 addressing their work of collection and recycling as well as the formal and informal commercial circuits driven by their activity.4 Although these circuits constitute another instance of the age-old linkage between things and people, it is striking how seldom studies of material culture have inspired treatments of this topic at the local level. In this essay I explore this topic by focusing on the specific production of a material culture associated with the disposal, collection, sorting, packaging, and recycling of waste materials. I ethnographically analyze the relational fabric that links residents of a middle-class neighborhood with cartoneros from a cooperative based in a nearby shanty town.5 My analysis focuses on the moral disputes that arise in and through the trafficking of objects that are discarded as trash by middle-class residents and then recuperated as materials by the cartoneros. I argue that in the course of these objects’ itinerary, they do not simply pass “from one hand to another” but instead traverse what Zsuzsa Gille has referred to as “waste regimes,” thereby acquiring and embodying different, and often contradictory, values and meanings.6 I particularly seek to account for the way in which the distinctions that mark the transition from one regime to another are constructed (from trash to value). These distinctions, which are expressed in the types and qualities of objects that pass through different circuits, have profound implications for the individuals and groups who handle those objects and conduct transactions with them, because they contribute to the moral definition of the individuals involved in these multiple acts of transfer. I would therefore argue that analyzing the materiality of trash involves much more than objectifying and tracing the itineraries of the things that circulate. It also involves provoking the formulation of new questions, a task to which this essay seeks to contribute: in what way do the materialities associated with trash play a role in constructing the mediations (the distribution of knowledge, power, legitimacy, and identities) that organize the relational plot woven around the handling of waste materials? Responding to this question involves, for example, not only accounting for the dozens of classifications and types of materials that the cartoneros recuperate, classify, and in some cases process but also paying serious attention to the role that this materiality plays in the construction of interpersonal bonds. [End Page 86] The (De)fetishization of Waste as a Practice of Valuation The Reciclando Sueños (Recycling Dreams) cooperative was started by a group of unemployed men, most of whom had no prior experience working in associations or partnerships. Although the group was formed in late 2003, its initiative began to gain importance in the field of waste management when, toward the end of 2006, it launched the program Reciclando Basura, Recuperamos Trabajo (By Recycling Trash, We Recuperate Jobs), aimed at promoting separation at source and separate collection of waste in an area consisting of about one hundred blocks...

The Big Question

Across the world, property prices in the inner city are spiking, forcing poor and middle-class residents out of their communities. World Policy Journal asked a panel of four experts how governments can work with the private sector to ensure that cities maintain genuinely affordable housing.

Food as creative city politics in the city of Rotterdam

This paper investigates the emerging importance of food and Urban Agriculture in the city of Rotterdam. In particular these themes are the focus of two policy documents recently launched by the municipality: the Sustainability Program and the strategic agenda Food and the City. In the process of rebranding the city for middle and upper class residents and creative workers, these strategies directly contribute to the marketing of Rotterdam as the most “sustainable world harbor city”. By way of discourse analysis, we analyze policy documents to highlight the tensions between the advertised social and economic benefits of these operations. Food and Urban Agriculture emerges as being framed to target the needs of the low-income multicultural population, and at the same time of the upper and creative class. The paper concludes that municipal experiments on food can be used strategically to foster competition and city-branding; as such these can ultimately be considered a form of creative city politics.

Geographies of Whiteness and Wealth: White, Middle Class Discourses on Segregation and Social Mix in Flanders, Belgium

ABSTRACT:While policy makers in different parts of the world are worried about the supposedly negative consequences of spatial concentrations of ethnic minorities and/or disadvantaged people, researchers continue the debate about the desirability and feasibility of social mix. In this article, we add to this literature by focusing on the often neglected, but crucial practices and discourses of the privileged in urban and suburban neighborhoods. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 74 white, middle class residents of eight different neighborhoods of the Ghent urban region in Belgium, we demonstrate that few middle class whites actually want to live in a mixed neighborhood. We also make it clear that those living in diversity do not necessarily take up the roles they are expected to take up by the advocates of social mix policies. Drawing on these findings, we propose to broaden the research agenda of studies on segregation and social mix.

Contesting Urban Metabolism: Struggles Over Waste‐to‐Energy in Delhi, India

AbstractRecent scholarship on the materiality of cities has been criticized by critical urban scholars for being overly descriptive and failing to account for political economy. We argue that through the conceptualization of urban metabolisms advanced by ecological economists and industrial ecologists, materialist and critical perspectives can be mutually enriching. We focus on conflict that has erupted in Delhi, India. Authorities have embraced waste‐to‐energy incinerators, and wastepickers fear that these changes threaten their access to waste, while middle class residents oppose them because of their deleterious impact on ambient air quality. We narrate the emergence of an unlikely alliance between these groups, whose politics opposes the production of a waste‐based commodity frontier within the city. We conclude that the materiality and political economy of cities are co‐constituted, and contestations over the (re)configuration of urban metabolisms span these spheres as people struggle to realize situated urban political ecologies.

“The poor are us”: middle-class poverty politics in Buenos Aires and Seattle

We investigate middle-class poverty politics in Seattle and Buenos Aires in a period of recovery from deep neoliberal economic crisis. Reading these cases in relation to one another allows us to examine what sorts of class subjects emerge in the US, which is theorized as remaining deeply entrenched in neoliberal governance and Argentina, conceptualized as postneoliberal. We investigate the poverty politics of middle-class residents engaged in anti- or pro-poor activism against homeless encampments or squatter settlements in urban neighborhoods. Rooted in relational poverty theory, we conceptualize these forms of activism as relational practices through which class subjectivities are reiterated or challenged through interactions across class lines. Specifically, we examine (i) how middle-class actors frame their differences or alliances with poorer residents and (ii) how these framings of middle-class selves and poorer others are expressed in poverty politics and cross-class antagonisms or alliances. Our analysis reveals poverty as a key site for the making of middle-class actors as individualized, aspirational, normative subjects in both countries. And yet the poverty politics of middle-class actors is not a foregone conclusion because cross-class alliances do arise, pointing toward the potential for alternative readings of class difference.

Ferguson and Beyond: A Descriptive Epidemiological Study Using Geospatial Analysis

Ferguson, Missouri, has emerged as a cultural reference for structural inequality in the United States; however, beyond journalistic descriptions of the community, there is very little in the scholarly literature about the interdependence of health, education, and the well-being of members of this community and its surrounding areas. The current study is important because its focus on the interdependence of health, education, and place has largely been lost in discussions of the geography of opportunity in Ferguson and in similar isolated, at-risk municipalities across the United States (Rusk, 2013). Good health positively influences cognition, learning, achievement, and educational attainment. Similarly, a quality education is associated with better health outcomes. A key risk and protective factor in both education and health is the nature and extent of residential segregation and the associated geographic continuum of poverty and affluence (Purnell, Camberos, & Fields, 2014). In this study, the authors will examine the nature and extent of residential segregation and of health and education disparities in Ferguson and the surrounding region.In The Truly Disadvantaged, Wilson (1987) is credited with providing a paradigm-changing explanation of the deterioration of segregated African American neighborhoods in the urban context. He argued that, until the mid-1970s, largely African American communities consisted of both poor and middle-class residents. Wilson documented the decline in industrial-age employment opportunities, including factory work, coupled with the out-migration of middle-class African Americans to surrounding suburbs in Chicago. Therefore, many African American communities were left with high concentrations of poverty and of social isolation. Wilson argued that these conditions fostered social instability and related negative developmental outcomes.Some scholars assumed that the conditions in Chicago represented those in most urban communities in the United States. In the essay, No Two Ghettos Are Alike, sociologist Mario Small (2014) stated, Poor neighborhoods are difficult places to live, but not all are difficult in the same way (para. 9). Small argued that Wilson's theory linked a substantial and fine-grained set of hypotheses, including many that were confirmed. However, over the course of the past two decades, Wilson's work has inappropriately dominated the picture of urban poverty because for some thought leaders, the work left little room for important questions about its universal applicability across urban metropolitan regions in the United States. Small challenged researchers not to ignore heterogeneity in their discussions of urban poverty and to avoid the related risk of stereotyping. Some scholars have endeavored to avoid this type of mischaracterization of urban poverty through their research, including relatively recent studies of Detroit, Chicago, and Boston (Galster, 2012a; Sampson, 2012; Tach, 2014). The authors accept this challenge as well and seek to better understand the uniqueness of Ferguson, Missouri, and its neighboring communities.The purpose of this article is to describe an epidemiological study of Ferguson and its surrounding region using geospatial methodology. The aim is to demonstrate the salience of social epidemiological modeling in efforts to better understand how race matters in educational debates and discourse. The following questions will frame this article: What is social epidemiology, and how might this discipline inform the understanding of race and related educational and developmental outcomes in Ferguson and neighboring communities? The authors will discuss how research and policy interests involving racial health disparities and education disparities are interdependent. This will be accomplished by providing an evidentiary base using a variety of underutilized information sources from education and health.URBAN SEGREGATION AND OPPORTUNITYOver the past 20 years, there has been a renewed focus on the effects of geospatial arrangements and social contexts as opportunity factors in models of child and adolescent development broadly defined (e. …

Middle-Class Poverty Politics: Making Place, Making People

In a context of rising inequality and economic vulnerability in the United States, we explore links between class identities, urban place-making, and poverty politics. We ask how class difference and poverty politics are made and remade in neighborhood-level place-making and with what implications for boundaries and alliances between middle-class and poorer residents. Place-making refers to activities through which residents work to produce the neighborhood they want, such as participating in community organization or initiatives, interacting with their neighbors, and supporting or opposing particular changes in the neighborhood. We use a relational poverty framework to show that middle-class place-making reproduces normatively white middle-class place imaginaries but always also produces poverty and class politics. We extend prior research on middle-class poverty politics, which focuses primarily on class boundary making, to investigate whether progressive, alliance-building moments ever emerge. Drawing on case study research with two Seattle neighborhoods, we trace the ways in which place-making practices situate middle-class and poorer actors in relation to one another. We show that these interactions might continue to govern poverty and poorer people but might also challenge normative understandings of poverty and sow the seeds for cross-class alliances. Through comparative analysis of the neighborhoods as dense sites of class formation, we show how particular histories, place imaginaries, and built or institutional infrastructures allow (or foreclose) questioning and reworking of normative class and race formations and poverty politics to pave the way for cross-class alliance.

Differential belongings: socio-cultural distinctions in suburban residential areas

This paper explores suburban middle-class residents’ narratives about housing choice, everyday life and belonging in residential areas of Greater Copenhagen, Denmark, to understand how residential processes of social differentiation are constituted. Using Savage et al.’s concepts of discursive reflexivity and elective belonging, the paper shows differences in similar residential areas between the narratives of university-educated and non-university-educated residents. This finding suggests that belonging in a residential area is closely linked to the cultural capital that people possess and not only to the area itself. In addition, rather than seeing suburban residential areas as homogenous, greater attention should be paid to differences within such areas.

Neither ‘Deepest, Darkest Peckham’ nor ‘Run‐of‐the‐Mill’ East Dulwich: The Middle Classes and their ‘Others’ in an Inner‐London Neighbourhood

AbstractThis article examines how middle‐class residents of an inner‐London neighbourhood draw up socio‐spatial and symbolic boundaries between themselves and their ‘others’. Through a discussion of accounts of two very different boundaries — the boundary of a multi‐ethnic high street and a less clearly defined boundary of a neighbouring middle‐class area — we argue that the production of middle‐class identities is bound up with processes of disaffiliation not only from proximate stigmatized areas, but also from more upmarket areas and the people who populate them. Against this background it becomes clear that middle‐class claims to belonging are made through (1) the asymmetric processes by which the middle classes create and maintain spatial boundaries between themselves and racialized/classed others, and (2) the subtle processes of distinction that go on within the middle classes. Nevertheless, relationships to place remain ambivalent, and as neighbourhoods undergo change, physical boundaries separating one area from another refuse to stay put. We argue that the re‐inscription of such boundaries in the accounts of middle‐class respondents are attempts to create a stable identity on the shifting ground of the contemporary global city.

Improving Local Governance without Challenging the State: The Middle-Class Protest in Urban China

The first decade of the new century had seen an increase in rights-protection protests in urban China. The main participants of these protests were local middle-class residents who initiated protests to raise issues on specific economic and social problems as opposed to abstract sociopolitical issues. They have started to claim rights which were granted to citizens by law in principle but never actually delivered. The sociopolitical changes facilitate the emergence and success of middle-class protests, which in turn have contributed to the improvement of local governance and positively reshaped local politics. However, their influence on the macro political structure of China remains to be seen.

Moving Considerations of Middle-Class Residents in Dutch Disadvantaged Neighborhoods: Exploring the Relationship between Disorder and Attachment

A central assumption in the residential mobility literature is that residents in disadvantaged neighborhoods will leave as soon as they are financially able, as a result of ‘residential stress’ related to physical and social disorder in these neighborhoods. However, this assumption contradicts the continuing presence of a substantial share of middle-class residents in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods in the Netherlands. A qualitative study amongst middle-class residents in disadvantaged areas in Amsterdam and The Hague explored whether and how the residential context plays a role in their decision-making process about moving, focusing particularly on the way in which perceptions of neighborhood disorder on the one hand and processes of neighborhood attachment on the other shape moving decisions. In contrast to what was expected based on the research literature, perceptions of neighborhood disorder do not ‘push’ people out and positive ties to the neighborhood do not keep people there. Rather, a lack of attachment seems to ‘shield’ residents from neighborhood disorder and reduces their propensity to move out.

Everyone knew everyone: diversity, community memory and a new established–outsider figuration

This article explores the transformation of a community and its diversity as narrated by former industrial workers from a neighbourhood in Nuremberg, in a context in which company-based social housing of workers had been replaced by private rented accommodation accessed by middle class residents of migrant backgrounds. In biographical interviews, narratives emerge in which diversity and social difference are not seen as ethnic difference, but rather as a power difference within an established–outsider figuration. In this figuration, heterogeneous past and present cultural practices are homogenised through community control and regulation along normative rules as defined by the established. Workers’ nostalgic laments for the loss of their former status show that figuration of established and outsiders is dynamic, opening up new ways of thinking about diverse place-making and alternative perspectives on urban gentrification.

Negotiations of Acknowledgement among Middle Class Residents: An Analysis of Post Disaster Interactions and Performance in a Danish Context

This article presents an analysis of communication processes between residents, between residents and people in the broader societal context, as well as of media coverage of a fireworks disaster in a Danish suburb. It demonstrates how residents (all members of the Danish middle class) were able to have their situation—their affectedness— acknowledged in interactions with others and gain considerable attention immediately after the accident. In addition, it demonstrates how the initial acknowledgement decreased over time. In this case, the axes of differentiation did not relate to questions of gender, ethnicity, class or other social categories normally recognized as influential in case of disasters. Since the population in the area was very homogenous, the axis of differentiation was instead linked to the social category of affectedness, and a hierarchy of affectedness was identified within the population.

“I Just Live Here”: Everyday Practices of Disaffiliation of Middle-class Households in Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods

This paper explores different explanations for the continuing presence of a large share of middle-class households in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the Netherlands, a seeming anomaly to middle-class residential practices of disaffiliation and elective belonging identified in the research literature. In-depth interviews with middle-class residents in urban restructuring neighbourhoods in Amsterdam and The Hague provide insight into the way in which these residents make sense of and engage with their residential surroundings. The study found that respondents downplay neighbourhood problems and validate living in an urban restructuring area through a value-for-money discourse. At the same time, they display subtle ways of disaffiliating from the neighbourhood through both discursive and socio-spatial practices in everyday life.

Urban brands, culture and social division: Creativity, tension and differentiation among middle class consumers

This article considers the relationship between urban brands, consumption and socio-spatial division in the city, drawing on recent theoretical developments in the sociology of brands and empirical material from a study of the Exchange District in the city of Winnipeg, Canada. Focusing on the theme of creativity, the article uses interview data to examine how middle class residents, workers and visitors engage with the creative possibilities and cultural consumption the Exchange District brand offers. At stake in this process is not only the surfacing of a particular kind of creative culture and neighborhood, but also the performance and positioning of middle class identities. In this process, creativity is elaborated in contradictory and often unintended ways. Parallel to existing work on authenticity and class, the article argues that different notions and practices of creativity are bound up with tensions between moral and cultural boundaries, constituting horizontal divisions between the middle classes who inhabit this urban space.

The effect of public library use on the social capital of rural communities

This paper reports on a study that investigated the relationship between social capital and public library use in small towns in Ontario, Canada. Comparisons were also made with the findings of a similar study that was conducted in a medium-sized urban centre. Data for this study were collected through questionnaires administered to both library users and non-users and interviews with library staff and frequent library users. Both Robert Putnam’s and Nan Lin’s conceptualizations of social capital informed the design of this study. The study found that participants from small towns had higher levels of social capital than the urban participants. However, in contrast with urban participants, library use had no significant association with levels of social capital for small town participants. The findings suggest that small town libraries cater mainly to middle-class residents who maintain their high level of social capital through participation in a variety of community activities and organizations.