Neighborhood Improvement Research Articles

Self-supervised learning unveils urban change from street-level images

Cities around the world are grappling with multiple interconnected challenges, including population growth, shortage of affordable and decent housing, and the need for neighborhood improvements. Despite its critical importance for policy, our ability to effectively monitor and track urban change remains limited. Deep learning-based computer vision methods applied to street-level images have been successful in the measurement of socioeconomic and environmental inequalities but did not fully utilize temporal images to track urban change, as time-varying labels are often unavailable. We used self-supervised methods to measure change in London using 15 million street images taken between 2008 and 2021. Our novel adaptation of Barlow Twins, Street2Vec, embeds urban structure while being invariant to seasonal and daily changes without manual annotations. It outperformed generic pretrained embeddings, successfully identified point-level change in London's housing supply from street-level images, and distinguished between major and minor change. This capability can provide timely information for urban planning and policy decisions towards more liveable, equitable, and sustainable cities.

Incorporating equity into transit performance measures: A disaggregated bus route level approach

Marginalized communities usually experience inadequate public transport services in North America. Within these communities, buses play a vital role in everyday activity participation. Unfortunately, transport services that may advance equity by improving coverage and service for disadvantaged population groups and areas are often overlooked in transit planning since they usually underperform in ridership-based metrics.To address this problem, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) introduced an equity service policy in 2019 to enhance bus services in vulnerable neighbourhoods known as Neighbourhood Improvement Areas (NIAs). This policy involves augmenting observed ridership counts for buses serving NIAs to improve or protect services for these communities. Although this proposed measure can improve bus services in NIAs, its current form might exclude other equity-deserving riders (EDRs) living outside NIAs, increasing their accessibility barriers.Our study uses quantitative and spatial analytical methods to better understand the equity impacts of this service policy change. We propose moving from the aggregate neighbourhood-based approach using NIAs to a more comprehensive and disaggregated person-based approach. First, we create an alternate method that identifies EDRs at the bus stop level using a fusion of census and travel survey data. We then explore the differences in augmented ridership levels created by the two approaches and evaluate whether the augmented ridership levels are likely to result in meaningful service changes using existing TTC service standards.We found that 2 out of 3 transit riders in Toronto are equity-deserving, with 72% residing outside NIAs. Our approach reveals increased ridership on routes with many EDRs, which receive minimal augmentation under the NIA-based method. Conversely, if all riders in NIAs are considered EDRs, our approach shows a 19% ridership overestimation equivalent to 35,245 users. Based on these results, we recommend creating a dedicated equity tool with an individual-centric focus, identifying areas with low transit service and high EDR percentages. This tool could then be integrated as an equity perspective into annual bus service planning.

The Impact of Vacant and Abandoned Property on Health and Well-Being: A Qualitative Inquiry

This qualitative study explored the role of neglected properties and neighborhood environment characteristics on a sample of New Orleans, Louisiana residents’ health and well-being, sense of community, sense of safety, and civic engagement. We hypothesized that residents would identify conditions of their neighborhood's physical environment, including neglected properties, as one factor that impacted their health and other aspects of well-being. Seventy-four (N = 74) participants, including women, men, youth, young adults, and community leaders, took part in 11 focus groups (n = 51) and 23 key informant interviews. Thematic content analysis through inductive and deductive coding cycles of interview transcripts revealed five main categories related to urban neighborhood-built and social environments: 1) health and well-being, 2) sense of community, 3) sense of safety, 4) civic engagement, and 5) youth and family violence. Ten themes were developed and included, for example, the role of neighborhoods in delineating access to health-promoting characteristics and resources; the role of neighborhood social networks as crime prevention strategies; resident-led decision-making in neighborhood improvements; the negative impact of neglected properties; and the role of the local government in improving physical infrastructure. These findings affirm that residents were aware of and impacted by the cyclical nature of built environment neglect on health and well-being, community violence, neighborhood cohesion, civic engagement, and youth violence. Participants recommended improving neighborhood conditions to shift resident mindsets about the health of neighborhoods, reduce violence, and improve quality of life.

From Barn Raising to Community Empowerment: the legacy of Karl Linn and John Turner

This article examines the lasting impact of architects Karl Linn and John Turner on community development and informal settlements. Grounded in the barn raising tradition, their distinct yet converging paths highlight the power of community participation, collaboration, and self-help in marginalized neighborhoods. Linn's Neighborhood Commons projects and Turner's ideas on self-help housing and user-centered design have influenced participatory practices, challenged institutional norms, and prioritized a process over product approach in today's complex urban landscapes. This exploration underscores the profound impact of their work on neighborhood improvement and inclusive urban environments.

Urban Farms for Neighborhood Improvement and Social Well-being of Urban Areas in Kandy


 
 
 In the latter half of the 20th century, as urban populations increased in the majority of emerging nations, the reliability of urban food production and delivery networks decreased. Urban hunger increased concurrently with the urban population, speeding up by in response, urban farms spread over a growing worldwide. However, later other purposes were added to it and urban farms were nurtured. Globally, urban farms are changing as a result of political, economic, environmental, and technical advancements. With time, urban farming activities are becoming a reason to improve the value and quality of life in terms of economic, social, and other elements. In this research, it was investigated how urban farming affects the social well-being and neighborhood improvements of urban areas. Furthermore, it focuses on urban farms' relative attachment to the neighborhood and confidence, their impact on agriculture literacy and youth development, and the economic and food crises in the urban areas. It was sought to understand community perceptions of how urban farms can benefit cities through a qualitative study conducted in two urban farms in Kandy. Interviews with visitors, laborers, and professionals related to urban farming revealed the pathways by which community members view farms as improving neighborhoods and social well-being. According to this study, six characteristics are highlighted and evaluated: neighborhood attachment, neighborhood confidence, youth development, food access, agricultural literacy, and economic development. Benefits stemmed from a primary changes urban farms made to neighborhood improvement: the creation of public project involvement, the physical improvement of degraded space, the production of local food, and the creation of new businesses. These changes led to multiple perceived benefits, including increased social connectedness, a transformed physical landscape, an improved neighborhood reputation, and employment opportunities. But there were some points that should be developed. especially in cases of food access and youth development. Urban farms with strong social aims may appear to contribute little to economic development if measured using traditional indicators of success such as job creation or fiscal impacts, but they provide numerous other benefits for community development.
 Keywords: Urban farms, Social connectedness, Physical improvement, Food access, Youth engagement, Economic development
 
 

Neighborhood Assessment of the Environment for Physical Activity: Engaging Adolescents Within an Under-resourced Community

Abstract: Background: Physical activity (PA) participation has many benefits; however, rates of participation remain low, particularly among underserved populations which may face low PA participation due to having poorer quality of built environment factors which is a known influence on activity levels. Objectives: To train adolescents to conduct environmental neighborhood assessments and neighborhood resident surveys of with the end goal of encouraging advocacy for neighborhood improvements. Methods: This mixed methods, prospective design study was focused in a low-income, under-resourced, predominately African American neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Adolescents ( n = 14; 13–17 years) in a community partner's youth program were trained to conduct neighborhood environmental assessments and distributed neighborhood resident surveys. Results of these assessments were shared with community partners to create strategies for improvement. These adolescents participated in a focus group following the environmental assessments to reflect on their findings and the process. The neighborhood resident survey ( n = 123) assessed demographics, perceptions of the neighborhood, PA participation and health outcomes. Results: Neighborhood assessments noted and resident surveys noted many barriers to activity (i.e., poor sidewalks, unsafe areas). Results were informative for our community partner to advocate for neighborhood improvements. Focus group results indicated that the adolescents understood how their neighborhood environment could influence PA and how the findings could be utilized to make improvements in their neighborhood. Conclusions: Adolescents can be successfully trained/educated to follow a research protocol for assessing the built environment for PA using a variety of measurement tools, while additionally gaining insight towards neighborhood environment advocacy.

Katamari Kart: A Serious and Hilarious Sub/Urban Game for More Serendipitous, Playful and Friendly Public Art

The article presents the sub/urban game-method Katamari Kart, where people roam industrial and suburban areas collecting waste materials and progressively building a large and mobile public sculpture. This game-method departs from established concepts and practice in neighbourhood improvement as it tries to evade capital expenditure and embraces uncertainty and friction in bringing together various stakeholders, does not aim to look stylish or even be useful, decelerates daily life, promotes self-sufficiency in cultural life, and creates long-term wellbeing through play. That is, it is a degrowth approach to neighbourhood improvement. Rumen Rachev positions the Katamari Kart game-method as an expression of the ‘Kiwi way’ and discusses the role it can play in making our future neighbourhoods more serendipitous, playful and friendly, and a ref lection of the diverse people and things that reside there – all without capital expenditure or the support of the authorities. Finally, Alex Bonham, author of the book Play and the City: How to Create Places and Spaces to Help Us Thrive, discusses the Katamari Kart game-method in the context of adult play, our settler history, keeping up appearances, the Be a Tidy Kiwi campaign, play and wellbeing, and conflicting responses to frugality.

Struggles over city-making: The community program for neighborhood improvement in Mexico City

ABSTRACT This article traces the trajectory of the making and unmaking of the Community Program for Neighborhood Improvement (PCMB), a participatory program for upgrading social infrastructure and public spaces in marginalized neighborhoods of Mexico City. The PCMB is an example of the range of upgrading programs supported by progressive local governments throughout Latin America over the past 20 years. Proposed by the city’s urban popular movement as part of their longstanding commitment to “city-making from below,” the PCMB was launched in 2007. At its inception, the PCMB was designed to co-produce neighborhood improvements through providing state support for resident-led planning and governance of community spaces. In 2019, the Mexico City government unexpectedly dismantled key participatory elements of the PCMB and folded it into other city priorities, including safe pathways and its surveillance-oriented security strategy. Based on fieldwork involving site visits and interviews with residents, community leaders, and city officials, we narrate the transformation of the PCMB (2007–2021) as state-society struggles over city-making. We argue that these tensions pivot around different spatial and political logics pertaining to territory, agency, and citizenship in city-making. The analysis also brings into focus how local governments attempt to diffuse, co-opt, or contain more radical city-making initiatives.

Context, health and migration: a systematic review of natural experiments

Migration health research pays little attention to the places into which people migrate. Studies on health effects of contextual factors are often limited because of the ability of individuals to self-select their environment, but natural experiments may allow for the causal effect of contexts to be examined. The objective was to synthesise the evidence on contextual health effects from natural experiments among migrant groups. We performed a systematic review of natural experiments among migrant populations in PubMed/MEDLINE, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CINAHL and Google Scholar for literature published until 13 October 2022. 5870 articles were screened in duplicate using the following inclusion criteria: quantitative natural experiment design, migrant population, context factor as treatment variable and health or healthcare outcome variable. Synthesis without meta-analysis was performed following quality appraisal using the EPHPP tool for quantitative studies and data extraction (PROSPERO: CRD42020169236). The 46 included articles provide evidence for negative effects of neighbourhood disadvantage on physical health and mortality, while finding mixed effects on mental health. Articles comparing migrants with those that stayed behind demonstrate detrimental effects of migration and adverse post-migratory contexts on physical health and mortality, while demonstrating favourable effects for mental and child health. Natural experiments of policy environments indicate the negative impacts of restrictive migration and social policies on healthcare utilization, mental health and mortality, as well as the positive health effects when restrictions are lifted. Natural experiments complement observational studies and provide robust evidence to advocate for more inclusive migration, health and social policies as well as neighbourhood improvement programmes. In order to strengthen the methodological approach, future research utilising natural experiments should be more explicit in the mechanisms underlying the experiment and provide details on potential causal mechanisms for the observed effects. German Science Foundation (FOR: 2928/GZ: BO5233/1-1).

Urban socio-ecosystem renewal: an ecosystem services assessment approach

Using a novel approach based on the urban ecosystem services approach, this research explores the relation between socio-economic, architectonic and ecological factors in urban renewal processes. This deductive conceptual approach is based on the definition of an urban diagnosis and intervention model based on the concept of urban socio-ecosystemic services. This conceptual approach is applied to three research cases in Andalusia (Spain) neighbourhoods linked to participatory urban renewal processes. A model is inductively defined from these analysed case studies: the socio-ecosystemic services model, based on the conceptual frame, the development of particular instruments and the definition of a participatory methodological strategy. The results obtained in these urban workshops show that the socio-ecosystem model better integrates the relationships between the architectural, socio-economic and ecological dimensions in addressing the need for urban services and infrastructure and the quality of life in neighbourhoods. Citizens can formulate their needs and perceptions of the neighbourhood beyond traditional quantitative variables (i.e. number of car parks, average size of dwellings, population density, etc.), incorporating aspects such as urban landscape, air quality, urban noise, shaded rest areas and children’s spaces. All these perceptions are collected and transformed into proposals for neighbourhood improvement, which are assessed and prioritized by the citizens. Together with participatory processes, this approach can be considered as the key to success in urban renewal strategies in neighbourhoods. However, it is necessary to develop indicators and metrics of the relationships between the socio-economic and ecological dimensions that allow a more integrated study of the model at different urban scales.

The informal tripart relationship between the state, neighbourhood police and community groups: community safety perceptions and practices in a Midlands neighbourhood in the UK

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the tripart relationship between British police officers, Local Authority representatives and community members based on a Midlands neighbourhood case study. It focuses on experiences of the strengths and challenges with working towards a common purpose of community safety and resilience building.Design/methodology/approachData was collected in 2019 prior to enforced COVID lockdown restrictions following Staffordshire University ethical approval. An inductive qualitative methods approach of semi-structured individual and group interviews was used with community members (N = 30) and professionals (N = 15), using a purposive and snowball sample. A steering group with academic, police and Local Authority representation co-designed the study and identified the first tier of participants.FindingsCommunity members and professionals valued tripart working and perceived communication, visibility, longevity and trust as key to addressing localised community safety issues. Challenges were raised around communication modes and frequency, cultural barriers to accessing information and inadequate resources and responses to issues. Environmental crime was a high priority for community members, along with tackling drug-related crime and diverting youth disorder, which concurred with police concern. However, the anti-terrorism agenda was a pre-occupation for the Local Authority, and school concerns included modern slavery crime.Originality/valueWhen state involvement and investment in neighbourhoods decline, community member activism enthusiasm for neighbourhood improvement reduces, contrasting with government expectations. Community members are committed partnership workers who require the state to visibly and demonstrably engage. Faith in state actors can be restored when professionals are consistently present, communicate and follow up on actions.

Effect of Road Rehabilitation on Housing Renovation in Calabar South Local Government Area, Cross River State, Nigeria

Infrastructure provision has been identified as a potent tool for the improvement of neighborhoods globally. One such infrastructure is a good road network. Road rehabilitation, therefore, has the capability of promoting land use development and housing development/renovation. Despite the obvious effect that road rehabilitation has on predicting property development and renovation, there appears to be a paucity of studies as it relates to Calabar South Local Government Area where road several roads have been rehabilitated. It is against this backdrop that this study was conceived. The study, therefore, analysed the relationship that exists between road rehabilitation and housing renovation in Calabar South Local Government Area between 2002 and 2021. Six residential neighbourhoods were randomly sampled. Furthermore, a total of 399 copies of the questionnaire were distributed and 389 copies were retrieved and used for analysis. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies and simple percentages were used in carrying out the analysis. It was noted that road rehabilitation drastically triggered the renovation of properties in the study area. For instance, there was an increase in the extent to which housing units were fenced, painted among other renovation exercises in housing units before and after the rehabilitation of the roads.

Right to the city or environmental gentrification? A discussion about risks and potential of urban agriculture

ABSTRACT Recent literature has highlighted the role of urban agriculture (UA) in creating more sustainable and equitable cities through social participation and promotion of food and environmental justice. However, in a context of neoliberal urban development, the overall socio-spatial impact of UA remains a subject of intense debate. In particular, whilst some scholars focus on the social justice possibilities contained in UA projects, others draw attention to how UA unintentionally fosters revalorization and gentrification processes through an esthetic and environmental improvement of marginal and working-class neighborhoods and suburbs. This intervention aims to explore these contradictory interpretations of UA and offers some conceptual tools based on concrete practice and empirical evidence for clarifying and potentially also resolving them.

Community Engagement in Crime Reduction Strategies: A Tale of Three Cities

Violent crimes in the United States rose for the first time in four years in 2020 (FBI, 2020). The typical and seeming logical response by communities and their police departments is to dispatch more officers to areas of criminal activity. But crime data tracked over the years shows that ‘overpolicing’ isn’t an effective tool at lessening crime rates, can be a strain on budgets, and can heighten tense relationships between police and community members. In this research, we test a community-engaged participatory research approach that combines crime data, design, and engagement in developing the needed policies, tools, and strategies for crime prevention in three medium-sized cities in Michigan. This innovative approach enabled action-oriented recommendations for neighborhood improvements that were grounded in the needs, issues, and concerns of each city. Our data collection approach was an iterative process, whereby data collected at one phase informed data collected in subsequent phases. While our crime data were collected between 2017-2019, our findings showed that bringing residents and stakeholders together with decision-makers and experts can be an effective tool to address environmental design and crime prevention policies especially in the postpolice defunding era. Additionally, successful crime prevention should be based on social programs and physical improvements to the built environment that are unique to the city. In summary, this participatory approach offers non-police driven crime prevention strategies and allows community members an opportunity to drive these strategies.

Monitoring the Improvement of the Urban Environment through Exceptional Communication with the Population (Based on the Materials of the Kirov Region)

For the improvement of cities, the project «Formation of a comfortable urban environment» has been implemented in Russia for several years. In many regions, a number of their own landscaping projects are being carried out. The analysis of feedback from the population can be used as a tool for monitoring and measuring the effectiveness of urban improvement programs. The purpose of the work is to evaluate the results of the implementation of improvement programs in Kirov, the regional center of the Kirov region, taking into account the opinions of the population as the main recipient of these programs. The object of the study is the current state of improvement of the city of Kirov. The subject of the study is the analysis of landscaping in a number of areas (road transport, house and communal infrastructure, accessibility and quality of work of socio-cultural facilities) through feedback from the population. The study was carried out by analyzing official statistics data, a formalized survey of the population and interviews with experts. Two clusters of citizens were identified according to the level of satisfaction with the current state of the city's improvement, a large proportion is a cluster with a low level of satisfaction. However, 60% of residents believe that the quality of the urban environment has been gradually changing for the better over the past few years. The majority of respondents have minimal experience of involvement in the co-development of the urban environment, usually expressed in voting for objects for priority improvement. The study made it possible to identify and concretize the problems of the urban environment: disproportions in the improvement of central and suburban neighborhoods, catching up with the nature of infrastructure development during housing construction, insufficient road capacity, insufficient landscaping of park areas and public recreation areas. A scheme for solving the identified problems of landscaping is proposed, combining two directions: urban planning and communication and managerial.

An epidemic context elicits more prosocial decision-making in an intergroup social dilemma

Societal challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic have the quality of a social dilemma, in that they compel people to choose between acting in their own interests or the interests of a larger collective. Empirical evidence shows that the choices people make in a social dilemma are influenced by how this decision is framed. In four studies, we examined how context of an epidemic influences resource allocation decisions in a nested social dilemma task, where participants share resources between themselves, their subgroup, and a larger collective. Participants consistently allocated more resources to the collective in the context of the Ebola epidemic than in the context of a neighborhood improvement project, and these choices were strongly associated with prescriptive social norms. Together, the findings provide an experimental demonstration that the context of a quickly spreading disease encourages people to act more prosocially.

School-Centered Community Development and a Quest for Spatial Justice: Exploring Competing Theories of Action in Baltimore

The role of public education and schools in the struggle for spatial justice is underappreciated because school and neighborhood improvement have largely been viewed as distinct processes. This article builds a conceptual and empirical argument to explore the intersections of spatial and educational justice specifically in community development practice. We draw on qualitative data collected from a study of Baltimore’s twenty-first Century School Buildings Program and center meso-level actors – city agencies and the school district – to analyze how divergent theories of action that undergird community development can challenge cross-section implementation and coordination. We also reflect on potential pathways to align and integrate schools into community development practice. Our analysis contributes to understanding across disciplines by incorporating schools in the constellation of actors in community development practice, and in doing so augments foundational theories of urban justice and community development.

The impact of coalition characteristics on outcomes in community-based initiatives targeting the social determinants of health: a systematic review

BackgroundCoalitions are a popular mechanism for delivering community-based health promotion. The aim of this systematic review was to synthesize research that has quantitatively analyzed the association between coalition characteristics and outcomes in community-based initiatives targeting the social determinants of health. Coalition characteristics described elements of their structure or functioning, and outcomes referred to both proximal and distal community changes.MethodsAuthors searched six electronic databases to identify peer reviewed, published studies that analyzed the relationship between coalition characteristics and outcomes in community-based initiatives between 1980 and 2021. Studies were included if they were published in English and quantitatively analyzed the link between coalition characteristics and outcomes. Included studies were assessed for quality using the Joanna Briggs Institute analytical cross-sectional studies assessment tool.ResultsThe search returned 10,030 unique records. After screening, 26 studies were included from six countries. Initiatives targeted drug use, health equity, nutrition, physical activity, child and youth development, crime, domestic violence, and neighbourhood improvement. Community outcomes measured included perceived effectiveness (n=10), policy, systems or environment change (n=9), and community readiness or capacity (n=7). Analyses included regression or correlation analysis (n=16) and structural equation or pathway modelling (n=10). Studies varied in quality, with a lack of data collection tool validation presenting the most prominent limitation to study quality. Statistically significant associations were noted between community outcomes and wide range of coalition characteristics, including community context, resourcing, coalition structure, member characteristics, engagement, satisfaction, group facilitation, communication, group dynamics, relationships, community partnership, and health promotion planning and implementation.ConclusionExisting literature demonstrates that coalition characteristics, including best practice health promotion planning and evaluation, influence community outcomes. The field of coalition research would benefit from more consistent description and measurement of coalition characteristics and outcomes, and efforts to evaluate coalitions in a wider range of countries around the world. Further research using empirical community outcome indicators, and methods that consider the interrelationship of variables, is warranted.Trial registrationA protocol for this review was registered with PROSPERO (CRD42020205988).

Neighbourhood associations may promote belonging, but for whom?

ABSTRACT Much has been written about how neighbourhoods provide a context for socially supportive relationships that contribute to belonging. Within neighbourhoods, people can find close-to-home sources of social support and connection. Neighbourhood associations (NAs) are common forms of mobilization through which neighbours work toward neighbourhood improvement. This study explored perceptions of NA leaders within a mid-sized Canadian city regarding the functions of their NAs. A particular focus of the study was on ways NA-organized recreation and leisure initiatives may promote a sense of belonging among neighbours. Findings suggest NA leaders describe belonging in terms of mutually supportive relationships as well as comfort and fit. Findings also suggest that while promoting belonging is an explicit goal of NAs, other NA goals may complicate the realization of neighbourhood belonging. For example, while NA initiatives include neighbourhood-wide leisure events geared toward enhancing belonging, these events often exclusively target toward young families and encompass traditional Christian settler-colonial themes and values. There is minimal effort to involve or connect people of different ages, racial identities, and cultural backgrounds. We discuss the implications these findings can have on the sense of belonging and politics of belonging within neighbourhoods.

Association of Neighborhood Deprivation, Race, and Postoperative Outcomes: Improvement in Neighborhood Deprivation is Associated With Worsening Surgical Disparities.

While there is a broad understanding that patient factors, hospital characteristics, and an individual's neighborhoods all contribute to the observed disparities, the relationship between these factors remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association of neighborhood deprivation improve postoperative outcomes for White and Black Medicare beneficiaries equally. We performed a cross-sectional Retrospective cohort study from 2014 to 2018 of 1372,487 White and Black Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and older who underwent an inpatient colon resection, coronary artery bypass, cholecystectomy, appendectomy, or incisional hernia repair. We compared postoperative complications, readmission, and mortality by race across neighborhood deprivation. Outcomes were risk-adjusted using a multivariable logistical regression model accounting for patient factors (age, sex, Elixhauser comorbidities), admission type (elective, urgent, emergency), type of operation, and each neighborhoods Area Deprivation Index; a modern-day measure of neighborhood disadvantage that includes education, employment, housing quality, and poverty measures. Overall, 1372,487 Medicare beneficiaries with mean age 72.1 years, 50.3% female, 91.2% White, residing in 1107,051 unique neighborhoods underwent 1 of 5 operations. The proportion of Black beneficiaries was 6.5% within the lowest deprivation neighborhoods and increased to 16.9% within the highest deprivation neighborhoods ( P <0.001). The interaction between beneficiary neighborhood and race demonstrated that the association of neighborhood on outcomes varied by race. Specifically, White beneficiaries had 1.5% absolute mortality decrease from the highest to lowest deprivation neighborhoods [odds ratio (OR):1.32, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.27-1.38; P <0.001], whereas Black beneficiaries had a 0.72% absolute mortality decrease from the highest to lowest deprivation neighborhoods (OR: 1.13, 95% CI: 1.02-1.24; P =0.018). Similarly, White beneficiaries had 3.6% absolute decrease in complication rate from the highest to lowest deprivation neighborhoods (OR: 1.23, 95% CI: 1.21-1.28; P <0.001) while Black beneficiaries had a 1.2%% absolute decrease in complication rate from the highest to lowest deprivation neighborhoods (OR: 1.07, 95% CI: 1.01-1.13; P =0.017). For 30-day readmission rates, White beneficiaries realized a 2.3% absolute decrease from the highest to lowest deprivation neighborhoods (OR: 1.19, 95% CI: 1.02-1.24; P <0.001), whereas Black beneficiaries saw no change (OR: 1.03, 95% CI: 0.97-1.10; P =0.269). Lower neighborhood deprivation is associated with improved outcomes across both White and Black Medicare beneficiaries; however, improvement in neighborhood deprivation disproportionately favored White beneficiaries. These findings provide a cautionary example of the misperception of the protective effect of higher social class for Black patients and provide a cautionary example that improvements in neighborhoods may have disparate health impact on its members.