Neighborhood Outcomes Research Articles

Exposure to Highway-related Ultrafine Particles and Cardiovascular Markers: The CAFEH Project

PP-31-029 Background/Aims: A significant portion of urban air pollution derives from motor vehicle exhaust on highways and busy streets. Recent studies have shown that the near-highway environment contains elevated concentrations of ultrafine particles (UFP; diameter <0.1 micrometer), which is a concern, because UFP is generally more toxic than larger particles. We are involved in a 5-year, observational, cross-sectional, community-based participatory research study (titled Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health [CAFEH]) of exposure and cardiovascular health outcomes in neighborhoods immediately adjacent to major highways in the Boston, Massachusetts, area. Methods: We are conducting environmental monitoring of particle number concentration and other air pollutants in Somerville (just north of Boston) near Interstate-93 (>1.5 × 105 vehicles/d), using a mobile monitoring platform and 2 fixed sites. The residents aged ≥40 living <100, 100–400, and 1000 m have been selected for participation. Participants complete a survey of demographics, time-activity, cardiovascular diagnoses, and potential confounders. A subset of these participants agreed to have blood pressure measurements taken and to donate blood samples for C-reactive protein (CRP), lipids, and fibrinogen analysis. Results: Data collection is ongoing, and we have preliminary results for the first set of participants. The cohort is predominately female and white, with a mean age of 58 years. Prevalence of hypertension and pre-hypertension based on measurement is 36% and 78%, respectively. The mean levels of CRP and fibrinogen are 1.9 and 455 mg/dL, respectively. Mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure in the left arm is 135 and 77 mm Hg, respectively. There are weak correlations between systolic blood pressure and both hypertension and cardiovascular diagnosis. In addition, there is a weak association between distance-to-highway and CRP. Conclusion: There are associations of interest in this near-highway cohort; however, definitive conclusions cannot be drawn at this time. Continued recruitment will allow us to more accurately evaluate associations between exposure and outcomes of interest.

Mega-projects, city-building and community benefits

Mega-projects figure prominently in the arsenal of contemporary city-building strategies. The allure is of a city redefined, placed on the world stage and able to improve services, facilities and revenues. Community attitudes to such projects are often mixed, with fears of gentrification, displacement or loss of existing city character. Although mega-projects are adopted to pursue global ambitions, concerted community-based demands are to use them to satisfy local needs. This article examines mega-projects that address both city-building and local concerns. Cases – situated in Montreal, Vancouver and Los Angeles – are examined in which innovative practices prioritized the quality of residential areas and needs of low-income households. The article reviews how agreements were reached, the form they took and neighborhood outcomes. The paper concludes by exploring whether new constellations of community-based actors and novel planning processes are emerging in parallel to the rise in mega-projects.

African American Locational Attainment before the Civil Rights Era

The conventional wisdom is that due to intense discrimination, prior to the Civil Rights era blacks of all classes lived side by side. Individual socioeconomic status did not translate into improved locational outcomes according to this view. But several historical case studies suggest that upper–stratum blacks did indeed live in neighborhoods set apart from their poorer brethren. This study uses individual–level data from the 1910–1950 Public Use Microdata Samples to investigate how individual–level socioeconomic status translated into neighborhood–level outcomes for blacks. the study finds that among blacks, individual–level socioeconomic status played no role in determining residential proximity to whites. for blacks individual socioeconomic status was, however, an important determinant of other neighborhood outcomes.

Community Effects on Mental Health Outcomes in Subjects With and Without Panic Attacks

The purpose of this study was to determine the proportion of variance in mental health outcomes accounted for by census tract in community-dwelling adults with and without panic attacks. This is a secondary analysis of a population-based study (conducted from August 1989 through December 1991) of subjects with and without panic attacks (DSM-III-R criteria) from 18 census tracts in San Antonio, Texas. All subjects completed measures of symptomatology, health care utilization, substance use, and quality of life. Subjects with panic attacks completed measures of panic-related disability and health care utilization, as well as measures of sense of control and secondary mental disorders. Hierarchical modeling was used to estimate the proportion of the variance of each outcome accounted for by census tract. Census tract accounted for less than 4% of the variance in psychiatric symptomatology and quality of life. However, census tract contributed to the proportional variance in panic-related outcomes, accounting for 13% of the variance of mental health utilization for panic symptoms when compared with individual-level variance. The use of more homogeneous levels such as block group could increase the measured multilevel effects found in this study. Studies of disease-specific mental health outcomes in multiple neighborhoods or clinics should consider whether multilevel effects are present.

Racial/ethnic differences in housing outcomes for first‐time, low‐income home buyers: Findings from a National homeownership education program

Federal housing policies aimed at making homeownership more accessible through education and affordable lending have been successful in raising the homeownership rate among minorities. By marketing homeownership to underserved populations and helping them overcome financial and informational obstacles, such programs might be expected to promote equality in housing outcomes, including housing quality, neighborhood composition, and neighborhood conditions, for minority homeowners. This article examines the experience of participants in a national home‐ownership education program. While the transition to homeownership has been associated with modest progress, it does not overcome persistent disparities in housing quality. Homeownership appears to lead to poorer neighborhood conditions for all lower‐income buyers—not just minorities—and may be exacerbating social and spatial isolation rather than helping to overcome it. Differences in neighborhood outcomes, however, may be due to locational preference rather than discrimination in housing and mortgage markets.

Residential Mobility and Neighbourhood Outcomes

When households move they obviously weigh both the quality of the house and the quality of the neighbourhood in their decision process. But, to the extent that housing quality and neighbourhood quality are inter-twined it is difficult to disentangle the extent to which households are more focused on one or another of these two components of the choice process. This paper uses both cross-tabulations of the neighbourhood choices, and logit models of the actual choices, to examine the relative roles of neighbourhoods and houses in the choice process. The research is focused on the question of the extent to which households trade up in house quality, or neighbourhood quality or both, as outcomes of residential mobility. The research measures neighbourhood quality in both socio-economic and environmental dimensions. The study shows that many households not only move up in housing quality, but quite consistently also make gains in neighbourhood quality, often independently of gains in housing quality. Not surprisingly, the largest gains in neighbourhood quality are related to households who make the city/suburban transition in their housing moves. The research adds another dimension to the growing and extensive literature on neighbourhoods and their role in residential choice.

Intervening in the residential mobility process: Neighborhood outcomes for low-income populations

Neighborhoods have become the focus of questions about how they affect the families that live within them. A current working assumption of some federal policies is that, with help, households can escape poverty neighborhoods and change their spatial context. How true is this, especially for low-income households, and does changing neighborhoods have measurable benefits? The study uses data from the Moving to Opportunity program, initiated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to test whether policy interventions by means of housing vouchers have aided moves away from low-poverty areas and into integrated residential settings. By examining the neighborhood demography of the initial and subsequent locations of the samples, it is possible to assess the success of the objectives of decreasing poverty and increasing integration. Although the program has shown some success in assisting households to live in lower-poverty neighborhoods, the findings here emphasize just how difficult it is to intervene in dynamic processes such as housing choice and mobility to create policy outcomes.

Investigating behavioural impacts of poor neighbourhoods: towards new data and analytic strategies

Three challenges confront statistical researchers of neighbourhood impacts on individual behaviours: (1) operationalising ‘neighbourhood processes’; (2) potentially non-linear relationships between neighbourhood characteristics and outcomes; and (3) the selection bias problem. To better comprehend these challenges and overcome them, the paper proposes an overarching conceptual framework wherein outcomes of interest are affected by neighbourhood interacting in a mutually causal fashion with housing tenure, housing wealth, household socio-economic status, and mobility behaviour. It advances a five-equation, simultaneous system for home ownership, mobility expectations, housing wealth, household socio-economic status and neighbourhood character. Although current US census data do not provide perfect proxies for neighbourhood processes, there is evidence that a battery of them could represent reasonable operationalisations. Tests for non-linearity could be conducted in this framework. This model could use a sufficiently robust set of instrumental variables to overcome the issue of neighbourhood selection bias, and thereby produce considerably more precise estimates of neighbourhood impacts on individual outcomes of interest. Implications for qualitative research approaches also are drawn.

Race, Regional Origin, and Residence in Northern Cities at the Beginning of the Great Migration

Southern blacks and whites began moving to northern and western cities in large numbers during the second decade of the twentieth century. City-level and ward-level data for 103 northern and western cities are used, along with the 1920 Public Use Microdata Sample, to investigate variation in neighborhood characteristics by race and migration history in 1920. The results of multi-level analyses reveal sharp differences between blacks and whites in the racial composition and quality of residential neighborhoods, even after controlling for a variety of sociodemographic characteristics. Regional origin also affects neighborhood outcomes, primarily because of the racial differences in the urban locations of southern migrants. Black migrants experienced a relative residential disadvantage because of their greater concentration in cities that constrained their residential opportunities. In contrast, white migrants selected destinations that enhanced their locational attainment. These findings highlight the importance of the larger social and economic context in the structuring of group differences in residential outcomes and point to the need for additional research into the selection of destinations by the participants in the Great Migration.

Race, Regional Origin, and Residence in Northern Cities at the Beginning of the Great Migration

Southern blacks and whites began moving to northern and western cities in large numbers during the second decade of the twentieth century. City-level and ward-level data for 103 northern and western cities are used, along with the 1920 Public Use Microdata Sample, to investigate variation in neighborhood characteristics by race and migration history in 1920. The results of multi-level analyses reveal sharp differences between blacks and whites in the racial composition and quality of residential neighborhoods, even after controlling for a variety of sociodemographic characteristics. Regional origin also affects neighborhood outcomes, primarily because of the racial differences in the urban locations of southern migrants. Black migrants experienced a relative residential disadvantage because of their greater concentration in cities that constrained their residential opportunities. In contrast, white migrants selected destinations that enhanced their locational attainment. These findings highlight the importance of the larger social and economic context in the structuring of group differences in residential outcomes and point to the need for additional research into the selection of destinations by the participants in the Great Migration.

POVERTY AREA DIFFUSION: THE DEPOPULATION HYPOTHESIS EXAMINED

Large tracts of land in American inner cities were transformed into extreme poverty areas between 1970 and 1980. Today, these extreme poverty areas have become the localities of what are popularly known as underclass behaviors. The leading explanation for the large increases in poverty areas is frequently referred to as Wilson's hypothesis. This paper examines the role depopulation plays in the growth of extreme poverty areas. A growth typology of extreme poverty areas reveals four different neighborhood outcomes resulting from population change. The evidence demonstrates that the depopulation hypothesis does not describe the growth circumstances of all poverty areas. Regional variations in poverty area depopulation rates are a reflection of how broader demographic and economic changes have played out unevenly across the national urban system.

Segregation and Neighborhood Quality: Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in the San Francisco Metropolitan Area

Segregation and Neighborhood Quality: Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in the San Francisco Metropolitan Area