Poor Urban Neighborhoods Research Articles

Vulnerabilities, competition and rights in a context of climate change toward equitable water governance in Peru's Rio Santa Valley

As glacial retreat changes the hydrology of Peru's Rio Santa, water demand is growing, pollution is worsening, and competition for water among economic sectors, political jurisdictions and upstream and downstream water users is intensifying. The vulnerability of highland communities, food producers, and poor urban neighborhoods in the Santa watershed in the face of these changes is magnified by inequities in water governance, giving rise to water conflict. Peru's new water regime defines water as an economic good and seeks to centralize control over water. This article analyzes implications of this regime for ensuring equity and managing conflict. It concludes that Peru's water regime is more likely to address equity issues when faced with concerted citizen action.

Screening of Vision and Hearing in Primary School Children

Background:Hearing and sight are two basic senses in terms of education and profession. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 15 million children worldwide suffer from uncorrected refractive disorders and another 275 million people are handicapped due to compromised hearing. In Indonesia, screening primary school children for hearing and vision is not part of the free public health-care system. Knowledge of the status of a child's hearing and vision may help secure the child's education and future profession.Materials and Methods:In five primary schools in a poor urban neighborhood in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, we screened pupils from class 1 to 6, for vision and hearing handicaps, following the WHO's definitions of handicap. On location in the primary schools, we screened vision using a Snellen chart and hearing using distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE). Those with vision below 6/18 were referred to an ophthalmologist and pupils with hearing below 30 decibels at 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kilohertz were referred to an ear nose and throat (ENT) specialist for final testing.Results:Totally, 775 pupils were vision screened and 777 pupils were hearing screened. We found that 2% were disabled by sight and 6% by hearing.Conclusion:Lost without proper education, these pupils can, with simple recommendations, have access to education. We recommend that Indonesia start screening its primary school pupils for hearing and vision to secure the country's future productivity and socioeconomic development.

El desarrollo de la inferencia analógica en niños que viven en sectores urbanos pobres

Se describe el desarrollo de la inferencia analógica en 405 niños de 3, 4 y 5 años, que viven en sectores urbanos pobres de las ciudades Colombianas de Cali y Santa Marta. Con este fin, se les propuso individualmente un problema de inferencia analógica. Los resultados muestran que niños de todas las edades son capaces de solucionar el problema utilizando la estrategia que requiere establecer inferencia y relaciones de analogía, aunque el porcentaje de niños de 5 años que la usa es significativamente mayor que el de los otros dos grupos. Los resultados obtenidos permiten discutir dos tendencias en el desarrollo cognitivo: una centrada en la edad y la otra en el variabilidad intra e inter-individual.

Bodegas or Bagel Shops? Neighborhood Differences in Retail and Household Services

Social scientists studying the disadvantages of poor urban neighborhoods have focused on the quality of publicly provided amenities. However, the quantity and quality of local private amenities, such as grocery stores and restaurants, can also have important quality-of-life implications for neighborhood residents. In the current article, the authors develop neighborhood-level metrics of “retail access” and analyze how retail services vary across New York City neighborhoods by income and by racial composition. The authors then examine how retail services change over time, particularly in neighborhoods undergoing rapid economic growth. Results indicate that lower income and minority neighborhoods have fewer retail establishments, smaller average establishments, a higher proportion of “unhealthy” restaurants, and in certain cases, less diversity across retail subsectors. In addition, the rate of retail growth between 1998 and 2007 has been particularly fast in neighborhoods that were initially lower valued and experienced relatively high housing price appreciation compared with the city overall.

Are poor neighborhoods “retail deserts”?

Poor urban neighborhoods are often referred to as “food deserts”, lacking in grocery stores and healthy food vendors. However, most empirical studies of food deserts have been small scale, focusing on limited geographies and a narrow range of products. Standard retail location models, which often assume that consumers have identical preferences and are uniformly distributed through space, provide little insight into the relationship between local income and retail patterns. In this paper, we examine the relationship between neighborhood income and retail density for several types of goods and services in 58 large U.S metropolitan areas. We combine detailed data from the National Establishment Time-Series database on retail establishments and employment, by industry category and firm type, with Census data on ZCTA income, poverty and demographics. Results indicate that retail patterns do vary by neighborhood income, along many dimensions. High poverty neighborhoods have lower employment density for retail overall, supermarkets, drugstores, food service and laundry facilities, driven largely by reduced employment in chain establishments. Average establishment size increases with median income for all retail types. Neither income levels nor poverty rates consistently predict retail employment growth, but neighborhoods that experience income upgrading do see larger gains in retail employment.

Conflict, displacement and health in the Middle East

Displacement is a hallmark of modern humanitarian emergencies. Displacement itself is a traumatic event that can result in illness or death. Survivors face challenges including lack of adequate shelter, decreased access to health services, food insecurity, loss of livelihoods, social marginalisation as well as economic and sexual exploitation. Displacement takes many forms in the Middle East and the Arab World. Historical conflicts have resulted in long-term displacement of Palestinians. Internal conflicts have driven millions of Somalis and Sudanese from their homes. Iraqis have been displaced throughout the region by invasion and civil strife. In addition, large numbers of migrants transit Middle Eastern countries or live there illegally and suffer similar conditions as forcibly displaced people. Displacement in the Middle East is an urban phenomenon. Many displaced people live hidden among host country populations in poor urban neighbourhoods – often without legal status. This represents a challenge for groups attempting to access displaced populations. Furthermore, health information systems in host countries often do not collect data on displaced people, making it difficult to gather data needed to target interventions towards these vulnerable populations. The following is a discussion of the health impacts of conflict and displacement in the Middle East. A review was conducted of published literature on migration and displacement in the region. Different cases are discussed with an emphasis on the recent, large-scale and urban displacement of Iraqis to illustrate aspects of displacement in this region.

Alleviating Urban Poverty by Mobilizing Neighborhood Labor

The ongoing problem of urban poverty has resisted almost all attempts at finding a solution. This paper proposes that by mobilizing the available labor in a poor urban neighborhood, poverty can be alleviated. This will require a motivated community organizer along with community leaders who together will organize community work teams which operate by issuing a local neighborhood currency that is backed by the work teams' labor.

PRECIOUS

AbstractThis article posits that the response to the AIDS epidemic among Blacks in the United States must acknowledge structural and institutional realities that render poor Black urban neighborhoods particularly vulnerable to high HIV infection rates. The controversial filmPrecious: Based on the NovelPushby Sapphire, inspires our analysis, revealing the spatial context of HIV risk and suggesting new potential avenues through which to address the epidemic at the neighborhood level. In the film, we find opportunities for institutions to serve as intermediaries among neighborhoods, families, and individuals, not only to reduce the transmission of HIV, but also to improve health management for HIV-positive inner-city residents. The film points to three potential location-based sites of intervention: (1) mental health services that treat childhood sexual trauma; (2) HIV-related health messaging and services within urban street-level bureaucracies; and (3) neighborhood access to food and dietary resources that mitigate HIV disease progression.

Opportunities for Making Ends Meet and Upward Mobility: Differences in Organizational Deprivation Across Urban and Suburban Poor Neighborhoods*

Objectives. Given the recent rise of poverty in U.S. suburbs, this study asks: What poor neighborhoods are most disadvantageous, those in the city or those in the suburbs? Building on recent urban sociological work demonstrating the importance of neighborhood organizations for the poor, we are concerned with one aspect of disadvantage—the lack of availability of organizational resources oriented toward the poor. By breaking down organizations into those that promote mobility versus those that help individuals meet their daily subsistence needs, we seek to explore potential variations in the type of disadvantage that may exist.Methods. We test whether poor urban or suburban neighborhoods are more likely to be organizationally deprived by breaking down organizations into three types: hardship organizations, educational organizations, and employment organizations. We use data from the 2000 U.S. County Business Patterns and the 2000 U.S. Census and test neighborhood deprivation using logistic regression models.Results. We find that suburban poor neighborhoods are more likely to be organizationally deprived than are urban poor neighborhoods, especially with respect to organizations that promote upward mobility. Interesting racial and ethnic composition factors shape this more general finding.Conclusion. Our findings suggest that if a poor individual is to live in a poor neighborhood, with respect to access to organizational resources, he or she would be better off living in the central city. Suburban residence engenders isolation from organizations that will help meet one's daily needs and even more so from those offering opportunities for mobility.

The Participant's Dilemma: Bringing Conflict and Representation Back In

AbstractInnovations in democratic participation involving small‐scale, long‐term focused governing bodies have increased citizen influence in poor American urban neighborhoods. Scholars have described these emerging forms of participation as essentially cooperative in spirit and directly democratic in nature. I argue that the new participatory regimes continue to involve social processes of representation and conflict inherent to more traditional forms of engagement. Participants move dynamically between cooperation and conflict and between participating as individuals and representing constituencies. This article presents a careful study of how a single decision developed and was implemented in such a participatory experiment, the American Street Empowerment Zone in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, between 1994 and 2008. Archival and interview data support the general perspective shared by articles in this symposium — that participation involves dynamic movement between conflict and cooperation. This article suggests that the durability of the participatory regime depends not on the level of conflict but on how participants move between displaying identification with either government or their community constituents. This article uses the concept of intermediation to describe this kind of dynamism and to reflect the flexibility a participatory structure must nurture to endure.RésuméLes innovations en matière de participation démocratique qui impliquent des organes de gouvernement œuvrant à petite échelle et à long terme ont accru l'influence des habitants dans les quartiers urbains pauvres américains. D'après certains auteurs, ces formes nouvelles de participation sont, dans l'esprit, essentiellement coopératives et, par nature, directement démocratique. Il est exposé ici que les nouveaux régimes participatifs font encore intervenir des processus sociaux de représentation et de conflit propres à des formes d'engagement plus traditionnelles. Les participants oscillent de manière dynamique entre coopération et conflit, et entre participation en tant qu'individus et représentation collective. Cet article présente une étude minutieuse de la manière dont une décision a étéélaborée et mise en œuvre dans le cadre d'une expérience participative de ce type, ‘American Street Empowerment Zone’à Philadelphie (Pennsylvanie), de 1994 à 1998. Des données issues d'archives et d'entretiens corroborent la perspective générale commune aux articles de ce symposium: la participation implique un mouvement dynamique entre conflit et coopération. L'article suggère que la pérennité du régime participatif dépend, non pas du niveau de conflit, mais de la façon dont les participants alternent dans leur manifestation d'une identification soit au gouvernement soit aux membres de leur communauté. Le concept d'intermédiation est utilisé pour décrire cette forme de dynamique et pour traduire la souplesse que doit garder une structure participative pour perdurer.

Bodegas or Bagel Shops? Neighborhood Differences in Retail & Household Services

Social scientists studying the disadvantages of poor urban neighborhoods have focused on the quality of publicly provided amenities. However, the quantity and quality of local private amenities, such as grocery stores and restaurants, can also have important quality of life implications for neighborhood residents. In the current paper, we develop neighborhood-level metrics of “retail access” and analyze how retail services vary across New York City neighborhoods by income and racial composition. We then examine how retail services change over time, particularly in neighborhoods undergoing rapid economic growth. Results indicate that lower-income and minority neighborhoods have fewer retail establishments, smaller average establishments, a higher proportion of “unhealthy” restaurants, and in certain cases, less diversity across retail sub-sectors. In addition, the rate of retail growth between 1998 and 2007 has been particularly fast in neighborhoods that were initially lower-valued and experienced relatively high housing price appreciation compared to the city overall.

Advocates for environmental justice: the role of the champion in public participation implementation

That segment of the community I would say is just in general pretty disenfranchised. We found that if you want participation you have to go to them. I mean there are days when you just need to go knock on the door. Brownfields developer in a poor urban neighbourhood This article considers the role that champions play as advocates for socioeconomically disadvantaged community member involvement in environmental management decision-making. Six case studies of brownfields redevelopment projects located in poor urban neighbourhoods are examined. Analysis of these case studies reveals how champion behaviour, which has typically been studied only in the context of technological innovation, is enacted in public participation efforts in the service of environmental justice. The study finds that champions who emerge in these settings lead the development and implementation of non-standard public participation process innovations.

Welcome to the neighbourhood: social contacts between Iraqis and natives in Arnhem, The Netherlands

Social mixing is viewed as an instrument for social justice because it is used to integrate different categories of inhabitants and improves social conditions in poor urban neighbourhoods. Social mixing as an instrument for integration assumes that some connections between natives and immigrants will be established. This article explores the dynamics of interethnic contact between Iraqis and native residents in a Dutch neighbourhood. It shows how cultural differences between the Iraqis and the Dutch influence the establishment of interethnic contacts. This study presents a more complex view of interethnic contact than is usually portrayed in the current debate on integration. It demonstrates that social mixing requires measures that enable and facilitate interethnic contact.

The Political and Economic Forces Shaping Concentrated Poverty

Through the second half of the 1990s and into the early years of the twenty-first century, public attention to the plight of poor black Americans seemed to wane. There was scant media attention to the problem of concen trated urban poverty (neighborhoods in which a high percentage of the resi dents fall beneath the federally designated poverty line), little or no discussion of inner-city challenges by mainstream political leaders, and even an apparent quiescence on the part of ghetto residents themselves. This was dramatically different from the 1960s, when the transition from legal segregation to a more racially open society was punctuated by social unrest that sometimes expressed itself in violent terms, as seen in the riots that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But in 2005, Hurricane Katrina exposed concentrated poverty in New Orleans. When television cameras focused on the flooding, the people trapped in houses and apartments, and the vast devastation, many Americans were shocked to see the squalid living conditions of the poor. Of course, the devas tation of Katrina was broadly visited upon the residents of New Orleans, black and white, rich and poor, property owner and public housing tenant alike. But while many residents were able to flee, the very poor, lacking auto mobiles or money for transportation and lodging, stayed to wait out the storm with tragic results. And through Katrina, the nation's attention became riveted on these poor urban neighborhoods. Some people argued that Katrina demonstrated how foolhardy is reli ance on the government for protection, rather than self-reliance and control of one's own fate. However, it is unfair and indeed unwarranted to blame people with limited resources for being trapped in their neighborhoods and

A highly efficacious pediculicide based on dimeticone: Randomized observer blinded comparative trial

BackgroundInfestation with the human head louse (Pediculus humanus capitis) occurs worldwide. Existing treatment options are limited, and reports of resistance to commonly used pediculicides have been increasing. In this trial we assessed the efficacy of a product containing a high (92%) concentration of the silicone oil dimeticone (identical in composition to NYDA®), as compared to a 1% permethrin lotion.MethodsRandomized, controlled, observer blinded clinical trial. Participants were recruited from a poor urban neighbourhood in Brazil where pediculosis capitis was highly prevalent. To minimize reinfestation during the trial, participants (145 children aged 5–15 years with head lice infestations) were transferred to a holiday resort outside the endemic area for a period of 9 days. Two applications of dimeticone or 1% permethrin were done, seven days apart. Outcome measures were defined as cure (absence of vital head lice) after first application and before and after second applications, degree of itching, cosmetic acceptability, and clinical pathology.ResultsOverall cure rates were: day 2 – dimeticone 94.5% (95% CI: 86.6% – 98.5%) and permethrin 66.7% (95% CI: 54.6% – 77.3%; p < 0.0001); day 7 – dimeticone 64.4% (95% CI: 53.3% – 75.3%) and permethrin 59.7% (95% CI: 47.5% – 71.1%; p = 0.5); day 9 – dimeticone 97.2% (95% CI: 90.3% – 99.7%) and permethrin 67.6% (95% CI: 55.4%-78.2%); p < 0.0001). Itching was reduced similarly in both groups. Cosmetic acceptability was significantly better in the dimeticone group as compared to the permethrin group (p = 0.01). Two mild product-related incidents occurred in the dimeticone group.ConclusionThe dimeticone product is a safe and highly efficacious pediculicide. Due to its physical mode of action (interruption of the lice's oxygen supply of the central nervous system), development of resistance is unlikely.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN15117709.

The Caregiving Trajectory Among Poor and Chronically Ill People

This article analyzes the caregiving trajectory for adults and elderly persons who suffer from diabetes. The objective is to develop a conceptual framework for understanding caregiving changes over time. An ethnographic study was conducted in a poor urban neighborhood in Guadalajara, Mexico, in which 21 caregivers were interviewed and followed from 1997 through 2001. The trajectory has a beginning and an end, and moves through three phases: semi-care, care, and dying. The phases differ by the type and timing of actions undertaken, and the degree to which the caregiver takes over the physical functions and social roles of the sick person.

Conduct, Meaning and Inequality in an İstanbul Courthouse

AbstractThis essay seeks to analyze the daily reproduction of inequalities in and around a contemporary İstanbul civil courthouse. Based on an ethnographic study in three poor urban neighborhoods and their civil courthouse, I examine the mode of conduct in the latter and the ways in which this mode is perceived. This study shows that routinized divergences from formalistic premises in the courthouse are not perceived as flaws, but placed within informal relations. This enmeshing of formal and informal practices is considered normal by both the legal professionals and lay low-income litigants. These constituencies, however, perceive this conduct rather differently in relation to their own and others' attributes. Lay low-income litigants locate it within a broader idiom of “doing administration,” a series of tactics to engage within a horizon of perpetual injustice. For legal professionals, on the other hand, the daily mixing of formal and informal practices has to do with their mission of “educating” and transforming those in need to participate in the culture of the state. I discuss the particular relation of these two perceptions in normalizing the view of the law as a site, not of formal egalitarianism, but of hierarchical social engagements.

Remaking Minnie Street

Urban design is frequently identified as a tool to reduce crime and improve traffic safety in urban neighborhoods. In this “before” and “after” evaluation, we assess a major urban revitalization in the Minnie Street neighborhood in Santa Ana, California, in terms of its impacts on crime and pedestrian safety. Conclusions suggest that urban design can help to improve crime and traffic safety in poor urban neighborhoods but that other factors must also be considered.

Community building in the twenty-first century

Community has long been a critical concept for social scientists, and never more so amid the growing economic inequity, natural and human disasters, and warfare of the opening years of the twenty-first century. In this volume, leading scholar-activists develop a conceptual framework for both the theory and practice of building communities. Rethinking the very concept in light of technological change and globalization, they examine local responses to worldwide trends, study the ways that communities generate and use resources, and evaluate existing theories and approaches to community building to determine the best strategies for fostering community strength and vitality. Their work with groups ranging from refugees, religious charities, and poor urban neighborhoods to tribal peoples, international corporations, and public health agencies demonstrates that local communities contain the seeds for a more desirable future and suggests how we may encourage those seeds to grow.

Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio

For decades now, scholars and politicians alike have argued that the concentration of poverty in city housing projects would produce distrust, alienation, apathy, and social isolation - the disappearance of what sociologists call social capital. But relatively few have examined precisely how such poverty affects social capital or have considered for what reasons living in a poor neighborhood results in such undesirable effects. This book examines a neglected Puerto Rican enclave in Boston to consider the pros and cons of social scientific thinking about the true nature of ghettos in America. Mario Luis Small dismantles the theory that poor urban neighborhoods are inevitably deprived of social capital. He shows that the conditions specified in this theory are vaguely defined and variable among poor communities. According to Small, structural conditions such as unemployment or a failed system of familial relations must be acknowledged as affecting the urban poor, but individual motivations and the importance of timing must be considered as well. Brimming with fresh theoretical insights, Villa Victoria is an elegant work of sociology that will be essential to students of urban poverty.