Residential Geographies Research Articles

Spatial Strategies of Haitian Businesses in the Diaspora: The Case of Metropolitan Miami (2001-2009)

The spatial dispersion of Haitians in the Caribbean, North America, and Europe in the twentieth century has had an increasing impact on Haiti's demography and on the transnationalization of its economy and social networks. Haitians abroad now constitute the equivalent of 20 percent of Haiti's population and families left behind are increasingly dependent on the social and economic strategies of their siblings living in foreign countries (e.g., social networks and remittances, family reunification). This trend has been reinforced in the aftermath of the January 12, 2010 earthquake. Migration flows and transnational ties are stronger than ever. In the United States, the development of Haitian communities-mainly in the Northeast and Florida-has been accompanied by the settlement of ethnic businesses that have provided goods and services, in response to the cultural needs of immigrants as well as the need to maintain symbolic ties with the homeland.Moreover, the presence of ethnic businesses has played a key role in the social, geographic and identity structuring of immigrant neighborhoods. At the same time, its contribution to the social and cultural transformation of US cities with a strong Haitian presence has been remarkable. In the context of the significant impact of contemporary immigration on demographics, culture and urban change in the United States, it seems relevant to focus on the relation between ethnicity, residential patterns and the emergence of immigrant business communities.The Haitian business community of Miami is probably the most visible and diverse one in the Haitian diaspora. It has experienced a remarkable transformation since its emergence in the 1970s, from a small enclave to a diversified transnational business community. Once confined to the ethnic neighborhood of Little Haiti, Haitian businesses have followed the northward residential movement of immigrants to the suburbs.1 In this study, I focus on the evolution of Haitian businesses' spatial patterns and their activities over the last decade (2001-2009) in the Miami metropolitan area. This focus stems from a curiosity about how Haitian businesses have responded to the specific needs of immigrants and, consequently, how immigrants' social and residential patterns have impacted the dynamics of ethnic businesses.As an outline for this general reflection, I begin by presenting the theoretical framework and methodology on which the analysis is grounded. Then, preliminary considerations on Haitian residential and social patterns in the United States and on the Haitian diasporic market will provide a contextual understanding of the general features of Haitian businesses in Miami. The evolution of the size and the nature of the business community between 2001 and 2009 will then be analyzed on the basis of two exhaustive surveys conducted in the Miami-Dade's Haitian enclaves of Little Haiti and North Miami-Biscayne Park in May 2001 and June 2009. Both places were homes to some 485 Haitian businesses in May 2001 and 471 of them in June 2009.Theoretical Framework and Methodology: Ethnicity, Residential Patterns and the Haitian Ethnic MarketRecent US history has shown a connection between ethno-racial categorization, residential geography and the settlement strategy of small businesses owned by immigrants. The residential concentration of many immigrant groups has provided a market for the creation of localized ethnic business communities throughout the country: New York's South Bronx, New York's and California's Chinatowns and Miami's Little Havana among others. The ethnic and racial lines along which immigrants have been integrated play a key role in their visibility as territorialized groups in large urban areas.Three theories have relied on the significance of race and ethnicity in US residential patterns: spatial assimilation, place stratification, and the ethnic residential niche model. The spatial assimilation model has attempted to demonstrate that immigrants and their descendants are increasingly likely to live in places occupied by the non-Hispanic white majority as they move upward in the socio-economic hierarchy and as they incorporate into the social and cultural mainstream. …

Contested Terrain: The Suburbs as Region

Wilhite contends that a general indebtedness to Cold War cultural critique has kept literary scholars from reading the suburbs and suburban fiction for what they truly are: the endgame and final outpost of US regionalism. Drawing on discussions of regional writing and cultural geography, Wilhite argues that we should read suburban narratives for the ways they update and revise long-standing regionalist approaches to local and global concerns: the charged insularity of the domestic sphere, the geographic containment of racial difference, the repressive construction of a common national identity, and the imperial reach of nation. As a mode of geopolitical analysis, regionalism clarifies the fraught relationship between isolationism and imperialism that has shaped US residential geography. When read as form of regional writing, suburban fiction exposes our homes and neighborhoods as national and transnational “sites of contestation.” To develop this line of thinking, Wilhite offers Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (2001) and Chang-rae Lee’s Aloft (2004) as case studies for his broader claims about region and the spatial effects of residential sprawl and suburban domesticity. Franzen and Lee both locate the political subject within the competing ideologies of privatism and globalization, but they produce radically different responses to the suburb as a symptomatic fact of twenty-first-century life in the United States. Taken together, these novels offer divergent paths for understanding the suburbs as a uniquely problematic and potentially transformative cultural and geographic region.

Understanding Racial Differences in Deceased-Donor Kidney Transplantation: Geography, Poverty, Language, and Health Insurance Coverage.

Despite the continued growth of diverse populations on dialysis, no prior studies have comprehensively compared the barriers to kidney transplantation among different racial and ethnic groups. This brief review summarizes key findings from a recent study that examined specific determinants of diminished access to, or delayed completion of, deceased-donor kidney transplantation among major racial-ethnic groups in the United States. In particular, we focus on the relative influence on transplantation rates of clinical factors, such as histocompatibility, residential geography, health insurance coverage, poverty, and other socioeconomic factors according to patient race or ethnicity.

Empty spaces: neighbourhood change and the greening of Detroit, 1975–2005

This paper investigates the disappearing residential geography of Detroit, Michigan, between 1975 and 2005 by examining the relationship between the ‘greenness’ of the urban landscape and the structural thinning of residential areas via satellite imagery and census data. The study uses normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and key housing variables as a proxy for observed changes in neighbourhood structure that correspond to the neighbourhood life cycle. Ordinary least squares and geographically weighted regression (GWR) were used to visualize the observed trends and performance of the models across space. Results from GWR analyses suggest the shifting residential geography of Detroit has changed from uniformly developed residential blocks to neighbourhoods that have experienced severe structural thinning across an urban landscape characterized by uneven development. The performance of the study models and parameters demonstrate how the relationships among NDVI and housing indicators, though significant, have diminished over time; this trend runs counter to green models applied to other urban landscapes, particularly those that follow the standard neighbourhood life cycle. Based on the empirical results, the study demonstrates the importance of understanding local histories and the broader socio-spatial context of cities when designing and implementing socio-spatial applications of remote sensing technologies.

The Geographies of Mixed-Ethnicity Families

This paper examines the underresearched residential geographies of mixed-ethnicity families. Analyses of 2001 Great Britain Census data reveal uneven patterns, with different concentrations of mixed-ethnicity families in distinct locations. The findings suggest that distributions of mixed-ethnicity families are not aligned with respective minority ethnic groups. The concentration of mixed-ethnicity families within ethnically diverse neighbourhoods is, in part, substantiated. The discussion disrupts media representations of mixed ethnicity and assumptions of the marginalisation of deprived, mixed-ethnicity families, making a contribution to theoretical debates of processes of sociospatial segregation, ethnicity, and neighbourhood change.

International students as urban agents: International education and urban transformation in Auckland, New Zealand

This paper discusses connections between the internationalisation of education, and in particular the growth in international students, and processes of urban transformation. The research is centred in Auckland, New Zealand, a city where the number of international students has grown rapidly over the last decade leading to significant impacts on the urban form and experience of the city’s CBD. This includes growth in educational services such as language schools and other private training establishments, new residential geographies characterised by low-cost and low-quality high-rise developments, and new ethnic economies of food, service and entertainment businesses that explicitly target international students. The paper draws on research with South Korean international students and a range of secondary materials to interrogate the connections between student mobilities and changing urban form. In doing so the paper contributes to emerging scholarship on student geographies and the role of students as urban agents through the inclusion of an international dimension that has largely been absent in the extant literature. The findings illustrate that while international students themselves clearly play a significant role in the transformation of urban spaces their influence cannot easily be separated from the contribution of a range of other actors including educational businesses, property developers, transnational migrants and local and national state actors.

Therapeutic networks of pregnancy care: Bengali immigrant women in New York City

The aim of this paper is to elucidate the links between place and Bengali immigrant women's use of social networks in their efforts to live a healthy pregnancy. The literature on therapeutic landscapes has mostly emphasized characteristics of local places. I argue that social networks constituted in and beyond the places where people live are equally important. I draw on findings of a qualitative study conducted with Bengali immigrant women in New York City between 2004 and 2006 to understand the place-creating characteristics of social therapeutic networks. In-depth interviews with 40 women in selected neighborhoods in New York City show that such networks operated at multiple scales, ranging from the local to the transnational. A mix of tangible and virtual care and support were received through face-to face interaction and phone conversations. Advice on how to live a healthy pregnancy, cooking and bringing or sending food and therapeutic conversations emerged as important kinds of care and support provided by therapeutic networks. These networks worked in complex ways, reflecting: 1) the situational context of women's lives, shaped by the temporal (e.g. length of residence) and place-based (e.g. residential geographies) aspects of migration, 2) the importance of 'imaginative aspects' in shaping the meanings women formed of therapeutic networks and 3) the diverse ways in which women created and sustained these networks, based on class, country of origin, religion and culture.

Geographies of faith: the differing residential patterns of the Indian‐Hindu, Indian‐Sikh and Indian‐Muslim populations of Dundee and Glasgow

AbstractThis paper examines whether the largest faith groups (Sikh, Hindu and Muslim) within the Indian ethnic populations of Dundee and Glasgow (Scotland) form residential clusters based around their religious affiliations. The residential geographies of the Indian‐Hindu, Indian‐Sikh and Indian‐Muslim populations of each city are explored through a combination of location quotients (LQ), regression and principal components analysis (PCA). Conclusions can be drawn as to whether the mapping of ethnic categories homogenises segregated geographies based around faith affiliation. This allows the paper to explore whether residential trends identified in previous studies as being associated with an Indian ethnic population hold true for all of these faith groups. In particular, the trend for the Indian ethnic population to engage in processes of suburbanisation is investigated with an awareness of the potentially divergent experiences of Indian faith groups. Geographers have claimed that the Indian ethnic population is following a ‘different trajectory’ in comparison with other ethnic populations (Phillips, 1998) in terms of its level of engagement with suburbanisation. However, this paper will investigate whether all the Indian faith groups are following the same ‘trajectory’. Therefore, by providing an analysis that incorporates religion, and analysing the existence of ethnic‐faith geographies, the paper points towards new ways of understanding ethnic geographies. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Immigrant residential geographies and the ‘spatial assimilation’ debate in Canada, 1997–2007

This paper discusses research published between 1997 and 2007 on the residential concentration of immigrants and ethnic and visible minority groups in Canadian metropolitan centres. Specifically, it reviews findings and conclusions that relate to the ongoing debate over the validity of assimilationist perspective assumptions regarding the typical social and spatial trajectory of newcomers. A Canadian immigrant underclass thesis is generally rejected, but some evidence emerges to suggest a potential bifurcation of the assumed pattern of sociospatial mobility. The traditional assumptions would hold for most groups, yet significant exceptions would justify an alteration of the model, essentially de-linking social from spatial mobility in the case of certain groups. Methodological considerations underlying this proposition are discussed.

Linking baby boomer and Hispanic migration streams into rural America – a multi‐scaled approach

AbstractDramatic transformations in the nature of urban economies across the globe have led to the arrival of linked migration streams into destination ‘global cities’. This paper extends these theorisations of linked migration streams into the rural context by examining the overlap between baby boomer and Hispanic migration streams into non‐metropolitan counties and across spatial scales. We argue that boomers arriving in non‐metropolitan destinations are likely to stimulate demand in personal and household services, construction, restaurants, and other service sectors, and such demands are akin to those precipitated by economic restructuring in global cities. Just as immigrants flock to global cities to fill labour demand in burgeoning service sectors, we argue Latinos are arriving in certain non‐metropolitan destinations in response to growing service demands brought about by recently arriving boomers. Our exploratory analysis documents the extent to which these migration streams converge in rural America, and describes the residential geographies that emerge in the wake of such migration. The analysis identifies 75 counties in which these migration streams overlap, and these counties are distinct in terms of geographical distribution and economic structure. Within these counties, however, there is considerable residential separation between these two populations, leading to new questions concerning community integration and fragmentation in these increasingly diverse non‐metropolitan destinations. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Politics of Studentification and `(Un)balanced' Urban Populations: Lessons for Gentrification and Sustainable Communities?

This paper explores the politics of studentification in the UK. It is argued that there is a paradox between New Labour's vision of sustainable communities and the geographical effects of the promotion of higher education—in a similar vein to policies to generate `positive' gentrification. This contention hinges on the absence of a national policy on the supply of student housing, which dictates how enlarged student populations should be integrated into established communities, or dispersed to other parts of towns and cities. It is asserted that the lack of government policy and the incapacity of institutional actors to intervene or regulate the residential geographies of students are yielding `unbalanced' populations. This is a factor in the rise of studentification and the fragmentation of established communities. Ironically, some activists argue these `lost' communities signified lucid exemplars that the sustainable communities policy seeks to engender. These new geographies also obscure the positives of a student population and may foster resentment and conflict between students and established residents. More specifically, the paper illustrates how debates of planning and housing legislation are integral for addressing the challenges of studentification. The paper concludes by considering some possible lessons of studentification for mitigating the negatives of gentrification.

The Esther Henderson and Chuck Abbott White Mountain Apache Photographs

The Esther Henderson and Chuck Abbott White Mountain Apache Photographs John R. Welch Notes 1. Perhaps in part because Cummings was not an accomplished or systematic photographer, several of his students from the Kinishba years pursued the medium for documentary anthropological purposes far beyond excavations and shots of workers. The work of Tad Nichols, available at Northern Arizona University's Cline Library (NAU.MS.332, http://www2.nau.edu/~libei-p/scadb/collna-mereferal.cfm?collection_name=Nichols%2C%20Tad, consulted May 27, 2006), is the most accessible of these bodies of work. Nichols photographed a basket-weaving sequence featuring Flora Erskine in 1941 (see fig. 11), a few months before the Abbott and Henderson shoot. 2. Many details associated with the lives, families, and residential geographies of the individual subjects in the photos presented here have been left unattended as an invitation to interested parties—particularly members of the region's Apache community—to add their knowledge and perspective. Beyond the eleven reproduced here, the Hoeck collection of Abbott and Henderson photos includes at least sixteen distinct images (several of which may have been taken years after the initial shoot). All of the Hoeck collection images are on file at Nohwike' Bagowa, the White Mountain Apache Cultural Center and Museum at Fort Apache. The only other repository known to curate additional original Henderson and Abbott prints from White Mountain Apache tribal lands is the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson (see AHS PC 29, PC 175). 3. See also pages on the Arizona Highways website at www.arizonahighways.com/page.cfm?name=About_History, consulted May 22, 2006. 4. Cooper (2005:117) suggests that once Henderson passed through the gauntlet of exclusionary politics and had an established practice, she turned the tables and sought to exclude other prospective commercial practitioners. During our consultation in early 2006 Henderson emphasized the sexist dimension to this issue, noting her insistence at the time that if she were to be required by Buehman, Bate, and Updike to meet their professional standards, so should other men, including Abbott. Also see Roy Drachman's (1979) side of the story, also available at http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/drachman/foreword.html, consulted May 28, 2006. 5. Dedi and Mike Hoeck do not recall the specific circumstances associated with their Henderson and Abbott acquisition, but it probably occurred as part of the purchase, intended for retail resale, of a large lot of historical photographs. Their collection is the best of what remained following the close of the Indian arts and crafts business they operated in Reno, Nevada. 6. The registers and Cummings' personal guest books are among his papers (MS 200) curated at the Arizona Historical Society, Tucson. 7. In addition to the 1942 portraits captured at Kinishba, a Henderson photograph of Cummings, probably shot between 1946 and 1950, graces the frontispiece of the festschrift compiled in honor of Cummings' ninetieth birthday and entitled For the Dean (Reed and King 1950). This portrait, which remains in the photographic collections of the Arizona State Museum, is also said to have served as the basis for the oil painting that hung for many years in the State Museum library and entrance lobby. 8. As this occurs I hope the owners will consider sending high- or medium-resolution copies to the tribe's Cultural Center at Fort Apache. References Cited Bassett, Everett 1994 “We Took Care of Each Other Like Families Were Meant To”: Gender, Social Organization, and Wage Labor among the Apache. In Those of Little Note, edited by Elizabeth M. Scott, 55–79. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Google Scholar Bostwick, Todd W. 2006 Byron Cummings: Dean of Southwest Archaeology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Google Scholar Cooper, Evelyn S. 2005 Pictures for Sale. In Picturing Arizona: The Photographic Record of the 1930s, edited by Katherine G. Morrissey and Kirsten M. Jensen, 103–23. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Google Scholar Cummings, Byron 1940 Kinishba: A Prehistoric Pueblo of the Great Pueblo Period. Tucson: Hohokam Museum Association and the University of Arizona. Google Scholar 1952 Indians I Have Known. Tucson: Arizona Silhouettes. Google Scholar 1953 First Inhabitants of Arizona and the Southwest. Tucson: Cummings Publication Council. Google Scholar Drachman, Roy P. 1979...

Studentification and ‘Apprentice’ Gentrifiers within Britain's Provincial Towns and Cities: Extending the Meaning of Gentrification

This paper focuses on processes of studentification, and explores the link between higher education students and contemporary provincial gentrification. The paper provides two main, interconnected, contributions to advance debates on gentrification. First, the discussion appeals for wider temporal analyses of the lifecourses of gentrifiers to trace the formation and reconfiguration of the cultural and residential predilections of gentrifiers across time and space. With this in mind, it is argued that there is a need to rethink the role of students within the constraints of third-wave gentrification, and to consider how ‘student experiences’ may influence the current and future residential geographies of young gentrifiers within provincial urban locations. Drawing upon recent studies of studentification, it is asserted that this profound expression of urban change is indicative of gentrification. Second, the paper advances Clark's recent call to extend the term gentrification to embrace the wider dominant hallmarks and tendencies of urban transformations. Controversially, in light of a deepening institutionalisation of gentrification, we contend that gentrification can be most effectively employed at a revised conceptual level to act as a referent of the common outcomes of a breadth of processes of change.

Mapping Race and Ethnicity: The Influence of James Allen

The theme of mapping race and ethnicity has been carried forward by many geographers, most by analyzing patterns to understand residential geographies and exploring processes of spatial assimilation of various racial and ethnic groups. James Allen's work is considered by many to be among the finest, and most classic, examples of this type of research. Through the eyes of a young scholar, this paper discusses the influence of James Allen's work on my own explorations in racial and ethnic geography. The paper outlines the themes and principal geographic concerns of James Allen's research and suggests how his work continues to inspire new racial and ethnic "mappings" and geographies.

The Emergence of Gated Communities in a West African Context: Evidence From Greater Accra, Ghana

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the global expansion of gated communities has become an increasingly important part of the residential geography of many cities. The gated community phenomenon has not been researched in West African cities, and the extent of these communities' formation and convergence or divergence with global trends is unknown. This article provides the first-ever analysis of their formation in Greater Accra, Ghana. The analysis suggests that the globalization of real estate markets and Diaspora living are important aspects in the residential geography of Accra. The concept of "transnational houses" is employed to explain aspects of the local property market that are being globalized and differentiated from local housing. Transnational houses add another layer of diversity to the contemporary urban geography of Greater Accra.

Partnering ‘out’ and fitting in: residential segregation and the neighbourhood contexts of mixed‐race households

AbstractThis analysis considers how racial segregation affects the residential geographies of households headed by mixed‐race couples. We also become interested in assessing whether diverse households live in diverse places. To measure neighbourhood diversity, we develop a new index of diversity based on the exposure index. The analysis of 12 large US metropolitan areas finds that race (in tandem with status markers like income) and nativity provide some of the best understandings of the neighbourhood geographies of mixed‐race households. The study also reveals that instead of fitting into and thus reinforcing the existing racialised urban spatial structure, some households formed by ‘partnering out’ live in spaces characterised by their racial diversity. We focus on the mixed‐race household because such a collective constitutes a scale at which mixed‐race contact takes place and a site for identity construction of individuals, partners, and the surrounding neighbourhood. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Work Together, Live Apart? Geographies of Racial and Ethnic Segregation at Home and at Work

When scholars map the urban geography of racial and ethnic segregation, they privilege the time when people are at home. When workers commute, however, the tract of residence of one group often becomes the tract of employment of others. It follows that an exclusive focus on the residential geographies of racial groups erases the presence of others who work in those neighborhoods. Not only does this analytical orientation create a false impression of a city's racialized spaces as fixed, but it also misleadingly characterizes neighborhoods as the domain of those who live, rather than work, in them. In addressing this oversight, the study compares levels of residential and work tract segregation for native-born and immigrant groups in a large U.S. metropolitan area, Los Angeles. The analysis reveals that segregation by work tract is considerably lower than by residential tract, suggesting more intergroup interaction takes place during working hours than at home. The difference in segregation between residence and work is very large in the case of native-born whites and Mexican immigrants. These two groups maintain substantially different residential geographies but are quite likely to work in the same tracts. Such work tract complementarities are gender sensitive; they are much more likely between native-born white and Mexican men than between women of these groups. This gendered difference holds across all groups, with men more likely to work in tracts with men from other groups than women with women from other groups. The study offers new perspective on diurnal shifts in urban racial segregation. We conclude by speculating that reduced segregation at workplaces factors into recent increases in rates of interracial partnering, which may, in turn, ultimately leverage change in residential segregation.

Accra

Accra, the capital and major economic city in Ghana, is undergoing a major restructuring of much of its infrastructure and, more important, its physical form and appearance. Much of Accra’s growth parallels the introduction of liberalization policies since 1983. During this time the economic foci of the urban economy have been shifting away from the old colonial city to a more diffuse spatial organization. Uneven economic and residential development is associated with these trends. Accra is developing independently of any spatial urban planning. Present-day Accra is characterized by fragmented economic and residential geographies that if left unchecked will undermine sustainable urban development.

From Modern to Post-modern?: Contemporary ethnic residential segregation in four US metropolitan areas

Recent articles by Dear and Flusty, Logan, Marcuse and Nijmann have initiated a debate regarding the characteristics of modern and post-modern urbanism. One of the differences between the two, it is contended, is in their residential geographies: post-modern cities, it is argued, are more heterogeneous and fragmented than modern cities, which are characterized by extreme segregation of ethnic groups into citadels (the host society) and enclaves/ghettos (all other groups). Testing these ideas empirically requires a methodology which allows rigorous comparisons over space and time. This article uses a recently-developed comparative methodology to explore differences in their residential patterns between two modern (Chicago and New York) and two post-modern (Los Angeles and Miami) US cities, using data on the four main ethnic groups from the initial Census 2000 releases. It shows very clear differences between the two pairs, in the expected directions, but also differences within pairs – especially the two post-modern cities.

In the Shadow of a Grain Elevator: A Portrait of an Irish Neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

THE creation of the immigrant neighborhood is one of the central features of American urbanization since the nineteenth century. settlements in North America since the early 1800s have been analyzed with depictions of various Irishtowns and Corktowns. (1) While images of ethnic homogeneity in urban neighborhoods in the period 1850-1930 have been dispelled by detailed research, the endurance of ethnically defined populations and identities has received scant attention. (2) Indeed, it has been assumed that the durability of such populations and identities in given neighborhood seldom lasted beyond the immigrant generation, but rather represented temporary or transitional arrangement in city's social geography. (3) The urban ecologists of the University of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s, with their spatial assimilation models, did not expect working class immigrant neighborhoods to last for more than generation. The descendants of the inhabitants of such places, they believed, suburbanized relatively quickly, paving the way for newer immigrant groups to occupy cheap housing close to downtown. The residential dispersal of the Chicago from the notorious Stockyards district in the early twentieth century, for example, moved Paul Cressey to write that they had undergone a more complete disintegration ... and greater degree of cultural assimilation than the city's Germans. (4) Though the exodus of the lace-curtain or steam-heat from early shantytowns forms key element in the story of America at the turn of the century, little has been said of the primary settlement areas they left behind, or about how long such areas remained Irish. This paper explores, firstly, the socioeconomic milieu of the First Ward, the principal district of Buffalo, New York, in the late-nineteenth century; and, secondly, it explores the conditions that contributed to the ward's durability as an neighborhood into the twentieth century. In contrast to many other pioneer neighborhoods in urban America, the identity of the First Ward as an working-class neighborhood has endured far beyond the first generation of immigrants who settled there in the 1840s and 1850s. (5) And though the neighborhood has been hit hard by de-industrialization, with part of the housing stock now put to other uses, the neighborhood is still viewed by Buffalonians as the part of Buffalo. Rather than being seen as bounded Irish world, neighborhood is conceptualized in this paper as fluid entity. I argue that variety of social territories co-existed alongside, and overlapped with, one another and were inextricably linked in web of ethnic-based social relations. The First Ward, in other words, was not world unto itself. Profiling the economic and social structure of this neighborhood and mapping its various social landscapes is possible through the analysis of census manuscripts, municipal records, personal memoirs, and con temporary novel, Roger Dooley's Days Beyond Recall, set in the First Ward circa 1900. (6) The book chronicles the family and social relationships of Rose Shanahan, born in the ward to Limerick-born parents. Although Dooley, born in 1920, was writing about the previous generation who lived in the district, I argue that his status as First Ward native of background and his use of real place-names in the book offer more nuanced picture of neighborhood life than can be gleaned purely through reliance on non-literary sources. As Mallory and Simpson-Housley argue, such novelistic descriptions of places enable the essences of sense of place to be felt strongly by the reader. (7) In discussing the First Ward's Irishness, I explore not only the district's residential geography, but also its labor market and various social and political institutions, all of which functioned to produce an Irish-American neighborhood of long standing. …