Suburban Poverty Research Articles

Refining a traditional urban-rural classification approach to better assess heterogeneity of treatment effects in patient-centered outcomes research

This article describes a rationale and approach for modifying the traditional rural-urban commuting area (RUCA) coding scheme used to classify U.S. ZIP codes to enable suburban/rural vs. urban core comparisons in health outcomes research that better reflect current geographic differences in access to care in U.S. populations at risk for health disparities. The proposed method customization is being employed in the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute-funded Management Of Diabetes in Everyday Life (MODEL) study to assess heterogeneity of treatment effect for patient-centered diabetes self-care interventions across the rural-urban spectrum. The proposed suburban/rural vs. urban core classification scheme modification is based on research showing that increasing suburban poverty and rapid conversion of many rural areas into suburban areas in the U.S. has resulted in similar health care access problems in areas designated as rural or suburban.•The RUCA coding scheme was developed when a much higher percentage of U.S. individuals resided in areas with very low population density.•Using the MODEL study example, this study demonstrates that the RUCA classification scheme using ZIP codes does not reflect real differences in health care access experienced by medically underserved study participants.•Both internal and external validation data suggest that the proposed suburban/rural vs. urban core customization of the RUCA geographic coding scheme better reflects real differences in healthcare access and is better able to assess the differential impact of clinical interventions designed to address geographic differences in access among vulnerable populations.

The suburbanization of poverty and changes in access to public transportation in the Triangle Region, NC

During the last 50 years, a number of economic forces led to noteworthy changes in the geography of poverty in the US. Employment decentralization and lack of affordable housing have resulted in many low-income households migrating to suburban areas, and as of today, the majority of the low-income population of metropolitan regions resides in the suburbs. Focusing on the Triangle Region, NC, this study systematically explores the changes in the geography of poverty and transit access over time to better understand how accessibility to transit has changed for the low-income residents. Spatial panel data models are also estimated to investigate the relationship between poverty and transit access at the neighborhood level and how it varies spatially and temporally, while accounting for unobserved heterogeneity and spatial autocorrelation. Results indicate that between 1990 and 2015, the outer-ring suburbs experienced the highest increase in both poverty and transit access, although improvements in transit access were lower in the recently urbanized areas within the outer-ring suburbs. Inner-ring suburbs experienced a substantial rise in poverty rate and low-income population, and a comparable increase in transit access. Central cities remained the areas with the highest poverty rate and transit access in the Triangle Region but experienced smaller changes over time compared to suburban areas. The findings of the econometric analysis suggest that poverty rate and transit access are not significantly related at the neighborhood level when time-invariant unobservable characteristics are accounted for.

Suburbanization of Transport Poverty

Many cities have undergone spatial redistributions of low-income populations from central to suburban neighborhoods over the past several decades. A potential negative impact of these trends is that low-income populations are concentrating in more automobile-oriented areas, resulting in increased barriers to daily travel and activity participation, particularly for those who are unable to afford a private vehicle. Accordingly, the objective of this article is to analyze the links between increasing sociospatial inequalities, transport disadvantage, and adverse travel behavior outcomes. This is examined first from a theoretical perspective and second via a spatiotemporal analysis for the Toronto region from 1991 to 2016. Findings show that many suburban areas in Toronto are not only declining in socioeconomic status but are also suffering from increased barriers to daily travel evidenced by longer commute times and decreasing activity participation rates, relative to central neighborhoods. Because of these adverse effects, this evidence further supports the need for progressive planning and policy aimed at curbing continuing trends of suburbanization of poverty while also improving levels of transport accessibility in the suburbs.

La Suburbanización de la Pobreza y el Acceso a los Servicios Públicos en la Ciudad de México

The aim of this study is to analyse the suburbanization of poverty in the Metropolitan Zone of Mexico City, this is a topic scarcely treated in the urban development literature on Latin American metropolis. Specifically the distribution of poor population by metropolitan rings is analysed, in order to identify the main concentrations of population with high and very high marginalization degrees; and these results are related to the access to two main public services, health and piped water inside dwellings. Trends are analysed with a comparison of census data for the years 2000 and 2010 at metropolitan level, confirming a concentration process of poor groups either in the suburban or the peripheral zones. One of the main findings is that interior and external suburban zones present the bigger concentrations of the population with the highest economic disadvantages with notable lack of access to public services. These results put in evidence the existence of large deteriorated suburban zones.

Changing occupational structures and residential segregation in New York, London and Tokyo.

Based on data from the 1980s, Sassen's influential book 'The Global City' interrogated how changes in the occupational structure affect socio-economic residential segregation in global cities. Here, using data for New York City, London and Tokyo, we reframe and answer this question for recent decades. Our analysis shows an increase in the share of high-income occupations, accompanied by a fall in low-income occupations in all three cities, providing strong evidence for a consistent trend of professionalization of the workforce. Segregation was highest in New York and lowest in Tokyo. In New York and London, individuals in high-income occupations are concentrating in the city centre, while low-income occupations are pushed to urban peripheries. Professionalization of the workforce is accompanied by reduced levels of segregation by income, and two ongoing megatrends in urban change: gentrification of inner-city neighbourhoods and suburbanization of poverty, with larger changes in the social geography than in levels of segregation.

Emerging anti-poverty infrastructural gaps in suburbia: Poverty and the voluntary sector across Metropolitan Sydney

Suburbs are subject to numerous stereotypes, including that they lack density, diversity and inclusivity. While these stereotypes have largely been dispelled, the deficit around anti-poverty infrastructure remains understudied. The focus of this paper is to systematically investigate the ostensible mismatch between (a) the emerging suburbanization of poverty, and (b) the potential lack of anti-poverty infrastructure to serve it, with a focus on suburban voluntary sector provision. These aims address the potential infrastructural deficit around voluntary sector provision in suburban areas of prosperous global cities in the Global North. Using Metropolitan Sydney as the case study, we investigate the extent of the suburban infrastructure service deficit across metropolitan space in 2016, comparing poverty patterns and supply of voluntary sector organizations. We find that poor inner and outer suburbs featured fewer services than the inner city, both per capita and per low-income residents, confirming an anti-poverty infrastructural gap.

Measuring accessibility to hospitals by public transport: An assessment of eight Canadian metropolitan regions

IntroductionThe ability to access healthcare services has long been considered a ‘right’ by Canadian citizens and is protected as such under the Canada Health Act. However, socio-spatial factors can limit access to healthcare services, especially for vulnerable populations. This paper aims to quantify the spatial accessibility to healthcare services by public transport across eight major Canadian metropolitan areas and compare accessibility to healthcare across vulnerable population groups. This is the first study, to the authors’ knowledge, to conduct an assessment of accessibility to hospitals by public transport across multiple metropolitan regions in Canada, thereby allowing to identify common trends, challenges, as well as knowledge gaps. MethodsSpatial accessibility to general medical and surgical hospitals by public transport was measured through a two-step floating catchment area method, considering both service-to-population ratios and travel time to these health services. For each metropolitan area, the average accessibility of all census tracts and the average accessibility of the 20% most vulnerable census tracts were calculated. To quantify vertical equity, an indicator was subsequently developed using the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient between accessibility and vulnerability. Main findingsWithin metropolitan areas (except for Vancouver), residents of vulnerable census tracts generally have greater access to hospitals by public transport. Yet, larger metropolitan areas (Calgary, Toronto-Hamilton, and Vancouver) tend to underperform in terms of vertical equity and average accessibility. In line with this, vulnerable census tracts in these metropolitan areas are characterized by the lowest levels of accessibility compared to vulnerable census tracts in the other metropolitan areas. ConclusionThis research highlights the challenges associated with the suburbanization of poverty in large Canadian metropolitan regions and the need to provide efficient public transport services to reach hospitals located in the periphery. It also shed lights on the necessity to conduct more empirical research to inform the implementation of guidelines in terms of accessibility to healthcare in Canada. This study is of relevance to researchers, planners and policy-makers wishing to improve accessibility to healthcare, especially for vulnerable populations.

Residential mobility and the geography of low-income households

In contrast to the traditional image of suburban communities as stable and secure enclaves surrounding a more volatile urban core, scholars have noted considerable increases in suburban poverty over the past several decades. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) from 1999 to 2015 and a seven-category neighbourhood typology, this analysis seeks to better understand the growing economic distress of suburban areas in two stages: first by examining the degree to which low-income residents have left urban communities for suburban neighbourhoods; and second by identifying the types of low-income households that have made urban-to-suburban moves. Results show that although low-income households rapidly suburbanised during the study period, higher-income households left urban areas for suburban neighbourhoods at nearly the same rate. This finding suggests that while the overall number of economically disadvantaged residents in the suburbs has grown, population flows have had only a modest impact on the income composition of suburban neighbourhoods. Results also highlight important differences between low-income households that suburbanised during the study period and those that remained in urban communities. In particular, urban-to-suburban movers were more likely to be white, had more household resources and lived in origin neighbourhoods with fewer urban characteristics than the origin neighbourhoods of those who relocated within central-city areas.

A tale of two suburbias: Turning up the heat in Southern California's flammable wildland-urban interface

As Southern California becomes hotter and dryer, wildfires are becoming more frequent and severe. At the same time, the suburbanization of poverty and immigration are making the region increasingly – albeit unevenly - diverse. This paper synthesizes insights from planning and ecology to address the following questions: how do burned areas differ from the rest of the region in terms of poverty, race, and housing values; how has this changed since 1980; and what are the implications for environmental justice? Typically, low-income urban communities of color are disproportionately vulnerable to climate impacts. However, this study finds that the wildland-adjacent neighborhoods most impacted by wildfire have remained predominantly white and affluent, even as Southern California has become increasingly diverse. Moreover, housing in burned areas is increasingly more expensive. These results indicate that home ownership in a fire-prone, wildland-adjacent neighborhood is a profitable investment for those who can afford it. This situation is likely creating perverse incentives for continued development of the wildland-urban interface, leading to both continued ecological disturbance and affluent residents continuing to subject themselves to more physical danger than they have acknowledged.

Families in the Driver's Seat: Catalyzing Familial Transformative Agency for Equitable Collaboration

Context An emerging body of research has begun to re-envision how nondominant families and communities might become powerful actors in equity-based educational change when issues of power, race, culture, language, and class are integrated into family engagement efforts. Beyond the commitment to more equitable engagement, the field offers little empirically-grounded evidence with regard to how to shift power and build collective agency, particularly in the moment-to-moment interactions that constitute the ongoing daily practice of family-school relations. Purpose of Study We sought to understand how nondominant parents and educators could enact equitable collaboration in the school-based co-design of a parent education curriculum. We sought to better “map” the journey to transformative agency of nondominant parents by asking: What were the turning points in the emergence and evolution of transformative agency amongst nondominant parents from different racial/cultural/linguistic communities? Within and across these turning points, how did parents narrate and negotiate their roles and evolve their transformative agency? Setting The research took place in a suburban school district in the Western United States outside a major urban city, in a region of increasing suburban poverty and marked racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Participants The design team included nine parents from two schools who identified as African/African American, Latina, Vietnamese, and white; three white teachers, two white principals, two district administrators (African American and multiracial), and five researchers (Asian American, African American, and Latino/a). Research Design This study merged a framework of equitable collaborations with expansive learning theory and employed participatory design research (PDR) methodologies to examine 10 design meetings with historically marginalized parents that sought to build authentic relationships, reciprocity, and accountability to one another and the targeted outcome. Findings/Results Our findings suggest a series of turning points marked by discursive expansions in which nondominant parents re-envisioned their own and educators’ roles in educational change. Through the design process, parents surfaced and engaged historical contradictions, developed collective understandings, modeled possibilities for collective voice and influence, and enacted their collective influence through the collection of data from other parents, the development and piloting of a lesson on bullying, and the completion of the curriculum. Conclusions/Recommendations We argue that these methods and theories offer ways forward from documenting deficit-based processes and historically-rooted power asymmetries in family engagement towards enacting equitable and democratic processes that leverage the expertise of nondominant families in tandem with that of formal educators and researchers.

Flashpoint: The Church and Law Enforcement in Poor Black and White Communities

This paper seeks to “connect-the-dots,” linking recent police shootings of African Americans, including several in suburban communities, with emerging research linking the migration to the suburbs of poor, mostly black and Latino urban dwellers with “suburban poverty” and crime. Also discussed are the increase in poverty, crime and incarceration among whites in rural communities. Contrary to popular belief, poor white communities contain the fastest growing segment of the U.S. prison population. Poor whites are also the victims of police violence more often than blacks. As one civil rights leader has written, “While African-Americans are at disproportionate risk from the structural and human biases of our criminal justice system, we should not forget that working and poor people of all races suffer from police excessive use of force. Police kill more whites than blacks.” (Jackson, 2015, para. 11)In an age of draconian and (in the opinion of many) hate-filled reversals in criminal justice and immigration policy, due in large measure to these demographic shifts, the power and moral witness of the church are sorely needed to assist the poor, both black and white. This assistance must go beyond the “outreach ministries” typically seen in churches. Rather, as society’s principal moral voice, the church must see and understand the demographic and cultural changes happening around it, effectively seeing through a moral lens the changes law enforcement often finds threatening. And, within the context of providing pastoral care to the wealthy and the poor, the black and the white, the law enforcer and the ostensible law breaker,assist in brokering relationships that are beneficial to the individuals, families and communities it serves.

Introductie bij het themanummer: een drieluik van groeiende woonongelijkheid

Access to affordable, decent and secure housing is under increasing pressure in countries across the world, especially in burgeoning cities. This results in displacement, exclusion and increasing housing cost burdens. This theme issue consists of a collection of papers that approach inequality on urban housing markets from different angles. In this introduction to the special issue, we provide a framework to understand these various dimensions of inequality and their interconnectedness. We identify three scales of inequality: First, at the abstract level of housing systems, market developments and housing policies contribute to increasing housing costs and a reduction in affordable housing units. Second, at the urban level we identify increasing spatial segregation between populations as well as the intertwined trends of intensifying gentrification and suburbanization of poverty. Third, at the everyday level we can identify a loss of belonging among long-term residents of changing (gentrifying) neighbourhoods, while other residents may appreciate change. This also fosters the potential for conflict and poses new challenges to professionals dealing with families in situations of poverty. We argue that emerging inequalities at these different scales need to be considered as interconnected.

Poverty Policy, the Market, and the Metropolis

This essay focuses on three recent books that examine contemporary trends and policy responses to poverty and urban regeneration: Places in Need: The Changing Geography of Poverty, by Scott W. Allard; The Servant Class City: Urban Revitalization versus the Working Poor in San Diego, by David J. Karjanen; and Urban Policy in the Time of Obama, edited by James De Filippis. Each examines the issue with a substantially different focus—the increase and nature of suburban poverty, the role of market-based urban revitalization in poverty production, and the approach and limitations of national urban policy under Obama—to shed light on the possibilities, limitations, and unintended consequences of our efforts to regenerate our cities and address poverty in urban areas.

Suburban status and neighbourhood change

This article examines suburban neighbourhood trajectories from 1970 to 2010 in the 100 most populous metropolitan areas in the US within the context of discussions around suburban decline and reinvestment. A weighted composite index of neighbourhood change indicators was used to identify the relative status of urban and suburban neighbourhoods. Index values were ranked by metropolitan area, and neighbourhoods were assigned to a corresponding quartile. The quartiles formed a status trajectory sequence, categorised as Reduced, Reduced with recovery, Stable or Improved. Neighbourhood trajectories were compared across city and suburb as well as across prewar, postwar, and modern suburban types. Despite increased discussion around suburban decline and suburban poverty, suburban neighbourhoods maintained a higher status than the city, were more likely to recover from reduced status and had higher frequencies of status improvement. The majority of suburban neighbourhoods occupied the highest status ranking in all decades. Stability was the most common trajectory for suburbs, and stable suburban neighbourhoods were higher status than stable urban neighbourhoods. The findings highlight geographies of neighbourhood inequalities and contribute to our understanding of regional and suburban neighbourhood change dynamics.

Where the Other 1 Percent Live: An Examination of Changes in the Spatial Concentration of the Formerly Incarcerated

Traditionally, prisoner reentry has been regarded as an urban phenomenon, with most returning prisoners concentrating into a select few disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. However, metropolitan-area changes—including the demolition of public housing, the suburbanization of poverty, and desegregation—may have altered the prevailing spatial distribution of returning prisoners, thereby spreading the challenges of prisoner reintegration to new geographic domains. Accordingly, I examine the extent to which the geographic distribution of formerly incarcerated individuals in Chicago and Illinois has changed since the late 1990s, including both the causes and consequences of changes, drawing on sixteen years of prisoner release data from the Illinois Department of Corrections, combined with data from the U.S. Census, the American Community Survey, the Chicago Police Department, and the Chicago Housing Authority.

Marginalizing Poverty with Car-Dependent Design: The Story of Two Expulsions

In the twentieth century in Nova Scotia, at least two racialized communities were forcibly expelled from their land: Black Africville residents in Halifax and the Membertou Mi’kmaw First Nation in Sydney. Differences in the long-term outcomes of the two expulsions, however, reveal critical factors in how urban design can support or frustrate poverty alleviation. While the Membertou First Nation was relocated as a whole to a centralized context where they were geographically positioned to stage an economic transformation, Africville residents were more widely dispersed, many to areas with less access to jobs and other economic opportunities.This article analyzes the urban design elements in Halifax that create barriers to prosperity for the city’s historically Black communities and low-income residents. These factors include housing displacement, the suburbanization of poverty, and a lack of access to transit and other destinations within walking distance of homes. This article proposes three policy options to address these barriers and ensure that the city offers opportunity to all residents.

Poverty and Student Homelessness at the Metropolitan Margins: Sensemaking among School and Community Leaders in a Growing Suburb

Background/ContextHistorically, the suburbs have symbolized the attainment of the American dream. In this post-World War II imagery, the typical suburban residents are White middle-class homeowners. Although to some extent the suburbs have always been diverse, recently, many have undergone racial and socioeconomic changes. Alongside these shifts, the suburbs are increasingly facing rising poverty and student homelessness. However, there is a dearth of education research that examines how poverty and homelessness unfold in the suburbs.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of StudyDrawing from the suburban poverty literature, my purpose is to learn how school and community leaders in a growing suburb make sense of rising poverty and homelessness.SettingThis study is situated in Acreville, a pseudonym for a rapidly growing Midwest suburb. Acreville is a majority-White and relatively affluent suburb that has experienced rising poverty and homelessness.Research DesignThis qualitative case study draws from wide-ranging data, including 42 interviews with community and school leaders, analysis of school board meeting minutes, observation of school board meetings, artifact collection, and longitudinal district data on poverty, homelessness, and mobility.Findings/ResultsI identified four narratives that reflect the ways in which leaders in Acreville made sense of rising poverty and homelessness. Often times, leaders used these narratives to rationalize and justify their actions or the actions of others around matters of poverty and homelessness. The narratives reflected ideologies around community identity, poverty, and race. They also played an important role in policy and molded the educational opportunities of families and students experiencing poverty and homelessness in unique ways.Conclusions/RecommendationsAlthough historically the suburbs were associated with the American Dream, today, many confront rising poverty and homelessness without the needed infrastructure and supports necessary to meet families’ needs. Surprisingly, Acreville is home to a number of innovative programs, practices, and services. In some ways, Acreville could serve as a model to other communities—at least on paper. Yet, matters related to community identity, class, race, and geographic space often thwarted the full potential of these well-intentioned responses. Implications for theory and specific recommendations for scholars, school leaders, community providers, and leadership preparation are discussed.

Assessment of New Urban Poverty of Vulnerable Urban Dwellers in the Context of Sub-Urbanization in Bangladesh

The main purpose of this study is to examine how sub-urbanization creates poverty in the suburban areas of Bangladesh. The study focuses on the new urban poverty of the adjacent area of Dhaka where sub-urbanization is taking place. Data have been collected from the inhabitants of Savar municipality under Dhaka district in Bangladesh through semi-structured interview schedule. The paper reveals that the poor men face more extreme poverty and vulnerability than women in terms of their economic, cultural and social conditions. The study also explores that suburban poverty is mostly affected by the masculinization of poverty instead of the feminization of poverty. It contributes to understanding and analysis of the phenomenon of rapid urbanization in the developing country like Bangladesh and its social consequences as the formation of frequent suburban mess hall like slums and new forms of urban poverty. Finally, the suburban poor are largely dependent on their household, income, employment, medical facilities, and social networking. The paper also indicates that significant portions of the suburban dwellers are lived mostly in informal house and are living below the poverty lines.

The unaffordable city: Housing and transit in North American cities

This paper presents an empirical analysis of seventeen large American and Canadian metropolitan regions to look at geographies of affordability in transportation and housing. A pre-recession snapshot of frequent transit networks are mapped against housing cost, urban form and socioeconomic variables from census data, and the relationship of housing cost to transit access is tested visually, by descriptive statistics, and with logistic regression. The results show apparent contradictions: while there is great variance in transit access and housing cost between and across cities, transitscapes are consistently more racially diverse, higher density, and poorer than surrounding autoscapes; but, once income and racialization are held constant, there is a decreasing chance of access to transit as housing prices become more affordable. In other words, for many people, there is no affordable access. These paradoxes are interpreted with relevance to patterns of racial and economic geographies of land use and mobility, the dominance of postwar automobility, the suburbanization of poverty, and wealth inequality in North American cities. This research fills gaps in the transit-oriented urban form research, by pointing to the need to consider housing affordability; it also fills gaps in the transit-oriented gentrification research, by opening consideration to all types of transit, not just rail. The results can be compared to relationships of housing affordability and transit in other cities across the world, as there are important commonalities and differences in geographies of poverty and access. While American and Canadian cities are becoming more like international cities in the peripheralization of affordable housing and the mismatch between transit and lower income areas, North American autoscapes face unique challenges to extending public transit access to these peripheries. Understanding and attending to these inequalities of access to housing and transportation can better inform efforts of sustainable transformation through significant mode shift and affordable urban form intensification.

The Philadelphia story: Age, race, gender and changing travel trends

We examine changes in travel behavior in the Philadelphia region between 2000 and 2012. We use two household regional travel surveys over a decade apart, the 2000 and 2012 surveys, from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC). Previous research, at the national scale, has highlighted changes among the Millennial cohort. We use these two regional datasets to examine the changing travel behavior among Millennials and to put these changes in context by comparing them with changes among other social groups of interest: women and minorities.We find that the travel behavior of young people did not change substantially between 2000 and 2012. Where there are changes, these pale in comparison to the changes among women and black residents. And finally, we find that the built environment factors appear to influence travel more in 2012 than in 2000. Taken together, our findings fit an overarching narrative about urban gentrification and the suburbanization of poverty, rather than a story of Millennials’ changing travel behavior.