Since the 20th century, cities of the United States have experienced a trend of suburban growth. The economic expansion after the World War II; the wave of international migration to the United States; the internal migration of African Americans to the cities of the north looking for better jobs and education opportunities; the return of American veterans from the war; the improved rails and roads networks and the transport innovations; and the new urban planning practice based on zoning laws, low density, and single-family detached housing were just some of the factors that contributed to the suburban development of American cities. The American suburban growth has been generally associated with the dislocation of the white individuals from the inner-city neighborhoods to the suburbs. In fact, from 1940s, the so called “white flight” saw a large-scale migration of white middle-class residents from racially mixed urban neighborhoods to racially homogeneous suburban areas. This produced strong patterns of residential segregation that contributed to dividing cities between white and rich suburban neighborhoods in the city extension areas and black and underprivileged ‘ghettos’ in the inner-city neighborhoods.
“If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes”
‘One race, one class’ neighborhoods
The process of exclusion and residential segregation has been largely promoted by strict racial zoning laws, race restrictive covenants, homeowners’ associations as well as large scale developers and real estate agents fighting against integration. Federal agencies had a great impact on the market system through the creation of a racialized ranking system to nominate community eligibility for federally-financed or federally-insured loans. Federal programs like Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), which made loans to homeowners, and the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), which insured private-sector loans, refused to lend money or underwrite loans for white men if they move to mix-raced areas. In fact, “inharmonious” racial groups were believed to cause lower performance in the ranking system. Social and racial homogeneity were considered essential to maintain the stability, integrity, and solidarity of a neighborhood. This not only resulted in preventing blacks’ choice to move to suburbs - as not entitled to loans – but also forced whites to move exclusively to segregated suburbs to achieve the private home ownership. In the meantime, developers and real estate agents were selling exclusion, rather than exclusivity through the promoting of racially segregated neighborhoods. As McKenzie illustrates in “Privatopia”, “as millions of African-Americans and others minorities relocated to Northern and Western cities, community builders […] responded by promoting the creation of one-race, one-class neighborhoods in cities and newly constructed suburbs. In essence, the black American was treated as a threat to property values, like a spam factory or a slaughterhouse.” (McKenzie 1994, pg 58).
Since the 1970s, due to the increased ‘social dislocation’ to the suburbs, inner-city neighborhoods have undergone a profound social transformation as consequence of the change of their economic class structure. In fact, the movement of middle class professionals out from the inner cities has left behind a higher concentration of the most disadvantaged segments of the urban population (Wilson 2012, pg 49). The process of social dislocation increased significantly the poverty intensity - mainly suffered by black poor individuals - through the ‘concentration effect’ as called by Wilson, and reinforced the new meaning of ‘ghetto’. In fact, according to the traditional meaning, the word ‘ghetto’ represents a “racially and/or culturally uniform socio-spatial formation based on the forcible relegation of a negatively typed population to a specific territory” (Wacquant 1993, pg 378). In recent years, the meaning of ‘ghetto’ started to assume a more complex connotation involving aspects of socio-economic marginality, spatial segregation, dispossession, urban inequalities and ethno-racial/class exclusion. In fact, the racialized housing markets, which relocated to the suburbs most of the existing and emerging white middle-class, also contributed decisions to move main urban services and employment opportunities to the suburbs. The suburban middle-class housing implied the displacement out from the inner-city of better-quality schools, main urban services as well as job opportunities, which followed the middle-class demand and work force. The majority of black working-class residents who remained in the city incurred longer and more costly commutes; less accessibility to the job market; rising level of unemployment; lower education opportunities. These, among others, were some of the reasons that contributed to the exacerbating of the ghetto’s socioeconomic exclusion.
In the last 30 years, suburban, homogeneous, and gated neighborhoods remain the result of the displacement and moving out of middle- and upper-middle-classes from the urban areas.
According to Setha M. Low’s research, one-third of the new homes in the United States in recent years are built within gated residential development, mainly targeting white middle-class and upper-middle-class communities (Low 2001, pg 46). Residential segregation, supported by planning practices and zoning laws, has been reinforced by the “culture of fear”, based on prejudice and socioeconomic disparities growing within the society. The research conducted by Low shows that the majority of the interviewees associate the decision of moving to a residential gated community to the perception of increasing level of crime, insecurity, ethnic changes, and deterioration of their neighborhood of origin. “Residents are fleeing deteriorating urban neighborhoods with increased ethnic diversity and petty crimes, concluding that the neighborhood is "just not what it used to be.”” (Low 2001, pg 55). Gated community residents tend to see immigrants as source of fears and identify the threat of a changing socioeconomic environment with “ethnic changes”. In most of the cases, in fact, the changing composition of the neighborhood of origin made the gated community residents so uncomfortable that they decided to move.
The conversion of urban space into a capital
“Property is not the house itself but an economic concept about the house, embodied in a legal representation that describes not its physical qualities but rather the economically and socially meaningful qualities we humans have attributed to the house ”
Pierre Bourdieu’s and Hernando De Soto’s theories of the forms of capital can help to understand the way discriminatory federal programs such as Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) worked and still affect the city’s social structure. Bourdieu explains: “capital can present itself in three fundamental guises: as economic capital, which is immediately and directly convertible into money and may be institutionalized in the form of property rights; as cultural capital, which is convertible, on certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the form of educational qualifications; and as social capital, made up of social obligations ('connections'), which is convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the form of a title of nobility” (Bourdieu 1986, pg 47). Since the economic capital is at the root of all the other types of capital, both the social and cultural capitals can be derived from the transformation of economic capital. The recognition conferred to the social or cultural capital by the institutional agents, such as legal or governmental organizations, makes it possible to establish conversion rates between cultural or social capital and economic capital. The conversion rates determine the value of the cultural/social capital in comparison with the economic capital. Hernando De Soto clarifies that assets whose economic and social aspects are not set in a formal property system are extremely hard to be converted into a capital. For example, in order to convert land or urban space it into capital, the boundaries need to be geographically defined as well as its economic and social values described and measured by documents authorized by the legal system and guaranteed by the institutional agents. According to these theories, land and urban space can be transformed into economic capital taking the form of land property rights. The urban form of a city can be considered the sum of the inhabitant’s land capital. The economic value of space (such as property prices and rents) in different locations within the city can be converted into social capital, such as the inhabitants’ prestige, social status and networks and, vice versa, the aggregation of inhabitants with higher social capital can raise the economic value of the neighborhood. The marginalization and segregation of the urban poor within the city can be explained by their inability to benefit from the effects of being the possessors of a formal property rights.
Applying this theory to the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and to the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) programs it will be possible to understand how institutional mechanisms promoted and legitimized over time patterns of residential segregation through a considerable impact on the social capital value of residents and on the economic value of urban space. On one side, the classification of the city neighborhood based on the level of integration, and the way federal programs were structured, impacted on each individual’s social capital. As Bourdieu describes, “the reproduction of social capital presupposes an unceasing effort of sociability, a continues series of exchanges in which recognition is endlessly affirmed and reaffirmed” (Bourdieu 1986, pg 52). The association of black Americans with an undesirable population identity affirmed the institutional recognition of the white dominance and supremacy. As only white American men were recognized by the federal law suitable inhabitants for the city’s neighborhoods, this harshly defined the value of social capital possessed by being a white man against being a black man. The prestige of the white man’s social capital certified his eligibility to receive loans and mortgages, while black Americans were not considered suitable. On the other side, the social qualities possessed by each neighborhood, inevitably reflected on the conversion rate to economic capital, such as land property values. The use of a racialized ranking system to nominate community eligibility for federally-financed or federally-insured loans attributed different kind of economic value to each city neighborhoods. Areas with a homogeneous white population were considered suitable for investments and performed higher in the ranking than areas with ‘detrimental influences’, such as undesirable population or infiltration of it. The economic value of racially heterogeneous inner-city neighborhoods decreased immensely, while the homogeneous white suburban areas gained higher property values.
The inner-city loss of capital
The federal housing programs, increasing the social dislocation of white middle-class families to the suburbs, caused an important social transformation of the urban neighborhoods. The discriminatory housing contributed to the public abandonment of the inner-city areas, favoring the presence of public urban services in the newly built suburbs rather than in the city. For this reason, ghettos and inner-city neighborhoods increasingly represented not only areas of ethno-racial exclusion, but also areas of socio-economic marginality, dispossession, and urban inequality. Not only city inhabitants themselves, but also scholars tend to construct theories and definition to explain the ghettos’ inferiority and the danger that they represent. Exemplary of this mechanism is the description of the inner-city residents provided by Wilson. The author, in fact, in his first chapter largely criticizes the liberal approach that refuses to use the term ‘underclass’ to describe the social class whom ghetto individuals supposedly belong to. The expression ‘underclass’ “carries an automatic presumption of social unworthiness and moral inferiority which translates into an acute consciousness of the symbolic degradation associated with being confined to a loathed and despised universe” (Wacquant 1993, pg 371). As extensively described by Wilson, the ghetto is considered a ‘pathological space of segregation’, represented as an area of disorder and lack, and characterized by social disorganization against the common perception of morality and propriety. Wilson in his work describes precisely the “pathologies” that affect the inner-city neighborhoods such as poverty and unemployment; vandalism and delinquency; crime and insecurity; family dissolution and young age pregnancy; and public abandonment. The pathologies of the ghettos derive from the difference in behavior and the contrast with the mainstream white middle-class suburban areas.
In the analysis of the inner city social capital, it is important to take into consideration, as defined by Wacquant, “the powerful stigma attached to residence in the bounded and segregated spaces” (Wacquant 1993, pg 369). Bourdieu describes the ‘social capital’ as the aggregate of potential resources linked to the participation into a durable network of institutionalized relationships, which provide the members ‘credentials’ that can be converted in other forms of capital. Based on material and symbolic exchanges, the establishment and maintenance of the social capital requires ‘proximity’, both social and geographical. (Bourdieu 1986, pg 51). The concept of proximity is also reinforced by Goffman description on the social information regarding a specific ‘social identity’ are conveyed by certain signs, also called “symbols”. Social information can be collected for association, in fact “in certain circumstances the social identity of those an individual is with can be used as a source of information concerning his own social identity, the assumption being that he is what the others are” (Goffman 1963, pg 47). When the symbol establishes a claim for prestige and a desirable class position, it is commonly called “status symbol”. When, instead, it draws attention on the discrediting and debasing characteristics of a particular individual, it is considered a “stigma symbol”. The ghetto’s stigma, defined on the mutual relationship between their attributions and the stereotypes connected to them, contributes to define the value of the space’s social capital. As Goffman describes in his work “Stigma”, the particular attributes of a person - or a space in which people live, as in this case – are considered a ‘stigma’ when they discredit and are deemed less desirable if compared with others persons (or spaces) from a similar category. He also specifies that “not all undesirable attributes are at issue, but only those which are incongruous with our stereotype of what a given type of individual should be” (Goffman 1963, pg 3). The description of these places through the identification of distinguishing symptoms and pathologies as well as by the classification of their inhabitants as part of the urban ‘underclass’ contributed to the stigmatization of the ghettos and further compromised the value of the urban space social capital. Because of the “epidemic social problems” that characterize ghettos, inner-city neighborhoods are increasingly becoming a ‘stigma symbol’.
The ghettos’ epidemic social problems highly influenced the value of the inhabitants’ social capital and reduced its conversion rate to economic capital, especially when measured according to the place of origin and/or residence.
The stigmatization of inner-city neighborhoods has a number of negative consequences, affecting the land property value (residents’ economic capital) as much as the residents’ social capital value. Wilson explains that the social isolation makes it much more difficult for those who are looking for jobs to be tied into the job network. He continues explaining that “the inner-city social isolation also generates behavior not conducive to good work histories. The patterns of behavior that are associated with a life of casual work (tardiness and absenteeism) are quite different from those that accompany a life of regular or steady work” (Wilson 2012, pg 60). Contrary to what Wilson defends, I argue that the reason for the negative working behaviors of the inner-city residents is not the ghetto’s ‘social isolation’, but instead how social and economic capital, such as class and space, distinguished among applicants for employers. In fact, the growing residential segregation brought a progressive stigmatization of the ghettos, which compromised the residents’ employment opportunities. Several studies report that well-qualified back applicants had greater difficulties in getting hired if in their applications there was indicated an inner-city home address.
The way Lauren Rivera explains the mechanisms and dynamics that rely behind the selection of candidates for ‘elite jobs’ can be useful to understand the reduction of employment opportunities for inner-city candidates. As explained by Lauren Rivera in her work “Pedigree”, “getting a job and entering a specific income bracket are contingent on judgments made by employers. The hiring decisions employers make play important roles in shaping individuals’ economic trajectories and influencing broader social inequalities” (Rivera 2015, pg 2). Having the right cultural and social capital can be “cashed in” for access to prestigious jobs and high salaries. “Evaluators believed that the best and the brightest [students] were concentrated in America’s most elite universities” (Rivera 2015, pg 36). The reputation and the conventional wisdom associated with the process of student admission to prestigious schools would guarantee a priori the quality of the social and cultural capital of their students. For this reason, applicants from less prestigious school would be very rarely considered for the job. At the same time having employees from the top schools would confirm the employee competence and the firm’s status. The research conducted by Mahoney shows that “in applying for office jobs, well-qualified black applicants who put inner city home addresses on applications or resumes had greater difficulty getting hired than the same individuals did if they used suburban addresses” (Mahoney 1995, pg 1674). Employers are selecting candidates not on the basis of their qualification, but on the value of the social capital of their neighborhood. In fact, the newly built suburb meant white, middle-class, stable-families, educated, and skilled, while the inner-city neighborhoods were increasingly associated with black, poor, uneducated, unskilled, lacking in values, crime, gangs, drugs and unstable families. The social capital value of the residence neighborhood (inner-city versus suburb) contributed to modify the employers’ perception of applicants. In fact, employers tended to believe that whites had a better work ethic than blacks and inner-city applicants (mainly belonging to lower class), who were considered having undesirable characteristics as an employee. The discriminatory federal programs, through segregation laws, contributed to exacerbate over time the unemployment of the inner city ‘ghettos’, reinforcing the concepts of ‘black, inner-city, unemployed, and unemployable’ versus ‘white, suburbs, employed, and employable’. What Wilson describes as ‘negative working behavior’ was, in reality, could be seen as a consequence of the reduction of the job opportunities for inner-city residents.
Gated community protection of capital
The discourse around segregated and gated communities shows that since 1920, stability, integrity, and solidarity still remain structural elements justifying the need for homogenous, middle- or upper-middle-class white neighborhoods. Residents of the gated communities still today refer to this when explaining their reasons to leave the city. Contrary to the open promotion of racial segregation of the early years of the 20th century, what emerges from the interviews conducted by Setha Low is that today talking openly about class and race is felt as both socially and psychologically unacceptable. Interviewers tend to refer to social, racial, and ethnically diverse people as “others”, contributing to the creation of a broader social category to legitimate the discourse of the ‘urban fear’. In fact, what emerges is that “the discourse of urban fear encodes other social concerns including, class, race and ethnic exclusivity” (Low 2011, pg 56).
To better understand the discourse on ‘urban fear’ it can be useful to use Rachel Sherman’s model of moral conflicts related to consumption and privilege. Sherman illustrates how wealthy and affluent New Yorkers experience moral conflict over consumption choices “striv[ing] to construct themselves as “normal” people with “reasonable” needs, drawing boundaries against the materialism or ostentation commonly associated with wealthy people.” (Sherman, pg 1). The author, in fact, explains how ostentation and excess are morally associated with illegitimate privilege and for this reason wealthy people try to provide a “reasonable” legitimation of their consumption. It is possible to notice that also in the case of gated communities, residents try to legitimize their choice of moving to gated communities framing the justification on the base of a more “reasonable” ‘urban fear’ due to the increasing level of crime and social diversity of the neighborhood of origin. In fact, Setha Low interviews show how some of the new gated community residents decided to move “to bring up their children in a better environment. The school system was changing, and they did not want their children to go to school with children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who were being bused into their [previous] neighborhood. (Low 2004, pg 135). The moral conflict over the gated community choice leads the new residents to legitimize and reproduce social and racial inequalities through the use of the discourse of ‘urban fear’ as reasonable legitimization of a segregating practice. The design of the built environment closely reflects the concept of fear through the use of walls, gates and guards preventing the public access to the residential enclaves. Contrary to high-rise building, gated communities are able to promote a feeling of greater safety keeping the small number of residents within strict limits, facilitating the community familiarity, intimacy and surveillance, according to Jane Jacobs’ model of ‘eyes on the street’. Gated community residents try to replicate this model with closed environment in which the proprietors ensure the community safety not only through the use of guards and cameras, but also checking in first person on the strangers accessing the neighborhood.
The discourse of ‘urban fear’ hides the process of differentiation of the white middle- and upper middle-class from the “ethnic others” with a lower social capital value.
Low explains that the psychological splitting between “good” and “bad”, reinforced by cultural stereotypes, can be used as a form of denial and resistance in an attempt to distance oneself from an undesirable image. This process is closely related to Goffman theory on stigmatization as well as to Bourdieu’s theory on social capital, which requires social and spatial proximity in order to be maintained. The mechanisms of social differentiation still derive from the discriminatory structure of federal housing programs that institutionalized the association of black American (and any other ethnicity in this case) as undesirable population. According to this, the integration of other ethnicity in the neighborhood would signify the integration of a population with a lower social capital when compared with the social capital of the white middle- and upper middle-class. In fact, the general belief is that the proximity with a growing social and ethnic diversity would compromise the community ‘status symbol’ of prestige and class position.
Gated communities not only are an attempt to secure the residents from the risk ethnic changes that could compromise the residents’ social capital, but still reflect the stereotype that integration leads to declining property values. The ethnic changes of their neighborhood of origin very often coincide with the belief of deterioration of the neighborhood economic capital. In fact, when residents start to see changes that could affect the property value of the urban area, are more likely to move to a gated community in order to avoid the economic loss associated to the social deterioration of the neighborhood. Through her research Low explains “the exclusivity and status advertised by the new gated communities are being marketed to an already anxious audience created by the economic turbulence […]. Assurance that walls and gates maintain home values and provide some kind of class status or distinction are heard by prospective buyers as a partial solution to upholding their middle or upper middle-class position” (Low 2001, pg 21). This marketing image still follows the federal programs ranking system and correspond to the advertising that was done during the 1950s to encourage the process of residential segregation. As McKenzie describes “residents have been encouraged to believe that the arrival of a single black family would cause a decline in property values as white owners sold in a panic and that the neighborhood would quickly become predominantly black” (McKenzie 1994, pg 72). Areas with a homogeneous white population are still considered more suitable for investments than areas with ‘detrimental influences’, such as undesirable population or infiltration of it. The marketing image of ‘positive ghettos’, in which white neighborhoods “seem to be suitable sites for investment, while black neighborhoods seem unsuitable” (Mahoney 1995, pg 1674), still systematically influence and encourages the contemporary housing racial discrimination and residential segregation.
Conclusions
The analysis shows that the evolution and perpetuation of the American racial residential segregation cannot be seen separate from the institutionalization of the ‘one race, one class’ neighborhoods of the 20th century. While the movement to segregated neighborhoods in the 1940s was not necessarily based on individual’s inclination to racial discrimination, the contemporary residential segregation is progressively being driven by discriminatory sentiments. The segregationist activity of developers and federal programs over time not only aggravated the racial animosity, but also contributed to the consolidation of segregated housing patterns. As a result of the marketing manipulation by the federal agencies and the real estate agents, the white flight in the 1940s was mostly driven by the economic reasoning to pursue private home ownership and not necessarily made to avoid the trend of black Americans coming into the cities. Contrary to this, today, the decision to move to a gated community is guided by the changing of the social and racial fabric of a neighborhood. Unforeseen and unintended consequences of the federal housing programs reinforced the development of social and racial inequalities in the urban context over time.
Taking into consideration the institutional mechanisms that initiated the process of residential segregation, it is possible to analyze the current social dynamics that contribute to shape the urban form of cities. Bourdieu’s theory on the forms of capital and the recognition of urban space as a capital can help to understand the consequences of discriminatory programs, such as the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). Racial discriminatory policies institutionalized a lower social capital value for ‘undesirable’ residents. This not only prevented black Americans to expand their economic capital, accessing mortgage and loans to purchase land property rights, but also recognized that higher level of neighborhood integration would cause lower performance in the ranking system and therefore compromise the community’s social and economic capital.
Today, the justification and legitimization of socially homogeneous neighborhoods have been shifting from the maximization of the property values to the stigma and the fear of ‘ethnic others’ associated to the urban areas. Space is becoming increasingly ‘racialized’ and the geographical location in the city progressively represents social characteristics and racial categories. “The physical space of the neighborhood and its racial composition become synonymous. The racialized spatial ordering and the identification of a space with a group of people is a fundamental aspect of how [urban] and suburban landscapes reinforce racial prejudice and discrimination” (Low 2004, pg 144). The urban form keeps reflecting the racial and social segregation component and its consequences on the urban context. On one side, the inner-city areas have been increasingly characterized by the rise of ghettos, stigmatized as areas of dereliction and deviance, reflecting the symptoms of the ‘underclass’ society (such as poverty, unemployment, delinquency, crime, and public abandonment). On the other side, in a society that condemns race and class discrimination, the suburban gated communities are being progressively legitimized by the desire for safer and more secure neighborhoods. The discourse of ‘urban fear’ that encodes social concerns such as class, race, and ethnic exclusivity, hides the attempt to continue the process of differentiation of the white middle-class from the undesirable “ethnic others”. The use of walls, gates, and guards is only making visible a system of social and racial exclusion that does not want to be openly discussed, but largely contributes to reinforce social inequalities.
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