The number of security guards is a good measure of a city’s level of “anti-social” capital We thought we’d take an updated look at one of our favorite indicators of “social-capital”–the number of private security guards as a share of the local workforce. Having lots of security guards is likely an indicator of distrust and […]
How “anti-social” capital varies by city Read More »
Cops per capita: An indicator of “Anti-social” capital?” Why do some cities have vastly fewer police officers relative to their population than others? In the 1966 film “The Thin Blue Line” director William Friedkin explored the role police officers played in protecting the broader populace from violence and disorder. As we’ve frequently noted at City
The varying thickness of the blue line Read More »
Neighborhoods are always changing; half of all renters move every two years. There’s a subtle perceptual bias that underlies many of the stories about gentrification and neighborhood change. The canonical journalistic account of gentrification focuses on the observable fact that different people now live in a neighborhood than used to live there at some previous
The constancy of change in neighborhood populations Read More »
Reducing segregation does seem to result in much more social interaction, as intermarriage patterns demonstrate Change doesn’t happen fast, but it happens more frequently and more quickly when we have integrated communities One of the regular critiques of urban integration is that while we might get people from different backgrounds to live in the same
Integration and social interaction: Evidence from Intermarriage Read More »
The number of security guards is a good measure of a city’s level of “anti-social” capital In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam popularized the term “social capital.” Putnam also developed a clever series of statistics for measuring social capital. He looked at survey data about interpersonal trust (can most people be trusted?) as well
Measuring “anti-social” capital Read More »
Happy Independence Day, America! All Americans are immigrants (Even the Native American tribes trace their origins to Asians who migrated over the Siberian-Alaskan land bridge during the last ice age). And this nation of immigrants has always grown stronger by embracing newcomers who want to share in, and help build the American dream. So here,
What makes America great, as always: Immigrants Read More »
Integrated neighborhoods produce more mixing, but don’t automatically generate universal social interaction. What should we make of that? Our recent report, America’s Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods identifies those places where people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds and from different income strata all live in close proximity to one another. We’ve counted more than
Socioeconomic mixing is essential to closing the Kumbaya gap Read More »
In a nation increasingly divided by race and economic status, where our life prospects are increasingly de ned by the wealth of our zip codes, some American neighborhoods are bucking the trend. These neighborhoods—which we call America’s most diverse, mixed-income neighborhoods—have high levels of racial, ethnic and income diversity. This report identifies, maps and counts
America’s Most Diverse Mixed Income Neighborhoods Read More »
Socioeconomic mixing, in neighborhoods that are diverse in race, ethnicity and income, benefits everyone To some extent, we take for granted that integration and equal opportunity should be valued for their own sake. But its worth noting that achieving greater integration along both racial/ethnic and income dimensions is important to achieving more widespread prosperity and
Why integration matters Read More »
The more segregated an metro area is, the worse the economic prospects of the poor and people of color Our City Observatory report, Lost in Place, closely tracks the growth of concentrated poverty in the nation’s cities; this is particularly important because of the widespread evidence of the permanent damage high-poverty neighborhoods do to children
How segregation limits opportunity Read More »
