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Workshop 1. Session 1.2: Segregation and strategies of gating and withdrawal

Workshop 1. Session 1.3: (Counter)acting stigma. Summary: The usual characterisations of multi-ethnic neighbourhoods in Dutch cities are rather humiliating and reinforce the negative image of these neighbourhoods. The Rotterdam invention ‘drain’ (afvalputje) is a very dirty example, but the current label ‘disadvantaged neighbourhood’ (achterstandsbuurt) equally does not improve their reputation. The impact of this negative labeling is far-reaching. Not only does the reputation of a neighbourhood effect the reputation of the residents, it also influences their perception of their environment and neighbours. The precise effects of a negative reputation on the (self)images of the residents depends on their housing history, their social-economical possibilities, their future plans and the availability of alternative sources of appreciation and acknowledgment. The overall effects are distance and prejudices between different groups of the population and hesitations to concern oneself with neigbourhood-affaires.

Workshop 1. Session 1.3: (Counter)acting stigma. Abstract: Urban neighbourhoods remain under the attention of politicians and scientists. Although it has been acknowledged that the lives of most (categories of) people are no longer centred around their area of residence, the idea that the neighbourhood context can have an influence on the life of its residents (the so-called neighbourhood effect) has not vanished. A lot of research has been carried out to study these neighbourhood effects. At the same time, research on the reputation of urban neighbourhoods has been thriving. However the link between neighbourhood effects and negative neighbourhood reputations has received little attention. Within the literature on neighbourhood effects, little attention is paid to the possible effect of the negative neighbourhood reputation on behaviour of residents (for exceptions see Bauder, 2002, Hastings and Dean, 2003). When reputation is taken into account, it focuses on the influence on attitudes and behaviour of non-residents. If attention is paid to the influence on the residents of these neighbourhoods, it is mostly connected to material- and psychological consequences of living in an infamous neighbourhood. Jobs are not offered because one lives in the wrong neighbourhood (Wilson, 1996), and people don’t receive mortgages from banks, or only against disadvantaged conditions (Aalbers, 2001). On behavioural responses of residents to the negative reputation of their neighbourhood, hardly any research has been carried out so far. We believe this link deserves more investigation. This paper gives an inventory of possible behavioural responses of individuals to negative neighbourhood reputations. Hirschman’s ‘Exit, voice and loyalty’ framework functions as a starting point to study three different behavioural responses (leaving the neighbourhood, attempting to change the neighbourhood, and maintaining social contacts).

Workshop 1. Session 1.3: (Counter)acting stigma. Abstract: In this paper an agent-based model for the choice of residential locations is presented, which is based upon Social Network Analysis. The model explains how the various reputations of a neighbourhood depend upon insiders’ and outsiders’ assessments of the area. For outsiders, reputations form a cheap alternative to the procurement of exact knowledge of the residential satisfaction at a specific location and are thus instrumental in the decision to settle or invest in an area. The procurement of insider information on the neighbourhood along social ties does help to make a more accurate assessment of the area and this shift in information flows could be very useful in tackling the stigmatization of neighbourhoods. The explanatory power of the model is then illustrated by developments in two Rotterdam neighbourhoods, both of whom are trying to shed their stigma in recent years with mixed results.

Workshop 1. Session 1.1: Poverty and Identity. Abstract: Low-income groups develop a ‘culture of poverty’ because of their marginalized position. Neighborhood effect studies use this notion as a point of departure. The culture of poverty provides necessary contacts for the informal economy, socializes diverging norms, and reproduces inequality trough genealogical lines. This culture retains the poor in their non-middle class life style. This article makes use of an antithesis of culture. Culture, as a mode of life style, taste, and cultural capital, can also be utilized as a weapon to keep others at a distance. By reversing the essentialist imperial concept of culture, this study will illustrate that low-income groups distance, are distanced and set apart by other status groups in the neighborhood. These tensions between class fractions decelerate building up social capital and thus contradicting the ‘neighborhood effect studies’ axiom.

Workshop 1. Session 1.1: Poverty and identity

Workshop 1. Session 1.1: Poverty and identity. Abstract: My PhD research focuses on the effects of different social-physical interventions in urban renewal programs. Are residents better of in restructured neighborhoods or do problems of deprivation remain? Moreover, how are successful transformations achieved and which interventions are less effective? Although scientists and professionals in the field of housing agree that neighborhood renewal is more the (re-) stacking of stones, there is considerable debate on the question of how social and spatial interventions can be combined in neighborhood renewal. My research aims at deeper understanding of the ways spatial interventions and social processes influence one another, in order to develop effective combinations. Based on the theoretical concept of identity dynamics and place attachment I will analyze the relationship between people and places to explain how social interactions, framed as identity processes, influence place attachment and place identity and in turn influence the usage of places. In urban renewal these dynamics are especially pressing: social network are uprooted and places in the neighborhood become more contested as new groups enter and claim their territory while the remaining residents try to maintain their place identity and sense of community. By researching this relationship with both quantitative and qualitative data I hope to provide new knowledge and tools in the future for more effective combinations of social and physical interventions in neighborhood renewal.

Workshop 1. Session 1.1: Poverty and identity. Abstract: This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study investigating the utility of the theoretical constructs ‘ontological security’ and ‘self-identity’ for understanding the routinized, everyday experience of housing and home. In-depth interviews conducted with 16 households in two inner-city neighbourhoods in Vancouver, Canada form the empirical basis for this study. The chief purpose of the study was to ascertain the nature and extent of the role played by housing and home in the ongoing maintenance of ontological security and the construction of self-identity for residents of the two case-study neighbourhoods. The main theoretical guide for this research is Giddens’ theory of modernity and self-identity (Giddens 1991), with particular emphasis on two key concepts: a) ‘ontological security’, which Giddens argues is the chief underpinning of human consciousness through which everyday, routinized experience in late modernity must be understood; and b) ‘self-identity’, which Giddens argues becomes a ‘reflexive project’ in late modernity, ordered by ‘narratives of the self’. The findings suggest that informants’ experiences of home were very much articulated through notions of ontological security, both in a material sense and in the sense that a stable home provided the means to generate an ongoing stability of self-identity and sense of control over everyday life circumstances. The intersection between self-identity and the home was also universally present amongst the informants, subject to the informants’ stage in the life-cycle. A further, unanticipated finding was that ontological security was also articulated through a racialized discourse of neighbourliness, with some informants highly accepting of the racial diversity of their neighbourhoods, others rejecting it, and a third group expressing ambivalence. The findings of this research suggest that Giddens’ theory offers a rich and empirically robust way to theorize the mental geography of residential environments.

Workshop 1. Session 1.2: Segregation and strategies of gating and withdrawal. Abstract: Over the years, implicitly or explicitly the relationship between spatial form and the social world has been recurrently discussed in urban studies. Recently, this topic again gained relevance through the emerging critical debate on the social consequences of ‘gated communities’. In this debate, more often than not, gated communities receive a very bad press. With reference to cities like Los Angeles, Sao Paolo, Johannesburg and Istanbul it is argued that walls and gates create exclusionary spaces that physically separate the haves from the have-nots. The lucky ones can retreat in their own spatial worlds, leaving less fortunate urban citizens behind. Spatial form thus functions to maintain and enhance social-economic inequality. On top of this, it is argued that the resulting physical separation of social groups undermines the public sphere. After all, groups that don’t meet won’t know and understand each other. So, the conditions for cross-social community, solidarity and maybe even democracy are under attack. We ascertain that this critical interpretation of ‘splintering urbanism’ presupposes that a specific spatial form (gated enclaves) leads to specific social consequences (e.g. lack of community and solidarity) that especially hurt the disadvantaged. On theoretical grounds, we question such an elitist and spatial deterministic approach. And we prompt researchers to replace ideological reasoning on gating by precise empirical analysis of social life within gated urban fields. This paper presents a first discussion of such research conducted in Bangkok. In this Asian metropolis, not only the rich, but also the poor live behind gates. At the same time, the relational networks of inhabitants of various neighbourhoods within this splintered urban field turn out to leave space for cross-cultural encounters. However, we show that this doesn’t necessitate understanding and solidarity.

Workshop 1. Session 1.2: Segregation and strategies of gating and withdrawal

Workshop 1. Session 1.2: Segregation and strategies of gating and withdrawal. Abstract: Kurucesme, a village on the Bosphorus, reflects the particular characteristics of its own as well as those of both the Bosphorus and the city of Istanbul. Accommodating different cultural and social layers is the most discriminating feature of the Kurucesme settlement. From a starting point of this stratification, this paper aims to investigate the mechanisms of environment-behavior interaction, particularly place attachment and the dynamics of community change. The study investigates the concepts and processes of people and their relations with the environment, focusing and exploring the neighborhood, community life and the physical environment. The study also reviews the research about place and community attachment. To establish a relation between the theoretical framework with the Kurucesme case, the data collected by in-depth interviews with the various groups of inhabitants and on-site observations using maps and photographs related to the public places and streets are analyzed and evaluated.

Workshop 1. Session 1.2: Segregation and strategies of gating and withdrawal

Workshop 2. Session 2.1: Planning and everyday life

Workshop 2. Session 2.1: Planning and everyday life

Workshop 2. Session 2.2: Functions and users

Workshop 2. Session 2.2: Functions and users

Workshop 2. Session 2.2: Functions and users Abstract: Since suburbanisation has become a mass movement in post-war America, a debate is going on about the effects of suburban life on people and society in general. On the one hand suburbs have a reputation of being dull and anonymous areas where private life is extremely dominant. Robert Putnam for instance claims they strongly contribute to the loss of social capital in the western world. On the other had there is a group of academics who in search for the ‘truth about suburban life’ found residents heavily engaged in their local community. In recent suburban research in the Netherlands traces of both viewpoints where found. However this paper will argue that suburban life cannot be seen as completely atomised nor exceptionally cohesive. Instead it represents a new form of local bonding in the form of ‘local community light’. Especially suburbs show how the relationship between people and place has changed over the past decades. Through a time where place did not seem to matter at all, it has regained importance in the form of the home territory. This locale, extending itself around the private property of the house, is the place people feel completely their own and will defend at all costs. In sustaining the order and control of the residents rely on each other, but generally stay distant. However when the collective home territory is at stake residential organisations get into action. The paper presents the concept of territorial ties and show how they have evolved and which part they play in current suburban areas. The focus lies on the early years of suburban settlements, the so-called pioneering stages. A comparison will be made between the 25 year old new town of Almere and a new Amsterdam suburban area called IJburg. There are both interesting similarities and differences that highlight the rise of the home territory and local community light.

Workshop 2. Session 2.2: Functions and users Abstract: The meaning of dwelling has been studied from many different perspectives such as psychology, phenomenology, sociology and environment behavior studies. Several authors have argued that a more integrative and interdisciplinary approach is needed in which physical, socio-cultural, psychological and economic dimensions are interrelated. However, in many of these studies dwelling is mainly treated as such. What is lacking is an approach in which dwelling is considered as integral part of environment-behavior relations. An ecological approach offers such a perspective. An ecological approach focuses on the individual’s ongoing transactions with meaningful features of the environment; it emphasizes the intentionality of individual’s actions. The reciprocity of the environment and the individual is a central feature of an ecological approach, and it may be studied at different levels of organization. For instance, a dwelling is an individual’s primary anchor in the environment. It may serve many functions such as shelter, privacy, security, control, and status. From an ecological point of view the meaning of dwellings lies in these functional relations between human beings and their dwellings. At a different level, a neighborhood park is a suitable arrangement of features that may also serve functions at a collective level, such as running and playing, walking the dog, and social contacting. In the paper the conceptual and methodological framework for studying the meaning of dwelling from an ecological perspective will be presented. The framework will be illustrated with examples from recent research on the meaning of dwelling in the Netherlands.