This chapter explores multi-scale estimation methods as an important future direction for segregation research in China. We explain how these recently developed methods help address many longstanding problems in traditional index-based segregation research and open up new avenues of research on Chinese cities. We explain the conceptual framework underpinning multilevel analysis in the form of a series of propositions that capture the theoretical basis and outline why a multilevel approach to segregation is advantageous. We then illustrate how this approach can be applied to China using census data on Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei Province. We use the model to consider segregation of different ethnic groups and of migrants versus non-migrants. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and our thoughts on future directions for research and the implications for policy.@en

The concept of urban living is evolving, and there is a growing interest in creating smaller, more connected, and hyperlocal neighbourhoods, where everything people need is within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. This paper challenges the concept of the ‘15-minute city’ as a panacea for urban ills, by exploring the history of utopian urban planning and regeneration aimed at creating sustainable, inclusive and vibrant communities by desegregating disadvantaged groups. Specifically, we examine social mixing policies, which are recurring top-down interventions that pathologise concentrated urban disadvantage. We trace the evolution of these policies in Europe from the Garden City movement to post-war social housing redevelopment to the current 15-minute city, which we consider to be social mix by stealth. While such policies can reduce the degree of concentrated disadvantage in the short term, they tend to be ineffective in the long term, as deprived neighbourhoods often remain so despite attempts to make them more diverse. The paper argues that the 15-minute city would be implemented through de facto social mix actions at the neighbourhood level, which are insufficient to address the deeper structural issues that perpetuate spatial inequality and deprivation. We propose that longitudinal and comparative analyses, combined with ‘right to the city’ perspectives, should be considered in future research and policymaking to understand – and more importantly address – why urban renewal initiatives that aim for equitable outcomes at the neighbourhood scale ultimately fail to deliver.@en

There has been a growing appreciation that the processes generating urban residential segregation operate at multiple scales, stimulating innovations into the measurement of their outcomes. This paper applies a multi‐level modelling approach to that issue to the situation in Auckland, where multiple migration streams from both Pacific Island and Asian origins have created a complex multi‐ethnic city. We identify two distinct trends. For the larger ethnic groups segregation remained static despite rapid growth over a recent twelve‐year period. For the smaller groups growth has been combined with considerable change; they initially clustered in a few localities and areas within them but then experienced considerable reduction in the intensity of that segregation. By spatially decomposing the segregation levels, this paper extends our appreciation of its underpinning processes when they apply to migration streams that differ in their nature from those on which traditional residential location‐decision theory has been based.@en

The neighbourhood in which people live reflects their social class and preferences, so studying socio-spatial mobility between neighbourhood types gives insight into the openness of spatial class structures of societies and into the ability of people to leave disadvantaged neighbourhoods. In this paper we study the extent to which people move between different types of neighbourhoods by socio-economic status in different inequality and segregation contexts in four European countries: Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK (England and Wales), and Estonia. The study is based on population registers and census data for the 2001–2011 period. For England and Wales, which has long had high levels of income inequalities and high levels of socio-economic segregation, we find that levels of mobility between neighbourhood types are low and opportunities to move to more socio-economically advantaged neighbourhoods are modest. In Estonia, which used to be one of the most equal and least segregated countries in Europe, and now is one of the most unequal countries, we find high levels of mobility, but these reproduce segregation patterns and it is difficult to move to less deprived neighbourhoods for those in the most deprived neighbourhoods. In the Netherlands and Sweden, where income inequalities are the smallest, it is the easiest to move from the most deprived to less deprived neighbourhoods. The conclusion is that the combination of high levels of income inequalities and high levels of spatial segregation tend to lead to a vicious circle of segregation for low-income groups, where it is difficult to undertake upward socio-spatial mobility.@en

Theory behind neighbourhood effects suggests that people’s spatial context potentially affects individual outcomes across multiple scales and geographies. We argue that neighbourhood effects research needs to break away from the ‘tyranny’ of neighbourhood and consider alternative ways to measure the wider sociospatial context of people, placing individuals at the centre of the approach. We review theoretical and empirical approaches to place and space from diverse disciplines, and explore the geographical scopes of neighbourhood effects mechanisms. Ultimately, we suggest how microgeographic data can be used to operationalise sociospatial context, where data pragmatism should be supplanted by a theory-driven data exploration.@en

In the UK the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 mitigations over the course of the pandemic (March 2020 to the time of writing in January 2022) have been experienced unevenly and with differential intensities at both the regional and local scales. Using individual-level geocoded data (from the Understanding Society: UK Household Longitudinal Survey COVID-19 study) linking people to the places in which they live, we consider the regional and local disparities in the risks and outcomes of financial hardship as a result of early stage mitigations. This paper provides direct evidence from the UK of a concentration of vulnerabilities in areas of high deprivation, undermining the capacity of individuals within those areas to shelter from economic shocks. Furthermore, the geography of financial hardship appears largely compositional–attributable to the pre-existing characteristics of individuals within regions and neighbourhoods, rather than being explicitly driven by the spatial contextual effect of their social or physical environments. This has implications for UK regional economic policy, and the Levelling Up agenda in particular. It is not the regions and neighbourhoods that give rise to COVID-19 hardship per se, but the concentration of individual disadvantages of the people living within them. The persistence of compositional dis/advantages means that there is a need not only to direct ameliorative packages to the individual but also to use local areas as places where the (regional) Levelling Up agenda can break long-term place trajectories that lock in existing disparities which in turn yield unequal financial opportunities and outcomes in periods of crisis.@en

Contextual poverty refers to high proportions of people with a low income in a certain (residential) space, and it can affect individual socioeconomic outcomes as well as decisions to move into or out of the neighbourhood. Contextual poverty is a multiscale phenomenon: Poverty levels at the regional scale reflect regional economic development, while meso-scale concentrations of poverty within cities are related to city-specific social, economic and housing characteristics. Within cities, poverty can also concentrate at micro spatial scales, which are often neglected, largely due to a lack of data. Exposure to poverty at lower spatial scales, such as housing blocks and streets, is important because it can influence individuals through social mechanisms such as role models or social networks. This paper is based on the premise that sociospatial context is necessarily multiscalar, and therefore contextual poverty is a multiscale problem which can be better understood through the inequality within and between places at different spatial scales. The question is how to compare different spatial contexts if we know that they include various spatial scales. Our measure of contextual poverty embraces 101 spatial scales and compares different locations within and between municipalities in the Netherlands. We found that the national inequality primarily came from the concentrations of poverty in areas of a few kilometres, located in cities, which have different spatial patterns of contextual poverty, such as multicentre, core-periphery and east–west. In addition to the inequality between municipalities, there are considerable within-municipality inequalities, particularly among micro-areas of a few hundred metres.@en

There is a growing narrative that the outcome of the UK referendum on European Union membership was the product of disenfranchisement and disillusionment wrought by the uneven consequences of economic restructuring in different UK regions, cities and communities. Those most likely to vote ‘leave’ were concentrated among those ‘left behind’ by globalisation, whilst those voting ‘remain’ were clustered within more affluent areas and social groups. These uneven geographies of leave and remain voting have been taken to reveal two diametrically opposed groups in British politics, obscuring the messy and contradictory ways in which votes are cast. In seeking to bring these complexities to light, this paper explores the motivating factors behind the Brexit vote amongst older working-class white men in Sunderland, England. The paper shows how economic stagnation and the experience of different forms of marginality led to a nostalgia for times past and a mistrust of political elites amongst this cohort. The paper documents how the feelings expressed by research participants became linked to the European Union project and its real and perceived impacts on the local area. In doing so, it shows that the referendum shaped and changed the electorate by asking them to align themselves with those either for or against Britain’s membership of the EU. The paper concludes by reflecting on the possibilities for creating an inclusive form of politics that treats different responses to the referendum question as the basis for an open conversation about democracy and democratic ideals.@en

Understanding how inequalities are transmitted through generations and restrict upward spatial mobility has long been a concern of geographic research. Previous research has identified that the neighborhood in which someone grows up is highly predictive of the type of neighborhood he or she will live in as an independent adult. What remains largely unknown is the relative contribution of geography compared to the contribution of the family context in forming these individual life outcomes. The aim of this article is to better understand the role of the spatial–temporal contexts of individuals in shaping later life outcomes, by distinguishing between inherited disadvantage (socioeconomic position) and spatial disadvantage (the environmental context in which children grow up). We use a sibling design to analyze the neighborhood careers of adults after they have left the parental home, separating out the roles of the family from that of the neighborhood in determining residential careers. We employ rich Swedish Register data to construct a quasi-experimental family design to analyze residential outcomes for sibling pairs and contrast real siblings against a control group of “contextual siblings.” We find that real siblings live more similar lives in terms of neighborhood experiences during their independent residential careers than contextual sibling pairs but that this difference decreases over time. The results show the importance of geography, revealing long-lasting stickiness of spatial–temporal contexts of childhood.@en

Western cities are increasingly ethnically diverse and in most cities the share of ethnic minorities is growing. Studies analyzing changing ethnic geographies often limit their analysis to changes in ethnic concentrations in neighborhoods between two points in time. Such a static approach limits our understanding of pathways of ethnic neighborhood change, and of the underlying factors contributing to change. This paper analyzes full trajectories of neighborhood change in the four largest cities in the Netherlands between 1999 and 2013. Our modelling strategy categorizes neighborhoods based on their unique growth trajectories of the ethnic population composition, providing a longitudinal view of ethnic segregation. Our results show that the ethnic composition in neighborhoods remains relatively stable over time. We find evidence for a slow trend towards deconcentration of ethnic minorities and increased (spatial) population mixing in most neighborhoods. We show how residential mobility decreases segregation, while natural population growth tends to reinforce segregation. While the ethnic minority presence in cities grows, there is a substantial share of neighborhoods which can be identified as white citadels; characterized by a stable large native population, with high incomes and high house values. These neighborhoods seem to be inaccessible to ethnic minorities, which illustrates the spatial manifestation of exclusionary elitism in increasingly ethnically diverse cities.@en

The neighbourhoods in which people live reflects their social class and preferences, so studying socio-spatial mobility between neighbourhoods gives insight in the openness of spatial class structures of societies and in the ability of people to leave disadvantaged neighbourhoods. We study the extent to which people move between different types of neighbourhoods by socio-economic status in different inequality and segregation contexts in four European countries: Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Estonia. The study is based on population registers and census data for the 2001–2011 period. For the UK, which has long had high levels of social inequalities and high levels of socioeconomic segregation, we find that levels of mobility between neighbourhood types are low and opportunities to move to more socio-economically advantaged neighbourhoods are modest. In Estonia, which used to be one or the most equal and least segregated countries in Europe and now is one of the most liberal and market oriented countries, we find high levels of mobility, but these reproduce segregation patterns and it is difficult to move to better neighbourhoods for those in the most deprived neighbourhoods. In the Netherlands and Sweden, where social inequalities are the smallest, it is easiest to move from the most deprived to less deprived neighbourhoods. To conclusion, the combination of high levels of social inequalities and high levels of spatial segregation tend to lead to a vicious circle of segregation for low income groups, where it is difficult to undertake both upward social mobility and upward spatial mobility.@en

Western cities are increasingly ethnically diverse, and in most cities, the share of the population belonging to an ethnic minority is growing. Studies analysing changing ethnic geographies often limit their analysis to changes in ethnic concentrations in neighbourhoods between 2 points in time. Such a temporally limited approach limits our understanding of pathways of ethnic neighbourhood change and of the underlying factors contributing to change. This paper analyses full trajectories of neighbourhood change in the 4 largest cities in the Netherlands between 1999 and 2013. Our modelling strategy categorises neighbourhoods based on their unique growth trajectories of the ethnic population composition, providing insight in processes of ethnic segregation and its drivers. Our main conclusion is that the ethnic composition in neighbourhoods remains relatively stable over time. We however find evidence for a slow trend towards deconcentration of ethnic minorities and increased population mixing in most neighbourhoods. Spatial mixing appears to be driven by the selective mobility patterns of the native Dutch population as a result of urban restructuring programmes. However, these pathways towards deconcentration are mitigated by processes of ethnic natural growth that reinforce existing patterns of segregation. Despite an increasing inflow of the native Dutch into ethnic concentration neighbourhoods, segregation at the top and bottom ends of the distribution seems to be persistent: High concentrations of ethnic minorities in disadvantaged neighbourhoods versus high concentrations of the native population in more affluent neighbourhoods continue to be a feature of Dutch cities.@en

Appreciating spatial scale is crucial for our understanding of the sociospatial context. Multiscale measures of population have been developed in the segregation and neighborhood effects literatures, which have acknowledged the role of a variety of spatial contexts for individual outcomes and intergroup contacts. Although existing studies dealing with sociospatial inequalities increasingly explore the effects of spatial scale, there has been little systematic evidence on how exposure to sociospatial contexts changes across urban space, both within and between cities. This article presents a multiscale approach to measuring potential exposure to others. Using individual-level register data for the full population of The Netherlands and an exceptionally detailed multiscalar framework of bespoke neighborhoods at 101 spatial scales, we measured the share of non-Western ethnic minorities for three Dutch cities with different urban forms. We created individual and cumulative distance profiles of ethnic exposure, mapped ethnic exposure surfaces, and applied entropy as a measure of scalar variation to compare potential exposure to others in different locations both within and between cities. The multiscale approach can be implemented for examining a variety of social processes, notably segregation and neighborhood effects.@en

Global cities are marked by precarity, yet little attention has been paid to the spatial overlap between work precarity among migrants and third sector organizations that sustain them. In this paper, we estimate the location of precarious work migrants in two global cities, London and Hong Kong, for both the 2001 and 2011 censuses, using a variety of spatial demographic and quantitative techniques, and then analyze the spatial overlap between this population and immigrant-serving third sector organizations. The results suggest both similarity, in particular between accommodation and work precarity, and difference, with an increasingly tenuous overlap in London by 2011.@en

A large literature exists suggesting that residential mobility leads to increased participation in risky health behaviours such as cannabis use amongst youth. However, much of this work fails to account for the impact that underlying differences between mobile and non-mobile youth have on this relationship. In this study we utilise multilevel models with longitudinal data to simultaneously estimate between-child and within-child effects in the relationship between residential mobility and cannabis use, allowing us to determine the extent to which cannabis use in adolescence is driven by residential mobility and unobserved confounding. Data come from a UK cohort, The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Consistent with previous research we find a positive association between cumulative residential mobility and cannabis use when using multilevel extensions of conventional logistic regression models (log odds: 0.94, standard error: 0.42), indicating that children who move houses are more likely to use cannabis than those who remain residentially stable. However, decomposing this relationship into within- and between-child components reveals that the conventional model is underspecified and misleading; we find that differences in cannabis use between mobile and non-mobile children are due to underlying differences between these groups (between-child log odds: 3.56, standard error: 1.22), not by a change in status of residential mobility (within-child log odds: 1.33, standard error: 1.02). Our findings suggest that residential mobility in the teenage years does not place children at an increased risk of cannabis use throughout these years.@en

Research into health disparities has long recognized the importance of residential mobility as a crucial factor in determining health outcomes. However, a lack of connectivity between the health and mobility literatures has led to a stagnation of theory and application on the health side, which lacks the detail and temporal perspectives now seen as critical to understanding residential mobility decisions. Through a critical re-think of mobility processes with respect to health outcomes and an exploitation of longitudinal analytical techniques, we argue that health geographers have the potential to better understand and identify the relationship that residential mobility has with health.@en

Investigating biologically plausible mechanisms for the embodiment of context is a key thoroughfare for progressing health geographies of place. Expanding knowledge of bio-processes such as epigenetics is providing a platform for appreciating the dynamic embedding of social relations in bodies over the lifecourse, and so to tracing the development of health inequalities. By providing a geographic lens on the biosocial, health geographers have key contributions to make regarding the theorisation of place. We put forward the exposome as a holistic framework in which to situate a biosocial health geography, placing ideas of dynamic exposure, plasticity and temporality as central.@en

Longer term exposure to high poverty neighbourhoods can affect individual socio-economic outcomes later in life. Previous research has shown strong path dependence in individual neighbourhood histories. A growing literature shows that the neighbourhood histories of people is linked to the neighbourhoods of their childhood and parental characteristics. To better understand intergenerational transmission of living in deprived neighbourhoods it is important to distinguish between inherited disadvantage (socio-economic position) and contextual disadvantage (environmental context in which children grow up). The objective of this paper is to come to a better understanding of the effects of inherited and contextual disadvantage on the neighbourhood careers of children once they have left the parental home. We use a quasi-experimental family design exploiting sibling relationships, including real sibling pairs, and "synthetic siblings" who are used as a control group. Using rich register data from Sweden we find that real siblings live more similar lives in terms of neighbourhood experiences during their independent residential career than synthetic sibling pairs. This difference reduces over time. Real siblings are still less different than synthetic pairs but the difference gets smaller with time, indicating a quicker attenuation of the family effect on residential outcomes than the neighbourhood effect@en

Theory behind neighbourhood effects suggests that different geographies and scales affect individual outcomes. We argue that neighbourhood effects research needs to break away from the tyranny of neighbourhood and consider alternative ways to measure the wider socio-spatial context of people, placing individuals at the centre of the approach. We review theoretical and empirical approaches to place and space from a multitude of disciplines and the geographical scopes of neighbourhood effects mechanisms. Ultimately, we suggest ways in which micro-geographic data can be used to operationalise socio-spatial context for neighbourhood effects, where data pragmatism should be supplanted by a theory-driven data exploration.Unexpectedly, children who lived in an affluent neighbor-hood throughout childhood were most likely to engage in delinquent behavior.@en

There is a longstanding interest in the causes and consequences of socio-spatial inequalities in cities. A large literature has emerged on so-called neighbourhood effects, which seeks to understand how living in neighbourhoods of concentrated poverty affects a range of individual outcomes, such as health, income, education and general wellbeing (Galster, 2012). The literature on neighbourhood effects has developed rapidly in the last three decades. It is now common practice that studies of neighbourhood effects use geocoded longitudinal individual-level data and employ a variety of (often econometric) approaches in an attempt to reduce bias from non-random sorting into neighbourhoods (Knies et al. 2021). Studies of neighbourhood effects have also increasingly looked to incorporate more personal geographic contexts replacing ‘off the shelf’ administrative units with bespoke neighbourhoods (Johnston et al., 2005; Andersson & Malmberg, 2014; Petrović et al. 2022). The most common example of bespoke neighbourhoods are egohoods – neighbourhoods placing everyone at the centre of their own personal residential space (Hipp & Boessen, 2013). More recently, multiscale approaches have been used, whereby neighbourhood characteristics are measured at multiple scales of bespoke neighbourhoods (Petrović et al., 2022). It has been argued that for both theoretical and empirical reasons, the term ‘neighbourhood effects’ should be replaced by the more encompassing term ‘spatial context effects’, as many of the assumed spatial effects are not confined to residential neighbourhoods and the contestable meaning of neighbourhood distracts (Petrović et al. 2019).@en