Residential segregation

- [Voiceover] All right so let's talk a little bit about residential segregation. So when we talk about residential segregation, we mean that groups of people basically separate out into different neighborhoods. Now, when I say groups of people, often times we actually mean groups of people by race. But sometimes you can mean groups of people by income. Now, what's really important about segregation, this residential segregation, is the concept that, where we live really affects our life chances. Because where we live affects our politics, our health care, our availability to educational resources. So where we live is actually pretty important. Let's look at this neighborhood that we see on the bottom left of the street. Now let's imagine both red and blue people live in this neighborhood. So the first thing we see, we see a pattern. And we can describe this pattern as being uneven. So we can see that there's groups of people living in different neighborhoods, both blue and red are not equally distributed. So there is a pattern of residential segregation that is present in the neighborhood. But actually, there are two other forms of segregation that we can talk about. So the first one of these forms I want to talk about is something called concentration. And concentration ia a form of segregation. And what concentration means, concentration means that there's clustering of the different groups. So not only is the distribution different, but they actually cluster together. So the reds and the blues may have a more intense pattern of clustering. So what could that look like in our neighborhood? So what we could see here is that the red is actually clustering on the bottom right-hand corner of this neighborhood. So clustering is clustering in a vicinity. And this is actually, the form of segregation is called concentration. Now, what if you had segregation and concentration but the clustering actually occurred right in the center of a geographic area or a metropolitan area. Well, that would actually be called something a little bit different. And that would actually be called centralization. So centralization is segregation plus cost strain in a central area. And what would that look like? In a central area, so what would that look like in our chart? So in our chart, if the reds were very centrally located, like so... Then this would be an example of centralization. So they're segregated, they're concentrated, and now, they're in a central area, so this is centralization. So this is another form of segregation. Now, let's talk about a way in which we can actually measure residential segregation. And one of the things that we can use is called the index of dissimilarity. And the index is a scale going from 100, all the way down to zero. And at zero we're saying that we have total segregation. So the communities are completely separate. And at 100, we are experiencing perfect distribution. So if we imagine a city that has four neighborhoods, neighborhood A, B, C, and D, and in the city lived the blue people and the red people, in this example we would probably be very close, or at zero. Because we can see that the red people are completely segregated in their own neighborhood, compared to the blue people. However, if we changed this up a little bit, and actually dispersed the red people up into different neighborhoods, and dispersed the blue people, we would actually be much closer to that perfect distribution. So this is an example of one of the measures that is commonly used to measure this residential segregation. Now, finally, one of the things you should also do, is ask ourselves, why is residential segregation important? Because communities that are segregated are politically weak. Their political interests do not overlap with the political interests of other communities. And when that happens, they become politically vulnerable. They don't necessarily have the votes or political influence to keep their own schools, establishments, community centers, open, compared to other communities who are much more politically integrated. Another factor to consider, is that communities that are very isolated, their language may change. Their language can be different from the language used in other communities, even within the same city. So there could be an element of linguistic isolation. And this may make it more difficult for these individuals in these more segregated neighborhoods to obtain jobs, to become more integrated in the wider city and the other communities. And we also mention that education, health care, and other resources, may be of a lower quality, in their neighborhoods compared to wealthier neighborhoods. Or neighborhoods that other groups reside in. There's a final concept I wanted to mention, and this concept is called spatial mismatch. And this concept suggests that opportunities for low-income people who are in segregated neighborhoods, may be present, but they may be far away from where they actually live. Which means that they're harder to access. So from the place that people live to where the opportunities are, there's an actual, physical distance, a spatial mismatch, which makes it harder for them to access.