Social Problems: Community, Policy, and Social Action
SAGE Journal Articles
Racial discrimination in the nation's housing markets and patterns of residential segregation have contributed to labor market inequalities and economic disparities generally. Housing values are suppressed in minority communities, undercutting wealth accumulation by nonwhite families. Job growth in suburban communities coupled with the concentration of public housing in central city communities restricts minority access to jobs. A range of institutionalized practices by housing providers and public policies by government agencies at all levels have nurtured and exacerbated racial inequalities grounded in traditional stereotypes.
Questions to Consider:
1)According to this article what are some factors that have led to segregation of minorities in the housing market? What role does housing segregation play in educational segregation?
2)Analyze the various policy options discussed in this article. Which option(s), in your opinion, best tackle the issues of housing inequalities?
This study explores how spatial characteristics commonly associated with suburban sprawl (including density, reliance on the automobile, neighborhood age, and commuting patterns) help predict voting patterns and individual ideological orientation. Researchers find that, at the county level, greater reliance on automobile commuting and younger housing stock were strong predictors of greater support for the Republican candidate in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, controlling for demographic factors. Using the 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS), Researchers also find that greater automobile reliance and younger housing stock, measured at the census tract level, are strong predictors of more conservative ideological orientation among individuals, controlling for other individual and contextual factors.
Questions to Consider:
1)How can political candidates use the results of this study to better understand how the voter patterns of their constituents?
2)One of the results of this study is the following, “support for Republicans is stronger in lower density, automobile-oriented, more recently built, and less bounded counties”. What reasons could account for this?
3)What are some limitations of this study?
This paper documents and analyzes a portion of the U.S. government's attempt to adopt the concept of sustainability after 1992. Numerous case studies of individual sustainable community development projects exist, although almost no literature describes the coordinated federal-level effort to create and implement a sustainable development policy from 1993 to 2000. Case studies of three prominent federal-level sustainable community programs are developed from twenty guided interviews and existing government documents.
Questions to Consider:
1)After reading the results presented in this article what are some questions you have for further studies on sustainable community development projects?
2)According to the article why did the U.S. government attempt to adapt the concept of sustainability after 1992? What are some barriers to implementation of sustainable community development projects?
This article puts forward an agenda for achieving the 2050 vision that focuses on unlocking a more systematic approach to urban development and management. This requires the development of new partnerships for urban development and management, between tiers of government, with the private sector and citizens. It requires a greater focus on using local resources to leverage the financing needed to support urban growth.
Questions to Consider:
1)According to the authors of this article, by 2050 the urban population in Africa will be relatively young. With projected population growth rates in excess of 2 percent, the median age will continue to drop from the current 19.7 years. The number of youth will increase from 205 million today to anywhere from 330 to 450 million, the majority of whom will live in urban areas. What implications do you think this will have for these urban areas? Will this lead to a higher crime rate or poverty?
2)After reading the results of this report what do you think are the biggest challenges for urban developers in Africa?
Subjective well-being (SWB) reflects an overall evaluation of the quality of a person’s life from his or her perspective. Although SWB is typically studied at the individual level, social scientists have become increasingly interested in the well-being of broader regions like cities, states, or nations. The current study examines the association between aggregate well-being and an important behavioral indicator of regional success: migration and population growth. Using life satisfaction data from over 2 million respondents, along with population data from 2000 to 2010, the author shows that U.S. counties with higher levels of life satisfaction grew at substantially faster rates than did counties with low life satisfaction.
Questions to Consider:
1)One of the results of the study stated, “Life satisfaction was moderately to strongly correlated with population growth over a 10-year period, and the most satisfied regions (those that were at least 1 standard deviation [SD] above the mean) exhibited growth that was more than 14 times as large as the least satisfied regions (those that were 1 SD below the mean)”. In your opinion, how is population growth affected by life satisfaction?
2)Have you ever lived in an urban area? Suburb? What factors, living in these areas, could increase life satisfaction? What factors would lead to a decrease in satisfaction?