Social closeness
Increasingly, in contemporary multicultural cities, we see a more nuanced form of segregation, whereby different groups share spatial territory (physical closeness) but have substantial social distance from one another. We term these situations “partial” segregation. Studying this kind of segregation presents both conceptual and methodological challenges for researchers. This is because despite sharing a neighborhood, a variety of physical, social, and symbolic boundaries may stifle meaningful social closeness between groups. These within-neighborhood boundaries may include the built environment (e.g. high-rise vs. low-rise residence), language, interests, affiliation, consumption practices, patterns of use, and many others. For example, in Toronto, despite sharing the same neighborhood as measured in conventional analyses, new immigrant families living in low-rent apartment buildings along major avenues are often socially distant from the long-standing residents who own single-family homes on quiet residential streets within the neighborhood. Another example is the case of social connections during a pandemic when we practice “social distancing” by keeping some degree of physical distance from our neighbors. One of the challenges in the study of segregation is to understand how and why some groups remain segregated once there is physical closeness, even after a long time. We will spend some time discussing this more complex form of residential segregation and describe how new measures and methods are needed for understanding it.
The existence of both physical and social closeness between groups, which we label “complete” integration, is an uncommon and idealized situation that is useful as a reference point. Social theorists for generations have sought to define social integration, which usually entails normative, functional, and communicative integration between group members (Durkheim 2002 [1897]; Habermas 1984; Parsons 1951). There are debates about whether such integration can be achieved in multicultural societies in a way that meaningfully and fairly incorporates diverse ethnic identities, people, and backgrounds. In Chapter 2 and beyond, we will expand upon these ideas as they relate to residential segregation.
Finally, it is worthwhile to note that in our ever-connected globalized world, it is possible to achieve social closeness with others despite physical distance. We term this combination “community without propinquity” in the table, in homage to Webber’s (1970) description that the basis for social closeness between some in urbanized societies is not proximity of a local neighborhood, but common interests, be they political, religious, or leisure. This perspective is also in line with a social network view of community, in particular a community-liberated perspective, which stresses that contemporary communities are based on social networks of a diverse range of people in a diverse range of locations and are liberated from spatial arrangements (Wellman 1979). Members of these groups sometimes come together episodically for meetups, but most group communication is online. As the online world allows for more connections and richer forms of communication, people are increasingly creating and maintaining social closeness forged by common identities, interests, and associations. The glue that binds these individuals can be a variety of things, including shared affinity for particular interests in mass culture, a particular subculture, ethno-religious identity, and cultural connections of diasporas. Resonating with Claude Fischer’s subcultural theory (1975), online communication technology today is a tool that gives individuals increasingly rich access to all the heterogeneous identity groups of contemporary society. What does segregation based on physical distance mean in a world of ever-richer forms of online connection possibilities? We will revisit situations of “community without propinquity” later in the book.
Residential Segregation: Bird’s-Eye, Drive-By, and On-Foot Views
The common prevalent and consequential forms of residential segregation are visually apparent as we move across most major cities in North America. The most encompassing view of residential segregation – the “bird’s-eye” view – sees what proportions of people belonging to different groups live in different neighborhoods across an entire city. These proportions can be color-coded onto a map of the city to reveal broad patterns, or these proportions can be summarized into an “index of dissimilarity,” an index ranging from 0 to 1, with higher values indicating higher levels of segregation, or other measures that seek to capture essential qualities of segregation in a single number. (These indices will be discussed in Chapter 3.) Despite its utility for broad observation, the bird’s-eye view misses a lot of details about segregation that may be important.
If we shift to what we observe driving a car along the roads, we see a bit more detail. For example, driving on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago from the north side to the south side of the city, you can see stark transitions in the racial and economic composition of residents and their neighborhoods. The combined effect of changes in both racial and economic composition of various urban communities can make it easier to visually identify changes during this drive. In the north, you see more middle-class neighborhoods with well-maintained houses and mostly white residents. In the south, you see more poor and working-class neighborhoods with graffiti on the walls and broken windows in some houses. If you are in Canada and visit the northwest end of Toronto, you see high proportions of black residents around the Jane and Finch neighborhood, which is characterized by high proportions of low-income families and public housing. However, despite this greater detail from this “drive-by” view, we still do not yet observe fine details that may be important to understanding residential segregation.
If you get out of your car and walk across the urban cityscape, you will observe a richer texture of differences that represent the communities that live in these neighborhoods. Engaging all your senses, you will smell different ethnic foods, enjoy distinctive types of ethnic architecture and businesses, notice different ways of dressing, hear unfamiliar music, and perhaps feel welcomed or feel like an outsider by how you are looked at or treated. At the street level, from an “on-foot” view, residential segregation and ethnic concentration is experienced socially and felt emotionally. This experiential and emotional connection gives us insight into how segregation is shaped to both social and physical distance.
The Measurement and Explanation of Residential Segregation
Residential segregation is both durable and dynamic. That is, many residential patterns are stable and have existed for decades, while others have emerged recently with immigration and intra-metropolitan migration patterns. For example, in the United States, the growing Latino immigrant population has increasingly been segregated from whites. In 2000, Latinos were found to be segregated from whites to an even higher degree in new destination locations (i.e. where Latino population was negligible in 1990) than in established gateway cities. Krysan and Crowder (2017) lamented the persistence of segregation in North American cities. However, some research suggests that segregation levels in major American cities have been declining since 1970, the largest decline occurring in Chicago. Reardon and Owens (2014) found a similar pattern of decline in residential segregation from 1980 to 2000 in small local geographic areas which contributed to the decline of within-school segregation during the same period. In other words, people from different racial groups become more likely to share neighborhoods than they were in the past, which in turn leads to a more racially diverse student body over time. Indeed, Glaeser and Vigdor (2012) claim that
