Studying Integrated Spaces and the Policies that Support Them

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel will consider integrated spaces and the effectiveness of the policies that support them. 

Beginning with the observation of sluggish racial economic income convergence in the U.S., Rucker Johnson provides a synthesis of racial differences in socioeconomic mobility across three generations along with analysis of the root causes of these racial disparities. This analysis will center on the causal role of school quality and neighborhood effects on generational mobility processes. That is, this paper will focus attention on how Black and White families with identical household incomes tend to reside in very different neighborhoods with considerable divergence in available resources and the role this plays in undermining racial economic income convergence.
 
Picking up on this thread, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley highlights the role of housing policy and the stakeholders who implement it in preserving or reducing resource imbalances across neighborhoods. This paper presents the development of an affluent planned community that reinforced segregation in a major southern suburban school district as a case study of how development patterns shape and are shaped by school policy. This study will draw on publicly available qualitative data as well as 15-20 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders to investigate how suburban land use, planning, and development processes intersect with and influence school construction and rezoning. Given bipartisan support for addressing the nationwide housing shortage, these results will help inform development policies that can prevent further segregation and instead advance racially and economically diverse schools and neighborhoods. 

Using consumer information records, Matt Mleczko and Laura Sullivan explore individual-level mobility dynamics among neighborhoods that have become or have remained stably integrated by race and socioeconomic status over the past two decades. In this study, the authors examine and compare the duration of tenure in integrated and segregated neighborhoods, where residents of integrated neighborhoods move to and from based on origin neighborhood conditions, and test different determinants of mobility into and out of integrated neighborhoods (e.g., housing affordability). These findings will build upon empirical tabulations of integrated and segregated neighborhoods to clarify the processes that result in neighborhood integration. 

Finally, Wenfei Xu and Bernadette Baird-Zars use cell phone data from 2023 to provide a quantitative portrait of experienced integration in mixed-income communities. These data allow the authors to assess to what degree cross-class interaction and shared experiences arise in mixed-income settings by examining the actual movements of individuals in integrated block groups in which subsidized affordable housing comprises the vast majority of the housing stock. The authors compare the distance traveled, time spent, and types of places visited by this group with a selection of ‘control’ block groups. In doing so, the authors test competing predictions from quantitative work on the benefits of promoting access to high opportunity neighborhoods and those from qualitative case studies documenting persistent patterns of microsegregation and exclusion within mixed-income communities.
Ultimately, this panel will contribute to our collective understanding of integrated spaces, how inclusive they are, and the effectiveness of the policies that promote and sustain them.

Policy Area

• Housing, Community Development, and Urban Policy

Secondary Policy Area

• Education

Chair

• Ingrid Gould Ellen, New York University

Discussants

• Ann Owens, University of California - Los Angeles

• Michael C Lens, University of California - Los Angeles

Organizer

• Matthew Mleczko, Marquette University

Individual Presentations

• Racial Economic Convergence with ‘Deliberate Speed’: Generational Mobility and the Role of School Quality - Presenting Author: Rucker C. Johnson, University of California, Berkeley

• Building segregation: The contemporary relationship between land use policy, housing development and schools - Presenting Author: Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Individual-level analysis of neighborhood integration dynamics - Non-Presenting Co-Author: Matthew Mleczko, Marquette University; Presenting Author: Laura R Sullivan, Cornell University

• Measuring Integration in Affordable Housing with Location Data - Presenting Author: Wenfei Xu, University of California, Santa Barbara