Seeing The Impact of Residential Immobility in New York City

• In Event: 031 - Section on Community and Urban Sociology Paper Session. Housing

Abstract

There is much talk in the mass media recently about urban issues such as “Stop and Frisk” and subprime mortgage fraud that disproportionally affect Nonwhite and low-income city residents. This paper discusses how ethnicity and class affect residential mobility and motility, and how that in turn affects the lives of local residents. It draws on decades long study of New York City’s neighborhoods focused on inter-class and inter-ethnic conflict and competition visible in vernacular landscapes (Krase 2012a; Krase and Shortell 2012). The mass movement of global capital into New York City has enhanced ‘the potential mobility of some, while detracting from the mobility potential of others.’ (Sheller 2011) Here, the rich get not only richer, but also more mobile as the poor get poorer and relatively less so. Burgess’s classic urban ecology paradigm of neighborhood invasion and succession has served for almost a century as a model for intra-urban mobility (1925). The neoliberal critiques of Harvey (2007), and Brenner, et al. (2010) also show that the organization of spaces and their embedded social practices in, as well as its image, are dominated by those who control social and economic capital. This study of the spatial distribution of human activity has been reinvigorated by the Mobility ‘Turn’ or ‘Paradigm’ (Urry 2000), which reiterates that spatial and other movements are critical elements of contemporary society. Some visually enhanced examples, focused on Brooklyn, New York, will also be provided.

Author

• Jerome Krase, City University of New York-Brooklyn College