Landscapes of Inequality: The Spatial Distribution of Housing Opportunity in Texas.

Details

Inequalities in the distribution of aspects of opportunity across and within metropolitan areas are well-established. Influential books by writers including Jonathan Kozol (1991), Myron Orfield (1997), and Gregory Squires (2006) lament disparities between central city and suburban resources, particularly relative to schools, jobs, and neighborhood quality. Orfield (1997) claims that the forces of suburbanization have created a “push-pull” of regional polarization. Affluent outer suburbs garner the bulk of metropolitan resources (wealthy tax base), leaving the central cities and inner suburbs as the least able to resist, and the “residual category for those without choices” (Rusk, 1993 as quoted in Orfield, 1997: 74). This uneven distribution of resources creates a new socio-spatial structure of domination and subordination where both economic forces and land use practices reinforce one another to produce a system of distribution of public goods and services that favors one area and harms the other (Squires and Kubrin, 2005). Glasmeier and Farrigan (2007, p. 221) call these “landscapes of inequality”. Findings from a group of studies from Dallas, Austin, and Galveston reveal how the geography of opportunity reduces access to educational opportunities and increases vulnerability to crime and damage from natural disasters.

References

Van Zandt, S. 2010. Landscapes of Inequality: The Spatial Distribution of Housing Opportunity in Texas. Presented at the “Race, Place, and Fair Housing” Conference, University of Texas School of Law, William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law, October 15, 2010.