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Life and Death in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx: Toward an Evolutionary Perspective on Catastrophic Social Change

Author

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  • Deborah Wallace

    (Public Interest Scientific Consulting Service Inc., 549 West 123 Street, Suite 16F, New York, NY 10027, USA and Columbia University School of Public Health, NY, USA)

  • Rodrick Wallace

    (Public Interest Scientific Consulting Service Inc. and The New York State Psychiatric Institute, NY, USA)

Abstract

During the 1970s, poor neighborhoods of New York City lost significant proportions of housing and associated community structure to a policy-driven process of contagious fire and building abandonment. The south Bronx was among the most heavily damaged areas. Here we analyze and compare the interrelationships between socioeconomic factors, housing, demographics, and two health outcomes (low-weight birth rate and homicide rate) in the southwest Bronx and in Upper Manhattan (Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood), using standard statistical methods as well as the Ives amplification factor employed by ecologists. Upper Manhattan showed much stronger and less ‘resilient’ relationships between these factors than the southwest Bronx, that is, a system of tight ties which amplifies external perturbations. It indicates vulnerability to impacts such as economic decline, changes in municipal service provision, and ‘welfare reform’. We hypothesize that the looser, and more resilient, system of the southwest Bronx and the brittle system of Upper Manhattan arose from their different histories of catastrophic urban decay, a highly ‘path dependent’ evolutionary process affecting a social system, subjecting it to extreme selection pressures on the underlying social network structure. The difference has profound policy implications.

Suggested Citation

  • Deborah Wallace & Rodrick Wallace, 2000. "Life and Death in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx: Toward an Evolutionary Perspective on Catastrophic Social Change," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 32(7), pages 1245-1266, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:32:y:2000:i:7:p:1245-1266
    DOI: 10.1068/a32208
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Wallace, Rodrick & Wallace, Deborah, 1995. "U.S. Apartheid and the spread of AIDS to the suburbs: A multi-city analysis of the political economy of spatial epidemic threshold," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 333-345, August.
    2. Wallace, Rodrick, 1990. "Urban desertification, public health and public order: 'Planned shrinkage', violent death, substance abuse and AIDS in the Bronx," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 31(7), pages 801-813, January.
    3. Wallace, Rodrick & Huang, Yi-Shan & Gould, Peter & Wallace, Deborah, 1997. "The hierarchical diffusion of AIDS and violent crime among U.S. metropolitan regions: Inner-city decay, stochastic resonance and reversal of the mortality transition," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(7), pages 935-947, April.
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    Cited by:

    1. Robert G Wallace, 2002. "The Shape of Space: Applying Geometric Morphometrics to Geographic Data," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 34(1), pages 119-144, January.
    2. Lauri Andress & Matthew P Purtill, 2020. "Shifting the gaze of the physician from the body to the body in a place: A qualitative analysis of a community-based photovoice approach to teaching place-health concepts to medical students," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(2), pages 1-15, February.
    3. Rodrick Wallace & Kristin McCarthy, 2007. "The Unstable Public-Health Ecology of the New York Metropolitan Region: Implications for Accelerated National Spread of Emerging Infection," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 39(5), pages 1181-1192, May.

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