poverty and poverty alleviation in globalised cities

In the light of increasing "division of the cities" and its underlying process of socio-spatial segregation researches focus more and more on the consequences of this process: the development of advantaged and disadvantaged districts within contemporary cities. Thereby especially poverty alleviation respectively poverty eradication in disadvantaged districts becomes an emerging and central field of intervention in social policies. This is due to the broad impact of poverty like higher risk of obesity, delinquency and so on. In this context researches could prove that the direct private social environment like family has an important influence on the duration and intensity of individual poverty. But also the social living environment, the neighbourhood, is a decisive factor. Interim evaluations and also long-term studies of mobility experiments like "Moving to Opportunity ? MTO" in the USA show various positive social effects by facilitate the chance of leaving a poor neighbourhood and being financially able to live in a richer district.*1 This lecture is oriented towards the international mobility experiments as tool within social policy on regional and global level. The structure of the lecture is as follows: The first part provides a theoretical introduction to the topic of poverty as a global phenomenon. Dimensions of consequences caused by poverty and further concepts in the international field of poverty research create a basis for the following second part of the lecture: The empirical studies and results of mobility experiments as best practice examples of the given urban development problems. Thereby I will span a range from the US-American origins of mobility experiments (MTO) to current European and especially German studies like "Socially Integrative City" which was initiated in 1999 and aims to create a balanced social mix by combining social housing projects with housings of the middle-class in the course of urban redevelopment but also in the course of development areas.*2 The third part summarizes the most important results from the theoretical and the empirical parts and demonstrates possible urban development paths to guarantee long-term alleviation of poverty in a more and more globalised world. JEL Code: I38 Key words: segregation, social policy, poverty alleviation, mobility experiments, globalisation. __________________ 1 DE SOUZA BRIGGS, ET AL. (2010):Moving to Opportunity. The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty. Oxford University Press. New York. 2 NADLER, M. (2010): JESSICA. JOINT EUROPEAN SUPPORT FOR SUSTAINABLE INVESTEMENT IN CITY AREAS. AVALUATION STUDY. Available: http://bei.europa.eu/attachments/ documents/jessica-evaluation-study-for-nordrhein-westfalen-final-report-en.pdf (02-12-2014)