IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v58y2021i13p2758-2781.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Activity locations, residential segregation and the significance of residential neighbourhood boundary perceptions

Author

Listed:
  • Nicolo P Pinchak

    (The Ohio State University, USA)

  • Christopher R Browning

    (The Ohio State University, USA)

  • Catherine A Calder

    (The University of Texas at Austin, USA)

  • Bethany Boettner

    (The Ohio State University, USA)

Abstract

The inadequacies of residential census geography in capturing urban residents’ routine exposures have motivated efforts to more directly measure residents’ activity spaces. In turn, insights regarding urban activity patterns have been used to motivate alternative residential neighbourhood measurement strategies incorporating dimensions of activity space in the form of egocentric neighbourhoods – measurement approaches that place individuals at the centre of their own residential neighbourhood units. Unexamined, however, is the extent to which the boundaries of residents’ own self-defined residential neighbourhoods compare with census-based and egocentric neighbourhood measurement approaches in aligning with residents’ routine activity locations. We first assess this question, examining whether the boundaries of residents’ self-defined residential neighbourhoods are in closer proximity to the coordinates of a range of activity location types than are the boundaries of their census and egocentric residential neighbourhood measurement approaches. We find little evidence that egocentric or, crucially, self-defined residential neighbourhoods better align with activity locations, suggesting a division in residents’ activity locations and conceptions of their residential neighbourhoods. We then examine opposing hypotheses about how self-defined residential neighbourhoods and census tracts compare in socioeconomic and racial composition. Overall, our findings suggest that residents bound less segregated neighbourhoods than those produced by census geography, but self-defined residential neighbourhoods still reflect a preference towards homophily when considering areas beyond the immediate environment of their residence. These findings underscore the significance of individuals’ conceptions of residential neighbourhoods to understanding and measuring urban social processes such as residential segregation and social disorganisation.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicolo P Pinchak & Christopher R Browning & Catherine A Calder & Bethany Boettner, 2021. "Activity locations, residential segregation and the significance of residential neighbourhood boundary perceptions," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(13), pages 2758-2781, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:58:y:2021:i:13:p:2758-2781
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098020966262
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098020966262
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098020966262?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Qi Wang & Nolan Edward Phillips & Mario L. Small & Robert J. Sampson, 2018. "Urban mobility and neighborhood isolation in America’s 50 largest cities," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 115(30), pages 7735-7740, July.
    2. Malia Jones & Anne Pebley, 2014. "Redefining Neighborhoods Using Common Destinations: Social Characteristics of Activity Spaces and Home Census Tracts Compared," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(3), pages 727-752, June.
    3. Basta, Luke A. & Richmond, Therese S. & Wiebe, Douglas J., 2010. "Neighborhoods, daily activities, and measuring health risks experienced in urban environments," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(11), pages 1943-1950, December.
    4. Kwan, Mei-Po, 2009. "From place-based to people-based exposure measures," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 1311-1313, November.
    5. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren & Lawrence F. Katz, 2016. "The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(4), pages 855-902, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jessica Finlay & Joy Jang & Michael Esposito & Leslie McClure & Suzanne Judd & Philippa Clarke, 2023. "‘My neighbourhood is fuzzy, not hard and fast’: Individual and contextual associations with perceived residential neighbourhood boundaries among ageing Americans," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(1), pages 85-108, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher R. Browning & Catherine A. Calder & Jodi L. Ford & Bethany Boettner & Anna L. Smith & Dana Haynie, 2017. "Understanding Racial Differences in Exposure to Violent Areas," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 669(1), pages 41-62, January.
    2. Wenfei Xu, 2022. "The contingency of neighbourhood diversity: Variation of social context using mobile phone application data," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(4), pages 851-869, March.
    3. Sharp, Gregory & Denney, Justin T. & Kimbro, Rachel T., 2015. "Multiple contexts of exposure: Activity spaces, residential neighborhoods, and self-rated health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 204-213.
    4. Zhang, Yanji & Wang, Jiejing & Kan, Changcheng, 2022. "Temporal variation in activity-space-based segregation: A case study of Beijing using location-based service data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    5. Shen, Yao, 2019. "Segregation through space: A scope of the flow-based spatial interaction model," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 10-23.
    6. Lina Hedman & Kati Kadarik & Roger Andersson & John Östh, 2021. "Daily Mobility Patterns: Reducing or Reproducing Inequalities and Segregation?," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(2), pages 208-221.
    7. Abbasi, Sorath & Ko, Joonho & Min, Jaehong, 2021. "Measuring destination-based segregation through mobility patterns: Application of transport card data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    8. Shareck, Martine & Kestens, Yan & Frohlich, Katherine L., 2014. "Moving beyond the residential neighborhood to explore social inequalities in exposure to area-level disadvantage: Results from the Interdisciplinary Study on Inequalities in Smoking," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 106-114.
    9. Matthew Hall & John Iceland & Youngmin Yi, 2019. "Racial Separation at Home and Work: Segregation in Residential and Workplace Settings," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 38(5), pages 671-694, October.
    10. Petteway, Ryan J. & Mujahid, Mahasin & Allen, Amani & Morello-Frosch, Rachel, 2019. "The body language of place: A new method for mapping intergenerational “geographies of embodiment” in place-health research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 223(C), pages 51-63.
    11. Naomi F. Sugie & Michael C. Lens, 2017. "Daytime Locations in Spatial Mismatch: Job Accessibility and Employment at Reentry From Prison," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(2), pages 775-800, April.
    12. Robert J Sampson, 2019. "Neighbourhood effects and beyond: Explaining the paradoxes of inequality in the changing American metropolis," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(1), pages 3-32, January.
    13. Park, Souneil & Oshan, Taylor M. & Finamore, Alessandro & Ali, Abdallah El, 2020. "Are we breaking bubbles as we move? Exploring the relationship between urban mobility and segregation," OSF Preprints 2ubzn, Center for Open Science.
    14. Jennifer Candipan & Nolan Edward Phillips & Robert J Sampson & Mario Small, 2021. "From residence to movement: The nature of racial segregation in everyday urban mobility," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(15), pages 3095-3117, November.
    15. John Palmer & Thomas Espenshade & Frederic Bartumeus & Chang Chung & Necati Ozgencil & Kathleen Li, 2013. "New Approaches to Human Mobility: Using Mobile Phones for Demographic Research," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(3), pages 1105-1128, June.
    16. Sarah E Wiehe & Mei-Po Kwan & Jeff Wilson & J Dennis Fortenberry, 2013. "Adolescent Health-Risk Behavior and Community Disorder," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(11), pages 1-7, November.
    17. Francesco Andreoli & Arnaud Mertens & Mauro Mussini & Vincenzo Prete, 2022. "Understanding trends and drivers of urban poverty in American cities," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(3), pages 1663-1705, September.
    18. Paul R. Flora, 2021. "Regional Spotlight: Poverty in Philadelphia, and Beyond," Economic Insights, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, vol. 6(4), pages 16-22, December.
    19. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Michael Storper, 2020. "Housing, urban growth and inequalities: The limits to deregulation and upzoning in reducing economic and spatial inequality," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(2), pages 223-248, February.
    20. Patricio S Dalton & Victor H Gonzalez Jimenez & Charles N Noussair, 2017. "Exposure to Poverty and Productivity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-19, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:58:y:2021:i:13:p:2758-2781. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.