Human mobility networks reveal increased segregation in large cities
nature.com
nature.com
I agree with AnimalMuppet's comment - car-centric behavior kills this. For example, if you go to older cities that were developed "pre-car" in the US like NYC or Boston, I feel like you get more interaction just because you're likely to interact with more people on the sidewalks or subway/T. Living in a car-centric city like Austin is totally different. As much as Austin likes to promote its progressive ethos, this is definitely one of the most segregated cities I've ever experienced, even more so now that housing prices have gotten insane - poorer people live further out, and the public transportation system is pretty abysmal and there is much more of a socioeconomic divide in people who use it (primarily because, and I see this all over the US, but many people love to talk about the need and benefits of light rail, but buses are often seen as "for the poors").
You share sidewalks, public transportation, etc when going for work or shopping for something that isn't a daily necessity. But the same could be said about less urbanized places.
The counter argument are towns and villages that only really contain one socio-economic group. You can have small towns that are basically only rich people, or only poor people. Cities provide less segregation than that.
Talking to random strangers when out and about is very much not the norm. Being forced to come into contact with the others is seen more as a negative than a positive.
The only places where I see some kind of mingling is where that’s the goal, such as bars, and possibly “hobbies”. Although, IME, even those tend to have people from similar “categories”.
Worked. Past tense. In most of the US, it's now a car culture. And even in cities where people walk, it's now an earbud culture.
It's not actually a surprise that society is bifurcating, is it? Not after the anaphasing of school demographics, voter behavior, and so on.
> In most of the US, it's now a car culture.
In my experience cars have nothing to do with this. I grew up outside the US in a very car-required area.
And yet what you call sidewalk culture was and is the norm of daily life. You go outside, meet the neighbors, play board games on the sidewalks, have beers with them deep into the evening, simply hang out outside a lot. I miss this a lot.
In the US they invented an actual fake crime for the idea of hanging out outside - loitering. You try your sidewalk culture in the US and the police will show up to break up your illicit activity (eyeroll).
In the US you must be at home or at work or commuting between them, or spending money shopping or in some corporate-sanctioned entertainment venue.
Urbanization increases social stratification in that the upper class and the upper middle class tend to live in or near cities. As far as the poor and working class, the majority live outside cities in agricultural societies, and in or near cities in modern societies.
You could just as easily disagree, with a valid point.
(And anyway, the phenomenon you are talking about stopped on most of the world at around the middle of the last century. The very few exceptions where it is still happening do not support you claiming it's a rule.)
I'm not sure that tracks. Farmers are the epitome of the upper to upper-middle class, deriving their living wholly or mostly from land and capital ownership.
Perhaps you meant upper to upper-middle income rather than class?
This must be why in the 1950’s large swathes of Europe saw so many farmers fleeing their land to go live in the city and take up those new fangled factory jobs. Same for Britain in the 1850’s. Or China in the 2000’s.
Usually when people talk about “farmers” in the context of social class migrations, they mean subsistence farmers eeking out a living from the land. Not the modern American or European industrial farmer who in effect owns and runs a multimillion dollar business. Although I hear margins are razor thin even for those.
Did they though? Doesn't match my knowledge.
Most farmers at the time who owned plots of fertile land would rather break their backs working the land themselves (even if for thin margins of subsistence farming) rather than move to the cities to live in cramped conditions and break their backs working factory jobs for low pay.
The only country folk who migrated to cities to take factory jobs were mostly people who didn't own much land or any at all, making them relatively poor, so a factory job in the city was a better prospect than poverty in the country side working someone else's land. But land owning farmers would never downgrade by going to work factory jobs.
Sure? There is nothing about upperclass-hood that implies that it is desirable or infinitely maintainable. In fact, beyond the romanticizing of the upper-class we see in popular culture, I suspect most actually prefer to be working class, especially when coupled with an upper income. There are way fewer nightmares when your only concern is showing up to work.
The bulk of the modern upper class are non-farm-specific capitalists, who tend to be urban-dwellers, and bulk of fhe petit bourgeoisie (middle class) are non-farm-specific small business owners and elite urban laborers whose wages have sufficed ti give them a capital nest egg sufficient to be a significant share of their economic support mechanism.
The modern farm, even small family farms, relies on capital to do the work. The farm owner's input is into the management of the operation. If management is considered labour then there is no such thing as upper-class. You can't own land and capital without some management.
All businesses rely on the application of labor to capital; if that labor is largely that of the owners, the owners are petit bourgeois, if it is predominantly rented labor of the proletariat, the owners are haut bourgeois. (In the simple case where the owners derive their support exclusively from that property.)
> If management is considered labour then there is no such thing as upper-class.
Management is labor, but that fact does not mean that there aren't a distinct class of people who, while they may incidentally do some labor in the marketplace, relate to the economy and derive support within it primarily through the returns of capital whose value is realized primarily by renting labor from the proletariat.
Yes, we call them retirees. Who, incidentally, as a group have a slight preference towards small town living.
It kind of makes sense that people that earn more or have a higher potential want to mingle with people that are the same. There's no upside for better off individuals to stay in low income neighborhoods.
No matter how much subsidized housing or whatever, low income individuals will be priced out of events or social gatherings.
And the bigger the city, the more opportunities there are, the more segregated economically they tend to be because just a small percentage will "make it". And the rest I think will follow a half Bell curve.
I posit that rich people actually enjoy having groceries cost double what they do just a few miles away, because it means only the ‘right people’ mingle with them in public.
Personally I exemplify this. I make enough to go to the fancy Whole Foods and shop in peace, whereas the local Safeway in the same neighborhood has people screaming and throwing objects and items are locked behind bars. Simple price differentiation keeps those people from bothering to enter WF.
While looking at residential location choice, around 10 years ago, you could discern a boundary (Georgia Ave in those days).
Netflix used to show the most popular movies by zip code, and one side of the boundary it was "Mamma Mia" and the other "Tyler Perry".
The bureaucrats, lawyers, doctors, and career officers (Pentagon) were highly concentrated in a few neighborhoods that border the Potomac (Old Town through Fort Hunt). A few blocks away, the Rt 1 corridor was largely working class or lower class, with some young enlisted families from Ft Belvior.
This extended to my high school - there were 3 buildings - first was arts/music, second was STEM and honors, and the third was the gym, auto shop, wood shop, and cooking. It's not hard to imagine there were students who never entered building 1. And the only reason I was ever in building 3 was the weight room and the one semester of auto shop I took.
I have lived in several countries and always observed that, irrespective of the political views, people try to flee poor areas when they can, and try to have their kids put in good schools when they can.
This is particularly funny in the case of left-wing politicians paying extras bucks to have their kids in elitists white schools with strong discipline, while advocating "diversity" for the other kids when they are interviewed on TV at night.
There is nothing wrong with advocating for a society wide rule change, but still playing the game according to the current rules.
One of the big problems with public schools right now is disruptive/slow students not being kicked out/remediated, hampering good students’ learning.