Suchergebnisse

"This book provides rigorous comparative evidence on socio-economic segregation from 13 European cities. Cities include Amsterdam, Athens, Budapest, London, Madrid, Milan, Oslo, Prague, Riga, Stockholm, Tallinn, Vienna and Vilnius. Comparing 2001 and 2011, this multi-factor approach links segregation to four underlying universal structural factors: social inequalities, global city status, welfare regimes and housing systems."

The Socio-Economic Segregation in European Capital Cities: East Meets West project investigates changing levels of socio-economic segregation in 13 major European cities: Amsterdam, Budapest, Vienna, Stockholm, Oslo, London, Vilnius, Tallinn, Prague, Madrid, Milan, Athens and Riga. The two main conclusions of this major study are that the levels of socio-economic segregation in European cities are still relatively modest compared to some other parts of the world but that the spatial gap between poor and rich is widening in all capital cities across Europe. Segregation levels in the East of Europe started at a lower level compared to the West of Europe, but the East is quickly catching up, although there are large dif- ferences between cities. Four central factors were found to play a major role in the changing urban landscape in Europe: welfare and housing regimes, globalisation and economic restructuring, rising economic inequality and historical development paths. Where state intervention in Europe has long countered segregation, (neo) liberal transformations in welfare states, under the influence of globalisation, have caused an increase in inequality. As a result, the levels of socio-economic segrega- tion are moving upwards. If this trend were to continue, Europe would be at risk of slipping into the epoch of growing inequalities and segregation where the rich and the poor will live separate lives in separate parts of their cities, which could seriously harm the social stability of our future cities.

Growing inequalities in Europe, even in the most egalitarian countries, are a major challenge threatening the sustainability of urban communities and the competive- ness of European cities. Surprisingly, though, there is a lack of systematic and representative research on the spatial dimension of rising inequalities. This gap is filled by our book project Socio-Economic Segregation in European Capital Cities: East Meets West, with empirical evidence from Amsterdam, Athens, Budapest, London, Madrid, Milan, Oslo, Prague, Riga, Stockholm, Tallinn, Vienna and Vilnius. This introductory chapter outlines the background to this interna- tional comparative research and introduces a multi-factor approach to studying socio-economic segregation. The chapter focuses on four underlying universal structural factors: social inequalities, global city status, welfare regime and the housing system. Based on these factors, we propose a hypothetical ranking of segregation levels in the thirteen case study cities. As the conclusions of this book show, the hypothetical ranking and the actual ranking of cities by segregation levels only match partly; the explanation for this can be sought in context-specific factors which will be discussed in-depth in each of the case study chapters.