Social boundaries and the (re)production of urban economic inequalities: a relational perspective of segregation
Conference talk, Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference, Bristol, UK
Despite the abundance of boundaries in urban space, such as administrative boundaries, social boundaries, neighbourhood boundaries, physical boundaries, school boundaries, etc., mainstream segregation theories often underestimate their significance. Early models in the literature by Schelling (1971) and Yinger (1976) focused on how boundaries emerged as the product of individual preferences and the residential movements of households. A quantitative approach that conceptualizes a boundary as an object in itself, rather than just a demarcation of another entity, has gained attention more recently in geography (Campari, 1996), geographic epidemiology (Jacquez, 2010), ecology (Fortin, 1992) and in spatial sciences in general (Jacquez et al., 2000).