Dynamic segregation

1999
Brazil

Segregation has been one of the most persistent features of urban life and, accordingly, one of the main subjects of enquiry in urban studies. Stemming from a tradition that can be traced back to the Chicago School in the early twentieth century, social segregation has been seen as the natural consequence of the social division of space. Such naturalized understanding of segregation as ‘territorial segregation’ takes space as a surrogate for social distance.

Netto et al. (1999; 2001; 2015, 2018) proposed a shift in the focus from the static segregation of places–– where social distance is assumed rather than fully explained––to how social segregation is experienced and reproduced through embodied urban trajectories. They accomplished this by mapping the spatial behaviour of different social groups as networks of movement that constitute opportunities for co-presence.

This alternative view recasts the original idea of segregation as ‘restrictions on interaction’ by concentrating on the spatiality of segregation potentially active in the circumstances of social contact and encounters in the city. This approach to segregation as a subtle process that operates ultimately through trajectories of the body is illustrated by empirical studies in Brazilian cities (Netto et al. 2015; 2018).

The epistemological change in the view of segregation as a phenomenon operating through and over the individual, their body, actions and experience was paralleled by the attention to activity-space segregation introduced by Schnell and Yoav (1999; 2001). They proposed an approach to individual agents with respect to the spaces in which they perform their everyday lives: home, cluster of neighbouring homes, neighbourhood and city in the spatial context and friends, work and leisure activities in the social context of agents’ everyday life actions as they are actually performed in their everyday time-spaces.

Since then, many authors and approaches have come to focus on this highly dynamic form of segregation experienced by individuals:

Dynamic segregation (Netto et al., 1999, 2001)

Dynamic spatiotemporal segregation (Shen and Luo, 2023)

Spatiotemporal segregation (Liu et al., 2021; Shen and Luo, 2023)

Segregation in urban trajectories (Netto et al., 2015, 2017, 2018)

Activity-space segregation (e.g. Schnell and Yoav, 1999; 2001; Aksyonov, 2011; Browning et al. 2017; ; Holton, 2017; Dixon et al. 2020; Järv et al., 2021; Müürisepp et al., 2022)

Activity space-based segregation (e.g. Na et al., 2021)

The time-geography of segregation (Netto et al., 2018; Dixon et al., 2022)

Temporal segregation (e.g. Silm and Ahas, 2014)

Experienced segregation (Athey et al., 2020; 2021)

Individual segregation

Individual-level segregation

Individual segregation experience

Transport segregation

Exposure segregation

Mobility segregation

Mobility-based segregation

References

Netto, V. M., & Krafta, R. (1999). Segregação dinâmica urbana: modelagem e mensuração. [Urban dynamic segregation: modelling and measurement]. Revista brasileira de estudos urbanos e regionais. "1"(1), 133-152. https://doi.org/10.22296/2317-1529.1999n1p133

Schnell, I., & Yoav, B. (1999). Socio-spatial lifestyles and segregation. Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography. https://doi.org/10.4000/cybergeo.4856

Netto, V. M., & Krafta, R. (2001, May). Socio-spatial networks: social segregation as a real-time phenomenon. In Proceedings of the III International Space Syntax Symposium, Atlanta 2001. https://bit.ly/4aBsQig

Schnell, I., & Yoav, B. (2001). The sociospatial isolation of agents in everyday life spaces as an aspect of segregation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91(4), 622-636. https://doi.org/10.1111/0004-5608.00262

Atkinson, R. & Flint, J. (2004) Fortress UK? Gated communities, the spatial revolt of the elites and time–space trajectories of segregation, Housing Studies, 19:6, 875-892. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267303042000293982

Netto, V. M., Paschoalino, R., & Pinheiro, M. (2010). The urban condition of coexistence. Virus, 4(1), 1-11. http://www.nomads.usp.br/virus/virus04/?sec=4&item=5&lang=en

Aksyonov, K. E. (2011). Social segregation of personal activity spaces in a posttransformation metropolis (case study of St. Petersburg). Regional Research of Russia, 1, 52-61. https://doi.org/10.1134/S2079970511010023

Farber, S., Páez, A., & Morency, C. (2012). Activity spaces and the measurement of clustering and exposure: A case study of linguistic groups in Montreal. Environment and Planning A, 44(2), 315-332. https://doi.org/10.1068/a44203

Netto, V. M., Soares, M. P., & Paschoalino, R. (2015). Segregated networks in the city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(6), 1084-1102. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12346

Netto, V. M. (2017). The social fabric of cities. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.47235/rmu.v5i2.2

Kollmann T., Marsiglio S., Suardi S. (2018). Racial segregation in the United States since the Great Depression: A dynamic segregation approach. Journal of Housing Economics, 40(), 95-116. Academic Press Inc. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhe.2018.03.004

Netto, V. M., Meirelles, J. V., Pinheiro, M., & Lorea, H. (2018). A temporal geography of encounters. CyberGeo: European Journal of Geography. http://dx.doi.org/10.4000/cybergeo.28985