Evaluating Ecological, Subcultural and Political Approaches to Neighbourhood Change and Neighbourhood Poverty

Abstract

Various metatheories are applied to explain neighbourhood change and neighbourhood poverty. Ecological approaches view these as a deterministic, evolutionary process of market competition amongst mobile social groups. Subcultural approaches view these as the product of a complex interaction of both endogenous psychological factors and exogenous economic, social and demographic factors. Political approaches view these as a spatial side effect of the unequal ownership of the means and modes of production, and skewed power relations. Statistical analysis indicates that a range of significant factors shared between different metatheoretical approaches explains neighbourhood change or neighbourhood poverty. This supports the trend in a convergence and hybridization of metatheory. The diverse approaches sufficiently explain common changes, but the low explanatory power of the models indicates that idiosyncratic factors are as or more important in explaining individual neighbourhood changes. Neighbourhood poverty is not a significant factor influencing changes in neighbourhoods, although other pecuniary measures are.

Keywords:

• Neighbourhood change
• neighbourhood poverty
• South Africa
• segregation
• subcultural
• growth machine politics