The influence of housing oversupply on residential segregation: exploring the post-socialist city of Leipzig^†

Abstract

In this article, we contribute to a better understanding of contextual differences related to residential segregation. We illuminate one specific contextual factor—housing oversupply—and how it intersects with historically inherited patterns of socio-spatial differentiation and other drivers of residential segregation. The study is based on an analysis of how segregation has developed over the last 20 years in the city of Leipzig, Germany. This case offers the rare possibility of studying the impact of city-wide housing oversupply on residential segregation, rather than concentrating on decline or decay in specific areas. We examine how oversupply emerged at the meeting point of changes in market structures, housing preferences, welfare state interventions, and migration trends in the post-socialist transition. Using existing statistical data, we demonstrate how oversupply has fostered a fast and thorough reshuffling of residential patterns. After a period of resolving segregation patterns from the socialist era, oversupply acts as a catalyst for recently emerging residential segregation patterns.

Keywords:

• residential segregation
• housing oversupply
• vacancies
• post-socialist transition
• urban shrinkage

Notes

1. measures the differences of the spatial distribution of a sub-population, compared with the whole population.

2. measures the extent to which minority members are exposed only to one other.

3. measures the relative amount of physical space occupied by a minority group in the urban environment.

4. measures a group’s absolute distribution in urban space.

5. expresses the average number of group members in nearby tracts as a proportion of the total population in nearby tracts.

6. In Leipzig’s statistics, the term “foreigners” is used for persons who do not have German citizenship or a German passport (City of Leipzig, Statistical Office, 2012, p. 10).

7. “Germans with migration background” is a category in German statistics for residents with German citizenship who themselves, or at least one of their parents, migrated to Germany after 1949. This includes the group of Germans who formerly lived in Russia and have German ancestors (BAMF (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge), 2015).