ABSTRACT
Although generally gender, class, and racial inequality are all unacceptably high, there are highs and lows in different places. The spatial unevenness of inequality and the fact that it appears to be mostly nonrandom allow us to investigate two major questions about the nature of inequality. First, what are the causes of inequality? In the spatial context, this translates into a question about whether there are certain places that systematically foster inequality and others that systematically reduce it. Since some “paths” of economic development (for instance industrial, postindustrial, and so forth) are clearly concentrated in particular geographical regions, we can examine whether such paths of development are associated with low or high levels of inequality. We can also investigate whether there are multiple paths to the same outcomes; that is, whether there are several different types of regional economies that have low inequality and several different types that have high inequality. If there are multiple paths to low inequality, for example, we can compare the relative merits of alternative paths in an attempt to fashion the best policies to reduce inequality. The conditions that foster low inequality can be enhanced and replicated in other areas and antiinequality policies can be targeted to areas with high inequality.
