ABSTRACT

The spatial sorting of residents according to socio-economic status is as old as the history of urbanisation (Nightingale 2012). Processes and patterns of segregation are far from uniform in historical and regional contexts (York et al. 2012). The intensity and geography of socio-spatial divisions in cities are related to the constant interplay between institutions that set the rules of the game and households that make residential location decisions. Most important, unlike other forms of segregation, such as those based on race, ethnicity or religion, socio-economic segregation is usually seen as a direct effect of economic inequality. Common

sense may suggest that greater inequality in a city also entails higher levels of socio-economic segregation (Reardon and Bischoff 2011). Nonetheless, more often than not, the relation between the two is far from ‘positive’ and ‘linear’. The seemingly obvious and logical regularity of this relation is mediated by a country/region-specific institutional setting and a city’s trajectory of economic and population development (Burgers and Musterd 2002; Maloutas and Fujita 2012; Musterd and Ostendorf 1998). Moreover, socio-economic segregation will also be mediated by other forms of segregation, such as race-based and ethnic segregation (van Ham and Manley 2009; Manley and van Ham 2011). When a household ‘selects’ a certain place to live on demographic or cultural grounds, there will also be an impact on segregation in socio-economic terms. Viewed in this light, the studies on class-based spatial divisions in a selection of European cities brought together in this volume illuminate the complex relations between economic inequality, social disparities, and urban space. These relations unfold in the divergent historical, demographic, cultural and institutional contexts of the northern, southern, western and eastern parts of Europe at times of profound political and economic changes. Sweeping across the continent in the last two decades, these changes include the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and demise of the Soviet Union (1991), the enlargement of the European Union to include the new member states from East Europe1 in 2004 and 2007, a concomitant massive East-West migration and, more recently, a deep economic crisis and its aftermath.