ABSTRACT
The degree of segregation of different qualities and tenure-forms of housing and the extent to which ‘up-market’ and ‘down-market’ areas are spatially differentiated contribute to the imaging of the social hierarchy and the self-imaging of one’s place within it. The basic problem is that the processes of capital investment and disinvestment that add or subtract jobs in a local area often have effects more rapidly than the processes that produce social infrastructure in the form of the housing, schools and similar facilities necessary for the reproduction of the labor force. It seems fair to argue that the relationship between economic development and the quality of the built environment has been insufficiently understood and consistently undervalued. The state/market interface in the process of producing the urban environment consists of a mix of legislative regulation and various forms of non-legislative intervention.
