ABSTRACT
Many studies have understood deprived—or depressed—neighbourhoods as ‘pockets of poverty’—a spatial concentration of poor and socially excluded groups. The studies of deprived neighbourhoods cited—and experience from slums in the United States—suggest that a revision of the understanding of the nature of deprived housing estates as simply pockets of poverty is needed. Outsiders have a different knowledge of and affiliation to a neighbourhood to residents. Segregation is initially created as a consequence of decisions taken by individual households. Segregation is influenced very much by the development of spatial differentiation in cities, and perhaps this is more important than the development in social inequality and social exclusion. Segregation and increasing spatial inequality are mutually self-perpetuating processes. The chapter concludes that problems of deprived areas should not be considered simply as spatially concentrated pockets of poverty that have arisen as a simple product of social inequality and segregation.
