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filtering |
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A process of neighbourhood change that involves its housing passing from one social group to another. Most filtering involves housing in an area moving down the social scale; as the former inhabitants move to better-quality dwellings their previous homes become relatively cheaper and so accessible to lower-income groups. The full filtering process involves the highest income groups moving to new homes, initiating a rippling process whereby all other homes, and thus (to the extent that they are homogeneous) all neighbourhoods, move down the income scale: if the rate of new building for the affluent at least equals the total demand for new homes in the system, this should release the lowest quality homes at the end of the process for demolition. If new homes are constructed on the urban periphery, the filtering process ripples in towards the city centre, with every income group moving out one neighbourhood (as proposed in the original sectoral model).
Filtering is a continuous process, so that at any time some neighbourhoods are mixed in their composition until the shift from one occupant group to another is complete. It may be \'interrupted\' by the construction of new housing for middle-income groups, who release neighbourhoods somewhere in the centre of the idealized sequence, or by the construction of public housing for lower-income groups: it may be initiated by pressure for more housing among the lower-income groups at the centre of the city, as in the invasion and succession process associated with the zonal model.
One widely remarked deviation from the general process of filtering, which associates newer housing with higher income groups, is gentrification, whereby higher income groups re-occupy and regenerate older housing in attractive inner-city districts.
Some writers argue that the operation of filtering mechanisms ensures that the housing needs of all are met through market structures, including those of the poor and otherwise disadvantaged. homelessness in many cities and poor-quality housing for the less affluent in most cities (see slum) leads critics to argue that filtering rarely succeeds in providing adequate housing for all, hence the need for government subsidies and various forms of \'social housing\' (see housing studies). (RJJ)
Suggested Reading Gray, F. and Boddy, M. 1979: The origins and use of theory in urban geography: household mobility in filtering theory. Geoforum 10: 117-27. |
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