Conference Agenda

After the change of regime, the employment and housing structure went through radical changes in Budapest, just like in most cities of the post-socialist countries, due to deindustrialization and privatization (including mass housing privatization). In the 1990s, the housing constructions stopped and despite the privatization, the residential mobility remained low within the city. Those who had resources after purchased their flat moved to the suburbia. Those who had resources after purchased their flat moved to the suburbia. The situation changed at the end of the decade, the economic recovery and new financial instruments helped the housing market.

New housing constructions restarted together with the demolition of old tenement houses and working-class estates from the turn of the century. The newly built flats were very expensive and no new social housing was constructed, thus the lower social strata had less and less opportunity to find home. This situation was further aggravated by the 2008-2012 financial crisis. Masses of mortgage borrowers lost their home. As a result, homelessness increased, families moved to the countryside, and the outmigration strengthened.

The study focuses on the neighborhoods with a high concentration of lower strata inhabitants who were hit hardest by the crisis. The research questions are: Where had been the least affluent groups concentrated before the crisis and how it changed after? Which neighborhoods became poorer after the crisis period and which ones transformed into middle class areas?

The authors compare the subdistrict level 2001, 2011 and 2022 census data of Budapest in order to identify the old and new low status areas. An in-depth analysis of their location and residential environment may reveal how the socio-spatial cleavage has evolved during the last two decades.

Who are “the rich” and how should their residential patterns be studied? In society, the rich are defined not only by their high income but also —and perhaps more importantly— by their high wealth. However, while income is closely monitored and taxed, wealth often remains less scrutinized, particularly in the context of segregation research. This study explores how the spatial patterns of affluence and poverty differ when considering wealth versus income and discusses their implications. By analyzing geo-coded microdata from the Netherlands, we reveal that wealth segregation is much higher than income segregation, and that roughly the top tenth richest households in terms of wealth are far more isolated from the rest of the population than what the income-based literature would report. Our findings also demonstrate other three key insights: (1) Whereas financial wealth is more unequally distributed than real estate wealth across society, it is more equally distributed across space. (2) Wealth segregation is notably more sensitive to the spatial scale of measurement compared to income segregation. (3) The temporal trends of income and wealth segregation diverge: while the former is decreasing in most urban areas, wealth segregation is rising almost everywhere in the Netherlands. This stresses the necessity of incorporating wealth into studies of segregation not as an alternative operationalization, but as a different perspective on the concentration of affluence which captures the role of capital, social class and the residential dynamics of the well-off individuals in a way that income-based approaches cannot render.

Residential segregation is one of the most visible manifestations of social inequality in cities. However, segregation is not merely a reflection of these inequalities but also a mechanism that actively contributes to their maintenance and reproduction over time. Thus, analysing socioeconomic inequalities requires considering both inequalities between places (Milanović, 2016) and inequalities within places (Piketty, 2013, 2023).

In this context, the article examines the dynamics of residential segregation in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, focusing on the evolution of socioeconomic disparities within its 164 municipalities and in relation to the metropolitan average. The research posits that segregation has reached a metropolitan scale, going beyond municipal boundaries, with vulnerable social groups increasingly concentrated in major cities, while wealthier groups tend to relocate to other areas.This dynamic generates a paradox in which the most disadvantaged populations tent to concentrated in municipalities with fewer local resources and greater difficulties in providing public services.

The study approaches residential segregation through two methodological perspectives. First, it proposes a taxonomy of metropolitan municipalities that combines the evolution of economic inequalities within each municipality with their relative position in terms of average net income per household within the Barcelona Metropolitan Region. This phase uses data from the Atlas de Distribución de Renta de los Hogares for the period 2015–2022 at the census tract, municipal, and metropolitan scales.

The second phase focuses on analyzing the evolution of residential segregation through the use of the multivariate residential segregation index previously used in the research Barris i Crisi (Blanco & Nel·lo, 2018), completing the temporal series for the years 2001, 2011, and 2021. This methodology examines the territorial distribution of four key variables, interrelated with the income: (a) the percentage of the unemployed population; (b) the percentage of the foreign population; (c) the cadastral value of housing; and (d) the average housing size. Data is collected at the census tract level using the 2021 Population Census.

This dual approach provides an in-depth understanding of segregation and inequality patterns in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, contributing to debates on public policies and the territorial distribution of resources.

In 1997, Amin and Graham pointed to the media's prevalent focus on urban crises and 'regeneration', which oscillates between gloomy predictions of urban collapse and optimistic portrayals of renewal, often simplifying the actual complexities. These observations remain pertinent and reflect a persistent but simplistic dichotomy of urban decay and revitalisation driven by neoliberal agendas (Pinson, 2022). The concept of urban regeneration has been criticised for lacking a defined theoretical basis (Leary and McCarthy, 2013) and for using stigmatising metaphors that exacerbate socio-spatial inequalities (Marcuse, 2005). Such metaphors target areas labelled as 'abject' (Sibley, 1998), potentially exacerbating marginalisation (Porter, 2009). Urban problems are often framed in dystopian terms to justify interventions as necessary treatments for perceived urban ills (Furbey, 1999), perpetuating 'hypochondriac geographies' (Baeten, 2002). The schematic approaches of the current literature require a socio-theoretical extension of urban regeneration (Lovering, 2007). Feminist geographers argue that urban theory overlooks the transformative potential of care that is essential for a just city (Power and Hall, 2018). This requires a new ethical framework that places the transformative ethos of care at the centre (de la Bellacasa, 2011; Lawson, 2007).

This study utilises relational and new institutionalist perspectives (Healey, 1999; Rydin, 2021) to examine urban regeneration along three axes: metaphorical/symbolic, instrumental/discursive and procedural/socio-spatial. The focus is on the south-east coast of Palermo, which has evolved from a bustling industrial zone in the early 20th century to a place of urban sprawl and decay. 'Sacco di Palermo' in the 1970s triggered a profound urban transformation that led to the construction of massive social housing projects that further blanketed the coast with rubble, the so-called mammelloni. As part of the NRRP, the city has launched four “eco-sustainable” projects to address these environmental and social challenges. The study aims to introduce the ethics of care as a relational lens into urban research, to explore the discursive impact of NRRP initiatives on urban imaginaries that can move away from pathologising approaches, and to assess how urban regeneration in Palermo unfolds on the ground, enabling agency. Methodologically, it combines critical discourse analysis and ethnographic fieldwork.