Changes in policy over the last thirty years, particularly within advanced economies, have allowed for increased financialization, deregulation and globalisation of housing. What differentiates real-estate from other financial markets is that it possesses a salient socio-spatial geography. Housing inequalities are often framed as an outcome of macro-economic structural changes or as a product of local socio-spatial conditions, but the interactions between the two are less understood. To address this gap, we develop a descriptive methodology to connect the analysis of national housing policy trends in the Netherlands with local socio-spatial trajectories of neighbourhood change using nearly 20 years of historical data across a range of socio-spatial dimensions from the City of Rotterdam. Whilst nationally there has been an increasing policy preference for home ownership associated with a narrative of social upliftment, the spatial-temporal analysis reveals that the wealthiest neighbourhoods have benefitted significantly more from capital gains and increased rates of home ownership over time. Through descriptive analysis, the results highlight the role of divergent neighbourhood characteristics and path dependencies, suggesting that housing policies could benefit from the adoption of a more localised approach. Overall, the study sheds light on housing inequalities by integrating macro socio-economic factors with micro-level neighbourhood conditions.

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The United Nations World Social Report (2020) reveals that more than two thirds of the world's population live in countries where urban inequalities have increased in the last three decades. While urban inequalities are traditionally characterized as an economic issue, scholars are increasingly applying methods from geospatial analysis to study them. In the context of these advancements, it remains unclear what underlying perspectives are guiding decisions to concentrate on certain aspects of urban inequalities, while potentially ignoring others. We address this gap by reviewing the literature centered on the geospatial analysis of urban inequalities and identify three predominant research lenses from accessibility, distribution, and policy and stakeholder perspectives. As a primary contribution of this article, we connect the perspectives with ideas drawn from complexity theory to develop an overarching socio-technical framework for how urban inequalities emerge over space and time. While traditional scientific frameworks seek to increase knowledge through causality, complexity science acknowledges the inherent challenges in defining, understanding and solving complex problems such as urban inequalities, which has profound implications for their representation, modeling and interpretation. We critically reflect on the framework through key relational themes and insights drawn from the literature and close with considerations for future research.@en

The world is increasingly urbanising, more than half of the global population live within cities. The impact of COVID-19 is having devastating effects. The United Nations estimates that the pandemic will most likely elevate poverty and inequalities at a global scale. The World Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting prosperity and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals have deemed inclusive, resilient, and sustainable cities as global imperatives. Despite wide recognition, building inclusive cities remains a challenge. Many studies of social inclusion are conducted at an individual or household scale, with little emphasis on the interaction between human dynamics and the spatial characteristics of cities. This article proposes a data driven framework for examining urban social inclusion through the profiling of neighbourhoods by combining spatial network measurements, transport, land use and socio-economic indicators in Cape Town, South Africa. The spatial unit of the neighbourhood is considered an important building block within cities and has especially historically important social and cultural connotations in South Africa. The results show that there are 4 types of neighbourhoods, Economically disadvantaged and marginalised, Affluent and exclusive, Semi residentially heterogeneous and Residentially heterogeneous. Neighbourhoods with increased residential racial heterogeneity, additionally, have access to higher levels of mixed land use, transport, and global closeness centrality. Furthermore, neither extremely high nor low-income neighbourhoods are found to be related to racial heterogeneity. The results enable the profiling and comparison of neighbourhoods, and it is envisioned that this evidence-based approach could support policy makers and urban planners within decision making processes.@en

The world is increasingly urbanising, more than half of the global population live within cities. The impact of COVID-19 is having devastating effects. The United Nations estimates that the pandemic will most likely elevate poverty and inequalities at a global scale. The World Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting prosperity and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals have deemed inclusive, resilient, and sustainable cities as global imperatives. Despite wide recognition, building inclusive cities remains a challenge. Many studies of social inclusion are conducted at an individual or household scale, with little emphasis on the interaction between human dynamics and the spatial characteristics of cities. This article proposes a data driven framework for examining urban social inclusion through the profiling of neighbourhoods by combining spatial network measurements, transport, land use and socio-economic indicators in Cape Town, South Africa. The spatial unit of the neighbourhood is considered an important building block within cities and has especially historically important social and cultural connotations in South Africa. The results show that there are 4 types of neighbourhoods, Economically disadvantaged and marginalised, Affluent and exclusive, Semi residentially heterogeneous and Residentially heterogeneous. Neighbourhoods with increased residential racial heterogeneity, additionally, have access to higher levels of mixed land use, transport, and global closeness centrality. Furthermore, neither extremely high nor low-income neighbourhoods are found to be related to racial heterogeneity. The results enable the profiling and comparison of neighbourhoods, and it is envisioned that this evidence-based approach could support policy makers and urban planners within decision making processes.@en

With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations in 2015, aspirations towards creating more inclusive and sustainable cities became global standards of urban development. This presents an almighty challenge for policymakers and urban planners, particularly in the rapidly developing cities of the global South, which have historically been known to possess higher levels of segregation and inequality. This article focuses on an analysis of patterns of accessibility, created through different systems of transport, in relation to potential opportunities they may provide for interaction between different social and racial urban population groups, using Cape Town in South Africa, as the primary case study. It examines the relationship between specific social and spatial variables and the geographic positioning of stops and stations of the public Railway, MyCiti Bus Rapid Transit systems and the paratransit, privately-owned Minibus Taxi system. A relational approach was required in order to address both the physical and social aspects of this paper, thus drawing on the discursive and analytical techniques offered by space syntax. The Minibus Taxi system, born out of the informal sector in South Africa, has widely been stigmatised as “chaotic” and “haphazard”, however the empirical evidence shown by this analysis of accessibility, suggests that it possesses an inner spatial and social logic.@en