American-Style Segregation is Dividing Europe
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- Despite varying politics, social welfare programs and public housing systems, segregation rose in the 2000s across countries in Europe.... reaching near US levels in many cities and causing politicians and researchers to ask: Will European communities will turn into American-style ghettoes?
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:12 A Changing Urban Landscape
06:17 Vienna: Priced Out of the Private Market
10:16 Stockholm: Segregation & Immigration
16:16 The Big Picture of Urban Design & Policy
Episode No. 140
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We live in France in a suburb where one street divides the classes - just like in Detroit: one side private family homes inhabited by lawyers, notaries, and general upper middle class. The other side is banlieue. Blocks and blocks of families with immigration background. But: during the COVID lock down the situation erupted: burning cars, riots and destruction. It came to light that the people in the blocks had no water, bursted pipes, the heating broke down..walls full of mold etc. Terrible conditions to live in. But this was homemade by the french housing policy. Now the city is changing it all. They took down the buildings, installing more social clubs for kids, social workers, new shops, activities for families, building new appartements, trying to mix the population. They put a lot of money & efforts into fighting segregation, making up for mistakes from the past. We will see if it works...
I know that in the U.S. there’s a lot of income stagnation. For example, from 2000 to 2020 my household income remained completely unchanged as employers in the region found excuses to freeze wages. The costs of goods and services in the same time have gone up 70%. So unless you’re from a wealthy family to begin with, you’re just going to become poorer.
“If you don’t move forward, sooner or later you begin to move backward.” M.Gorbachev. Your household income depends on the skills you can provide to the economy. Most likely these skills were not changed significantly between 2000 and 2020 in your household. Google suggests that "The real median household income in the United States between 2000 and 2020 was $42,148 in 2000, $50,000 in 2009, $49,578 in 2010, $49,100 in 2011, and $67,521 in 2020."
I’ve definitely noticed more segregation and wealth inequality in Sweden from when I was born in the 80s. I also see people getting richer. Pools was something you barely saw in Sweden when I grew up. Summer is short and you have access to many public beaches. But now it’s fairly common for people to have pools and instead of socialising with others people stay at home in their pools. You also see many people with Teslas and other expensive cars while some struggle to afford the increasingly expensive public transportation. If you owned a home you saw your wealth increase a lot while the renters only saw higher rents. It’s a paradox because as a nation we are richer compared to when I was born in most metrics but it feels like most things are worse. Almost all public utilities feel worse because it schools or healthcare or infrastructure. But people have a lot more stuff at home. Having a computer was rare as a kid now even low income families have iPhones and iPads and stuff. So more stuff but less of the important things.
We are such an individualistic nation nowadays. Egoism is encouraged. I also feel that our parent's generation really f*cked up when they got rid of the capital taxes, and privatized most of the welfare-functions in the 90's. Sure, we could renovate our houses with subsidies, but literally sold out the schools to venture capitalists. They almost undid what their parents built up before them. It's sickening.
Så är det och inte lär det bli bättre.
Just relax, get your money however you can and stay away from trouble. I was born in the early 70s and I used to have opinions about the situation in Sweden. Now I'm old enough to just smile at what's happening. Yes, many people have their lives ruined in different ways, but what can I say? People voted for this. Sweden is a democracy. 👍🤣
@@sweden_is_xxxx I guess yay for being a sociopath? Have fun not caring about the lives of yourself and others, but me, I kind of want a better life that isn't dependent on intentionally hurting others.
@@snorpenbass4196 Oh I don't hurt anyone. I just keep myself and my family safe. The Swedish people has voted for this so I let them have it. You reap what you sow.
Same here in Switzerland. Its a very different country to what it used to be, to where I grew up. I'm not convinced it's for the better, even though it may look better on paper. But the ground truth is entirely different.
In Ljubljana, Slovenia, private house and flat prices are very high (and increasing), rents in private flats are very high, and it is very hard to get a flat in the social housing because of lack of it. Private market builds only luxury flats (the word "luxury" is the part of most advertisement for flats...
Same here in Belgium a flat you need to spend around 30 years to pay for your flat. 30 freaking years for a flat...
It ain't good in Sarajevo either if it can make you fell better.
And from those overpriced apartment that are actually in a bit affordable range... well they are built so close together that you can practically see what your neighbour in next apartment complex has for lunch
@@jesenjin8467 -- In the USA, we call houses in that kind of development "McMansions." Rather large homes on small lots - where you could be washing dishes and look into your neighbor's bedroom window. Of course, we have the other extreme too. Folks might have a trailer (mobile home) and live out on 100 acres by themselves.
I am realizing that nearly ever place in the world has its benefits and problems.
In Montréal a appartement is verry expensive...But suberban is just has bad...😢
in hunagry the house prices in major cities similar like house prices in florida. in budapest from the price of 50m2 apartman u can buy a 150m2 house in a floridian gated community. a house prices in budapest at the better areas similar like prices miami or naples (fl)
Every Sunday a different topic to look forward to.
It's always a pleasure to watch your videos, thank you
My pleasure! Thanks for watching ♥️
@@TypeAshton
What's wrong with segregation?
Your videos are garbage.
I think that the term "No-Go Area" originated in The U.K. I first heard it in the early '70s (1971/2) when it started being used to describe areas in Northern Ireland where police presence was virtually non-existent due to religious/sectarian divisions. Such areas were typically patrolled by the British Army in order to maintain some form of law & order, but were effectively run by paramilitary organisations.
wikipedia: "(...) The term "no-go area" has a military origin and was first used in the context of the Bush War in Rhodesia. The war was fought in the 1960s and 1970s between the army of the predominantly white minority Rhodesian government and black nationalist groups. (...)" ...
Thanks for some real depth on an issue usually shown in hot buttons, sound bites and victim-blaming trolling. This video is a keeper.
Thank you ♥️
victim blaming? who IS the victim? is it the autochthonous population, or is it the migrants who make up the majority of those segregating THEMSELVES for cultural reasons and are mostly poorer whch ist also responsible for segregation by income?
It's actually a meme about liberal Viennese that the nanosecond they have children, they either want to move to another districts or send them to a private school, even if they themselves are lower income, so their kids won't have to deal with immigrant children with a different first language.
The whole language thing is, however, a real problem. Even affluent immigrants tend to segregate through "international" schools and similar.
And that is understandable.
Some people don't grow up until they get real responsibilities.
@@hevnervals I doubt that the liberals don't want to send their kids to a school with immigrants, but rather that the schools available to immigrants are usually lower value. I live in the US and our neighborhood school is title 1 but has much less net funding than the nicer schools. Our school has 30+ students per classroom, is older, and has stressed support teams.
If we move schools it's not because half the student body isn't a native English speaker, it's because the school isn't great. It's obvious that the schools with the most issues need the most resources but our system is horrible at ensuring that happens. As long as America continues to consider education and equality to be unimportant, they will continue to be problems.
@@Revocdeb There is no correlation between budget and result, and there are countless examples. Look up this research: "Increasing Education Spending Does Not Equal Higher Test Scores". Schools with huge subsidized budgets, like in Baltimore produce illiterate students, while schools with tiny budgets in the rural midwest have the highest SAT's in the US.
Regardless, as a European, I can safely say your initial assumption is wrong. There is a lot of bullying towards native European kids in schools with large immigrant student populations.
@@RevocdebThey don't. Here in Denmark, they advocate for integration, but when it comes to their own children, they make sure, they go to private schools. Other people's kids, must than be bothered, with the arab mentality, but NOT their own.
How much of these divides are impacted by cultural differences? There’s a lot to be said about integrating into these European societies when coming from such a completely different background, including mindset, language, religious beliefs and practices, and so much more. These are not always compatible and that’s a factor that shouldn’t be ignored. Speaking as a woman of color living in the Netherlands, I’ve seen some neighborhoods here in The Hague where it’s obvious that the desire to assimilate into Dutch culture is neither important nor desired by many of the residents there. So, what’s to be said about that? Not trying to be controversial but just sharing a different perspective. Love your videos!
its worse as in some communities, even those living here for generations now, they actively resist even the minimal level of assimilation and reversing to more extreme and conservative version of their culture than in their own home countries and treating local European culture and people as enemies- like the immigrant communities in Belgium and France and most recently in UK collectively protecting and hiding literal murderers and terrorists. those want to live in segregation and as separated from others, outsiders, as possible..
So true. I (a western immigrant to Germany) have noticed this a lot in Germany with a percentage of the Turkish and Russian immigrants. Many chosen to "keep to themselves" and not integrate with the Germans.
Integration works best, when your mix migrants with locals. If you have to deal with each other on a daily basis, there is no choice, but build understanding for each other, learn the language and to adjust culturally. And where new migrants live is very much a political decision.
Because if the government does not actively manage the settling of incoming migrants, non diverse neighborhoods form where adjusting to the new country is simply not necessary as most people around you are from your country/culture of origin anyway.
@@johanneskurz7122 Well, what about locals who don't want to mix with the immigrants? Prison, economic punishment, police violence? 😂
@@rebeccarendle3706 exactly. I see it here in the Netherlands too and also in the U.S., so I think it’s only fair to talk about that too because it’s not always on the host country to accommodate to a degree that degrades their own cultural norms or marginalizes their own citizens. Not trying to stir the pot but my friends in Sweden and Denmark have a few things to say about this as well.
I live in a Greifswald, a small Town of some 60.000 people in the Northeast of Germany. Here the City decided against large scale privatisations in the 90s and opted instead to invest in the Housing of the City, with the result, that up to 70% of housing in the City is owned by the City. Witch give the City a say in where new inhabitants go. And that is used to purposely spread out new inhabitants in the city to prevent segritation...
As for now it is loking like it works.
forcing people to live next to unsafe people, natives always come last
@@Datacorrupter234 I don't see it like that. People especially locals like me are not unsafe by default. And here the most people who come here are students in University here, also not the kind of people who are typicall "unsave".... And even if there are those people, then no-one can specifically say that they are in one Location, because all people are somewhat mixed up do to the policies of the City, which is also a good thing, because in this way the Police is able to guarantee the safety of all residents in our City....
@@johannesstabenow4459 vs having them far away in ghettos
It's what they do in Singapore too to prevent the highly multiethnic city state from becoming segregated and it works too.
@@Datacorrupter234 How do you define "unsafe people"?
I am sorry, but as an Austrian, there are some issues with your analysis of Vienna. For once, a lot of the laws you mentioned regarding rental are federal ones, where the conservative ÖVP has more influence. But Vienna isn't just a city, it is also a Bundesland with its own subset of laws overwriting these. Here the SPÖ is governing continuously. Vienna is still spending more on social housing as the entire country of Germany. In fact we actually talk about taking back benefits for landlords (like being able to pass on the cost of home insurance and tax to renters) introduced during the 2000s. Like in Germany, rental in Austria isn't as much of a working vs middle class divide. More of an urban vs rural one. Vienna is historically divided in districts (using numbers) some with better reputation than others. This is not new, it is in fact so old that there are two distinct dialects in Vienna and over the last few hundred years governments occasionally tried to mix these up, but they still exist today. There is a TV series from the 70s called Mundl, about this very topic. So the heat map you showed hasn't changed that much since WW2. Now other cities in Austria, such as Graz, Linz, etc.. are indeed a different issue, hence the figures for Austria as a whole changing noticeably.
No-go areas or no-go zones usually refers to areas that police or rescue-workers won't/aren't allowed to enter without a large escort.
It's about the danger, not the demographics of the people living there.
Depends on the Area and country but some "no go Zones" only meen that you need 1 extra backup to go to some areas during some times of the day, in the zone. You dont need a "large" escort. Sweden has 3 diffent levels of Risk areas. That media love to call "no go Zone" Only in the highest risk area Cops, ambulance and firedeparment needs a minimum of 1 extra cop car. If they are going to a know drugdealers home for a raid or a active shooting they will call for a large escort. But that will happen anywhere. No ambulance will go to an active shooting without backup from the police.
@@KristoferOlsson that's the wrong measure, to send a police car as escort. Attacking an ambulance is a war crime so they should send a platoon of army soldiers to protect it.
@@adamcrookedsmile Thats nonsens. Its never a warcrime for a civilian to attack an Ambulance in peacetime. In Sweden its called blåljussabotage. If its minor its up to 2 years in prision if its major its 2 years-lifetime in prison. Worst possible thing you can do in a civilized country is to put your army on your citizen.
I was just in a town outside of Paris a few weeks ago. This "banlieu" named Le Plessis-Robinson is a town that over the last 30 years has completely turned itself around. It was once a pretty awful place to live, but has been able to turn itself around over the past 30 years. It's a nice example of what can be possible if there is the political will power and of course money to do so.
One of the issues that leads to segregation in many cities is the lack of public transport, thus limiting access to employment. In Toronto, areas that are poorly serviced by public transport tend to have higher concentrations of poverty. Having said that there has been significant investment in areas such as the Jane-Finch area and, to a lesser extent, in our east end which are dropping commute times. There have been some successes in areas where social housing has been built into revitalized communities where the demographic mix more closely resembles that of the city population. One area that works is an area known as Regent Park that had a low rise subsidized housing stock redeveloped to a more dense mixed community. Finally the funding model of education systems is also very important. We have a province-wide funding allocation per student so the educational disparities are less pronounced than in the US which tend to vary widely based on the prosperity of the community. Still, the difficulty of those living in poverty means that academic achievement is still biased towards the well to do.
Great show. I look forward to it every Sunday
Social Mobility is not only a question of income inequality, factors such as education system are also crucial. Germany (and Austria) being a typical example. Children are separated relatively early as to what path to take later in life (Gymnasium and University) vs Hauptschule and vocational training. This means, a worker's child will most probably have the same path as their parents.
Even though Germany praises itself as a Social market economy, its social mobility is one of the lowest in all OECD countries.
Nope. My parents were nurses, I went to university anyway. My mother kept saying, what you learn cannot be taken from you by anyone. What parents need to understand is that if their child has the brains to get higher education, it's their duty to encourage it to go to the best school he or she can hack.
I have to say, though, the education system in Germany needs to be improved - mostly by increasing financing of schools and universities (there is no such thing as college, the closest thing is the later years of the Gymnasium). At least in theory, if you have the brains, you should be able to get ahead in society.
@@realulliread the last sentence again, „one of the lowest social mobility rates“, an anecdote about yourself doesn’t negate the point of the argument you commented on. It’s the trend not the individual that counts when comparing social mobility
@@scarba I concede your point. But please read my whole comment - I'm saying that parents need to be convinced that education is something worth having and the state needs to support that. (Also, companies need to be convinced that hiring an apprentice from Realschule or lower isn't a bad thing...)
@scarba i think you agree with the op. He sees the issue. Just does not know how to reverse the trend. We were very diverse in the 70s. Many of my friends and school mates were the first in their families to go to university. Turkish greek Italian Spanish German. Germany has done this for generations. Being muslim does not have to be a deciding factor either. I feel it all starts with education.
@@realulliyou are wrong. It is natural that the coming generations use longer time to educate themselves
Weirdly enough I found that not entering any discussions about politics as well as socio economic subjects was best for my mental health. Problems often are complex, most people generalize too much, discussions are mostly emotionally charged and at the end of the day no one listens to or cares about my (or any individuals) opinion.
I have lucked out with a nice flat I own near munich and a decent job. Life is stressfull enough as it is...
That being said, I appreciate being educated which is why your informative and neutral videos are a blessing - even on topics that are usually rather divisive.
So being lucky and staying out of politics is your recipe?
@duncan.o-vic -- That tactic works pretty well for a lot of people.
@@1VaDude It works great for the 1%.
@@duncan.o-vic -- EVERYTHING works out well for the one percent, especially when they are in government or very closely connected to it. In the USA, you will find that many of those who whine about wealth inequality are solidly within the top one percent of both income AND wealth. Places with the widest gap between rich and poor are often under their type of hegemony.
It can be frustrating that they can fool so many people so often.
@@1VaDude Those who (you hear) whine about inequality are the rich ones because if you're poor, you're either busy with surviving or uneducated, and your voice is certainly not coming through.
Media only covers what the rich say.
And that is my point: the only way of changing something is not staing out of politics.
If you're staying out of politics, you're finding yourself outside the politics. And eventualy outside your home.
I teach AP Human Geography. We are in the middle of our urban development unit, which will be very helpful for my kids. My students live in a racially integrated middle-class suburb, and they struggle to understand modern segregation. Thanks for your great content!
races do not exist. racist left wings try to keep this sorting alive (thats the real racism - this sorting). and students who are not aware bout such stuff are under-educated. first of all they represent a lack of knowledge about the middle age. if you went for instance to Venice at that time then most groups were separated in communities. you had German communities, Jewish communities, Polish communities and so on. In Central Europe where Germans and Slavic ppl shared the territory you also had such segregated communities. you had of course also often ppl who mixed in but the base was usually common culture etc... even more so in the middle east and the rest of the world. in most cases - and here you still can see that TODAY (in Africa, Asia etc.) you have/had separated tribes (and related conflicts) and so on. the 'mixed' societies are mostly a modern European phenomenon (partly also due to the impact of modern structures and accelerated urbanization - almost 99.9% of the time most ppl lived rural while since 2008 the first time mankind surpassed the 50% urbanization rate - developed countries did that already sooner, less developed ones are following) which here and there already existed in the past but rather as exception. the mixed ppl in the world are usually long term mixing results or a thing of the MODERN time - in difference to what you here believe. and that segregation is seen as problem is also a result of a modern mindset (in the end of the day out of the experience that indeed masses of conflicts worldwide also had to do with that. in Afghanistan the Pashtunes are the ruling tribe and others are forbidden in most cases to get the ladder up. It is not just a typical anti human right and female oppressing islam dictator ship but also tribal - segregation oriented like in old times).
Hi @TypeAshton. I am enjoying the video. At 15:20 in the video you have a stat showing Avg. Home Value for Detroit v. Grosse Point. But your voice-over states Median Household Income.
To answer that question the average home value in Detroit is $68, 903 while the average home value in Grosse Pointe is $414,794. By the way I lived for 25 years in Grosse Pointe Park, then downsized with my wife to Eastpointe in 2014.
I've been watching your Fantastic channel since 2021(that BlackForest family video from when your second child was Born made me and my wife cry at the end of Relief❤🙏🙏🙏).
OMG, What a brilliant content creator that you guys are🤩
Thank you so so much for helping people with trusted content in a time that Fake news is waaay more popular than honest content.
Thank you so much for providing these Amazing comparisons between some of the G7 countries.👍
Hello from Waterloo 🇨🇦🤠✌️
Really glad you enjoy the videos and content. ♥️ These kind of stories are something that brings me a lot of joy from a research interest perspective and I'm thrilled that others find it interesting too.
Thanks for watching and following along!
Canada 🇨🇦 eh Ontario eh
FR Freiburg Baden Württemberg 💶‼️💰
Fast becoming my new favorite channel
Wow thank you so much.
Sunday morning, cant await your video. I must reapeat: Why the heck your channel hasnt millions of follower, thats baffeld me! Since the time your channel named The black forest family, I wait for sunday morning watch your unbiased video. Regards
Hi🙂. Another fantastic and factual video on a really interesting topic 👍.. but a tip!!.. you show graphs, but do not keep them up long enough for us to really see/understand, especially as we are listening to your dialogue at the same time. In science talks (I know this is not an academic presentation, but..) we always annotate the graphs so the audience can immediately focus on seeing the message/trend being discussed... maybe you could apply this? You did partially do this to a couple of graphs, which made it easier to see and connect the graph content with your spoke explanation, but it would be great if you did it with all the graphs. Also if you add into your spoke communication "as we see in this graph, which shows x and y (refering to the axis) we see a trend to eg increasing divergence between the two groups etc.."..this reference to the parts of the graph with added annotations that highlight and draw our eyes to the relevant part of the graph you are referring to while you are speaking, will allow us to follow the visual evidence supporting you monologue without having to rewind and or stop the video.
I LOVE your academic approach to the topics you address in your videos , which I have always commented on since you started your channel.. but now they are purely academic/factual, it would be great if you added in these "academic" presentation methods (I mentioned above) to make it easier to appreciate the graphical evidence you researched and provide to support your verbal discussion.
Ps. In my Germany city we have richer and poorer areas, but maily mixed. My house I bought was broken into before we bought it..since living here 6 of my immediate neighbours have been broken into.. that is the disadvantage of mixed econimical communities and then this causes the more affluent people to move away and segregate because without a feeling of safety, quality of life drops and the value of property drops to.
Just pause it and you'll have all the time you need😉
That's what I'm doing
@@nonamegirl9368I did pause it! I also mentioned that I did in my comment. But as I explained, constantly pausing and rewinding spoils the experience of the videos.
Maybe I notice it more because I am an academic myself and in addition to my science, I have been teaching soft skills (eg academic presentation courses) to grads and post-grads for over 20yrs!.
I use you tubers for my Millennial students to learn topics in my area of teaching because they grew-up with social media, and Ashtons high quality, factual channel has the potential to expand hugely if students in study areas where these topics are relevant also find and watch these videos. University lecturers and teachers in general, are always looking for "in a nut shell" videos explaining complicated topics to get their students interested, in the hope they will eventually become motivated to "dig deeper" into the scientific literature for said topic .
Eg my 10yr old son loves a factual German made you tube channel called "Kurzgesagt" to learn stuff. They have also the same channel in English "In a nut shell" which has millions of followers. His school teachers have started to use you tube channels in all his subjects, like I have been doing with my Uni students for the past 10yrs!
I pause to look at the charts and access the sources!
Another problem is caused by _AirBnB_ and the _digital nomads_ from wealthier European countries, who are driving up rental prices well beyond what locals can afford in some very popular locations such as Porto, Zagreb, and Barcelona to name a few. The same applies to border workers in border areas.
Yeah but that is just another symptom of neoliberalism/advanced capitalism together with gig economy and union-busting.
No, airbnb does little to no influence as much as you might think. There have been many studies in total rent and house prices only increased by 1 or 2%
@@cedricdellafaille1361 Can you point us to those studies or add some detail like cities and who conducted them?
Even if those numbers are true, day rentals are taking the housing off the local housing market, and could be offset by locals moving out or emmigrating as most popular nomad destinations are poorer countires with brain-drain.
Tourists bring alot of money and many quite easy jobs. I live in a tourist area, why do u think we basically do nothing else except tourism? Well bcs tourism is easy!😀
Is real estate more expensive here bcs of it? For sure, and not just 1-2%. But most of us here already own it and it is in a way good thing for us. If you rent, not so much ofc., on the other hand you want to be here bcs of those tourist jobs..😀
As somebody from the USA living in Germany, (state of Hesse), I do notice "clusters" of non-German people in certain parts of town. It isnt as bad as in other places, but it is there nonetheless.
We rent and live in a nice building that was brand new when we moved here.....but there is "social housing" behind us.
Neighbors tell me that some people stay in subsidized apartments their entire lives. Pethaps they have similar issues with "rent control" as does New York City.
Trying to sustain large numbers of poor immigrants and a rather generous social welfare state is difficult.
Thanks for another interesting video!
I think we shouldn't be talking about rent control. We should be talking about social housing. I see only my bubble here in Germany, but rent inflation only happened when social housing was cut back and/or privatized. The cities were selling or spinning off their housing projects to private entities and just paying them rent for social housing. A person entitled to social housing was entitled to a certain amount of space and the city would pay for the rent, no matter the cost. Then people bred, we took in refugees and housing became sparse. Prices increased. But instead of incentivizing building more housing, rent controls were enacted.
What the cities should be doing is restarting social housing. It can be done, even without segregation, if you mix it well. We need housing for all the people, not luxury flats nobody can afford (except when subsidized by the state).
If you think that rent control is a good idea, then perhaps you should try looking at New York City. It has been an abject failure (unless you are one of the fortunate few to already have a rent-controlled apartment). It leads to shortages and disincentivizes the construction of new housing stock or renovation of older units. [ That means you end up with more slums. ]
From the point of view of an outsider such as myself, it makes me wonder why so many European countries "imported" so many people that they cannot afford to feed, house and educate - without having to excessively tax their own citizens to pay for it. That's not a good long-term strategy for success or even maintaining your sovereignty.
Maybe it is the economic & cultural version of biting off more than you can chew. It is possible for politicians to manipulate an economy - at least for a while, but they can not change the basic principles of economics.
The next 15 to 20 years are going to be some trying times for the Western nations.
P.S. There will have to be a reckoning regarding who is "entitled" to free/subsidized housing - because governments run the risk of running out of other people's money.......especially when a limited supply confronts an infinite demand. Economic reality can sometimes be unpleasant.
@@1VaDude on the contrary. I think rent control is a ridiculously bad idea. I think the governments should start building social housing again, but mix it well with the rest of society. If people's rents are not subsidized but they're instead housed by the government directly, the market pressure drops, especially when you also enact laws that can make someone lose their property if it's not kept up. Basically, make it expensive to let properties sit unused for years, waiting for someone to shell out enough money.
I grew up in Freiburg (the city where Ashton now lives), there were several large housing projects in the 1960s and 1970s, some with the associated segregation effects, some without. My family lived in Landwasser, which has a good mix in most places but you can see some degree of segregation there as well. For those who know the area: Max und Moritz (you probably know what I'm talking about) are two large blocks with minimal communal area, lots of dark corners and very low visibility. They are (or at least were) a crime hotspot that I didn't like to go near, even as a guy.
The rest of the area was a mix of high rises (various sizes) and single family homes. There were some problems, but from my experience they were mostly blown out of proportion by the press. I think if you build something like that again, you need to add more communal spaces, what you (IMHO) must not do is try to implement ideological measures, e.g. build lots of flats with zero parking spaces for cars. I think parking needs to be buried underground, you need excellent public transportation (Freiburg is fairly good at that already but building houses and introducing the tram decades later is a bad idea!) right from the start, plus a network of bicycle routes and walkable amenities like schools and shops.
You *will* need quite a bit of surveillance and a strong police presence, at least until everyone learns that illegal activities are a bad idea. And I'm talking about German police, not the US style cops. German police has 10-12 times the training and education of the US cops, they are experts at defusing situations. The goal is not to be an occupation force but to be part of the community and help out.
I could write about this subject for hours...
@@realulli -- I am not familiar with Freiburg. We live in Wiesbaden (in Hesse) - across the Rhine River from Mainz and about 25km west of Frankfurt (FRA) Airport. We're not here as expats, but because my wife is a civilian employee of the US Government - so our status is a bit different than others here.
I can't speak for the efficacy of subsidized or "social" housing and rent control in Germany, but it has typically been an abject failure in the United States. Too many of our fellow citizens keep electing socialists (and neo-socialists) to office and then when they and their cronies mess it up, they blame the free market............when the free market was never even allowed to work.
As is the case with you, I could write on this subject for hours. I have been to 44 out of our 50 states and about 25 foreign countries on three continents so far - learning a lot more about things than they ever teach in a college classroom. My nearly six decades on this planet have enabled me to learn a lot and see things from many perspectives.........but I find that the more I learn, the more I still don't yet know. While we are here, we are going to visit Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic in August. We're seeing the three Baltic States + Norway, Finland and Sweden in June (we were already in Denmark last summer). We set foot in Africa last year (Morocco) and I have yet to see any of Asia (although my wife has traveled there a few times with her job).
I also served as a law enforcement officer (but that was a very long time ago) in the USA. The "role" of police there is a lot different than in Germany; that's for sure. However, I did work in a rural county and we didn't even have police. Just an elected sheriff with a platoon of deputies. Our crime rate was the lowest in the entire region and we had a well-armed populace. In the past 15 years or so, though, a lot of the "city problems" have migrated outward and there are a lot of challenges that have arisen. Our problem is not really policing as an institution, but with the laws and ordinances that the politicians keep enacting - then charging the cops with enforcing them. It makes for a society where every good citizen runs afoul of the law two or three times in the course of a day's work. Too many laws against victimless crime and a judicial system that often hangs its failures on the police who are forced to arrest people for violating laws that never should exist in the first place. ( Yeah, I could write a book! ) Policing for profit is a huge issue too, but that is best left for another day.
When we go back to the States (when my wife retires for the second time), we're contemplating moving to one of the Western states. The East Coast is just getting too crowded and the infrastructure cannot keep up with the number of newcomers. We also face a common problem - hordes of people who come from other places and bring their problems with them.
You are spot on about building apartments with no parking spaces. Wiesbaden is infamous for that. We have parking underneath our building - which is convenient, but it costs us 130 Euros a month! That's unheard of in the USA - where parking is free and abundant almost anywhere outside of a major city. The local officials here also have blocked off side streets (with poles or barricades) to enable motorcycles & scooters, but not cars to pass through. Other streets have been made one-way only so as to "force" all cars onto main streets where the traffic lights are not timed correctly. I guess it is to discourage driving and I was told by a neighbor that it was the Greens in the name of lowering emissions; but how does it reduce emissions to have hundreds of cars sitting still or crawling in traffic while their engines are burning expensive gasoline and going nowhere?
Now there is talk of mandating EVs, but where are people supposed to charge them if they do not even have enough spaces for the other cars? Our apartment has four charging stations at the far end, but the renters still have to pay for those spots like we do for ours. They have to pay for the electricity as well, but I have no idea how much it is. Fuel here costs over $7 per gallon, but we pay about $4.25 or so if we purchase it on post or at an ESSO station that accepts our AAFES debit card. Our friends back home complain when gasoline goes above $3 per gallon. Haha!! ( Some of them think fuel is cheaper here because it is sold by the liter, but that's totally untrue. )
Anyway, I appreciated your comment. Much higher level of discourse than I usually see on ScrewTube. Tchuss!!
@@1VaDude If you think Wiesbaden is bad for cars, you haven't been to Freiburg. ;-)
The secret is not making something worse, the secret is offering better alternatives. I'm not married to my car, but right now I have only limited alternatives where I live (in Fuerth, near Nuernberg). Last October, I went on a training in Leipzig. I went by train. The way there was quite pleasant. The way back was a horror. I had extended the stay to visit relatives who live in a rural town near there (50 km away). The trip from Leipzig to the next station to their village was ok. On the way back, my booked train was cancelled. The alternative was to go to Dessau, then take another train to Leipzig, then the ICE to Erfurt, then the ICE to Bamberg, then a rural train to Fuerth. About 9 hours to do what I can do with my car in 4.
I've been fully electric since 2019, I don't want to go back to a stinky. It seems you're still in the scarcity mindset. In an ideal world, almost all parking spots have an electrical socket. That socket doesn't have to be powerful, so it's not even expensive to build, 2 kW (on average) is enough for about 99% of all people. Most cars are just sitting around for most of their time.
Also blocking charges for slow chargers need to go. The local energy company in Nuernberg built a charge park when they were building a tram line extension. The chargers are mostly unused. I was wondering why, then it hit me: blocking charges! They want people to use these chargers when they park their cars and continue their journey with the tram. Who is supposed to use the park and ride parkings? People who work in the city. Who will not use their lunch break to get on the tram, travel 20 minutes to unplug and move their car, then travel 20 minutes back? Anyone's guess... ;-)
They should have installed sockets on every spot, with load management, then issued their own charge card with no blocking charge. Then they'd have full usage...
About the charging spots in your garage - having a dedicated spot is the first step. A few years ago they enacted a law that makes it rather hard for the landlord (or the WEG, the local variant of an HOA) to block you from having a line installed from your breaker panel to your parking spot. Of course, you still have to pay for the spot, you will have to pay for the installation of the circuit, but they can't block you. Having four dedicated charging spots in the garage sounds kinda stupid to me.
About the parking costs: The difference between the US and Germany is that Germany is much less married to their cars than the US. Also, space is much more scarce than in the US, so just building lots of parking spaces is expensive. And I think giving over a lot of space to cars isn't necessarily a good thing, especially if they're doing nothing but sit around. Parking should almost always be underground with something actually useful on top, like parks, playgrounds, etc.
You could make do to some degree with car sharing, but all the current implementations of that suck, IMHO. They're not there when you need them, they're friggin' expensive (I don't need a nearly new car with a correspondingly high depreciation when it's sold off after a few months), I can make do with a car that's a couple of years old. When I lived in Munich, I had a membership with Stattauto - the prices were somewhat high when the car was moving (they billed per km driven on top of time) but the time prices were reasonable. Getting one of their cars for the weekly shopping trip was very affordable. Most of the cars were a couple of years old but in OK condition. None of the members would abuse the cars, since if you abuse the car you'll have an abused car the next time you want to use it again. Fine with me, it worked. I don't need to own a car if I can use one when I need it (and if the need isn't too frequent, e.g. with good local transportation, trams, bike routes, etc.).
You might notice, I have opinions on lots of things (and I think a lot about stuff) - thank you as well for your comments, it's rare to have a civilized discourse on the internet. 🙂
Segregation has existed for centuries in Europe. Even here in Switzerland where we have laws to protect the housing market from exploitation by real estate sharks, neighborhoods are "developed" and people with less income are concentrating in more affordable. The accentuation happens for a variety of reasons and I think your video does a very good job explaining most of them. Gentrification is a consequence of this development but also a reason for further segregation. The segregation is mirrored in the classrooms and this drives enequality even more as the quality of education goes down. All bigger towns in Switzerland have this kind of problem in one or the other way, but certainly not to an extent like Paris. Even in the town I grew up we have a school where classes have 60% of immigrant children while the population consists "only" 36% of immigrants in the same town.
It sure has existed forever in Europe. Calling it "American-style" is not accurate since it has existed centuries before the US existed.
@@lorrilewis2178 Which means that Europeans created American style segregation. Yay!
Right!
This happens in every racially diverse society. Why would you assume it would be different in Europe?
Become more like the USA, expect USA problems.......
You have to understand, once and for all, that if you open your country's external doors (the borders) you create new doors and borders inside the country. The more you open the country's doors, the more secure the doors of your home will have to be.
wow thats the most subtle ive seen you hatemongers be in recent memory
beyond the borders of your country does not live a lesser people.
criminality on average is higher within native born people of a country than within immigrant groups.
cultural diversity is not a weakness - its a strength.
maybe when you let go of your fear and hate, you can actually see the people around you for who they are, rather than what you fear them to be
@@SharienGaming I'm sorry to disappoint you Karen, but if you've decided to live in the concept of a fantasy world, that's fine by me, but I'm sticking to what's real and concrete.
@@SharienGamingNo, it's a weakness. Worship of soullessness, directionlessness, meaninglessness.
This may sound religious, but I am actually an anti-religionist, I dislike religions, I see them as insufficient answers to questions humans have always asked.
While I disagree with multi-culturalism, I understand why the collective west went down the path of multi-culturalism after the second world war, it is the opposite of what the nazis wanted. On one side, the thought would have been "if there are no dominant cultures, no holocausts can happen, right?". On the other were the market liberalists(capitalists to most others) worshipping the "line", the never ending desire to make more money, dirt cheap labour was a mechanism to achieve that non-achievable goal. Those two were the primary driving factors behind what appears to be a western desire to destroy itself. Like always, humans overcorrect when faced with a social problem, rather than using finesse.
All multiculturalism produced was a malaise, a feeling of never truly being home.
Kind of harsh in a subtle way, but you do speak a certain degree of truth.
Is every newcomer a bad person? Of course not, but there will be a certain percentage among them who might be problematic.
Trying to separate the wheat from the chaff is not always easy.
@@1VaDudeIt's not about good vs bad people necessarily.
Sure, the immigration from islamic and african countries does not bring with it the most civilized of people. Islam in particular is a vehemently barbaric ideology, which generates a certain number of supremacists with every generation, that in turn cause the news headlines we hear from time to time. But it's not the actual cost, merely a sideshow.
The real cost is what I pointed to in my previous post. It's death of true cultural diversity, in its place a grey mass of soullessness.
The future will be completely devoid of value. Something similar to what communism unintentionally created: What we now refer to as the russian psyche being a good example of it. What form it will take is unclear, but it's not pretty whatever it is.
I think we gladly dont have much of this in switzerland. I think one of the main reasons is that we dont have large public housing projects, where whole buildings or neighbourhoods get built by the government to house poor people. Instead if you are on welfare, the government will pay a certain amount for your housing and let you find your own apartment. This prevents the extreme ghettoisation of america, sweden or france. Where kids go to school in areas where almost everybody's parents are unemployed and dont speak the language etc.
I saw another factor, after the outbreak of the farmers' protests I noticed that some of them targeted the supermarkets, it made me think that in the city closest to me they concreted over fields to build an Aldi, a Eurospin and a Mondo Brico near other shopping complexes and in the town where I live we have 6 supermarkets and a McDonald's for a town of 10,000 inhabitants, in the meantime butchers, greengrocers and fishmongers where you could find quality, seasonal and local products are closing. Globalization has brought advantages and disadvantages that can be noticed in these periods
So sad that they are closing 😢. But why don't people buy the high quality stuff anymore? 😢and in what country do you live? Because I don't know Eurospin and Mondi Brico. I am living in Germany. I am curious. Can you please tell me what country you are in?
@@sandralison7584 I'm Italian, people now go looking for savings because salaries always remain the same (maybe increased by 3% compared to the previous year) but expenses have increased more or less by 8% or they use supermarkets because it's the fastest way to go shopping because you have everything available. Life has also become hectic, there are people who now work half a day on Saturdays to have perhaps 50 euros more a week
@@sandralison7584 I'm Italian, people now go looking for savings because salaries always remain the same (maybe increased by 3% compared to the previous year) but expenses have increased more or less by 8% or they use supermarkets because it's the fastest way to go shopping because you have everything available. Life has also become hectic, there are people who now work half a day on Saturdays to have perhaps 50 euros more a week. P.s. I don't know what happened, this comment was deleted
@@marco_grt4460 thank you very interesting 👍🏼
Globalisation enriches companies, but states and people get poorer
I'd be interested in a video about rental controls in Europe or Germany, that seems like an interesting topic with cities like Munich having high rent problems since i can remember and Berlin which was known to be cheap now exploding in rent prices and implementing desperate measure that kinda backfired.
Partly because (pre-Brexit) a lot of people moved to cheaper Berlin from London. Even the more extortionate and rip-off rents in Berlin were cheaper than London. Literally a "richer" class of London based creatives were pushed out of London due to extreme prices pricing out the locals ... oops
Very interesting video. Would be great to deep in current and possible solutions and policies. It would also be interesting to know more about the segregation between declining and rising cities, and the rural/urban segregation
I’m East-Asian and i deliberately segregate myself from middle-eastern cultures because I prefer the German culture -that’s why I went to Germany. So I agree, segregation is more than just geographical -you can’t hang out with chickens if you want to fly with the eagles.
I live in Amsterdam nowadays and comparing it with Portugal (my home country) I feel that Amsterdam is a lot more mixed, both in terms of income and race, than Lisbon, we still have a lot proper ghettos in and around Lisbon.
The Dutch have done the same errors as other countries in the 60s and 70s but I think they have been fixing that in the last decades, you don't see social/low-income only projects anymore. In same neighborhood and even building you have homeowners, free-sector rentals and social rentals, and you cannot really distinguish what is what, so there is no possibility of ghettos being formed.
I find really funny when Dutch people call Bijlmer and Nieuw-West "bad areas"... Clearly, they never seen proper bad areas in other countries 🤣
By Dutch standards those are bad areas. But that says something about Dutch standards.
I'm old enough to have seen the old Bijlmer it wasn't a good place 30 years ago. But you are correct we have been rebuilding those kind of Neighbourhoods in the last 2 decades and Bijlmermeer is actualy a pretty nice vibrant neighbourhood nowadays. Its just that the bad reputation from its past is still around. Not many people go there so they don't see things have changed.
@@arturobianco848 Yes, I know Bijlmer was really bad but I think still considering it "bad" area nowadays is exaggerated... Of course, it's not Oud-Zuid or De Pijp but compared with proper "bad" areas that still exist nowadays in Paris, London or Brussels is a complete different level 😅
A few days ago I was looking around in Lisboa on street view and I indeed noticed real shanty towns similar to what I had seen when visiting South Africa, and I was shocked to see people in what is still not the poorest part of Europe having to live in makeshift shelters. compared to the people living there the lowest income group is still better off in the Netherlands.
@@Tom-Lahaye from a Central-Western European view like from Germany back in the 20. century many of those countries like Portugal, Greece, Spain, also a huge part of Italy (even in the North) was more like a less developed country (lets say 2nd world - it wasnt like in Africa or most of Asia etc.). In trains ppl/famiies cooked with open fire, you had a lot of dead dogs/hounds and sheeps in Greece on the streets (or somewhere in the landscape) and so on . What you see are the rest of such structures - former live. Another aspect is that Europe back then was after WW2 very homogenous regarding the population. This changes now more and more in the 21. century, not just due to different migration but you have also all the time much more tourists, expat, foreign students/workers in the cities with a much higher fluctuation which are now part of the everyday population experience. In the US you had that already in the 19./early 20. century and over the 20. century rather a kind of re-homogenization of the mix (which is why most over time spoke only English dispite the fact that you had migration from overall in the world) - of course you always had a certain influx in the cities of new migrants (mostly from the Spanish speaking sphere, in the 90ties also a bit more chinese and indian influx) and in the 21. century also more global fluctuation. but there are still a bit different 20. century backgrounds (most have this and that ancestor stories from several origins ...)
Very interesrting subject this video! Have their been any studies done on housing inequality in the past? For instance going back 200 years (to 1824) and then for a country like England or Hungary, what was the housing condition vs economical condition then, and how did it evolve and why? What were the main factors and what has it let too? That could be an interesting lesson from the past.
In my neighborhood there are some new low rise apartment buildings, in which a certain percentage of the apartments is subsidized and the rest is rented out at market price. I think this might be part of the solution
Mixed building certainly helps in my opinion but some economicly segregation will always happen it always was there.
@@arturobianco848 Well, preventing the situation from becoming worse would already be a good start.
@@faultier1158 We are activly trying to do that in the Netherlands. I used to work in some of the worst neighbourhoods in the Netherlands wich are quite nice now. Problem is the problem just moves but overall the situation is much better then 10 years ago.
Sorry, but why should I live in the same block and pay two times more than my neighbour which lives on welfare. That means, I get up (what I really hate) at 05:30 to go to work for nothing.
@@schurlbirkenbach1995 Well, if you really think that's true, just stop working and apply for welfare, and see if you like it better.
You should really see the documentary "breuklijnen" (fault lines), where Dutch television maker Sinan Can portrayed Clichy (Paris), Molenbeek (Brussels), Rinkeby (Stockholm) and Tower Hamlets (London). I don't know if its available in English or German but its really interesting and sometimes shocking to me.
This sounds like a very interesting documentary. I hope I can find it with at least german or english subtitles.
Sinan Can is a foreigner.
Excellent video🎉
Thank you 👍
So true. Hi Arno 👋🏻
@@Opa_Andre Hi Andre 🙋♂️
I enjoyed watching your videos...just getting to say that now openly.
Awesome! Thank you!
Hi,
I am living in Austria.
I think one other point why segregation is continuing is the language.
People do not want that their child goes to a school where German first has to be learned.
And therefore there move or give the child into private school.
So ein kickl schmarrn.
What's wrong with German?
Parents want always best for their children. Why would they want their child to go the school where they might be held back because majority of students struggle to grasp the language and thus overall study process goes slower.
Part of the segregation in Europe is also a lot of immigrants having a low desire to mix with locals, for a slew of reasons. In Aarhus one area it was decided to simply tear down some of the old housing blocks, and renovate the rest, completely redeveloping the area, in order to do this tenants have to move out, so they're forced to spread out, it is fairly new so we have no long term data, but so far initial data shows it might work to curb crime, lower unemployment and aid in integration.
No, immigrants are segregated because they cannot afford living in expensive areas, how is gentrification going to help? That's the reason why we have the housing crisis.
Nationalisation of housing and eliminating income inequality is the only way, and that is not happening because the so-called democratic governments are really just pawns of oligarchs.
And here you are, having watched the video, and you still turn the responsibility to escape the situation around to the immigrants. You have all the means to find the information, you have also been handed the information on a platter by Ashton, yet in your advantageous position you can't see the cycle, that you're also part of, that keeps the immigrants in this place and amongst each other. Yet you expect them, with far less means, to do what even you can't.
In short: we're becoming more exclusive and expect the poorest immigrants to somehow manage to be included against all odds. Not even expats manage that with their vastly greater wealth and stay mostly amongst their social peers.
In your Aarhus example, it appears that it was only cosmetic as the people getting pushed out will only end up in areas that have the same low rent, continuing the cycle.
Hello Ashton, thank you very much for another impressively well made and highly informing video.
You'll find in many German towns areas where hardly or no people with low income live. Often they just don't stand out that much like they do in Hollywood or Miami. But usually local know where those streets and quarters are.
Additionally there are incentives for more rural places to increase their numbers of inhabitants and they tend to try attracting more wealthy people.
Great and important topic!
I think there's a pretty simple solution to counteract this trend: just move there before it's too late.
Yes, that takes some courage. But simply watching the city or district go down the drain is not a solution either.
Another strong episode.
@TypeAshton - thanks for this thoughtful and well-researched video. I first questioned what exactly was being exported from the US to Europe, but I get your message. However, there are arguments that ghetto effects are older than the US. As someone who has lived in lots of different cities and countries, I can see many of the results detailed in your video and by commenters here (don't agree with all!). I've also worked for some cities and regions trying to deal with these challenges (Cardiff Bay Development Corporation, trying to adapt the city post coal industry and re-integrating the docklands as an attractive part of the city, of the largest Scottish city -Glasgow - post ship-building era) - immigration is often part of the solution, not the problem and cities need to recognize that. For myself, I live in a terrace/row house in an out of town suburb in a small, rich industrial city in Germany. Glad to be on a bus route so don't have to use a car every day. Green land and social spaces around me. Arguably, I could afford a bigger more prestigious property in a "better" part of town. I am lucky to have that opportunity. Not everyone is given that opportunity. If we want to keep and build great and inclusive communities, it is everyone's responsibility to do their part.
It's say it was exported from Europe to the US along with the settlers who came from Europe.
I hope Europe can avoid the income and racial segregation that we have in the U.S. I started my childhood in a poor, white (formerly a sundowner town) neighborhood, where we had knife fights on the elementary school playground, to moving to the same Grosse Point that you mentioned in this video. The differences between the poor, white school and Grosse Pointe schools were stark. Even though I stayed in the same grade when I switched schools, the coursework was at least three years more advanced. I remember that we started writing our first paper at the age of 9 in the poor school, but in Grosse Pointe, they wrote their first paper at the age of 6.
I read a newspaper article about the conditions in some of the Detroit schools, and I was shocked. Some of their schools didn't have heating (for those unfamiliar with U.S. geography, Detroit is in Michigan, which is just south of Canada), had parts of the roofs missing, had mushrooms growing out of the walls, and had toilets on the upper floors leaking into the classrooms on the lower floors. The article didn't go into the details about the quality of education they received, but if you had great prospects as a teacher after you got out of university, would you want to teach in a building without heat when there are at least a few days every winter that get down to -15C?
With how much hate is on the rise, and sinister forces fanning the flames... Not looking good.
with right extremists on the rise... im seriously worried about this continuing to getting worse
we had too many decades with hypercapitalists in control and the problems they caused in turn caused enough discontent that it allowed fascists to recruit support again by blaming foreigners and spreading hate
@@SharienGaming-- Clowns to the left of me; jokers to the right.
Reminds me of a song.
while your conclusions on Vienna are overall sound, there are some inaccuracies: rent control in Austria depends on the age of the buildings with old buildings (Altbau) full under it, while new buildings (Neubau) dont This is defined by law. Altbau means any building built before 1945. as the Altbau segment cant grow, there are less rent control buildings by default. government didnt roll back rent control they didnt extend it. which is legal semantics because it leads to the same result. while segregation is an issue, as of now there are ‚no go‘ areas in Vienna as of yet
What's a sundowner town?
You're my go-to Sunday morning show. Also, you're about my daughter's age. Watching young-uns killing it at their jobs makes me really happy. Smart girls rule!
Thank you ♥️♥️♥️
I think this is difficult to tackle indeed:
Individually we can select where we live and if we have the financial capacity we will move to what we perceive as nicer, better places. I shared a flat with my girlfriend in Schaerbeek (a few steps away from Molenbeek) just after uni, and as we both worked up the social and financial ladder, we now live in Switzerland (among the filthy rich 😊 of last weeks video).
I rent out some property and after my first bad tenant experience, I now tend to choose tenants very carefully preferring to have the property in-occupied longer than to risk a bad situation again.
Only local governments can influence this by building mixed housing projects. I'm involved in my local government, but it's a hard sell if the population you are serving is not willing to live among less fortunate people.
Thanks again for your excellent video!
thats not true, typical left wing propaganda. most wealthier people (which is rather middle class by quantity) have no problem to live among poorer people as long there are no general crime/violence/intolerance problems. the problem with mixed houses is rather that the government/political ideologies (in the entire west) created more and more buerocracy and laws which limits more and more the ability to construct in the first place = more and more expensive. from energy costs to minimum wage and general raised income to thousands of regulations regarding environment, general safety, energy efficiency, limits to how you can build, as high you want, also raising material costs, costs due to ideological population protests against everything, due to in general over-regulations, more and more structural delays and so on. this results in more and more expensive construction (for everyone, from private to government to mixed joint ventures) which means if you want built a multi store house then you need a certain amount of benefit to keep this even just going, not to mention about wins. and the more things are low rent the more you have to compensate that with high rents on the other side. another problem which also has to do with more and more inflexible structures is that most growing cities should already have reorganized to much larger areas by km2 to have more cheaper land, cheaper organization/buerocracy and so on. but already such simple things everyone should understand do not happen (or are more difficult than in the past except you have really dying rural towns/cities which are then put together to a new municipally - always only if something gets existential ppl move. and its often not the polititions who are to blame here - in most cases its the population!). for many european cities you need a 'great' version, expand their city size, create new 'huge' infrastructure projects like a public transit RING system and then built REAL urban (house at house and higher) structures in masses. instead you have stupid variations of commieblocks in smaller (isolated houses with dead green - the worse of two worlds, not really urban but also not nature/country side or biological diverse like suburbs) - or single family suburbs (which as said have at least often still a more biological diversity). How many NEW districts your city got? Or Berlin (districts like Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg etc. which were all/mostly created in the 19. century)? ZERO. same is true for Paris, London and so on. the biggest pressure is on the more successfull 'old urban structures'. do you have the impression that ppl (also you) even recognized that in different to other products (successful so i create more of that) is even in the mindset of most? but then be surprised that they get more expensive (if one does not create more alternatives of the same).
Thanks Ashton for another excellent video. One of the main reasons I left London for (probably) the last time 10 years ago was the increasing inequality, and I fully recognise the trend for richer people to congregate in different areas, even here in Copenhagen. I even lived in one for a while, but it was too smart for me! One observation, however, is that physical access to jobs is much better in European cities with well integrated public transport, giving people better opportunities than those on the outskirts of US cities.
Wages here are also much less unequal - thanks to strong unions, lower paid people get a decent wage, while highly paid executives are paid significantly less than their US/UK equivalents. One of the things I really like about this country is knowing that the waiting staff and taxi drivers can afford a decent lifestyle. However, there is a deeply ingrained racist streak in some Danish people, which can make acess to jobs much more challenging, even for native Danes who happen to be various shades of brown.
I think one of the main differences between Copenhagen and London is the tightly controlled housing rules - you can't buy a property here unless you can prove you live here, so while there are expensive areas where the rich congregate, it's nothing like as extreme as the housing market in London, where the centre is basically owned by foreigners and criminals, pushing people who work for a living further out.
Very interesting and important topic. However, I have three concerns about the segment on Vienna:
1) Rent control depends in part on the age of the building. Large parts of the Austrian rental law (MRG) do not buildings for which the building permit was granted after June 30, 1953 and no public subsidies were used for construction. Part of the reduction in the number of rent-controlled building must be due to the erection of new buildings.
2) More qualifications are counted as "university education" than it the past, which partly explains the increase in the number of people with tertiary education.
3) The map at 10:10 obviously has the scale reversed. Red are the areas where the more education and higher income people live.
In our province (Bolzano-South Tyrol) social Houses are mixed with privat rental and ownership and the social houses are given to people associated with the mix of languages (German, italian or ladin ) spoken in the municipality
Very interesting, thanks.
My brother, told me once: there is a war betwwen the rich and the poor, currently the rich are winning.
But you asked for other elements.
In my town , one element "helping" no go zone to get reinforced is the recent explosion of drug dealing. Dealers try to
reinforce these no go zones to have free hands.
The dealers are not creating the no go zone, but they have to a big role in their stabilisation and expansion.
Ask any middle class and upper middle class blacks if, 'race' has anything to do with economic disparities in the US. It's not 'race' that causes the disparities in wealth, it's culture.
well anyone cannot stop people who earn more to move to a better housing area, Even if someone makes a solution there is a high probability that we might end up in same situation where states will provides subsidized or public housing to people who can't afford it and people who are well off will move to a better place...Anyone who has enough money will always move to a better place but it should not be depending on someone's race
About the Austrian numbers: In this time-frame there is one factor probably unaccounted for: The shift in how qualifications are classified.
You said, in 2001 there were 13,5% of people with "at least Bachelor's degree" but in 2001, a bachelors degree didn't exist in Austria. Those 13,5% people were either immigrants with bachelor degrees from abroad or much more likely people with at least a Magister (master degree). People who had studied in master program for years but then found a job without taking the final master exam, wouldn't be counted into the 13,5%. In 2023 Bachelor degrees are well established.
About at the same time a OECD study showed that in Austria we have a low level of university degrees. Many professional trainings that were counted as bachelor degree in other countries, for example teacher or nurse, weren't counted as an academic degree in Austria. In order to have nicer numbers in international comparisons, several education tracks were defined differently - now our teachers and nurses also have those newly introduced bachelor degrees, and voila, without changing much, we have a lot "highly educated people" in our country. If that shift in definitions wasn't accounted for, it can easily explain most of the "trippeling of demand for highly skilled professionals".
Also the picture in 10:10 is quite odd: it shows the most affluent districts 1, 13, 18, 19 in the red as also having below average educations. See for example www.moment.at/story/soziale-durchmischung-wien
A large portion of that is basically the are the chris rock prices are the new jim crow act given that these minorities/ immigrants tend to be in the lowwer economic factions there would be a natural concentration of these peoples in affordable areas. This is before you add landlordism, financial deregulation and speculation in the realestate sector.
Please don't forget corporate ownership of houses in most of America & Western Europe. For example Blackstone owns $25 Billion worth of houses in the USA and another €100 Billion In Europe.
As always, great video. Well, to be honest, segregation between the rich and the poor has always existed anywhere in the world. The Kings and Barons, the big farms and land owners. Where I grew up, a small village in the Black Forest, a new area was ready for development of about 50-60 houses on the outskirt of the village. Pretty much all of these houses were built by doctors, lawyers, engineers.... Everybody in the village knew that this area is "for the rich". Their kids went mostly to Gymnasium whereas the rest of the village went on to Haupt and Realschule. When I later moved to a bigger city in Bavaria, there were also pockets of areas for the rich and others for the not so rich. The same is true in Las Vegas, where you have North Las Vegas for the not so rich, Summerlin for the rich and the rest for all in between.
What I am saying is, we always had that issue and we always will have that issue, however, because we are not offering faster ways for immigrants to be part of society, these people have to live on the bottom of the housing market for way to long, thus creating a much starker contrast than before. I always say, it's not the immigrants who are seen as the problem, but the laws and regulations to allow these people a faster and fairer process to become part of society which will help in reducing segregation.
Harbor Springs, Michigan. This entire town is rapidly turning itself into an elite private club. I watched a similar transition happen in Aspen, Colorado in the 60's, 70's and 80's. Escalation of property values coupled with strict growth controls drive out the worker class. The concentrated areas for lower income populations are in other towns, miles and miles away. The only businesses that survive are high end restaurants, boutique stores and real estate agencies.
the world was a better place if ppl learned to STOP RADICALLY to focus on such things and rather focus on the real problems like crime/violent parts of a city and their structures (and who is responsible, usually left wing (which are antisemitic/antizionist Nazis anyway, and also antiwhite/antisouth asian racist - due to their anticapitalism (like you, more focus on successful ones who are no problem instead of focusing on the ones who ARE a problem. otherwise pseudo problems like you have were quickly solved: you just move to the totally cheap areas with the lowest rents and stuff. but - surprise surprise - all of a sudden ppl dont want that even if there is no rich one, even not wealthy middle class (which is btw. more the case in most so cold 'rich' areas - there are not so many really rich people around). and btw, all of the better urban structures in modern cities with a high quality are in relation to 100 years ago 'totally super rich/wealthy/changed' - standards in general are raising (much more ppl today live with higher standards. even kings back then had no such warm heaters, bathrooms, computer, electricity and stuff). another REAL problem is that cities often dont create NEW urban areas and districts (most are from the 19. century) which means more and more ppl fight over less and less space. this is totally stupid: other products became cheaper and more companies create more of the same. more = makes things cheaper and the urbanized areas cannot get much high (except a few bubbles), because of the many alternatives. the lack of alternatives is what makes urban areas so expensive! ALTERNATIVES! and no, pseudo urban structures/prospects/commie block like structures are NOT urban! suburbs also not but at least ppl can have here an own nature like/garden environment and own house. thats not a urban city but at least an alternative. the US AND Europe lacks to create MORE new districts with modern technology but focusing on the old successful urban structures.
Good Sunday from Norway
I am from Austria and private rents have risen by nearly 50% in the past 3 years...
It got nearly impossible to find affordable housing if your not rich or if you are in your early 20s and want to start your own life.
It's a very sad development 😥
Why not to look for a public rent then?
What a gold mine of research, very well done.
I do differ one the perspective on your final remark between USA and Europe in years to come and how such living segregation will evolve.
USA is ultimately capital driven and I would argue nearly solely capital driven society. Meaning politicians, who make these impactful decisions are heavily influenced by the military-industrial complex and Washington’s lobbyists.
While in Europe there is always a strong tendency to do what is right in a social fair and economic way. This underlying thought process will in the long run result in more equality for people on a broader basis. It is a struggle granted, although I do foresee better urban planning for people overall. With time we should see improvements of these segregation trends and housing problems.
The big unknown and possibly long term issues to solve that segregation are the continuous high influx of people from many particular war riddled regions outpacing normal housing growth and planning. Time will tell.
A big difference between the US and Europe is that in the US, many immigrant groups are better off than the average American (and much better off the poorest American groups). This is particularly true of south and east Asian immigrants -- all of the various Asian subgroups have above average household incomes. The same is true of immigrants from the Middle East. Completely unlike Europe, the poor slums in the US (the closest equivalent to the Banlieues) are NOT full of immigrants at all.
Also, economic segregation has existed everywhere throughout history. The Roman elite had their villas located away from the poor people living in their crowded apartment blocks. One of the things wealthy people will always buy with their money is better housing -- larger, better-built homes in quiet, low-crime areas with good access to various amenities -- why would they (or you) NOT want to spend money that way?
Unfortunately, in the US most Americans associate the word “immigrant” with poor, uneducated, unskilled, and low-class people. The reality is that there are immigrants of all backgrounds and educational levels. Immigrants with higher education and skills will get better jobs than the average american because the average American does not have a higher education. Most Americans do not go beyond a high school diploma, therefore, they cannot have better jobs. So, when immigrants with bachelor and master degrees come, surely they will get good paying jobs and move on to financial stability.
@@TheSimmpleTruth Sorry, but to say that most Americans don't go beyond a high school diploma is so inaccurate. The only way you could come to that conclusion is by lumping much older generations together with young ones. Decades ago it wasn't necessary to get a college degree to do well financially. Younger generations largely DO go to college.
@@lorrilewis2178 I am quoting from the census: “In the Census Bureau's most recent 2022 findings, the percentage of people with a bachelor's degree or higher remained stable from the previous year at around 37.7%.” Most Americans do NOT have a college degree.
@@TheSimmpleTruth That is because it's counting ALL generations. As I said, younger Americans generally attend college. What do you think the complaints about college loans are all about? If you break it down by age, the percentages get higher as the generations get younger.
@@lorrilewis2178 When one talks about American society, we are NOT referring to generations. We are talking about the totality of American citizens which makes the American society. One generation only makes a small percentage of the American society and that is NOT what I am talking about. You are derailing from the topic. If you are college educated, you should know better but it doesn’t show.
Tower Hamlets is probably the most egregious example of wealth inequality in London as the Borough is the richest in income - Canary Wharf is located there. The trouble is, no one owns and lives in homes there - every residence is basically a bottom-tier example of "social housing" (I prefer to call them dumping blocks because that's how they operate).
I'm an African-American with a background in psychology living in Vienna, Austria where I've been active in this and other social areas for the past 20 years or so. Although I agree with the data points presented in the video, I very much disagree with many of its conclusions. I guess the reason I never pursued a degree in sociology is because it requires you to pledge allegiance to such popular buzzwords as "inequality" and believe the theory that victimization is at the root of all our social ills. In my experience however, nothing could be more further from the truth. While it has become fashionable in the social sciences to label everything an "inequality", as Ashton does in the video, .e.g. income inequality, what they actually mean is DISPARITY. Inequality happens whenever someone is denied access to something they have a LEGAL RIGHT to. To my knowledge no one has a LEGAL RIGHT to a high salary, therefore the term "income inequality" is being used to suggest a phenomenon that does NOT exist, presumably for political reasons. The proper term should be income DISPARITY.
The second issue we need to clear up is this idea that disadvantaged individuals are victims of third parties. This has been the assumption of various government policies and tons of so-called academic research since the 1970's, and just like a misdiagnosed patient given the wrong medication, the poor and disadvantaged have just been getting poorer and more disadvantaged with each passing decade. What many in the social sciences absolutely DETEST is any suggestion that different values lead to different outcomes. They'd rather assume that ALL values are the same and that ALL values lead to the same output, which of course is demonstrably false. What do I mean by different values lead to different outcomes? The values held by a cultural group leads to the results experienced by that cultural group. This has nothing to do with discrimination or disparities, but the choices favored by certain cultural groups. Let's take my own African-American culture, for example. Word on the street is that African-Americans are disadvantaged because we face discrimination. When put to the test, however, this theory falls rapidly apart at the seams - black immigrants from the Caribbean to the United States, who also have a history of slavery and who are genetically and ethnically indistinguishable from their African-American counterparts, fare substantially better than African-Americans in almost every social metric. They have much higher rates of home ownership, earn much higher salaries, have higher rates of college education, etc. If poverty in the African-American community is caused by racism (or it's more elusive cousin "structural racism"), then why are black immigrants not equally affected by said racism? The answer is simple, different values lead to different outcomes - in other words, it's the culture of a group that determines that group's outcome. This also explains why decades of social programs costing untold trillions aimed at stamping out disparities have actually made the situation worse - the patient was incorrectly diagnosed and given the wrong medication as a result. Things will only improve once we finally face the facts that people are not "victims", but sovereign individuals making sovereign and personal choices. If you want to change the collective outcome of a group, then you have to change the collective choices made by said group.
This is the approach I've taken these past 20 years with my clients. I've counseled many thousands of clients in a psycho-social setting here in Vienna, and instead of seeing and treating them as victims of "inequality", I try to get them to change the pattern of behavior that's leading to the same undesirable outcomes. This approach has lead to a remarkably high rate of success among my clients. The reason these segregated communities all over Europe all feature similar rates of high poverty, violence and crime has nothing to do with social "inequality", and EVERYTHING to do with the values held by these communities. It is their values that leads to these undesirable outcomes, not discrimination by the "system". If you'd like to see positive transformation in these communities, then you have to start by changing the value systems held by members of these communities. This is what's causing segregation in high income countries - immigrants are being taken in at very high rates but are not being socialized to understand that the secret behind the wealth, prosperity and peace of their adopted home is the cultural values held by its population. If groups are allowed to migrate AND keep the values of their birth countries, then they will quickly come to replicate the EXACT conditions in their countries of birth in their adopted countries. Again, different values lead to different outcomes!
Very insightful. Our mindset and thought process is affected by what we value and what we pay attention to. This determines $$$$ in the USA and you see a whole host of correlations between towns and neighborhoods with $$$$ and those without. Those without money harbor excess resentments, entitlement, anger, poor discipline, lack of long term planning, poor impulse control, drug use, poor diet.. etc. Places with money tend to have the opposite.
@@steve19811 I've seen well over 7,000 clients in my 20 year career and over that time have taken copious notes as well as observed and identified certain behavioral patterns. My observations have shown that with few exceptions, it's mostly a poor mindset that leads to poor economic circumstances. Certain mindsets and ways of thinking, however, are more prevalent in some cultures than others. And just like you've theorized, I've observed that individuals belonging to a culture that promotes resentment, poor discipline, lack of long-term planning, poor impulse control, etc. are invariably characterized by low economy performance and upward mobility. Of course, it's professional suicide to address this issue in the social sciences, and so academics in this field constantly lay the blame for economic disparities at the feet of third parties, hence terms like "inequality". Meanwhile nothing changes, and so the poor keep getting poorer while the rich get richer. Social anarchy and disorder is the result, which eventually leads to societal breakdown. I'm amazed that it never occurs to social scientists to analyze what causes some groups to consistently overperform and to then transfer those values to groups that consistently underperform.
Oh man, I'm so second everything you said (even though I wouldn't be able to put the same ideas in words as well as you did!). As an immigrant, I was always fascinated by these communities closely representing the home countries, whether India, Russia, or any other country. People in these groups have nothing to do with the country where they moved. In many cases, they won't even feel the need to learn the language of the host country. Why bother? You have your own little copy of your country right here.
On top of that, the issue that you didn't mention is the fact that these people tend to blame the "third parties" or "the government" or "slavery history" or "segregation". In reality, none of these issues stand in their way. Instead, they assume that they "can't change the world" or are "victims" and this is a dangerous corner-cutting for their brains. You don't need to learn, to work hard, to try and improve because no matter what you do, there are those "outside forces" that will not let you succeed. I think it's related to learned helplessness in a way.
Anyways, I will save this comment you made in my memory, thanks a lot for sharing your point of view!
A very well researched and clearly presented presentation of a problem that people or only beginning to realize exists. Personally, I can't afford to live in my home town of Zürich anymore.
There's a stark difference historically in what you'd consider American "segregated housing" and what is happening in Europe.
In America, because of slavery there were many black Americans who developed a unique viewpoint and ideology based on the 100+ years they lived as slaves here in America. When slavery was abolished, they still had "an American identity" based on the trials they went through as slaves, but they still saw themselves as Americans, and even though it's still an ongoing struggle breaking down some barriers, at least everyone involved in this struggle is still looking at it from the perspective that America is our home. That's incredibly important.
What I believe is happening in Europe is that the refugees are not interested in integrating into European society. Instead, they largely reject the new culture and focus on sustaining the culture where they came from and bringing it forward into their new home. It is NOT inherently bad to want to honor your heritage, but there's a difference between honoring it while adapting to the new culture versus rejecting the new and fighting against the people who've welcomed you into their country.
This is why it's such a massive problem in America that we are not doing more to enforce legal immigration and are not sufficiently protecting our borders.
Ashton touches on this around 12 minutes into the video, which is great!! As someone who lived in Germany for 10+ years I have seen all of this first hand.. I was largely guilty of it myself because some things were incredibly hard for me to accept, although I did try to fit in. I know that for people who really want to fit in, there are government programs available. There are free language classes you can take, and once you learn the language all sorts of other doors open up. I think many of these immigrants are choosing not to work towards fitting in and also are not as interested in giving back to the country where they now live. I think many came in and received welfare, and have now stopped trying so hard to fit in and have instead become more reliant on that welfare.
Finally - as for why America is more segregated now than it was in 1990 - my suspicion is that there is a correlation between policies such as affirmative action and DEI type initiatives that have actually pushed us backwards by suggesting it's ok for people to see themselves as victims and act like victims and wallow in their victimhood, and this has actually had the opposite affect than intended. (DEI is diversity equity and inclusion).
American style like this only first exists in the US. This exists everywhere.
American style is from western colonial times and slavery to Jim Crow and all the rest,colonial Europe had the slaves elsewhere and when wars came they forced the colonies to come to save the colonial powers so imported the former colonies people as soldiers and workers,and no they did not want to mix either the immigrants and segregated them and now complaining about immigration…
Segregation happens naturally, as people naturally want to live near someone, who is similar to them. And rich differ from poor even in culture.
@@ceu160193 this left wing rich/poor black-white thinking is part of the problem, totally obvious because the middle class is ignored (why? because then such resentments work less) ..
@@ceu160193 Rich people tend to have superior culture to the poor. Bad choices in life will condemn one to poverty, and those choices can be learned accidentally like an infection.
@@starventure No, rich people tend to have inferior culture, that is based on greed and treating other humans like garbage, because that's how big wealth is made and increased.
Vienna resident (owner) here. The »segregation«, if you want to call it such - is somewhat unusual, in that the new, pricier private housing happens in what we call »Trans-Danubien« (or Mordor 😅, even those living there) - it’s basically a ghetto for highly educated, well off residents, quite a high percentage being European expats (mainly from Germany). There is nothing there but (ugly, sky scraper) housing and office space - all social-life happening in Vienna takes place in the older parts of the city, on the other side of Danube.
In those older parts, there indeed also some segregation takes place on the private market, though more »horizontally« within the (Gründerzeit) houses. You usually have sub-standard flats (and/or airbnb) on the ground floors, better off renters on the 1st and 2nd floors, and owners living above, crowned by the rooftop penthouse owners/renters. This is still segregation in a way, maybe - but at least socially and culturally different structures share the same public space.
I stayed for a couple of weeks a few years ago in a Stalin era apartment complex in the former GDR. They were low rise and no hallways. The stairwells serviced 6 or 8 apartments that went from the front to the back of the building so there was cross ventilation. They looked drab from the street but by circulating the inside of a four street block the centre contained a little parkette with trees, benches, clothes lines and playgrounds making the complex into a small community. Some of the apartments were owned while others rented by the city. Income levels covered a wide spectrum. I enjoyed my visit and even after 2000, these apartments were older were still suitable housing. It’s the high rise isolated apartment towers built in the 1960’s that are the blight of North America. Would like to read some of Ashton’s academic papers……
I have noticed a trend in my region of PA where school districts restructure their buildings. Instead of having K-6 in several community schools throughout the district, they construct a K-2 building and a 3-6 building. This shift results in all students being bussed to their schools, no longer walking down the street. Since these changes were implemented locally, many of our downtowns saw an exodus of wealth to the suburbs. I wouldn't say there is a loss of homeownership because many kept the properties in town as rentals. The communities are struggling, the tax base left, businesses pulled out, and the downtowns are a shell of their former, thriving selves. Have you found anything in your research to support or refute this?
I'd be really interested to hear research about how non-US & Euro high income countries compare (Japan, Canada, Australia & New Zealand etc)
Excellent presentation.
Excellent data based analysis as usual.
There is new book by Lauren Stokes called “Fear of the Family” which traces the US/anxiety about “the Bronx” in Germany going back to the 1970s. Highly recommend!
I'm not sure if anything politicians do can help, people are way too happy enforcing segregation on their own.
politicians in power are way too happy to help with increasing the movement of wealth from the majority of people to a small minority of super rich... so why would they actually help with alleviating or solving the problems they caused?
as long as capitalism is the operating system of our economies, this kind of segregation will be unavoidable - capitalism relies on a vast supply of impoverished workers they can exploit - it isnt just incapable of fixing the problem of poverty... it relies on poverty to function
Seeing the ugliness displayed by older and wealthier members of communities I've lived in whenever the topic of housing comes up, I am very inclined to agree with you. It's like they want to keep their neighborhoods in a glass case while the rest of us suffer from their bone-headed decisions made throughout the years.
Excellent topic that affects us all. I think in this age and probably many others, capitalism really should be called greed-ism. When the wealthy figure out that they can become even more wealthy by privatizing government social programs, politician's pockets get greased and the poor suffer. This is true all over the world.
Here in the USA, we add racial prejudice to that. Lines are drawn in every city based on the color of one's skin. I've always looked at it as if there is only one race, the human race.
I'm a white, native-born American but I was married to a black woman for 20 years and now I've been married over 20 years to a Cuban. In both cases we all are well educated, upper middle class and our kids went to private schools.
It was opportunity that gave us the chance to live that way.
During my student time, I lived in the city centre of a student city with quite some diversity, although no super-expensive cars unlike Amsterdam: that was the horror-story where students couldn't find a place to live. Unfortunately, Dutch cities are often not too child/family friendly. Holland does try to include specific income groups to live in certain areas, but this tends to disturb the working of the market prices. In an ideal world, landlords should not be too profit-oriented, pushing up the prices. Yes, they can be discouraged in doing so: put the public sector back in charge, but then the question would be what they should invest in otherwise, besides that it'll lead to protests, I reckon...
Thanks for another well thought out, well presented video. I'm in a Wash DC suburb and it is definitely economically segregated. As a 67yo American, who has also lived abroad, I see differences and similarities. Although, at the root of these problems is the lack of trust in the institutions... they don't work for me (services), so why should I work for them (taxes). In the US, this started with Reagan and then was super-fueled by NAFTA. A new story was introduced that capitalist greed was "good" (Reagan), and exploiting the cheapest labor (NAFTA) was therefore necessary as "good business". This really fueled the wealth division. Any business that can exploit the global work force creates huge profit (wealth)... that's the upper 0.1% of the US population. Now, the new force of segregation is immigration... all over the world... well, within wealthy democratic nations. Immigration does feel out of control and it seems like no country is really ready to deal with these levels. But, being democratic, we're trying to find fair, friendly, humane solutions. When Democratic mayors started yelling "help", it seems to me, we had reached a tipping point. Of course, today's media don't help... they mostly sensationalize and are woefully unprepared to investigate these issues... they seem pretty mindless when interviewing leaders. This allows leaders to easily dance around issues. I'm curious, where you are in Germany, when Angela Merkel berated a young immigrant girl a few years ago, I think most Germans were horrified.... what do you think they would think today? Don't most European countries basically feel overwhelmed by the rate of immigration?
I used to work as a teacher in one of Swedens "No go zone" areas. It had loads of problems, 99.5% of the students was immigrants or had immigrant parents. Unemployment was almost 50% We had lots of problems but I never ever felt unsafe walking to work or working in that area. Doors wasnt looked we did not have guards in school or metal detectors or guns or cops. Most of the parents and kids was amazing. But we have to put in the effort to stop the downward trend. In 20-30 years my area might be as bad as some areas in US. If we do nothing realy bad things will happen.
I lasted only 3 years at my job before the cost of living surpassed my annual wage increases (by a lot). I come from a pretty homogenous US city (although it is getting more diverse every day). I would say one of the main issues facing that city is population growth. It's one of the fastest-growing cities in the country with one of the highest birth rates. Despite a long history of huge families and large growth in the tech industry that has brought a lot of transplants from neighboring states, lawmakers and developers have not been able to effectively plan for or keep up with demand. This has pushed lower income people onto the outer edges of the city or displaced them altogether. Areas of the city that used to be fairly decent are now run-down and have high rates of crime and homelessness. Other places have been completely gentrified and are now locked in a stalemate between the displaced population that is now homeless and camping on the streets and the new tenants who live in the housing there. It's a huge mess, and it's discouraging because it takes two incomes to be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment in a not-very-desirable part of town.
The visual indicator around the percentages seems to be off, regardless of the number the circle is filled about 23-24% e.g. visible at 6:44 ot 15:22
Thanks for another great video!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Skyrocketing prices in housing and goods definitely seem global as well. In the US, I also noticed that while my siblings a decade older than me lived on their own in their twenties, for myself and many of my peers in decent paying white collar jobs tend to live with family or live with a significant other. This of course compounds the familial wealth aspect: even if you get an education and make a decent wage, if housing forces you to rely on living with family then how well off the family is and their location will impact you even more than it does while growing up.
I live in Austria, not in Vienna though. And I have not noticed the city getting more segregated. But maybe that is just a rather subtle change. I still live in the "bad" area of my city that I grew up in even though I could afford to move to other parts of the city. We also have a huge social housing sector, similar to Vienna, if not more. So I am sure that helps too. And we are too small to be an international city lol :)
Growing up in eastern Germany in a what many would consider a "low-income household" even back then, I agree and disagree. In my opinion, it's about the people. Funny, I never saw the need to revert to crime to increase my monetary means in order to "compete" with the "in people". Even as a kid I despised the dumb, obnoxious and show offs. Maybe, just maybe, the way my parents raised me might have played a role in this. Just effin maybe ... . They thought me from early on, that the pursue of shallow trinkets to impress others is not a good thing. So not being able to afford those when I grew up TOGETHER with a good family didn't turn me into a criminal, but made me more content with what I have and appreciate it. I don´t have kids, but I think, raising kids (and having pets, for that matter) is a serious business and should not be delegated to nannies, the government or electronic gizmos. Based on my upbringing, it seems to require a lot of hard work and sacrifices, things, which my parents were willing to accept and, in my opinion, less and less people are willing to bring.
So in my opinion, you would need new people to "solve" this issue, which I think is based on greed, envy, the desire for convenience and to "keep up with the Joneses" no matter what. Fueled, of course, by the marketing people, hammering the "desirable" and "must have" consumables into everybody's head from early on. Traveling quite a bit in my younger years and getting to know the North American continent quite well, I made the experience, that it doesn't make any difference, what color your skin or who your upper echelon of your believe or non-believe system is. People showing those behaviors prominently come in all shapes, colors and sizes.
Segregation, due to whatever reason, just makes it so much more visible and increases the tension due to the sheer volume. I would bet, that even if you look around closely in a "good neighborhood", you will find "those people", they're just more spread out. They absolutely existed in the neighborhood, where I grew up 50 years ago, albeit smaller. Back then, it was a single five-story building or two in an area, or a street in another. The difference in income was very small, but the "currency" were connections and waving the correct flag. Not that dissimilar to the Germany about 90years ago. Go figure. So albeit not as much, it did exist and always will be. And quite frankly, I can´t blame anybody living next to a bunch of those, who will try to find a place in a quieter area. Although the relief might be temporary, it might be long enough for them to finish their lives in peace and quiet without being bothered, harassed, mugged or worse.
Difficult, complex topic and no easy solution. Maybe no solution at all. Various religions, socialism and infant communism have failed spectacularly in my opinion. Not because of the lack of good ideas in any of them, but because of people abusing and therewith sabotaging those very ideas. Capitalism worked best for quite awhile, but slowly seems to reach it's limits, as it is based on continuous growth and overabundance at the cost of our resources, which can not continue indefinitely.
I think neoliberalism is to blame. The floodgates of immigration have been opened to get cheap labour, and still are. So now we have high output with low wages (and housing pressure) and that's where a lot of the issues come from. Extreme competition. Alienation. Exclusion. Couldn't have gone any other way. Question is just are the powers that be willing to admit and change course (straining corporations but putting money in everyone's pocket) or are we continuing to ignore it and label everyone racist who isn't in on it instead? As to the latter, expect more of what's been going on... This can get a whole lot worse.
I very much like the Viennese social housing system. Lots of hosing is owned by the city of Vienna. So the city provides living space for relatively reasonable rent and any rental income they make from it they in turn have to invest in creating yet more living space. It is the gift that keeps on giving. Pretty much opposite to some big investors that just build high-end luxury places to make massive gain for themselves
That's nonsense as the city is ugly, cultureless and broken, and nobody invests in it.
@@urlauburlaub2222 What a bullshit!!!
She didn't mention that only 200,000 apartments are owned by the city the majority of social housing 220,000 is owned by associations. To join one of those it costs like 20,000 euro. Also the rent control system has created a real lack of modernisation especially in altbau with Vienna being one of the few cities on earth who have virtually no fire regulations and the death toll to provide it.
Thanks for shedding some light on the Delmar Divide here in St. Louis. However, I wouldn’t say it’s STILL perpetuated by city planners. StL is very unique because it is totally separate from the county that surrounds it (unlike most U.S. cities), thus it is also very small (66 sq. mi.) So I wouldn’t blame the current city government. They would like to see investment into the northside too but the people with the money all live in the county and don’t care about the city yet unfortunately. 😕
In my home Denmark we have areas with many Immigrants without hardly any social skills, and near only speaking their former areas language (2 versions of ½ languages hardly make one) . Today we try to brake up those areas in more combined groups with a mixed population of higher income and the supported ones, which are to a high degree former immigrants. It seems to work though not always being to former inhabitants liking, as being in groups of their own kind seems more "safe"-
"Poverty is high, work is scarce"
Hemm, pliz, lots of those "banlieues", like the ones in Aulnay or Sevran, are located at 30 minutes from Paris with public transportation. So no, work is aboundant ; except when you are looking for a job that pays as well as droug dealer.
wow.. not even 3 & a half minutes in and my home town gets (justifiably) put on blast! lol.. Just as an aside to the "Delmar Divide" ... here in University City (one of the 80+ municipalities in St. Louis County - 2nd aside: St. Louis city IS NOT part of the county in which it sits) the divide jumps up to become the "Olive Divide" between U City Ward 3 and Ward 2... and the socio-economic disparities are just as bad if not worse! I'm fortunate to live in a tiny bubble of very mixed neighbors, but blocks away to divide is STARK and bewildering. We're talking a difference of million-dollar homes and 6-figure incomes on the south side and then predominantly working-class poor and bank foreclosures on every block to the north. it's wild.
Hi it may have been said but the world is at a tipping point with population growth generally very low, its a known fact or idea that de-globalisation is beginning anyway which may change the way cities look and lesson segregation?
Even here in holland, once a paradise of equality, a new grim reality is rising.
A newbuilt, small place, will have a mortgage of close to 3000 euros a month.
Always good analysis. But, I didn't notice (might have missed it) analysis of the "Section 8" program in the US. It was imagined as a method to disburse (and provide better housing) low income people by subsidizing market rate housing and not concentrate the low income, in low income housing "projects" or estates. Section 8 hasn't been as effective as hoped. In some cases Section 8 ghettos have been created.
Hi there - this was one of the areas that I studied in my PhD - Section 8 has an inherent flaw: landlords are not required to accept it, and may actively choose not to house those holding such vouchers. Section 8 vouchers allow those to pay 30% of their income towards the cost of their rent and then (in theory) the government pays the remaining balance.
But in reality Section 8 is small fish when compared to the LIHTC (low-income housing tax credit) which is used to leverage the construction and development of low-income housing by developers. This is where the vast majority of housing subsidies go from a revenue perspective, and where my research was focused.
LIHTC is historically concentrated in already low-income neighborhoods because city councils (and the public through required public forums on their construction) will fight tooth and nail to not have such housing types constructed "in their backyard". Unless of course it is senior housing, or housing for veterans - those cases carry more public empathy and are typically not as difficult to construct in the USA from a public backlash standpoint.
@@TypeAshton Even senior housing and veteran housing are fought against by some people if they are for low income people. I'm still pretty young, but I've yet to hear of a single new housing project people were OK, regardless of who it was for.
It's not that senior or veterans housing for low income groups doesn't have any pushback, but it is less. I'm basing this position off of the interviews I conducted with the developers themselves.
I follow all the urban planning channels you might expect, and this was a phenomenal adjunct to content around good urbanism! Brilliant work!
Wow, thank you!
would like to see the trend maped against housing prices and OR state involvement / investment in housing to me the state divestment is likely a "key" ingredient that is driving this social divide
I am originally from Russia (born in Soviet Union), now I live in the US, in NYC and I used to live in LA. Russia is a country where more socialistic views are stronger than in the US (but overall inequality is higher in Russia than USA). On the one hand I like the "liberal idea" of equality but on the other hand when I see how people with a different socio-economic status live I understand that I would prefer to live in a less diverse neighborhood if I have a choice. And I am not talking just about crime rates, even things like cleanliness on the streets are better in more affluent areas. We can talk a lot about equality and so on but people prefer to live among people like themselves. Especially when times aren't so great. And the times aren't great and with the AI involvement we can imagine that inequality will grow even higher. When people from particular areas start ruin their own areas because they don't like their conditions (american cities in 2020) people are watching and understand that it is better to stay away. Violence is a path to nowhere but people who feel less equally do not recognize it.
The expectation that the process of capitalism would result in anything else than economic stratification is like expecting an absolute monarchy resulting in more power on the hands of the common people. Economic stratification is literally in the definition of capitalism.
Good topic, as so often. Many thanks.
I don't think Europeans would accept to word "segregation" for this issue, as this is not the result of active discrimination (in contrast to the U.S., e.g. with "redlining", where people were actively kept apart), but the result of laisser-faire , which is actually a core problem of Europe in social policies since the '80s, probably because of reduced funding for social policies. "Social segregation" (both words together) or "Socially divided" would probably be more acceptable as a description of this issue as a RESULT of bad policies. That said, there are exceptions to what I just said, like Saint Denis in Paris, which has been treated like the garbage area for housing and schooling by Paris, and I feel like Sweden has done something similar, as well as Denmark, which has recently radically changed course.
You are right to point out that such social housing areas exist all over Europe, and many if not most of these areas are actually very agreeable to live in. What matters is an active approach to managing these areas: actively managing the social mix, the quality of schools, public transport, recreative facilities, public cleanliness. Laisser-faire in a low growth economy will lead to concentration of problems and vicious circles. Singapore is one extreme example of active management: they have seen very closely to what laisser-faire leads to, with the potential of riots and social explosions when letting ethnicities (with their different income levels) concentrate in different areas on their own. In most European cities you will find elements of similar active policies (in Berlin visit the area of Wittenau for ex.which could have become exactly like St Denis, but did not - though many Berliners will kill me now for suggesting this ...). The inhabitants of Saint Denis themselves have requested from the local authorities that they be allowed to mix in schools outside of their areas and to make the area a real option for educated people, to improve the social mix.
This "active" approach to social policy is actually also true in a wider sense regarding democracy and democratic societies, which don't perpetuate themselves just on their own, this also would need an active method of transmission from generation to generation, and to newcomers. Pretty all modern democracies on the contrary have neglected this needed form of self-renewal.
I love your vides...! Things i think about often. I tend to think positively about globalization but, governments are too slow to correct the issues causing segregation.
What's also not talked about is culture and crime. I guarantee that if these no-go communities became safe and homeowners actually maintained their properties well. The value would increase a lot. Thats a good place to start in my opinion. At least here in the US.
Hi Ashton, in your discussion of Detroit/Grosse Point, the graphic indicated average home prices, but the narration said average income? I'm just guessing, but it appears to be income and not housing, although the average housing costs in Detroit are known to be pretty low and possibly the same as average income. I don't think the same can be said for Grosse Park Point. Either way, not a big deal. Thank you so much for giving a perspective on what is happening in Europe. I wonder if it ties politically with the rise of right-wing politics in Europe? I'm particularly interested in if the phenomena is driven by the upper part of the inequality divide, or if it is (as I suspect) a function of a racial divide amongst the lower strata. That seems to be true in the US, where the upper income groups tend to be absent from the active part of the discussion. Anyway, thanks again - I enjoy learning from you!