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Open research questions in Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies

208 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 5,312 Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • Aggregating different types of unions, union dissolutions, and births into single variables has important implications for the interpretation of our results, particularly with respect to conjugal unions in the Quebec context. The synchronous effects of unions likely primarily reflect the move-in dynamics associated with cohabiting unions. To the extent that cohabitation in Quebec often constitutes a first relational step prior to a potential marriage or a stable alternative to marriage, the concomitant residential adjustment we document most likely captures rapid and pragmatic relocations (moving in with one partner, searching for an affordable shared dwelling) rather than long-term, planned residential changes. For union dissolutions, the aggregation of separations and divorces may contribute to the contrasted temporal effects observed between immigrants and non-immigrants. https://www.demographic-research.org 151 Ngalé, Lardoux & Adjiwanou: How do family transitions shape residential mobility among Quebec residents? Among non-immigrants, the pronounced lagged effect observed two years after dissolution may be consistent with a greater representation of divorces, which often involve longer legal and financial processes and may delay residential adjustments. In contrast, the strong synchronous effect observed among immigrants may reflect a higher proportion of separations, which allow for more immediate residential changes. However, as our data do not distinguish between types of union dissolution, this interpretation remains speculative and should be viewed as a potential mechanism rather than a demonstrated explanation. For births, the lack of distinction by parity limits our ability to interpret the temporal effects observed in the full sample. The anticipatory effect detected two years prior to birth may be specific to first births, as first-time parents are more likely to actively plan residential adjustments in anticipation of a child’s arrival (searching for larger housing, moving to a family-oriented neighborhood, proximity to childcare services). By contrast, the negative synchronous effect (residential stabilization at the time of birth) may be more pronounced for higher-order births, as families are already settled in suitable housing and may prioritize continuity for children already present. Potential heterogeneity by parity may also help explain why the effect of births on mobility differs from that documented in some international contexts. If our sample contained a substantial share of higher-order births (which we cannot verify), this could have reinforced the observed residential inertia.

    How do family transitions shape residential mobility among Quebec residents? Evidence on lagged, synchronous, and anticipatory effects by immigration status · 2026 · DOI

  • Urban reinvestment projects commonly embed ‘healthy‐city’ objectives like Safe Routes to School (SRTS), yet little is known about their effects in neighborhoods undergoing rapid gentrification.

    Unintended gentrification: community perspectives on children’s active mobility in the American South · 2025 · DOI

  • Specifically, when different coding schemes are applied, the estimands defined in the MCM bear distinct meanings, involve different but equally arbitrary constraints, and sometimes yield contradictory results.

    Is There a Mobility Effect? On Methodological Issues in the Mobility Contrast Model · 2025 · DOI

  • The United States is home to more than 100 million renters and approximately 11 million landlords, yet these two sides of the rental market are rarely studied in tandem.

    Where the Landlords Are: A Network Approach to Landlord-Rental Locations · 2024 · DOI

  • Drawing on GIS mapping and descriptive statistics, we find limited evidence of a systematic relocation of low-income households from gentrifying central areas or even to the suburbs, yet significantly higher mobility rates among this group.

    Gentrification and the suburbanization of poverty: evidence from a highly regulated housing system · 2024 · DOI

  • Recent immigrants, especially renters, face challenges in their settlement and housing experiences, including limited financial resources, language barriers, and rental-housing discrimination based on ethnicity or race, and yet relatively little is known about these experiences and the barriers they encounter in mid-sized cities.

    Settling in a Mid-sized City in the Interior of British Columbia: A Case Study of Recent Immigrants' Housing Experiences in Kelowna (Central Okanagan Valley) · 2024 · DOI

  • Although low-income homeownership programs serving vulnerable families at the lower end of the income distribution have been the focus of housing policy in many countries over the past 50 years, little is known about the post-origination experiences of immigrant families participating in these programs.

    Serious Mortgage Arrears among Immigrant Descendant and Native Participants in a Low-Income Public Starter Mortgage Program: Evidence from Norway · 2023 · DOI

  • A conventional panel model of US ZIP code-level data provides mixed evidence in support of a shifting housing preference for more space or neighbourhoods farther from the urban core.

    Covid-19 impact on US housing markets: evidence from spatial regression models · 2022 · DOI

  • Problem, research strategy, and findings: Evidence suggests that inclusionary zoning (IZ) correlates with affordable housing and mixed-income communities; however, what effect the policy design has on affordable housing productivity remains unclear.

    Examining the Effects of Policy Design on Affordable Unit Production Under Inclusionary Zoning Policies · 2022 · DOI

  • City‐specific analyses provide limited evidence of adverse effects on the share low‐income, but the pooled city analysis does not; the national analysis generally finds no impact on the share low‐income, except for reductions in the share near‐poor, although that may at least partly reflect prior trends.

    Effects of recent minimum wage policies in California and nationwide: Results from a pre‐specified analysis plan · 2021 · DOI

  • The SPC method contributes to scholarship on residential segregation by capturing the effect of an important yet understudied mechanism of segregation—the connectivity, or physical barriers, between locations—on the level and spatial pattern of segregation, and it enables further consideration of the role of the built environment in segregation processes.

    The Spatial Proximity and Connectivity Method for Measuring and Analyzing Residential Segregation · 2018 · DOI

  • White tracts that were moderately diverse actually doubled in number between 1990 and 2010 although this increase was insufficient to cancel the loss of low diversity white tracts.

    Remaking white residential segregation: metropolitan diversity and neighborhood change in the United States · 2017 · DOI

  • While many studies have investigated the effects of the financial crisis on national housing markets or on foreclosures in particular US metropolitan areas, only a few studies have focused on how the crisis affected neighborhood change.

    The global financial crisis and neighborhood decline · 2016 · DOI

  • This paper aims to begin to fill gaps in the literature on Hispanic populations in the Northwest by mapping and describing Hispanic population change in counties across the state of Washington since 1990.

    Hispanic Population in Washington State: Demographic Change and Spatial Clustering · 2015 · DOI

  • In comparison, the economic outcomes of black migrants in the West, particularly during the second wave of the Great Migration that occurred between 1940 and 1970, have not been fully explored in the literature.

    Occupational mobility of black migrants in the West during the 1950s · 2015 · DOI

  • While studies are increasingly examining residential mobility motivations using the reasons reported in social surveys, data constraints and the conceptual legacy of behavioural theories mean that little is known about how people's reasons for desiring and making residential moves vary over the life course.

    What Motivates Residential Mobility? Re‐examining Self‐Reported Reasons for Desiring and Making Residential Moves · 2014 · DOI

  • Beneath such national-level figures lie important geographical differences in the income hierarchy: the thresholds, average incomes and socio-economic characteristics of the top 1% vary widely across provinces and cities.

    The Occupy Movement and the Top 1% in Canada · 2013 · DOI

  • We show that ten to 15 years after baseline, MTO: (i) improves adult physical and mental health; (ii) has no detectable effect on economic outcomes or youth schooling or physical health; and (iii) has mixed results by gender on other youth outcomes, with girls doing better on some measures and boys doing worse.

    Long-Term Neighborhood Effects on Low-Income Families: Evidence from Moving to Opportunity · 2013 · DOI

  • BACKGROUND: Limited information is available about teenage pregnancy and childbearing in rural areas, even though approximately 20 percent of the nation's youth live in rural areas.

    Spatially varying predictors of teenage birth rates among counties in the United States · 2012 · DOI

  • Notes1 Outmigration was not limited to the Inland Empire—similar demographic shifts were occurring, albeit on a much smaller scale, within Los Angeles County in the movement of families out of South Los Angeles into the northern, fast-growing communities of Palmdale and Lancaster, which experienced a ninefold increase in their African American population during the 1980s (CitationBoyer 1995).

    Has Exurban Growth Enabled Greater Racial Equity in Neighborhood Quality? Evidence from the Los Angeles Region · 2012 · DOI

  • Using a data set on 74 neighborhoods in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands spanning 10 years, we tested the extended theory, which to date only a few studies have been able to do because of the unavailability of neighborhood‐level longitudinal data.

    A LONGITUDINAL TEST OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORY: FEEDBACK EFFECTS AMONG COHESION, SOCIAL CONTROL, AND DISORDER* · 2011 · DOI

  • The argument that economic prosperity promotes ethnic group assimilation is confronted by mixed findings that ethnic residential segregation intensified in Silicon Valley during the 1990s, regardless of the income level of neighborhoods, and that some second generation immigrants have begun to assimilate residentially.

    PROSPERITY, IMMIGRATION, AND NEIGHBORHOOD CHANGE IN SILICON VALLEY: 1990–2000 · 2010 · DOI

  • Subsequent research showed that minority borrowers might also have been more likely to default on loans, but these findings were less clear in that they did not control for basic ex-ante risk factors (Ladd 1998).

    Subprime Mortgage Pricing: The Impact of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender on the Cost of Borrowing · 2009 · DOI

  • Duncan Northwestern University [Comments] Moving the poor out of inner-city neighborhoods of concentrated poverty (where jobs are scarce), and into low-poverty suburban neighborhoods (where jobs may be more plentiful) has been suggested by Wilson's (1987) theory of social isolation and Kain's (1968) theory of spatial mismatch to lead to greater [End Page 137] employment and earnings.

    Neighborhood Effects on Barriers to Employment: Results from a Randomized Housing Mobility Experiment in Baltimore · 2006 · DOI

  • Despite the high profile given to poor neighbourhoods in the English government’s social inclusion policy, little is known about how many poor neighbourhoods there are, how many people live in them, whether their number is growing or diminishing, or in what ways they are getting better, or worse, compared with other neighbourhoods.

    Poor neighbourhoods in the 1990s: better or worse? An analysis of 1991 and 2001 UK Census data · 2005 · DOI

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208 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 5,312 Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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