Social Segregation, Housing Tenure and Social Change in Dutch Cities in the Late 1980s

Abstract

Contemporary debates about social polarisation and divided cities emphasise common influences on social and economic change in cities. The development of a global economy and of global influences on both market systems and on public policy regimes encourages an expectation that there is a convergence in processes and policies affecting cities and a convergence in outcomes—in terms of increasingly similar patterns of polarisation and division. This paper considers data from Britain and the Netherlands relating to changes in the housing sector and to social segregation and indicates that emerging patterns are very different. Socio-tenurial polarisation and social segregation are not as marked in the Netherlands as in Britain and are not changing as fast. The discussion arising from these data suggests that concern with globalisation and common influences on change should be balanced with a recognition of the importance of other factors in determining the pattern and pace of change in cities. Within this it is important to recognise not just differences in housing finance and policy but the degree of social and income inequality and the wider functioning of the welfare state.