Showing papers on "Tipping point (climatology) published in 1977"

Alternative Models of Neighborhood Change

Abstract: Social scientists have long engaged in studying the racial transition of neighborhoods in urban areas. One aspect of such change that is often debated is the tipping point phenomenon. In this paper an attempt is made to formulate a model which captures this phenomenon and when it is tested against alternative models the results support the tipping point position. Furthermore, the model proposed is shown to be superior to simple extrapolation as a means, which would be useful to planners and others, for predicting the direction of future neighborhood change. Those engaged in urban studies have in recent years become increasingly concerned with the racial aspects of intraurban residential location. In the present paper I fix on one of these aspects-the changing of neighborhoods from white to Negro. Urban economists (Bailey; Ladd; Lapham; Laurenti; Muth) studying this phenomenon have been primarily interested in racial differentials and discrimination in the pricing of housing while sociologists (Duncan and Duncan; Taeuber and Taeuber; Wolf, a, b) have attempted to analyze the social and economic charactersitics of those groups, both Negro and white, involved in a neighborhood change. I shall develop in this paper a model, useful to planners and others, capable of predicting which areas (or neighborhoods) of a city will turn over racially from white to Negro and what the extent of this turnover will be in the intermediate (i.e., ten years) future. As will be explained in the next section the model is based primarily on economic variables and, in particular, the mobility of white residents will be treated in economic terms. This economic condition (mobility) of the white residents will offer a fuller explanation of racial turnover than that provided by a more mechanical procedure. I will characterize a mechanical procedure or naive model as one which would simply extrapolate present Negro areas. That is, over a ten-year period such an approach would suggest that a white area would turn Negro inversely in relationship to its distance from Negro areas at the beginning of the tenyear period. A variation of this sort of mechanical is the tipping point hypothesis or theory.' According to this theory once a white area has attained a certain percentage (tipping point) of Negro, or other minority, residents the area will inevitably and at an acelerated rate turn completely Negro. The numerical value, or percentage, at which this tipping phenomenon occurs is usually suggested to be between 10 and 20 percent Negro in an area but can vary from city to city and neighborhood to neighborhood (Grodzins). As a part of this paper I intend to provide statistical tests of the validity of this tipping point theory.