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Places of Inequality, Places of Possibility: Mapping “Opportunity in Geography” Across Urban School-Communities

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Abstract

For decades, research on geography of opportunity has indicated that where people live impacts their access to opportunities, especially education. Most research on geography of opportunity has focused on spatial inequality between low and high opportunity neighborhoods, which has unintentionally fostered narrow perspectives about low-opportunity neighborhoods that often obscure the assets within them. As such, the purpose of this study is to examine what I call opportunity in geography, which is a conceptual and research approach that reconsiders low-opportunity, urban communities of color as not only places of inequality, but also places of possibility. To illustrate the approach, this study uses Geographic Information Systems to map institutional assets across the two lowest opportunity neighborhoods in Detroit, Michigan, according to poverty and educational attainment rates. Asset-based community development is used to conceptually frame this study and to guide the analysis. Findings indicate that, collectively, the two lowest opportunity neighborhoods in Detroit have a total of 85 institutional assets, including: 48 places of worship, 19 schools at the K-12 level, 11 community centers, 4 hospitals, 2 libraries, and 1 university. The study concludes with a discussion about the tensions in this work as well as implications for policy and future research.

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Notes

  1. John powell spells his name with all lower case letters.

  2. GIS is software that combines non-spatial and spatial data (e.g., latitude and longitude coordinates).

  3. Opportunity in geography is more of a method and approach than it is a neighborhood asset driven theory.

  4. In this study, places of worship included, but were not limited to churches, Kingdom Halls, Mosques, Monasteries, etc.

  5. The percentage ranges on the maps vary by variable (i.e., poverty rates, educational attainment) to correspond with important thresholds, per the literature, as well as to most easily display the data.

  6. According to census.gov, census tracts are small, relatively permanent statistical subdivisions of a county or equivalent entity that are updated by local participants prior to each decennial census as part of the Census Bureau's Participant Statistical Areas Program. Census tracts generally have a population size between 1200 and 8000 people, with an optimum size of 4000 people.

  7. I plan to conduct these analyses in subsequent studies.

  8. In this paper, I use the terms Black and African American interchangeably.

  9. The post-WWII era began in 1945.

  10. See also Sugrue’s work on the Origin of the Urban Crisis.

  11. As McDonald (2014) points out, political corruption in Detroit did not begin with former Detroit mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick. Rather, mayoral political corruption in Detroit goes back, at least, to Charles Bowles in 1930 (a white male) that was removed from office for corruption.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to deeply thank Joanna D. Sánchez for making the maps for this study. In addition, the author would like to thank Anthony Brown, Huriya Jabbar, Pete Miller, and Shameka N. Powell for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

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  1. Department of Educational Administration, University of Texas at Austin, George I. Sanchez Building, 1912 Speedway D5400, Austin, TX, 78712-1604, USA

    Terrance L. Green

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Green, T.L. Places of Inequality, Places of Possibility: Mapping “Opportunity in Geography” Across Urban School-Communities. Urban Rev 47, 717–741 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-015-0331-z

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