nature cities
Review article
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00037-5
The role of vertical segregation in urban
social processes
Received: 8 August 2023
Thomas Maloutas
Accepted: 19 January 2024
Published online: 1 March 2024
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It is common knowledge that urban neighborhoods have diverse and
unequal social profiles, and this makes a difference for the life prospects of
their residents. We know much less about social separation and hierarchies
within neighborhoods (micro-segregation), that is, in the micro scale of city
blocks and apartment buildings. Vertical segregation is a form of microsegregation embodied by positions of advantage or disadvantage according
to the floor of residence. Is vertical segregation exceptional or can we locate
it in many different cities? Does it make a difference for the life prospects
of urbanites if they live in the advantaged or disadvantaged parts of such
micro-segregated spaces?
Segregation, a term coming from biology, deals with the residential
separation of different social groups in urban space and has become a
central topic for urban studies since the 1920s. This separation in space
was deemed very important and, according to the Chicago School,
it could be used as a proxy to study social distance1. Segregation has
always been considered negative for the social reproduction of those
in less advantaged spaces. At the same time, unequal neighborhoods,
in the form of socially and/or racially homogeneous residential communities, were the expected outcome under the term ‘natural areas’2.
The remedy against this assumingly natural negative process would be
either to increase the social mix of segregated neighborhoods or, in
less socially regulated contexts, to act individually and move out from
disadvantaged/segregated spaces.
The main issue for this Review is that segregation studies have
always focused on the neighborhood as the obvious spatial unit of
reference and analysis, neglecting the importance of social hierarchies
within it. This unilateral focus on the neighborhood level was in accordance with urban studies’ preferential attention to the US urban context
and its features (low-rise, sparsely built, expanding and unregulated
cities). Eventually, these contextual features were implicitly universalized3 by a discipline not operating in isolation and not presuming
that its own context was unique4, but as pioneering the universal way
of urban development. The term ‘micro-segregation’ indicates that
social hierarchies often exist within neighborhoods, even at the level
of single apartment buildings. Questions about the forms and impact
of separations and hierarchies at the micro scale came much later and
mainly from outside the English-speaking urban world.
Vertical segregation is a form of micro-segregation in the
micro-space of individual apartment blocks within the high-rise
Department of Geography, Harokopio University, Athens, Greece.
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neighborhoods of a city. At the aggregate level, it embodies the social
hierarchy within the vertically stratified social milieus it creates in the
high-rise housing stock of a city, where individuals occupy unequal
but spatially proximate positions according to their socioeconomic
status or ethno-racial identity.
Vertical segregation is probably the most common form of microsegregation. The question is whether this form of micro-segregation—
as well as the others that also socially shape urban micro-spaces—are
important for social reproduction and consequently for urban policies.
Causes, forms and visibility of vertical
segregation
Vertical social hierarchies within high-rise blocks are formed when
housing quality is unequally distributed among floors and are empowered when the housing market is not regulated. The unequal quality
of housing by floor differentiates housing cost and therefore brings
wealthy households to the floors with the highest quality and relegates poor ones to the floors with the lowest. This spatial ranking is
a result of the shifting and sorting function of the housing market,
notwithstanding relevant contextual features related to historical
institutional legacies and to local market regulation. The same applies
to other forms of micro-segregation within apartment blocks (for example, between advantageous dwellings at the front versus disadvantageous ones at the back or between recently refurbished versus poorly
maintained dwellings5).
Different forms of vertical social differentiation can reasonably be
expected in any high-rise urban area where housing quality and price
are related to floor level and where housing allocation is sufficiently
commodified. This social differentiation is often contained within
e-mail: maloutas@hua.gr
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a relatively narrow segment of class hierarchy, for example, among
residents of luxurious apartments in waterfront-development condos
in Vancouver or Buenos Aires. Although it is important to explore the
social significance of such separations within narrow segments of the
social hierarchy, the discussion in this Review is mainly focused on the
less frequent interclass vertical segregation.
Vertical segregation is sometimes labeled ‘vertical social differentiation’. The two terms are not completely interchangeable, although
they are often used to designate the same phenomenon. White6 uses
‘vertical segregation’, whereas Leontidou7 and Grafmeyer8 prefer
‘vertical social differentiation’, considering that this vertical social
cohabitation opposes, or at least mitigates, neighborhood segregation. According to their understanding, vertical social differentiation
compared to horizontal segregation denotes class cohabitation in the
same neighborhood, and somehow implies that this cohabitation is
voluntary, resulting from a common urban culture7. In this text I use
‘vertical segregation’ and thus prioritize social distance at the micro
scale rather than social mix at the neighborhood level.
Vertical segregation may have been neglected by urban studies,
but it has not gone unnoticed by artists, novelists and journalists.
Emil Zola, in the novel Pot-Bouille9, deals with the social profile and
functioning of the bourgeois apartment building in Paris at the end of
the nineteenth century. In 1975, James Graham Ballard described, in
the novel High-Rise10, dystopic life in a modern housing tower, where
the vertical residential hierarchy summarizes capitalist social relations. The novel inspired a film of the same name in 2015, directed by
Ben Wheatley, focusing on the vertical hierarchy of social positions
and land uses, the functioning of which eventually became extremely
conflictual and unsustainable. A very graphic description of vertical
segregation, describing the combined lives of masters and servants
in South Korea, living respectively above and below ground, is central
to the movie Parasite by Bong Joon-ho, winner of the 2019 Palme d’Or
award at the Cannes Festival. In a more persistent way, Greek popular
cinema of the 1960s frequently dealt with the typical apartment block
of Athens11 and its internal vertical social hierarchy, opposing those at
the top and the bottom to designate privilege and stigma, respectively.
Academic interest about micro-segregation remains rather scarce
and segmented. Some cities have attracted more attention than others
due to both their socio-spatial structure enabling micro-segregation
and the research performed on this topic (for example, Naples12–17). The
challenge is to bring the segmented research on micro-segregation
together.
A brief history of vertical segregation
There are several dimensions in the history and the functioning of
densely built vertical cities, including the varying symbolic use of their
vertical (third) dimension18 and the sustainability planning issues for
high-rise neighborhoods19. This Review focuses on the vertical social
geography of high-rise urban areas. Vertical segregation first appeared
in the high-rise areas of ancient Rome20. Poor residents were driven to
the less accessible apartments at the top, which were also less protected
from rain and cold.
In modern times, the best-known example of vertical segregation
was developed in central Paris6,21 during the nineteenth century. The
Parisian model of vertical segregation followed the social pattern of
ancient Rome. Affluent households lived in the high-ceiling and wellequipped apartments with all the available amenities on the first or
second floor. Moving up, the social positions of the residents declined.
At the very top (under the roof), tiny servants’ rooms, with areas of less
than 10 m2 and no amenities, accommodated female servants (bonnes),
who provided domestic work in the large bourgeois apartments on
lower floors. The coexistence of bourgeois households and servants in
the same city building was a condensed version of the complex division
of labor in manor houses. The many servants in former chateaux were
replaced by a single female servant (bonne (à tout faire, that is, able to
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do all domestic tasks previously allocated to different servants)). The
vertical difference in housing quality and the social profile of residents
in the apartment blocks of central Paris is depicted in the gravure Coupe
d’une maison Parisienne le 1e Janvier 1845, explained by Thierry Aprile22
(http://grial4.usal.es/MIH/parisBuildings/resource1.html).
Vertical segregation in Paris and some other European cities, like
Naples and Montpellier, where the same model was followed, has been
considered a disappearing relic of urban history23. Along the same
lines, White6 described vertical segregation in Paris as a residue of the
pre-industrial, mercantile city, where there was ‘coexistence, within
single houses, of individuals and families at different positions in the
class hierarchy’.
Gradually, this vertical social cohabitation declined with the
decrease in domestic work for bourgeois households, and even more
so with the disappearance of low-quality housing, affordable for the
lower part of the social ladder in central Paris. Massive embourgeoisement and gentrification have eradicated vertical segregation in the
increasingly unaffordable center of Paris24,25.
Vertical segregation in the contemporary city
Evidence from many other cities across the world shows that vertical segregation—as well as other forms of micro-segregation—does
not only belong to the past. Twenty years of research work on vertical
segregation in Athens has recently attracted some attention to this
topic. This work provides strong evidence of a clear vertical hierarchy
among residents in Athenian apartment blocks in terms of class and
ethnicity26,27. Two main reasons delayed the attention to vertical segregation in Athens. First, vertical segregation in Athens was initially
perceived and investigated as a particularity of the social geography
of a regional metropolis in Southern Europe. Second, the significance
of what happens in a city like Athens must be strongly argued to attract
global attention in urban studies.
In recent years, several research projects have progressively
revealed that many other cities have a stock of apartment blocks with
diverse dwelling quality within them that fosters, at the same time,
social mix and segregation at the micro scale. In central Naples, for
example, segregation in the city’s vertically differentiated apartment
blocks has been a widespread phenomenon for a long time15,17. At the
same time, other forms of micro-segregation have been investigated,
such as the invisible enclaves of manual workers within the city’s most
expensive neighborhoods13. Ethnic vertical hierarchies have been
detected in neighborhoods of London28 and Malaga29. Evidence of
vertical hierarchies within apartment blocks comes also from Eastern
European cities existing under state socialism (for example, Bucharest
and St. Petersburg30), when market mechanisms were not supposed
to be reproducing social hierarchies. There is also evidence from the
post-socialist period in Budapest, where vertical segregation is more
prominent in the old high-rise stock of the city center compared to the
housing estates built during state socialism31,32.
Vertical segregation is also present in diverse forms in the housing stock of many large cities outside the ‘Western world’, in East Asia,
Latin America and the Middle East. Housing towers in Hong Kong,
Seoul and São Paulo provide housing at different prices by floor.
Hierarchies within such towers are usually contained within a narrow segment of the city’s social hierarchy, but sometimes they are
more socially diverse than expected33. Vertical segregation is also
witnessed in Beijing, where rural migrants (without hukou formally
permitting their permanent urban residence) are often living in basement apartments constructed as air-defense shelters in the 1980s and
illegally converted to rental properties, and in Guangzhou, where rural
migrants are often tenants in low-quality dwellings in the informally
enlarged properties of local urban villagers34. In the urban environment
of highly unequal cities—like the cities of Brazil—high-rise apartment
residences often separate middle-class households from a surrounding
mass of working-class low-rise housing. Separation is very clear in this
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case—especially when residential towers are organized as gated communities—but the spatial proximity with the groups living in adjacent
low-rise housing is reason enough to consider their coexistence in
residential space as micro-segregation35. Although vertical segregation
does not seem to be present within such high-rise bourgeois apartment
blocks, according to evidence from Rio de Janeiro36, it is important to
investigate the potential effect of the proximity of middle-class towers to low-rise working-class areas for social reproduction, drawing
inspiration from research on the impact for poverty of spatialized social
networks37. Moreover, vertical segregation is also present within the
steep favelas of Rio, where the physically less accessible housing units
are occupied by the most deprived26. Furthermore, invisible spaces
within bourgeois high-rise neighborhoods in Beirut informally create
an unexpected social mix38.
At the same time, steep vertical urbanity has attracted attention
due to the concentration of very wealthy people in exclusive towers,
either for living in ‘luxified skies’ or for investment, as in London or
New York, where some neighborhoods have turned to ‘urban necrotextures’39,40 due to the purchase of apartments as investment objects
rather than as living space. Similar hierarchies are sometimes witnessed
unexpectedly, as in the case of the few housing towers in Vienna, which
operate in a very different way from the city’s strongly regulated housing market and attract an affluent clientele that are used to this type of
housing investment product41. Moreover, new regulations, bypassing
the long-term existing tenement regulations in Vienna, have liberated/
deregulated a considerable part of the housing market (the top floors
of the old housing stock—Zinshäuser) in the city center42, eventually
promoting social mix and vertical social hierarchies at the micro scale.
All the evidence from recent forms of vertical segregation in
recently built or refurbished apartment blocks shows that the traditional Parisian model has been turned upside down, with affluent
households now inhabiting the top and poor ones the bottom. The
vertical distribution of housing quality has changed over time. Lifts
have been introduced, making upper floors more easily accessible, and
construction technology sufficiently protects them from the cold and
rain. Also, growing density in high-rise quarters has blocked the view
from lower floors and made them darker and noisier, whereas upper
floors enjoy panoramic views, a feature increasingly appreciated in
today’s real-estate markets.
Most of the aforementioned evidence about the form, the processes and the social content of micro-segregation in Europe, Latin
America, East Asia and the Middle East is provided in the edited volume
Vertical Cities43. Moreover, a special issue of the journal Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique—Moderne et Contemporain discusses different
forms of micro-segregation in Naples12,44, Venice45 and Athens46–48, and
a special issue on urban micro-segregation in Land (https://www.mdpi.
com/journal/land/special_issues/938S2A99L1) discusses this issue in
Paris and Malmö49, Naples19, Fuzhou50, Szeged51 and Rome52.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00037-5
effects of industrialization53. The choice of the elites not to abandon
city centers—as in Paris54, Madrid and Vienna—and subsequent policies
to (re)locate industrial activities and workers to the urban periphery,
contributed greatly to preserving a dense built form, and its inherent
and constantly reproducing social and functional mix. Moreover, the
weaker and comparatively belated development of the automobile
industry compared to the United States, as well as the more regulated
tenure laws, planning regimes, and land and property markets have also
contributed to preserving and reproducing rather dense and compact
urban forms in most of the rest of the world.
Cities of the English-speaking world are present in the literature on
urban verticality, but mainly when it addresses issues of green sustainability through densification (for example, ref. 19) or complex and often
socially exclusive vertical forms of housing and real estate (for example,
ref. 39). These cities are usually missing from the developing literature
on micro-segregation. To some extent, this is understandable, because
they offer no physical support for micro-segregation, especially those
of the new English-speaking world, being comparatively recent without
a complex old urban tissue and having a stock of single and low-rise
houses in suburban neighborhoods with relatively homogeneous
social and racial profiles.
However, there are two reasons why the cities of the English-speaking world should be included in the study of micro-segregation. First,
micro-segregation is present in their past. Recent research and publications by John Logan and other scholars geolocalized the data of US
censuses of 1880 and 1900 in several major cities of the East Coast of the
United States and showed a clear pattern of racial micro-segregation
separating affluent white people in big houses on avenues from poor
black people squeezed in small back streets and alleys55,56. This evidence
overturns the dominant impression that segregation was developed
in parallel with the expansion of US cities, leaving behind a much more
racially (and socially) mixed context. Neighborhoods may have been
more racially mixed, but the evidence of micro-segregation reveals a
completely different situation from what a racially mixed neighborhood implies. Second, gentrification — a process firstly developed and
mainly analysed in the cities of the English-speaking world — usually
increases the social and racial mix at the neighborhood level, but also
creates hierarchies at the micro scale, especially in the unregulated
context of US metropolises. The question of social mix is widely discussed in relation to gentrification (for example, ref. 57), but the debate
focuses mainly on the outcomes of the recipe of attracting middle-class
groups to working-class areas, and rarely deals with the forms and
impact of segregation at the micro scale. Therefore, both the past and
present of cities in the English-speaking world indicate that research
on micro-segregation is relevant and important in addressing issues
of social reproduction, even in the less compact and dense cities of the
United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.
The example of vertical segregation in Athens
Vertical segregation and the cities of the
English-speaking world
As mentioned, the interest in urban segregation originated in and
focused on cities in the United States. Thus, segregation studies were
directed primarily to the low-rise, low-density, sprawling US urban context, and, to some extent, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
This led to the production of research tools such as neighborhood
segregation indices, and fueled debates such as those on the neighborhood effect. Eventually, this approach to segregation and the methods
associated with it dominated urban sociology across the globe and
implicitly universalized the US urban model35.
Cities in much of the rest of the world have always been more
compact and socially mixed, making neighborhood segregation a less
powerful tool for the analysis of socio-spatial hierarchies and inequalities. These cities are the outcome of urbanization paths where the
elites did not massively move to the periphery to avoid the negative
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Vertical segregation in Athens refers to social stratification by floor
in the typical apartment building there, which has five storeys or
more. These dominate the housing stock in the broad city center, having been built using the land-for-flats system (antiparochi) from the
early 1950s to the late 1970s. Antiparochi was a barter system operated by two small agents (an owner of a small plot and a petty buildercontractor). They produced single apartment buildings and split the
ownership of the apartments, offices and shops according to their initial
agreement58. A large part of the city’s booming population (increasing from 1.5 to 3.5 million between 1951 and 1981) was housed in the
~35,000 apartment blocks built during that period26. In the early 2010s,
the same stock still hosted ~70% of the broad city center’s population
(Municipality of Athens).
The great success of the land-for-flats building system was due
to (1) the huge demand for cheap and modern apartments by the
city’s soaring population; (2) its suitability for joint ventures between
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00037-5
100
100
80
80
60
Workers
Intermediate categories
Managers & professionals
40
Percentage of occupants
Percentage of occupants
Review article
Citizen from developing
countries
Citizen from developed
economy countries
60
Greek citizen
40
20
20
0
0
–1
0
1
2
3
4
5+
Floor
–1
0
1
2
3
4
5+
Floor
Fig. 1 | Percentage distribution of occupants by floor of residence and broad
occupational category of households’ reference person in the Municipality
of Athens in 2011. The reference person is the first adult on the household’s
census registration form. Figure adapted with permission from ref. 27, Athens
Social Atlas.
Fig. 2 | Percentage distribution of occupants by floor of residence and
broad citizenship category of households’ reference person in the
Municipality of Athens in 2011. The reference person is the first adult on the
household’s census registration form. Figure adapted with permission from
ref. 27, Athens Social Atlas.
the numerous small urban landowners and petty builders; and (3)
the special tax reliefs this system enjoyed that made it impossible to
compete in terms of production costs using any other procedure.
Restructuring of the city’s housing stock by the land-for-flats system made central neighborhoods more dense and socially mixed, especially after the massive inflow of poor migrants from the early 1990s27.
This rapid and unregulated densification deteriorated environmental
and living conditions in the city center and led to the gradual outmigration of a substantial proportion of the middle- and upper–middle-class
households to the suburbs.
Vertical segregation was triggered by the substantial difference
in housing quality among floors, which was related to the structure of
such land-for-flats apartment blocks, which had better conditions on
the upper-floor apartments (more housing space, openness and better
views, less noise, more light, better aeration, large balconies that were
usable almost all year round) and clear disadvantages on the lower
floors. Moreover, the impact of increasing building density was much
more detrimental to lower-floor apartments, where noise and darkness
increased disproportionally, especially in the many narrow streets.
Vertical segregation in Athens was fully documented only recently
using the micro-data of the 2011 Population Census, where—for the
first time—the apartment floor could be linked to the profile of its
occupants. This is summarized in Figs. 1 and 2.
Mapping vertical segregation on a two-dimensional map presents
a substantial challenge. The depiction of vertical differentiation needs
a third dimension, because different social or ethnic groups literally
live one on top of one another and not in different neighborhoods.
Two recent attempts to map vertical segregation in Athens (only
the second one is presented in this Review; Fig. 3) illustrate its complexity. The first map27 (not shown) separates the broad city center into three
parts. The first part comprises the spatially concentrated and socially
mixed areas of strong or very strong vertical segregation, and includes
two-thirds of the city center coinciding with most of the areas where
the land-for-flats system was particularly developed during the 1960s
and 1970s. The second comprises areas where higher, intermediate or
lower social categories are over-represented on all floors, mitigating
the presence of vertical segregation. These areas, mainly neighborhoods where lower social categories are over-represented on all floors,
form the remaining third of the city center built with the land-for-flats
system. They are spatially concentrated areas that have experienced
‘white’/middle-class flight and increased inflow of migrant workingclass households since the early 1990s. The third part is much smaller,
spatially dispersed and is atypical in terms of vertical segregation. The
second map59 (shown in Fig. 3) is an attempt to combine vertical and
neighborhood segregation, depicting the intensity of vertical segregation together with the differentiation between areas of vertical advantage or disadvantage (expressed by the high concentration of higher
or lower social categories in the upper or lower floors, respectively).
These two maps indicate that vertical segregation is a prominent feature
of the social geography in the high-rise residential areas of Athens.
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Social mix and the effect of micro-segregation
for social reproduction
Does it really matter if, in a socially (or racially) mixed neigborhood,
people are segregated at the micro scale? Is micro-segregation important for social reproduction?
The focus on neighborhood segregation has drawn a lot of attention to the importance of spatial distance for reproducing social
inequality and has initiated a debate on neighborhood effects60.
Eventually, the assumed negative effects of concentrated poverty
and the fear of ghettoization became universal concerns, leading to
the development of urban policies promoting social mix61. To attenuate the sorting effect of the housing market and the displacement risk
of low-income residents, urban policies were developed to protect
social mix or increase it in poor neighborhoods. Policies imposing
a minimum percentage of affordable housing in new developments
were adopted in several countries (for example, in France62, the United
Kingdom63 (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/
uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/7606/1775206.pdf)
and the Netherlands64,65). Moreover, social mix has been a strategic
element in flagship urban development projects across Europe66.
However, in the long run, policies to increase social mix in deprived
neighborhoods or to escape from them with the help of spatial mobility
programs like HOPE IV or Moving to Opportunity in the United States67
(www.huduser.org/publications/fairhsg/mtofinal.html)68 produced
ambiguous results and are still under debate57,69. Moreover, if social
hierarchies are constantly (re)built at the micro scale, and if no further
policies are developed to oppose their potential negative impact, the
promotion of social mix at the neighborhood level is not enough to
confront the problems assumed to be produced by segregation.
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Municipality
of Athens
Municipality of
Piraeus
High vertical segregation
for both vertical advantage and disadvantage
Relatively high vertical segregation
for both vertical advantage and disadvantage
High or relatively high for vertical advantage,
below average for vertical disadvantage
High or relatively high for vertical disadvantage,
below average for vertical advantage
Below average vertical segregation
for both vertical advantage and disadvantage
Unbuilt areas
Fig. 3 | Advantage and disadvantage in the vertically segregated high-rise
areas of Athens in 2011. Advantage is measured by the degree of concentration
of higher occupational categories in the upper floors and disadvantage by the
degree of concentration of lower occupational categories in the lower floors. The
concentration of advantage or disadvantage is divided into two categories—high
Vertical segregation increases social mix in a micro-segregation
form at the neighborhood level compared to the benchmark context
where the unequal groups in vertically segregated areas would be living
in their separate and socially/racially homogeneous neighborhoods.
Regardless of the causes increasing social mix and, at the same time,
producing micro-segregation, the following fundamental questions
remain:
1. Is bringing unequal social groups closer in space producing
positive effects for the conditions and life prospects of the more
deprived?
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N
3 km
(>1 s.d.) or relatively high (0 to 1 s.d.)—of the average concentration of higher
occupational categories in upper floors or the concentration of lower categories
in lower floors, respectively, in the city’s high-rise areas. Figure reproduced from
ref. 59 with permission of the licensor through PLSclear.
2. Is micro-segregation (vertical segregation or any other form)
inevitable when unequal groups are brought together in space?
3. How and to what extent is the social hierarchy formed in residential
micro-spaces (vertical or other) negatively affecting the conditions
and life prospects of the groups at the bottom of the hierarchy?
4. Are the observed negative effects on those in disadvantaged
positions in residential micro-segregation produced by their
positions in micro-space, or should they be attributed to their
personal/household features (occupational position, ethnic
identity and so on)?
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The answer to the first question is that the policy of simply bringing unequal groups closer in space is a kind of social engineering, which
mistakes symptoms for causes70 and does not improve the situation
of the deprived. Further critical scholarship claims that the spatial
concentration of poverty is not the major cause of negative social
effects71–74. The effect of concentrated poverty may not be insignificant,
but its impact is comparatively small75 and context-dependent76. On the
other hand, bringing different social groups closer in space does not
mean that they will necessarily interact positively77 and that the reduction of their spatial distance will also decrease their social distance78,79.
The second question needs more research evidence corroborating the existence of micro-segregation forms in different contexts,
although existing evidence already shows that micro-segregation is
inevitable if policies to oppose it are not developed. The third and
fourth questions need answers similar to those concerning the neighborhood effect: unequal conditions in (micro)space have significant
effects that should be addressed, but the main causes of the observed
negative conditions are related to inequalities linked to personal/
household features (occupational position, ethnic identity and so on)
that need to be resolved in ways beyond spatial policies. This means
that there is a need for comprehensive policies addressing social and
spatial inequalities at the same time.
Moreover, vertical segregation (and other forms of micro-segregation) has social effects that are highly context-related. Policies to
bridge inequalities by increasing social mix were functioning much
more effectively in the era of strong welfare states when combined
policies addressing social and spatial inequalities were deployed,
compared to the more recent era of neoliberal policies where policies
to increase social mix were rather isolated and eventually became part
of gentrification processes80. Along the same line, recent agendas to
densify cities, founded mainly on environmental concerns, may not
lead to socially sustainable outcomes, even when they are developed
within contexts where awareness about the danger of gentrification
is increased81,82. The de-segregation of working-class neighborhoods
by the market-oriented redevelopment of social-housing estates is a
recurrent policy to increase social mix. This may well lead to better
housing conditions for the beneficiaries of the renewed social rental
and affordable housing stock, but it carries the risk of displacement
and decreases the accessibility of local services57,83.
Context is important across both time and space. Therefore, dense
and compact cities may be more socially mixed, but not necessarily
more equal. Immigrant groups in southern European cities, for example, are not particularly segregated at the neighborhood level, but are
highly deprived and excluded84. In Hong Kong, extremely high levels
of inequality do not translate to high levels of neighborhood segregation85. This means that simply mixing social groups in space does not
lead to social integration. Segregation is more an outcome and less a
cause of urban social inequalities.
Moreover, neighborhoods that become socially mixed through
rapid gentrification processes are usually lacking the traditional
functional social mix built through the long and gradual processes
of urbanization. This traditional mix involved mutually helpful links
creating community bonds and ties based on employment relations
and family networks. The absence of such links in gentrification areas
nurtures antagonistic interactions among completely unrelated groups
seeking to appropriate or retain the contested territory, preserve or
modify its profile, and built their own sense of belonging. Residential
areas with a conflictual social mix are usually spaces where the copresence of unequal and diverse social groups is simply antagonistic
and not functional, reducing the desired level of social cohesion. A
gentrified neighborhood in London or a public housing complex in
a banlieue of Paris with old native and new immigrant households
are hosting groups with different positions in the social hierarchy,
without functional relations or ties between them. These groups have
antagonistic perceptions and practices regarding the shape of the
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space they share, without any common ground for mutual understanding and compromise. In contrast, servants and bourgeois families in
the apartment buildings of Paris at the end of the nineteenth century
shared an unequal but long-lasting functional relation in the local labor
market. The same applies to the very unequal groups in the mixture of
lower-class enclaves in Naples within the city’s aristocratic strongholds,
as well as to the old manual workers and the young professionals and
managers, socially distant but related by kinship, in the upwardly
mobile traditional working-class neighborhoods of western Athens.
In these last three cases, functional relations and kinship enable social
mix to provide some positive interaction between unequal groups. This
positive interaction may not be challenging their unequal social relations, but enables the mutual acknowledgment of the other’s presence
and of the minimum requirements for reproducing their coexistence
in the shared common space. A reconsideration of the literature on
urban communities since the work of Tönnies on the transition between
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft is needed86.
Micro-segregation will become an important research topic for
urban studies if its relevance can be demonstrated for policies that
aim to promote social and ethno-racial mix, highlighting that these
policies need to go beyond the simple social and racial mix in space87–90.
Policies for social or ethno-racial mix are not effective if they miss
micro-segregation in presumably diverse neighborhoods91 (https://
paa2015.populationassociation.org/abstracts/153646) or if they only
improve the mix without promoting meaningful relations between the
groups involved (https://shelterforce.org/2016/05/04/addressingdiversity-segregation-in-mixed-income-communities/). Recent work
at the micro scale of segregation in Athens has hinted at detrimental
spatial effects (dropping out early from school) ‘over and above’ the
personal characteristics of residents—like class, ethnicity and gender—
for children growing up in the disadvantaged small apartments on
lower floors92. Much more evidence is still needed from research in
diverse micro-segregation contexts. The fact that social mix does not
necessarily put an end to the issue of negative neighborhood effects
reveals the social significance and the complexity of micro-segregation.
Micro-segregated social mix can comprise unbearable co-presence
and conflict, acceptance of unequal conditions and opportunities,
social interaction producing positive or negative effects for the disadvantaged, a showcase and a challenge for reproducing or reducing
inequalities. Social mix is not a condition; it is a process at stake.
Concluding remarks
Micro-segregation, with vertical segregation being an important part
of it, is a persistent form of social hierarchy and inequality expressed
in the spatiality of everyday life for most of the world’s urban population. It affects the ways in which people perceive, reflect, decide
and act. Micro-segregation effects should not be considered as
independent parameters of social reproduction, but as integrated
complementary features inevitably modifying the effects of primary individual characteristics, like class and ethnicity, in the logic
of intersectionality.
At the same time, bringing together all the different forms of vertical segregation (and all other forms of micro-segregation) remains
a challenge and an issue. It is a challenge because it requires sorting
out the different forms of vertical segregation processes, their transformation during their (re)production, the agents involved and their
role, as well as the ways segregation at the micro scale affects social
reproduction in different contexts. It is also an issue, because stretching
too much the mid-range concept of micro-segregation and bringing
under a common umbrella (as in the case of gentrification93) all forms of
segregation at the micro scale, regardless of the sociopolitical context
in which they operate, leads to reducing the concept’s rigor by focusing
on similarities in outcomes rather than on the much more meaningful
common functions of micro-segregation processes within comparable
contexts. On the other hand, discussing vertical segregation and all
190
Review article
other forms of segregation at the micro scale as a common research
topic enlarges participation and potentially enriches the debate. The
choice is open.
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Competing interests
The author declares no competing interests.
192
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