The geographic location of our home within the city has a major impact on our daily life. It conditions the time it takes to reach study or work, our leisure activities, our ability to enjoy amenities and green spaces, and the way we move around. And, also, our network of social relations, with whom we interact and with whom we do not in our day-to-day life, since a significant part of our activities takes place in our immediate surroundings.
Therefore, studying residential segregation and its evolution is especially relevant in urban analysis. The concept refers to the degree to which different social groups live mixed or separated across the various neighborhoods of the city. From this, to a large extent, depend the opportunities of households with fewer resources, social cohesion, and the distribution of goods and services across the territory.
Now, thanks to the latest update of the Atlas of Household Income Distribution by INE, we can analyze what has happened with residential segregation during the decade 2015 to 2024. The results indicate that in eight of the country’s ten main urban areas, segregation has increased —for this analysis the Moran index was used, but, according to the dissimilarity index, which measures segregation from another perspective, the increase is recorded in the ten areas studied—, which implies that neighborhoods with similar income levels tend to cluster together more and more, and people of different social classes live increasingly separated. In other words, in them, the territory is becoming more hierarchized.
It is possible that the rise in housing prices, in addition to hindering emancipation or absorbing a larger share of salaries, is also behind the increase in residential segregation in the largest urban areas of our country. The mechanism is as follows: the more expensive it is to rent —or buy—, the greater the market’s capacity to classify people in the territory according to their income, since people with lower purchasing power see their ability to decide where to reside reduced.
What can be done to combat the advance of residential segregation and the problems it generates?
First, move toward an equitable distribution of goods and services across the entire territory of the city. At heart, what a segregated city reflects is an unequal distribution of what is socially valued, whether it is scenic value, the commercial fabric, or cultural heritage. This unequal distribution, which is usually greater in large cities due to their larger area, translates into differences in housing prices, which, ultimately, classifies the population into the different neighborhoods. Therefore, a more egalitarian territorial structure could help reduce spatial hierarchy and facilitate social mixing.
However, the construction of large public—and private—works in zones of the city that have traditionally been degraded, which contribute precisely to generating a distribution of goods and services in the city, such as large parks or museums, may generate a paradoxical effect. In the first instance, they enable social mixing with the arrival of people with higher purchasing power, but in the medium term, without measures that enable permanence, low-income households tend to be displaced, contributing again to segregation. Therefore, it is important that there be a broad stock of public and protected housing, that does not lose its value and is well distributed across the city, as it is the element with the greatest capacity to prevent displacement of the most precarious population.
“In the medium term, without measures to enable permanence, low-income households tend to be displaced, contributing again to segregation”
Finally, the city must be stitched together. The major physical infrastructures of the city, such as highways or train lines, contribute over time to crystallizing the inequality of the neighborhoods they separate. In fact, analyzing the evolution of income data between 2015 and 2024, it can be seen that when a gap of this kind separates two areas, the income difference between them is reduced 35% less than if their urban fabric were continuous. Tearing down physical barriers, therefore, can also contribute to creating less segregated cities, provided that the permanence of the most precarious households is protected.
