Urban inequalities in the 21st century economy

Jan Nijman; Yehua Dennis Wei

doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2020.102188

Urban inequalities in the 21st century economy

Appl Geogr. 2020 Apr:117:102188. doi: 10.1016/j.apgeog.2020.102188. Epub 2020 Apr 2.

Authors

Jan Nijman^{1

2}, Yehua Dennis Wei³

Affiliations

¹ Urban Studies Institute and Geosciences Department, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, 30303, USA.
² Department of Geography, Planning, and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
³ Department of Geography, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112-9155, USA.

Abstract

In the last decade or so, inequality studies have assumed renewed prominence across the social sciences. In this introduction to a special issue of Applied Geography, we set out to articulate the importance of urban spatial context in broader present-day inequality debates. We argue that the information-based economy is emphatically urban-based and that it has forged new spatial inequalities in and between cities and among urban populations. Income gaps have widened, inter-city disparities have grown, suburbs have been re-sorted into a wide array on the basis of class and race or ethnicity, and many central cities have assumed a renewed importance within metropolitan areas. We argue that attention to urban spatial dimensions at various scales is critical to understanding current inequality trends, from intra-urban to regional and global scales. Contributions to this special issue from North America, Europe, South America, and China suggest that deepening urban inequalities are pervasive across the globe.

Keywords: New economy; Scale; Spatial inequality; Spatiality; Urban inequality.

Publication types

Review