When writing this book I had the distinct advantage of standing on the shoulders of giants within the previous generation of scholars. Professor William Grigsby of the University of Pennsylvania first developed the concept of housing submarkets, which Professor Jerome Rothenberg of MIT subsequently operationalized in a comprehensive, neoclassical economic model. I was fortunate and privileged to have these wonderful people as teachers, collaborators, mentors, and friends. I also am grateful for the longtime association with Dr. Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution, whose constant encouragement and seminal book about why neighborhoods change were vital talismans.
Several peers also played crucial roles throughout my career in helping me develop the concepts, models, and empirical evidence that inform this book in so many fundamental ways. Foremost among them is Professor Anna Maria Santiago of Michigan State University, my collaborator and friend for a quarter of a century. This book would have been impoverished without our amazing research partnership. Professors Roger Andersson of Uppsala University and Sako Musterd of the University of Amsterdam were extraordinarily generous in providing intellectual stimulation, unique data sets, institutional resources, and energizing friendships over the course of a fourteen-year collaboration. Professor Garry Hesser of Augsburg College provided seminal guidance in conducting field research, and first exposed me to the sociology of neighborhoods more than forty years ago.
I also am deeply grateful to Professors Kenneth Gibb, Ade Kearns, Keith Kintrea, and Mark Livingston of Glasgow University; Gwilym Pryce of Sheffield University; Jurgen Friedrichs of the University of Cologne, Frank Kalter of Mannheim University, Michael Darcy of the University of Western Sydney; Talja Blokland of the Technical University of Delft (who is now at Humboldt University); Hal Pawson of the University of New South Wales; Up Lim of Yonsei University; Lena Magnusson Turner and Viggo Nordvik of the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences; Gabriel Pons Rotger of the Danish National Institute for Social Research; and Lena Hedman of Uppsala University. All have provided institutional and intellectual resources that have greatly assisted me in formulating ideas and gaining empirical understandings of neighborhood effects, household mobility, and concentrated disadvantage. I have been extremely fortunate to have such superb collaborators who proved to be even better friends.
I gratefully acknowledge many other exceptional teammates in the joint production of important neighborhood research over the years. At the Urban Institute I worked with Erin Godfrey, Chris Hayes, Leah Hendey, Jennifer Johnson, Maris Mikelsons, Ron Mincy, Kathryn Pettit, Roberto Quercia, Susan Popkin, Robin Smith, Peter Tatian, Margery Turner, Chris Walker, Doug Wissoker, and Wendy Zimmermann. At MDRC I worked with David Greenberg, Sonya Williams, and Nandita Verma. Indispensable Wayne State University quantitative researchers and project managers included Jason Booza, Alvaro Cortes, Jackie Cutsinger, Jessica Lucero, Ron Malega, Erica Raleigh, Ana Santiago-San Roman, and Lisa Stack.
I could not have undertaken much of my work represented in this book without the financial support from many governmental agencies and foundations whose grants I gratefully acknowledge. In particular, I recognize grants for my research on neighborhoods from the following public sector entities: the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Child and Human Development / National Institutes of Health, the Social Science Research Council, the Ohio Department of Mental Health, and the city of Wooster. The following private foundations also provided grant support: the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Fannie Mae Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Above all, the generous terms of the Clarence Hilberry Professorship of Urban Affairs at Wayne State University provided me with an unrivaled platform of scholarly support from 1996 through 2017.
In comprehensively tackling a complex topic like urban neighborhoods, one must break out of the narrow disciplinary perspectives that characterize graduate training in many of the social sciences today. Doing so often comes at the cost of being marginalized by one’s home discipline. Fortunately, in my case I was able to find substitute sources of personal and professional support and validation from a set of interdisciplinary professional organizations whose rise to prominence coincidentally corresponded with my academic career. In particular, I wish to thank the Urban Affairs Association, the Association of Public Policy and Management, the European Network for Housing Research, and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning—executives, staff, and members—for the invaluable role they have played over forty years in directly and indirectly helping me develop the ideas in this book.
I must express my debt to several generations of graduate students in the Master of Urban Planning program at Wayne State University. The students in my classes served as unwitting guinea pigs as I tested my formulations of neighborhood dynamics on them; their creative responses, challenges, and suggestions proved invaluable in polishing them. Three of these students provided even more crucial contributions to this book as research assistants: Natalie Lyons, Katrina Rinehart, and Timarie Szwed. To them I offer special thanks and deep appreciation for their unstinting and extremely professional efforts. I also greatly appreciate the generous assistance of Drs. Sarah Mawhorter and Meagan Elliott, who provided valuable information about Los Angeles and Detroit neighborhoods, respectively.
I thank the University of Chicago Press for its enthusiastic support for this manuscript from the outset. I acknowledge in particular the efforts of Timothy Mennel, Renaldo Migaldi, and Rachel Kelly.
The closing acknowledgment is most crucial: Nancy Galster. She was the one who invested the most valuable emotional resources in this book, though she may not have known it at the time. She was the one who paid with hours of solitude while I was on writing sabbaticals, whether they were in my home office or overseas. Her unflagging support for my scholarship and the social changes I hoped to accomplish with it have been nothing less than essential. Thank you, thank you, my love.
George C. Galster
May 2018