The Spatial Concentration of Subsidized Housing - Poverty & Race ...

with 1,500 to 12,000 the minimum and maximum allowed without exemption from theCensus Bureau (p. 7). While controlling somewhat for population size, the tract areaactually varies considerably between metropolitan areas due to differences in densityand housing stock. The authors note that the median tract size in Little Rock is 16.6km 2 which is nearly 80 times the size of NYC/White Plains at .21 km 2 (p. 7). “Anobvious consequence of linking tract boundaries to population is that the overalldensity of a metropolitan area will be negatively related to tract spatial size” (p. 7). Byrelying almost entirely on the census tract to define the scale the authors note that“little has been learned about what predicts segregation at scales different from that ofthe tract (whatever size of a tract happens to be), and especially about whether thepredictors of micro- and macro-segregation are distinct or the same” (p. 13).Related to geographic scale is the issue of density. Housing density is animportant concept which is often overlooked in studies of concentrated poverty butwhich can alter the results. Cooke and Marchant (2006) distinguished between centralcities, inner and outer suburbs based on density and age of housing rather than usingcensus defined places. Using this method they did not find increased poverty in theinner suburbs in the 1990’s as did other researchers. Grengs (2007) developed amethodology that accounted for open space in calculating neighborhood density. Heapplied this method in Detroit and found an increase in the spatial concentration ofpoverty in the 1990’s that was counter to the results of other studies of the city during47