CSI Final
sunbelt
A geographical region in the United States loosely described as the southern and western states. These states witnessed a period of remarkable economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s due to their cheaper labor, weaker labor unions, cheaper land, lower taxes, and fewer regulations.
single room occupancy hotel
A house, apartment building, or residential hotel where low-income or otherwise unhoused tenants live in small, single units sharing a bathroom and, in some cases, a kitchen. Rent can typically be paid in short-term (daily, weekly) increments. Also known as an SRO, a flophouse, or a welfare hotel.
Section 8 Program
A housing program that provides rent vouchers to low-income individuals based upon that individual's ability to pay. The voucher makes up the difference between what the low-income household can afford and the rent for an adequate housing unit in a particular community. The vouchers can be project based, which are attached to specific units in a property, or tenant based, which are portable and move with the tenants that receive them.
spilt labor theroy
A labor market theory in which two or more racially or ethnically distinct groups of workers vie for the same jobs where the total cost of hiring one group of workers is significantly lower than the cost of hiring from the other group. This causes employers to hire the cheaper workers absent active opposition from higher-priced workers. This situation creates an antagonism between the two groups that is exacerbated when employers undermine the position of the more expensive labor with tactics such as strikebreaking and undercutting.
supportive housing
A type of affordable housing that includes individualized health, counseling, and employment services for persons with mental illness, chemical dependency, chronic health problems, or other challenges. Typically this type of housing is "transitional," meaning that it is intended to stabilize residents for more traditional housing.
Swan vs. Charlotte-Meckienberg BOE (1971)
Assigning students to schools within a city or neighborhood that has been segregated is the same thing as segregating schools; created mandatory busing; resulted in hostile learning environments with cruel and long bus trips
secondary market lenders
Government-sponsored enterprises (or GSEs) named Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae that buy mortgages and sell them to investors as mortgage bonds called mortgage backed securities (MBSs). Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's bonds do not have an explicit government guarantee. However, Ginnie Mae tends to focus on mortgages from first-time and low-income home buyers and its bonds have an explicit government guarantee.
Miliken II (1977)
Legal clarification of Miliken vs. Bradley; while students can't be required to bus among metro boundaries, money from suburbs can be used to fund magnet schools within city limits.
Green vs. New Kent Country (1986)
Not enough to abolish mandatory segregation or stop segregating; schools have an affirmative duty to desegregate both root and branch.
NIMBY
Not in my back yard. When a resident objects to the government siting a particular land use in his own neighborhood but does not object to that same land use being sited in another neighborhood.
Pessy vs. Ferguson (1896)
Separate but equal railroad cars; sets precedent for separate but equal facilites (including education)
Miliken vs. Bradley (1974)
You can't bus students across city lines to suburb schools to integrate black and white students; No metro busing unless they can prove suburb schools are deliberately segregating and intentionally kept only white students (but hard to prove); led to magnet schools
mortgage backed security (MBS)
a bond financed by home mortgage payments. the mortgage principal and interest paid by the homeowner on the mortgage is paid to the MBS holder.
community benefits agreement
a contract between community groups and a developer stipulating that the developer will provide certain agreed upon benefits to a local community or neighborhood in exchange for the right to develop there
oppositional culture
a culture that consciously rejects mainstream values and norms
culture of poverty
a culture that encourages short term gratification because long term economic, political, and social opportunities appear bleak.
credit default swaps
a derivative, similar (but not identical) to an insurance policy, purchased to protect buyers in the event of a default on a mortgage security or other financial instrument (A derivative is a financial instrument whose value is based upon another security)
liminality
a disorientated state characterized by ambiguity in which an old order has gone with no apparent new order to replace it; being "neither here nor there" or "betwixt and between"
anomie
a feeling of alienation resulting from the breakdown of a system of values
ethnicity
a group of people who are perceived by themselves and/or others to share a unique set of cultural and/or historical commonalities
race
a group of people with perceived unique biological and physical characteristics
public housing
a housing development for (or at least primarily for) low-income households that is publicly funded and administrated
poverty
a lack of adequate provisions for the basic necessities for living established by a society
racial restrictive covenants
a legally binding provision on the deed of a property specifying which races and ethnicities can and can not own that property. These provisions were legal until 1948.
festival marketplace
a mall-like facility featuring boutiques, restaurants, and street entertainers that is usually built in historic or historic-looking buildings
determinism
a perspective that holds that all events are inevitable consequences of preceding sufficient causes. Certain perspectives might maintain that these preceding sufficient causes are -for instance- economic, cultural, or biological.
communitarian approach
a perspective that holds that local government should engage all levels of the system, provide basic equality of opportunity, offer a robust set of public goods and spaces for all residents, and prohibit NIMBYism.
spatial mismatch
a phenomenon in which employment opportunities are located a considerable distance from the residences of people most qualified to fill them. this term also connotes the unequal abilities of different income groups to overcome this distance.
redlining
a practice in which financial institutions deny mortgages and other types of financing to residents of predominantly poor or minority neighborhoods without regard to individual creditworthiness. This practice was legal until 1968.
blockbusting
a practice, by real estate agents, of obtaining a house from its owner (historically white) utilizing fear tactics and subsequently selling that house to another person (historically non-white) at a higher price. This practice was legal until 1968
head start
a program that provides government-funded preschool for the children of poor households
inclusionary zoning
a regulatory instrument available to local government that either encourages or requires the provision of affordable housing as a part of residential developments.
magnet school
a school with a specialized curriculum that is intended to attract students throughout a geographic area by focusing instruction on a specific area of aptitude, talent, or interest.
community
a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage. This term can also be used to describe a sense of mutual interdependence and common vision among such a group.
meritocracy
a society in which individual achievement is basd only upon talent and hard work.
tourist bubble
a specialized area of a downtown that presents a coherent, easy-to-understand, and safe version of the city in order to lure visitors who might otherwise be leery of cities.
zoning
a system for regulating what kind of buildings can be built and where in the community they can be built
tracking
a system in which all students within a school are separated by academic ability into groups for all academic subjects
bureaucracy
a system of formal organization based upon defined roles, a hierarchical chain of command, and rules, protocols, and procedures that mange activites
theory
a systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular aspect of life
illegal lodging citations
a ticket issued by police to homeless individuals for taking up lodging (usually sleeping) in a public place.
suburb
a town with an independent government that is located near a city and is dependent upon that city for its economic, social, and/or cultural life.
metropolitan area
an area of population that includes a central or core city and surrounding towns or suburbs that are in some way dependent upon it.
good business climate
an economic environment more conducive to corporate growth, productivity, and profits than competing environments.
enterprise zone
an economically distressed zone within an urban area within which government presence is decreased by slashing taxes and cutting regulations with the intention of increasing its attractiveness to business investment
social capital
an informal ranking of people in a society based on their income, occupation, education, housing, power, and/or other measures of resources
constitutive perspective
an understanding of people and place that suggests that social policy should create a larger environment that is conducive to human agency while at the same time encouraging individuals to exercise that agency.
capital
assets available for use in production of further assets; investment money. Also known as economic capital
prejudice
bias; a partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue, situation, or person
building codes
building standards that govern how structures themselves should be designed
education vouchers
certificates backed by government educational funds that are given directly to public school students (rather than to the school, school district, or larger administrative body) so that students using these vouchers may attend the schools for their choice, public or private, instead of the public school for which they are zoned.
locational incentives
economic perks offered by a government to convince a business to locate within that government's jurisdiction
common school
free, nonsectarian schools in the 19th century United States intended to be open to all regardless of class, religious, or ethnic background.
economic restructuring
globalization, deindustrialization, and transition to a goods & service economy
discretionary incentives
incentives that are rewarded in exchange for specific behaviors by businesses (e.g. employing locals, paying higher wages, offering health care, providing job training and education opportunities)
genetic inferiority
individual's inherent feature
Culture of Poverty
individual's unfortunate by product
exclusionary zoning
local zoning requirements that appear to impose unnecessary or unjustifiable costs or requirements intended to exclude undesired populations
social mobility
movement from one social position to another
community development corporation
non-profit organizations incorporated to engage in activities that support the development of a specific community. CDCs typically (but not always) focus on serving lower-income residents or struggling neighborhoods and often champion the development of affordable housing.
intermediary institutions
organizations that connect individuals to the larger political process
redistributive polices
polices that shift resources among a population
developmental policies
policies that encourage new economic activity
linkage policies
policies that link large-scale commercial development with community-based goals such as housing, transit, and employment in order to mitigate the negative effects of downtown growth
distributive policies
policies that provide basic services to all residents
rent control
regulation by state or local governmental agencies restricting the amount of rent landlords can charge their tenants.
urban
related to or concerned with the city
charter schools
schools created and organized by teachers, parents, and community leaders that receive public money but are free from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools. Each school is accountable to the local public authority for the mission, methods, and anticipated outcomes that are set forth in its charter.
Brown vs. Board of Education (1954)
segregated schools deny black children equal protection in terms of education; fought by NCAAP; racially separate schools are inherently unequal (the very act of separating is unequal); order the desegregation of schools with all deliberate speed; led to violence in the South that when unchecked by government when schools tried to desegregate (you may have the freedom of choice but we won't stop the bullying and violence)
class exploitation
system's inherent feature
ravages of change
system's unfortunate by product
agency
the ability to take creative social action
cultural capital
the accumulation of cultural knowledge, skills, education, and advantages that confers status upon an individual in a specific society
globalization
the broadening, deepening, and speeding up worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of life -economic, social, and political.
physical public realm
the built environment; the totality of every physical structure created by people that provides the environment for human activity.
power
the capacity of any one social actor to determine the course of events or the structure of relationships
diversification
the combining of a variety of investments to reduce the risk of the entire combined portfolio of investments
liquidity
the degree of ease with which an asset can be converted to cash.
stratification
the division of society into layers of people who have unequal resources, life chances, and influence
institutional racism
the embeddedness of racially discriminatory practices in the institutions, laws, and agreed upon values of a society
social structure
the fixed regularities and patterns that shape social action and perceptions. Alternatively, the pattern of relationships, positions, and numbers of people that provides the skeleton of social
underclass
the group that comprises the lowest social class in a society and who have non of the internal or external resources to use to improve their position in society
agglomeration
the location of complementary functions in geographic proximity to one another
tipping point
the point at which enough elements of an issue change so that the whole character of that issue changes
eminent domain
the power of government to seize a person's private property at fair market value without consent for the public good.
socialization
the process of adopting the behavior patterns of the surrounding culture
securitization
the process of packaging a group of assets into a financial security ( a security is a holder's legal interest in a corporation, certificate, or note that may increase in financial value over time. this potential for increase makes it an investment)
disnification
the process of stripping a place of its authentic character and repackaging it in a sanitized and diluted format with the intention of making it more pleasant and easily consumable
programmatic public realm
the programs that structure people's access to core ingredients of opportunity.
gentrification
the reinvestment of real estate capital into declining neighborhoods near a downtown to create a new residental neighborhood for middle- and high- income residents
deindustrialization
the removal or reduction of manufacturing activity in a country or region.
service economy
the sector of the economy that includes jobs producing intangible products rather than physical goods
culture
the set of symbols that a social actor uses to make sense of and navigate her way through the world.
bifurcation
the splitting of something into two parts
capital mobility
the state in a global economy in which profit-seeking enterprises can choose the most profitable location for their investments
human capital
the stock of knowledge and skill, embodied in an individual as a result of education, training, and experience, that makes her more productive
sociology
the systematic and methodological study of the ways in which human relationships are socially organized
discrimination
the unfair treatment of a person or group on the basis of prejudice
shelter poverty
when a household's rent or house payment is excessive to the extent that it creates a deficiency in other household items (i.e. food, clothes, electricity, etc.)
False Consciousness
when workers lack to see the commonality of class but focuses on the different characteristics (sees social and race differences but not class commonality)
Class consciousness
workers understanding the common class and desires; and works together to reach these common goals
racial zoning
zoning laws restricting residences to certain city blocks by race. These laws were legal until 1917
