Week 10 Blog: Race and Status in Neighborhood Space

The urban neighborhoods of the late nineteenth century provide an image of how race and status are distributed in neighborhood space. The wage maps provided illustrate that income divisions exist within neighborhood space as well, though sometimes subtle. The first wage map shows that there is some mixing of income levels within neighborhoods. However, it also shows that higher income areas and lower income areas do exist within these neighborhoods. The other wage maps infer that this separation is worse in some areas, especially near the brothels, where housing is predominantly low income.

When compared with the nationality maps of the same neighborhoods, income divisions and racial divisions appear to line up, perhaps not surprisingly considering the economic condition of this era.

The tightly packed housing in urban areas in the late nineteenth century, especially in low income areas, restricted the amount of public space that was available for ethnic groups to mingle or interact. Often interaction was restricted to that which occurred naturally in many of the low income immigrant neighborhoods, which frequently became melting pots. In cities where the walls of buildings form tight borders, Jane Addams introduction and expansion of the Hull House becomes even more impressive.