FIVE / Expectations, Information, Search, and Neighborhood Change

This chapter demonstrates both in theory and practice that multiple domains related to neighborhoods are characterized by nonlinear or threshold effects that hold powerful implications for both the social rationale for and strategic formulation of neighborhood revitalization and resident diversification policies. This chapter synthesizes research demonstrating that how neighborhoods shape individual behaviors related to residential mobility, investments in property, educational attainment, fertility, employment and a variety of other domains often manifest threshold-like relationships. It considers the nonlinear effects associated with changes in neighborhood racial composition, poverty, and assisted housing, and how these are associated with changes in crime and property values. It advances the proposition of linked threshold effects. Individual mobility and housing investment decisions are triggered discontinuously once perceptions and expectations regarding the neighborhood have exceeded critical values. Aggregations of individual actions typically lead to large changes in neighborhood conditions only after these causal forces exceed a critical point. Once begun, aggregate changes in neighborhood conditions progress over time in a nonlinear fashion once they exceed another critical point.