A Pioneer's Perspective on the Spatial Mismatch Literature

This paper was originally prepared as the keynote address for a 12 April 2003 Research Symposium "Understanding Isolation and Change in Urban Neighborhoods", sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The conference sponsors provided the paper's title and in that way suggested the central theme. As often happens, however, considerable license was taken in interpreting and implementing the brief. For example, the phrase 'spatial mismatch' is used in two ways. First, the paper examines the origins of the spatial mismatch concept that was the central focus of the author's 1964 and 1968 papers. These papers were concerned with the effects of housing market segregation/discrimination on the employment and earnings of Black Chicago and Detroit residents. The spatial mismatch concept was then broadened to include a number of other, perhaps more important, ways in which serious restrictions on the residential choices of Chicago and Detroit Black residents affected their welfare. These included the effects of housing market discrimination on housing prices, home-ownership and educational opportunities. Reflecting the two-way linkages between the author's research on racial discrimination and involvement in on-going policy debates and civil rights litigation, the discussion of these issues was imbedded in something of a personal history of his involvement in these areas in the 30 years following the publication of the original spatial mismatch papers. The paper ends with a discussion of the author's research during the past 10 years into what may be the most serious example of spatial mismatch and its negative impacts on Black welfare—the continued concentration of Black children in low-achieving inner-city schools and the impact of these patterns on the achievement of individual Black children. This research, which is based on data for Texas public schools, provides substantial evidence that continued Black segregation and the resulting concentration of Black children in low-achieving schools accounts for a large part of the Black-White achievement gap.