Neighborhood Inequality

Neighborhood inequality is the framework, attributed in Kyle’s notes to sociologist Patrick Sharkey, that disadvantage is bound to place and inherited across generations. As The New Urban Crisis quotes him: “Neighborhood inequality is multi-generational, something that is passed down from parents to children in the same way that genetic background and financial wealth are transmitted across generations.” Richard Florida uses Sharkey’s work — his study of racially concentrated poverty, Stuck in Place — to argue that where you grow up, not just your family income, durably shapes life outcomes. This makes neighborhood a unit of inequality in its own right, distinct from individual or household income, and helps explain why concentrated poverty persists even as cities grow wealthier overall.

The concept sits at the intersection of Kyle’s city-building reading: it is the structural counterpart to the NIMBY / “New Urban Luddite” dynamics in the same book, where blocked development and exclusionary land use lock in spatial advantage and disadvantage.

Context: Patrick Sharkey is a sociologist (Princeton) whose Stuck in Place (2013) documented how Black American families have remained in poor neighborhoods across generations, arguing that neighborhood disadvantage is itself inherited. The idea draws on a longer tradition of “neighborhood effects” research, including William Julius Wilson’s work on concentrated urban poverty.

Where this appears

• The New Urban Crisis — quotes Sharkey directly on neighborhood inequality as multi-generational inheritance, citing Stuck in Place.
• Patrick Sharkey — the sociologist who frames neighborhood disadvantage as passed down like genetic background and financial wealth.