Date published: 2005/08/17
The BBC says:
Websites providing information on different neighbourhoods could widen the gap between rich and poor areas, a charity has warned.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) is concerned about websites providing househunters with data on neighbourhood income levels and ethnicity.
The JRF said that similar sites in the US had led to people on high incomes increasingly living in the same area.
The charity said this led to greater segregation and less social cohesion.
Generally, information available to UK househunters about neighbourhood characteristics has been more limited than that available to their US counterparts.
In the US, househunters can search for the average income of neighbourhoods as well as other details such as how ethnically diverse an area is.
Such information is becoming more widely available over the internet to UK househunters, on a postcode rather than neighbourhood basis.
Already househunters can check out local crime rates and the performance of neighbourhood schools.
The JRF said that, although it was good for househunters to know more about areas, there was a danger that wealthy people would only choose to live in areas with other wealthy people.
Social scientists have long theorised that having a mix of rich and poor in a neighbourhood ultimately raises the living standards of the poorest people in the area.
"It is entirely possible that people will start using them to sort themselves out into neighbourhoods where their neighbours are less diverse and more like themselves," said Professor Roger Burrows, who led the JRF research team from the Universities of York and Durham.
"While no one would want to prevent public access to neighbourhood information, we should recognise the potential implications for disadvantaged neighbourhoods and the people who live in them," he added.
Isn't it amazing how the internet is now blamed for all social ills? (Child pornography, illegal wildlife trading, etc.) How many people buy a house without checking out (or more likely explicitly knowing about) the neighbourhood in person, and how many people trust without question the information they see on the internet? Rich people are always going to live in the same neighbourhood as each other (clue for the JRF "research" team: it is not too common to find expensive houses intermingled with crap housing). The best quote in the article is: "Social scientists have long theorised that having a mix of rich and poor in a neighbourhood ultimately raises the living standards of the poorest people in the area." Well three cheers for the wonderful genius social scientists. Stop wasting money on this "research" and give the money to a more deserving cause, e.g. anyone working to make more land available for housing (which is a much more serious issue for the people of Britain than the "diversity" of their neighbourhood). Once in awhile JRF has something useful to say about housing but unfortunately they then produce stuff like this. Middle class control freaks in action.
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