Is Chicago an Outlier? Organizational Density in Poor Urban Neighborhoods

One of the most important factors affecting conditions in an urban neighborhood is the number of banks, clinics, grocery stores, recreation centers, and other commercial and nonprofit establishments—i.e., its organizational density. The “deinstitutionalized ghetto” hypothesis, based largely on research in the city of Chicago, has argued that the loss of organizational density is a major consequence of the concentration of poverty at the neighborhood level. The hypothesis, however, has been subject to little empirical scrutiny. This article performs the first comprehensive test across all U.S. cities of the hypothesis that concentrated poverty reduces the density of a wide array of establishments. We find that there is little support for the hypothesis across a remarkable range of organizations; that the special case of Chicago differs dramatically from the average city; and that regional location and the general economic climate of a city are the most important predictors of organizational density. Findings suggest moving toward a perspective in which conditions in poor neighborhoods, and by extension “neighborhood effects,” depend systematically on the historical and geographic contingencies of separate regions of the country and on the political economy of the city. Note to the reader: The following is (still) a very rough and unfinished draft. Nevertheless, it reports sufficient findings for a concrete discussion. A more complete version should be available in the near future. All findings are preliminary. Please do not cite. --MLS.