Patterns of spatial dependence and heterogeneity and the scale of urban deprivation

The scale and pace of change in urban systems is without historic precedent. Today’s increasingly affluent populations have ever more diverse lifestyles, and it is increasingly untenable to think of intra urban social patterning by analogy to an inert mosaic of internally homogeneous statistical reporting zones (Johnston, 1999). Small area spatial differentiation in physical and social conditions thus remains an important and developing focus for policy concern: most cities are restricted in spatial extent by planning policy, and so experience complex processes of change in neighbourhood composition over even quite short time periods (Harris, 1999). Appropriate allocation of public resources within and between urban areas requires that social conditions be represented in ways that are open to scrutiny (Gordon and Pantazis, 1997), while there is increasing realisation that ‘if government has no settled and adequate measure of poverty, then it cannot reliably assess how its policies are contributing to reducing poverty ’ (White, 2002). Such measures need to be generalisable, transparent, pertinent, up-to-date and safe to use (Campbell, 1999). Taken together, one of th