Early in the twentieth century, Robert Park (1915) assigned responsibility for immigrant housing to 'private enterprise' without paying attention to how private enterprise actually produced it (Light, 2001). 1 Park just assumed that...
moreEarly in the twentieth century, Robert Park (1915) assigned responsibility for immigrant housing to 'private enterprise' without paying attention to how private enterprise actually produced it (Light, 2001). 1 Park just assumed that markets unerringly followed consumer demand. Whatever consumers wanted, markets slavishly produced, including ethnic residential neighborhoods. Admittedly, Park's assumption was very common, and the whole Chicago School followed suit. Indeed, their tradition prevails even today in mainstream studies of residential choice and location, which routinely ignore the supply side (Fong and Gulia, 2000: 168; Fong and Shibuya, 2000: 139). 2 Reviewing that massive literature, Massey (1985: 319) concludes that immigrants are 'guided to the neighborhood by social networks anchored among friends and relatives who live there'. True as far as it goes, and a fair encapsulation of the mainstream view, Massey's generalization overlooks and ignores the supplier institutions that plan, produce and distribute housing in contact with consumers' social networks. In a state socialist economy this oversight would be glaring, but even in a market economy like that of the United States, in which the private sector produces 98% of housing, Massey's generalization ignores business firms. Specifically, his review article ignores firms in real estate, real property development and construction. 3 However, in market economies, networks of firms plan, produce and distribute residential housing to networks of consumers. In international real estate transactions, 'local property consultants' link foreign capital to real estate investments in the targeted destination (De Magalhaes, 2001: 104). Social networks refer customers to business networks and vice-versa. No producers means no housing. Consumers' networks cannot guide anyone to housing that does not exist. Therefore, a complete picture of housing access and neighborhood formation requires attention to the supply side as well as to the demand side, and the existing residential segregation literature pays next to no attention to the supply side. Happily, outside the residential segregation literature, one finds two research approaches that do offer theoretical access to the supply side: Harvey Molotch (1976) and
