Nonlinear and Threshold Effects Related to Neighborhood: Implications for Planning and Policy

Nonlinear and threshold relationships are commonly manifested in neighborhoods, both relating to effects of neighborhoods on residents and causes of neighborhood changes arising from individual mobility and housing investment decisions. These relationships are generated by amalgam of often reinforcing processes related to socialization, gaming, tolerance, contagion, and tolerance. The existence of nonlinear and threshold effects holds powerful implications for planners. Scarce public investment resources must be spatially concentrated, so that they exceed property owners’ reinvestment thresholds. Poverty deconcentration strategies must seek to replace neighborhoods exceeding 40 percent poverty rates with those that have low (less than 15 percent) poverty rates.