Social Segregation and Housing Markets in Large Cities

Abstract

This is an exploratory article which consider the results of a research about the spatial segregation in Madrid, trying to analyse the relation between housing market and the distribution of social groups in urban space. In a society where the housing access is increasing in effort and where the search of external elements which signify the social position is growing, housing markets become real social filters able to distribute social groups in the urban space in relation with their values and their resources. This process of social distribution in the urban space is complex, it must consider the changes in social value, with the growing value of centrality for upper social groups, the residential strategies of households and the housing production system. The considering of these variables make more understandable the segregation process.