Widening gaps? Socio-spatial inequality in the “very” European city of Vienna since the financial crisis

Abstract

While European cities were long argued to have moderate levels of socio-spatial inequality, recent years have seen a growing assertion that such inequalities are on the rise. Structural shifts on labor and housing markets since the financial crisis suggest that this trend has further intensified since 2008, but empirical evidence has so far been scarce. This paper examines the case of the “very” European city of Vienna, which, like other European cities, has experienced rising inequality on the labor market and the housing market since the onset of the crisis. Drawing on compound indices, GIS mapping, regression analyses and several inequality metrics as well as a small-scale level of analysis, we demonstrate that socio-spatial inequality has increased in terms of a growing distance between the socio-economic status of spatial units. This is particularly caused by lower status areas that lose ground against the rest of the city. We do not only provide novel empirical evidence on socio-spatial inequality in a major European city after the financial crisis, but also enrich existing methodological frameworks for such an analysis in various ways. The paper concludes with discussing the broader implications of our findings for the debate on socio-spatial inequalities in European cities.