“Geographies of Whiteness and Wealth: White, Middle Class Discourses on Segregation and Social Mix in Flanders, Belgium.” Volume 37, Issue 4, October 2015
Award Recipients
Pascal De Decker (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Bruno Meeus (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), and Nick Schuermans (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Universiteit Antwerpen).
Award Committee Assessment
The committee recommends that the Best Article in the Journal of Urban Affairs award be given to Nick Schuermans, Bruno Meeus, and Pascal De Decker for their piece, “Geographies of Whiteness and Wealth: White, Middle Class Discourses on Segregation and Social Mix in Flanders, Belgium.” Overall, the committee was impressed with the care with which the authors carried out their study, the clarity of the writing, and the substantive insights provided by their research. Their findings implicate the role and power of white privilege in shaping the continued segregated patterning of urban landscapes, which is particularly important at a time when many people do not consider themselves to be “racist,” yet everyone can plainly see the persistence of racial inequality in cities. While the study was situated within a particular metro region, its insights are particularly far-reaching and relevant across myriad socio-spatial contexts. In addition to documenting the persistence of social stigma associated with certain urban neighborhoods, the authors provide excellent documentation of the three distinct mechanisms that produce these continued negative attitudes among white, middle-class residents. The findings are important not only for informing current urban renewal efforts, but also speak to the unique challenges that will emerge as we begin to see more and more mixed-income neighborhoods undergo gentrification.
Award Committee
Chair: Vladimir Kogan, Ohio State University
Members: Shoshana Goldberg-Miller, Ohio State University; Renia Ehrenfeucht, University of New Mexico; Mathew Anderson, Eastern Washington University; Don Rosdil, Independent Scholar
Award Winners Bios
Bruno Meeus is a post-doctoral researcher at the Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research (VUB). During his stay at the Faculty of Architecture Campus Sint-Lucas Brussels -Ghent (KU Leuven, Belgium), he was a researcher in the middle-class housing pathways project, funded by the Flemish Government, which formed the basis of a book in Dutch and a number of journal articles. As project manager of the ‘Cities and newcomers project’ at VUB, he is particularly interested in transnational geographies of care and responsibility and the human and material infrastructures of arrival neighborhoods in superdiverse cities.
Nick Schuermans is a postdoctoral teaching associate at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp, both in Belgium. At the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, he teaches courses within the Erasmus Mundus 4Cities Master in Urban Studies and the Master in Geography. At the University of Antwerp, he is affiliated to the Centre on Inequalities, Poverty, Social Exclusion and the City (OASeS). He is responsible for the day to day coordination of the DieGem project on solidarity in diversity. His current research focuses on the nurturing of solidarity in super-diverse schools in Flanders and Brussels and builds upon his PhD research on the geographies of encounter in Belgium and South Africa. More information.
Pascal De Decker is an assistant professor at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and head of the HaUS (Housing and Urban Research) research group with research interest in migration, social housing, housing and urban policies and recently the spatial dimension of aging in a sprawled country.
Read more about the award for Best Published Paper in the Journal of Urban Affairs.
