RC21 CONFERENCE 2013
Resourceful cities
Berlin (Germany), 29-31 August 2013
Humboldt-University Berlin, Institute for Social Science, Dept. for Urban and Regional Sociology
Education and the City
Urban restructuring has resulted in massive changes to their occupational structures which has had long term consequences for their social composition. In spite of the development of a rhetoric and policy discourse around social mixing and equality of opportunity, cities have become more socially unequal. Education has played a key role in this process in which, despite being the assumed means for achieving intergenerational upward social mobility, it has increasingly become the means which those with most economic, cultural and social assets have been able to transmit this to their children through privileged access to high quality schooling. In cities which were once the home to large unskilled working-class populations, there has been a long standing shortage of high-quality schools. The demographic changes which have accompanied de-industrialisation and the development of knowledge-based economies has led to greater emphasis being placed on the acquisition of such skills in a situation, there has been little upgrading of their educational infrastructure and provision. At the same time, the role played by the state has been changing, with the allocation of scarce resources being increasingly mediated by consumer competition for places in a situation where parents increasingly feel under an obligation to enter such competition. In this sessionf, we wish to explore the different ways in which this competition for educational assets is working out in different cities and in exploring some of the wider consequences for socio-spatial segregation and social mixing.
Session Organizer
Prof. Tim Butler, Professor of Geography, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, T: +44 (0) 207 848 1693, E: tim.butler@kcl.ac.uk
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