In the Ghetto (eventually)

New scientist had an interesting article a week or so back about how ghettos are created. It was based on a new study which looked at Venice and discovered that the Venetian Ghetto is the most isolated section of the city in terms of connectivity.

Obviously Venice is an ideal example to use to illustrate this theory but the implications are pretty wide ranging. It would be nice to see local councils thinking twice about new road schemes which might destroy the road links to any particular neighbourhood. It might also provide a good method of fixing existing ghettos. Upgrade the road system in and around them, new business will slowly filter in, people will find it easier to travel to jobs (and therefore be more likely to actually have jobs in the first place) and slowly but surely, so the theory goes, the neighbourhood will pull itself up by it's bootstraps.

The only issue I see with that is that at some point we'd hit a "tipping point" (for want of a better phrase - that one seems a little over-used these days) where the poorer members of the community would be under significant financial pressure to sell their houses to the more affluent people that had begun to move in. Presumably these people would move to the ghetto a couple of neighbourhoods over and the whole process would begin again.

It would be nice to see some graph theorists employed by local government though alongside the town planners.