When reading Global Neighborhoods: New Pathways to Diversity and Separation, Logan and Zhang stated that, “… whites remain in neighborhoods where they constitute a large majority and where other conditions…suggest an attractive housing market…new minorities are able to enter when conditions suggest that the neighborhood is no longer attractive…” Upon reading this sentence, I recalled reading President Obama’s novel, Dreams from my Father, published before he became the President. In one section, Obama had worked as a community organizer, and he wrote about how many of the white residents had moved away from the neighborhood as African-Americans residents moved in. The property values fell, and the general area diminished in quality. This resulted in many of the current residents moving out, and the same white residents moving back in, buying up the lands at a cheaper price. When using that information as the context to this article, it is easy to see that this problem is not an isolated one, nor is it a recent one. This issue has been happening as new immigrants have moved in. The white population has been moving out and further away, either to other cities or to the suburbs. Logan and Zhang also assert that in no way do global communities make any racial divides disappear; in fact, the most common example of this would be on the subway. As we board the train and it winds through the boroughs, there are neighborhoods where one ethnicity or one race tend to gather. Though New York City itself is a global city, there are still invisible divides, however minute.

In Enclaves, Citadels and Ghettos, Marcuse states that there are significant differences between the three. Marcuse also explains the difference between a ghetto-which would be an area where residents are involuntarily made to be inferior to other members outside of the ghetto, and enclaves. There are two types of enclaves: an immigrant enclave and a cultural enclave. Perhaps the most prominent ghetto in New York City that comes to mind is Harlem; Marcuse states that while Harlem was the center for black culture, it has changed. “42% of Harlem’s residents live below the poverty line” and “the death rate in that area is higher than any other place in the city”. When taking enclaves, citadels and ghettos into consideration, one must also remember that the richest areas in New York City-the Upper East and Upper West Sides: homes that go for tens, hundreds of millions- and one of the poorest ares in the entire nation-Harlem- are only separated by a few blocks, with a common route that cuts through both: Broadway.

Finally, in Immigration and the Global City Hypothesis, Samers explains the origins of immigrants the mark they left on the city. Samers alludes to the fact that many of the new residents took up jobs in manufacturing, and we see that it is because of their participation in jobs like clothes manufacturing that the city was allowed to change and develop, for better and for worst. All three of these works have gone to show the origins of neighborhood developments in New York City, and what the results were of industrialization and immigration on current and arriving residents.