Middle Classes and the Future of London, 1998-2000

The broad aim of the research is to investigate the social and economic consequences of the middle class settlement of inner London in recent decades in order to assess whether there are variations between different areas. A subsidiary aim will be to investigate the relationships between the middle class and other social groups in these neighbourhoods and whether, if these differ, the quality of these relationships can be related to the area and the social composition of the groups involved. Have the middle class exacerbated social exclusion in the city as some claim (Smith 1996)? At the heart of the research proposal is the assumption is that it is no longer possible to identify a single middle class and that different groups will have different social, economic, political and cultural interests and, for this reason, will have different relationships to their localities and populations.<br> More specific objectives are:<br> to identify what are the dominant patterns of middle-class settlement in inner London and how these are differentiated - by occupational characteristics, by social background, or by age-cohort;<br> to identify the consequences of middle class settlement particularly in terms of networks, patterns of sociation, the relations between work and non work associations;<br> to investigate to what extent these social and possibly economic interactions involve other social groups and if so how these variations might be explained; <br> to identify if possible what one area might learn from another - in other words, are there policy recommendations that can be made to improve the attractiveness of some areas and minimize their negativities?