Segregation and Urban Spatial Structure in Barcelona : Does History Really Matter?

We conduct an empirical analysis to assess the degree of segregation among the different communities in Barcelona taking into account the spatial dependence of the features associated with the neighbor's status. We build an original database by gathering information for the period 1947–2011. Estimations emphasize that Barcelona increasingly shows a spatial-dependent segregation pattern based mostly on the gentrification of the high-skill workers rather than on the ethnicity of the different communities