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- Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences
- National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities
National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities
Show moreAs an urban-redevelopment strategy, the goals of mixed-income development are often talked about in terms of building “community”—the shaping of environments, opportunities, and social arrangements that promote healthy neighborhood life, particularly for the low-income people who live there. This article explores the strategies engaged, expectations for, and early responses to efforts to build “community” in three mixed-income developments being built on the footprint of former public housing developments in Chicago. In doing so, it investigates the expectations among residents and stakeholders, distills and explores three major strategic orientations being engaged by developers and their partners, and examines how these strategies in particular—and the building of community more generally—is playing out across sites, including the dynamics and conditioning factors that promote or inhibit participation, engagement, interaction, and the shaping of social cohesion and social control
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Show moreThis article examines the theory and evidence behind the increased policy and scholarly interest in the role that schools might play in promoting neighborhood revitalization, focuses on the extent to which schools might be a key component in the growing efforts across the country to address urban poverty by creating and sustaining mixed-income neighborhoods, identifies five channels through which investment in high-quality public schools might help facilitate the types of neighborhood- and individual-level outcomes sought through mixed-income development, explores the theoretical arguments behind these pathways, and draws on research to assess the potential value of each. The article concludes that schools can play unique roles as amenities, local resources, and forums for interaction and collective action, but leveraging that potential value for the benefit of everyone, including those in poverty, will require impeding real estate market forces and surmounting differences in parental school expectations and engagement associated with socioeconomic status.
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Show moreMixed-income development has been embraced by policymakers across the country as a promising means of deconcentrating poverty and revitalizing inner city neighborhoods. The unprecedented scale of Chicago’s effort at mixed-income development provides an important opportunity to learn about the possibilities and challenges of this approach. Most of the new developments have completed at least one pre-occupancy phase of construction, marketing, and resident outreach. This paper explores the perspectives of two key actors in the mixed income development process: private developers and social service providers. In Depth interviews were conducted with 26 individuals working on nine of Chicago’s major new mixed-income developments. This qualitative analysis uses the perspectives of these key actors to identify some of the major early challenges of the mixed-income development process in Chicago. Implications for the future of mixed-income development and public housing transformation in Chicago and across the country are considered.
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Show moreMixed-income development is an increasingly popular poverty deconcentration strategy in the United States but there have been few in-depth studies about the experiences of residents once they move in to the new housing developments. This article explores the early experiences of residents of all income levels who have moved into a new mixed-income development on the south side of Chicago. In-depth interviews have been conducted with 46 residents of the development, including 23 former public housing residents. Interviews were also conducted with a comparison group of 69 public housing residents who did not move to the development. I find that public housing movers appear to be a substantially different group than non-movers. I find that overall satisfaction with the new development is quite high among residents of all income levels. Early social relations are limited, particularly across income levels, and there are key barriers to interaction, such as physical design, stigma and assumptions based on class and housing status, and segregated associational structures.
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Show moreWhile public housing reforms seek to address poverty among what is a predominantly African-American population, there has been little explicit attention given to the significance of race in the formation of new mixed-income communities. Indeed, the policy framing of these efforts has focused on economic integration and has been essentially silent about racial integration. In this article, we examine whether and how race remains relevant to the everyday life and experiences of residents in mixed-income developments. Drawing on a multiyear research study of three mixed-income developments in Chicago, we examine the nature of interracial and intraracial social dynamics within these (still) predominantly African-American neighborhoods. Consistent with critical race theory, we find that institutionalized notions of “ghetto culture” continue to inhere in the attitudes of many higher-income, nonblack homeowners and professionals in these contexts, and that the relative privilege and power these groups have to establish and enforce norms, policies, and rules generate and reproduce inequality fundamentally grounded in race. Consistent with secondary marginalization theory, we also find that the increasing economic diversity and widening cleavages among blacks living in these contexts generate complex intraracial social dynamics where relocated public housing residents and other low-income black renters experience marginalization from both black and nonblack neighbors. We argue that because the design of mixed-income development policy frames residents’ social identities primarily along the lines of income and housing tenure rather than race, it ignores what we find to be the enduring, if nuanced and complex, significance of race.
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Show moreI critically assess the potential for mixed-income development as a means of helping lift families in U.S. inner cities out of poverty. I identify four main propositions for the promise of mixed-income development, provide a conceptual framework that delineates the pathways through which mixed-income development can be hypothesized to improve the quality of life for the urban poor, and review the evidence from existing research on the relevance of these propositions. Because of the scale and possible elimination of the HOPE VI (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) program, I pay particular attention to what we have learned from it. The most compelling propositions are those that do not rely on social interaction to promote a higher quality of life for low-income residents and instead predict benefits through greater informal social control and higher-quality goods and services. I consider the limitations of this strategy and policy implications for future mixed-income development.
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Show morePolicy-makers in several countries are turning to income- and tenure-mixing strategies in an attempt to reverse decades of social and economic isolation in impoverished urban areas. In the US city of Chicago, all high-rise public housing developments across the city are being demolished, public housing residents are being dispersed throughout the metropolitan area and 10 new mixed-income developments are being created on the footprint of former public housing complexes. Findings are presented from in-depth interviews with residents across income levels and tenures at two mixed income developments and the paper explores residents’ perceptions of the physical, psychological and social impacts of the mixed-income setting on their lives.
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Show moreA mixed-income development can be defined as a complex with housing and other amenities such as parks, schools and community centers that has the mixing of income groups as a fundamental part of its financial and operating plan. Mixed-income development is a housing policy that has been implemented in the U.S. and around the world to deconcentrate poverty, particularly in public housing developments. Mixed-income development engages private real estate developers to produce public housing and thus exemplifies the shift in the 1990s to a neoliberal approach to urban development and other social services. Mixed-income development has proven to be an extremely complex endeavor that has successfully promoted physical transformation and neighborhood revitalization but has failed to achieve social cohesion and integration or economic mobility for low-income residents.
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Show moreIn the largest poverty deconcentration effort in any city in the US, all high-rise public housing family developments in Chicago have been demolished and are being replaced by mixed-income developments. Advocates for public housing residents have worked hard to negotiate a ‘‘right to return’’ to the new mixed income developments. Yet, as in other cities across the country, the rates of return to the new developments have been very low. Little is understood about residents’ perceptions of their options or the factors that drive their relocation decisions. This article examines relocation decisions using data from in-depth interviews with a panel of relocating residents and a sample of ‘‘returners’’ at three mixed income developments in Chicago. Our findings about relocation decisions include the relevance of attachment to people and place, challenges to the notion of resident ‘‘choice,’’ conceptions about the anticipated benefits of mixed-income communities that refute popular theories about the value of higher-income neighbors, and anticipated trade-offs and risks associated with a move to a mixed income development.
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