Social Mix and the City: Challenging the Mixed Communities Consensus in Housing and Urban Planning Policies

In the fields of housing, urban planning, and in particular the redevelopment of social housing, no idea would seem to receive more attention than that of ‘social mix’. Seen as both an objective of ‘good planning’ as well as a precise solution to the ‘problem’ of aging social housing estates, social mix aims to include a mix of incomes in the same neighbourhood, to have high-income and middle-income households share the same residential space as well as low-income households. This is often ac..