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This chapter aims at providing insight into how social mixing plays out in the Transvaal neighborhood in Amsterdam — a neighborhood which has gone through various rounds of urban renewal — in the context of nationwide polarization between native-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch.

This chapter is based on research with a neighborhood focus — daily interactions, urban renewal, and use of public space — which took place during 2007–2010. Methods used include participant observation, semistructured interviews, and focus groups.

The physical renewal implies renovating and pulling down social housing, and building new social or owner-occupier housing. This study provides insight into how residents of different ethnic and income backgrounds live together in the neighborhood, also taking into account the impact of social polarization at the national level.

By knowing how people with different ethnic and class backgrounds live together in Transvaal neighborhood, it contributes to the formulation of evidence-based policies for the improvement of social cohesion, livability, safety of the neighborhood, and social capital of local residents.

This study looks at social mix in the context of national-level social polarization between native-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch. This creates a new viewpoint seen against how the general literature on renewal and social mixing tends to do two things: firstly it usually explicitly or implicitly is also a tenure mix strategy, and secondly the policy focus of the social mix is usually around class issues, that is, the mixing of poor social housing tenants with richer owners.

The notion of sustainability broadly builds upon the development of the present without hampering the needs of the future generation. Accordingly, the contemporary development programmes, in general, emphasise on minimising the adverse bearings of climate change and arresting the irreversible ecological degradation following the implementation of the growth-oriented economic models. While such idea of sustainable development is expected to be applied across different sectors, the traditional urban development projects such as the Integrated Development of Small and Medium Towns (IDSMT) (1979), the Mega-City Scheme (1993), and the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) (2005) focussed mainly on physical infrastructure with inadequate emphasis on the ecological aspects and sustainability. However, with the experiences of globalisation and the negative impact of changing climate, the recent urban development initiatives across the world have gone through considerable redesigning, and the idea of eco-city, compact city, sustainable city, etc., have taken the central place in the project proposals. In this connection, the Smart City Mission (SCM) (2015) of the Government of India has emerged as an important initiative to facilitate improvement in the standard of living along with economic growth through the development of urban infrastructure and integration with intelligent technologies. This chapter attempts to understand how the projects under the SCM have incorporated various ecological aspects to transform the cities into liveable and sustainable ones for the future generation. Using secondary data and carrying out a comparative analysis of selected smart city proposals, this chapter finds that there is still a lack of adequate emphasis on ecological sustainability in many smart city proposals. This chapter suggests revisiting the smart city proposals, and initiatives should be made towards the development of urban areas in a sustainable way.

This chapter analyzes the role of new local planning frameworks in the development of urban megaprojects (UMPs). It argues that the way projects are integrated with existing planning controls and statutory procedures influences how its costs and benefits are distributed. Drawing on the case studies of the Special Hudson Yards District in New York City, the “Zone d’Amenagement Concerte Clichy-Batignolles” in Paris and the Operacao Urbana Agua Branca in Sao Paulo, it compares how the legislative reforms and strategic plans enacted in each city impacted development programs, implementation process, and public benefits delivered by each project. This is a comparative case study analysis using quantitative and qualitative data collected through planning documents, press articles, interviews, and field research on the planning process of the three case studies, their administrative and institutional frameworks focused combined with quantitative analysis of the development proposals and outcomes of each project. The research shows how the articulation between the new plans and the underlying zoning districts as well as willingness by the city to commit public funds to finance the required upfront investments influence the ability of cities to extract public benefits from urban megaprojects and improve integration with surrounding neighborhoods, transport infrastructure, and regional policy. Based on a succinct review of the related literature the chapter illustrates the evolving role of public agencies and land-use regulation in the development of UMPs, illustrates the material expression of strategic planning on legislative reform and policy statements, provides a comparative analysis of contrasting legal systems, and suggests policy formulations that can improve the “public return” generated by UMPs.

Based on a case study of the Logan Renewal Initiative (LRI) in Queensland Australia, this chapter examines the competing aims bound up in programmes of urban renewal and the way different stakeholder groups advocate for one component of the programme while seeking to prevent another.

A qualitative case study approach is used based on interview and documentary material to elicit the competing views and opinions of local residents, state and local governments, housing providers and other stakeholders around a renewal programme.

It is found that there are two competing agendas bound up within the LRI, with gentrification at the heart of each. One focuses on the virtues of the social housing reform agenda, but sees gentrification as an unintended and undesirable outcome that needs to be carefully managed. The other is a place-improvement ambition that sees gentrification as an effective policy mechanism, but one that will be undermined by any increases in the stock of social and affordable housing.

The chapter emphasizes that programmes of renewal are rarely coherent policy tools, but are subject to change, contestation and negotiation as stakeholders compete to impose their own desired outcomes. In the case of the LRI, both outcomes will likely result in the marginalization of low-income groups unless their needs are placed at the forefront of its design.

The chapter engages critically with the widely held view that urban renewal is a means of gentrifying local neighbourhoods by showing how local conditions and circumstances render the relationship between renewal and gentrification far more complex that generally conceived.

This chapter compares programmes for urban housing regeneration in France and England, showing how ideological similarities reflected in policy ideas and programmes played out differently in significantly different contexts.

The chapter draws on results of several major research programmes, including in-depth extensive fieldwork in a number of cities and regions in France and England. Field research included participant observation in participatory planning events, interviews, home visits, guided walks in the districts, etc. These enabled a multi-site and multi-perspective understanding of urban housing renewal at different sites.

In both contexts, early promises for participation in housing renewal gave way to an imperative for demolition, justified on purely technical grounds that were not shared with participants. The linking of social mix and demolition for local ‘improvement’ also then appeared to be a contradiction between different policies that few residents could endorse, other than selected beneficiaries. Participation, social mix and demolition thus formed an unholy trinity in urban renewal policies.

Housing renewal requires much greater commitment to the experience of residents, to avoid exacerbating social problems rather than relieving them.

The chapter reflects on a wealth of in-depth research over more than a decade to consider the broader implications and outcomes of housing renewal programmes in two countries. It highlights the different balances of power in the two cases and the trajectories of respective urban social politics, including the overlaps between policy objectives and similarities in the government of housing renewal. It also highlights the determination and commitment among residents to the value of housing that is judged from the outside to be ‘poor’.

This chapter provides a critical examination of the urban renewal process currently taking place in inner-city Johannesburg. It evaluates the effects of an approach to providing social housing which blends commercial, market-based practices with state intervention and regulation and discusses the implications these competing imperatives have for the area and academic understandings of urban renewal.

Findings are based on a qualitative research process, carried out over 9 months in inner-city Johannesburg. Research involved interviews with property developers, housing providers, government officials, and tenants living in renovated social and affordable housing developments.

The process is contradictory and overburdened, and attempts to fulfill competing goals and agendas. Some developmental ambitions are being realized as the supply of social and affordable housing is expanding. However, the benefits are limited, as poor communities are being displaced and, in many cases, commercial concerns trump social and developmental considerations.

Findings highlight the ways in which a range of political circumstances, policy decisions, and spatial conditions combine to create an approach to renewal which is neither entirely neoliberal nor developmental. The case study complicates narratives which stress the global dominance of neoliberal approaches to urban renewal and demonstrates that alternative developmental ambitions exist alongside commercial practices.

The chapter highlights the ambiguity and hybridity of localized approaches to housing provision. In doing so it adds nuance to debates about urban processes around the globe and draws attention back to the uncertainty, agency, and diversity which are continuously shaping urban societies.

This chapter addresses the related questions of how to assess housing redevelopment and what constitutes a successful redevelopment project, based on the HOPE VI transformation of Boston’s Orchard Park from one of the city’s most notorious, crime-ridden public housing projects into a mixed-income community that remained overwhelmingly composed of low-income residents.

The analysis is based on a unique set of interviews with a sample of residents before and after housing redevelopment occurred. In addition, we draw upon interviews with housing authority staff, official agency file documents, and archival materials.

We find increased residential satisfaction after redevelopment but lingering concerns about safety and security despite marked declines in crime. Although the redevelopment process displaced some households, residents attributed improvements in living conditions to changes in tenant composition prompted by the housing transformation.

The results suggest an alternative model of public housing redevelopment that accommodates a majority of poor, subsidized households with some displacement. Still, loss of housing units, tenant selection, and social problems complicate notions of successful redevelopment.

This chapter contributes to the literature by showing how some low-income families may benefit from housing displacement induced by the redevelopment process. We analyze an overlooked but frequently implemented approach to housing redevelopment under the HOPE VI program to keep the majority of redeveloped units for low-income residents. It is the only study of which we are aware that has collected public housing resident opinions both before and after HOPE VI redevelopment occurred.

In this chapter, I focus on stigmatization exercised and experienced by local residents, comparing two socially-diverse areas in very different contexts: the Cabrini Green-Near North area in Chicago and the La Loma-La Florida area in Santiago de Chile.

Data for this study were drawn from 1 year of qualitative research, using interviews with residents and institutional actors, field notes from observation sessions of several inter-group spaces, and “spatial inventories” in which I located the traces of the symbolic presence of each group.

Despite contextual differences of type of social differentiation, type of social mix, type of housing tenure for the poor, and public visibility, I argue that there are important common problems: first, symbolic differences are stressed by identity changes; second, distrust against “the other” is spatially crystallized in any type and scale of social housing; third, stigmatization changes in form and scale; and fourth, there are persisting prejudiced depictions and patterns of avoidance.

Socially-mixed neighborhoods, as areas where at least two different social groups live in proximity, offer an interesting context for observing territorial stigmatization. They are strange creatures of urban development, due to the powerful symbolism of desegregation in contexts of growing inequalities.

The chapter contributes to a cross-national perspective with a comparison of global-north and global-south cities. And it also springs from a study of socially-mixed areas, in which the debate on concentrated/deconcentrated poverty is central, and in which the problem of “clearing places” appears in both material (e.g., displacement) and symbolic (e.g., stigmatization) terms.

Increasing concern about rising crime rates, high levels of unemployment and the anti-social behaviour of youth gangs that are concentrated within particular regions and neighbourhoods of cities has prompted renewed interest in governments to frame policies to create socially mixed cities. Recent riots experienced on social housing estates, including in France (St Denis, Poissy, Clichy-sous-bois), Australia (Macquarie Fields, Redfern in New South Wales) and Britain (Bestwood, Nottingham) have reinvigorated public and community debate into just what makes a functional neighbourhood. The nub of the debate about dysfunctional neighbourhoods is whether part of the problem is to be found in the lack of social mix of residents, that is, the homogeneity of the neighbourhoods in aspects such as housing tenure, ethnicity and socioeconomic characteristics of residents.