AR0095 Summary Social Inequality in the City, Diversity, and Design (TU Delft)
Door: Soraya Amenou
Week 1 - Thursday 16-02-2023
Housing policy and regeneration
Preparations:
- Video ‘Overview of Social Inequality’ (3:56 min)
- Kleinhans, R. (2012), Housing Policy and Regeneration …
- Optional: Affordable Housing in the Netherlands (2018).
Literature:
- R.J. Kleinhans, 2012 ‘Housing policy and regeneration’
Integrating housing programs into regeneration policies serve a broad range of policy goals. This
article discusses the most common policies and identifies the regeneration benefits claimed by
policymakers in many countries.
Regeneration = the process in which a variety of stakeholders employs a range of physical, social,
and economic measures to improve the quality and future prospects of neighborhoods or urban
districts that face multiple problems.
Introduction: Regeneration Policies
Urban regeneration policies have taken root in most Western European countries and the US.
Regeneration policies have grown in complexity, partly because of the multidimensional character of
urban problems such as deteriorating housing quality, poverty, unemployment, social exclusion,
segregation, low-quality public space, and so on.
The content and implementation of regeneration policies differ between countries, but there
are similarities. Most regeneration policies have a strong housing policy component that can typically
take two different forms:
1) Policies designed to attract and retain residents through various measures that improve the
physical quality of buildings and their environment;
2) Policies focused on people that use incentives (such as housing vouchers) to motivate residents in
deprived neighborhoods to move to less deprived areas.
The second policy approach has a different philosophy, as it aims to move residents away
from deprived areas rather than tackling housing and other conditions in those areas. The first policy
approach typically employs housing programs to change the characteristics of the current housing
stock, in ways that promote regeneration goals. However, it can extend beyond the improvement of
the housing stock and include the demolition, conversion, or sale of social (including public) rented
housing and the construction of new, owner-occupied, or privately rented housing. These policies aim
to create more variation in housing sizes, forms, quality, prices, and tenure within targeted
neighbourhoods. A defining feature of such measures is a considerable turnover of residents since
the demolition, upgrading, and new construction inevitably involves the displacement of existing
residents into target areas. Thus, urban regeneration programs will generally change the
composition of a neighborhood’s population, and change the behavior of residents.
1. Housing and neighborhood quality
Housing programs in urban regeneration policies usually aim to substantially improve the
general quality of the existing housing stock. ‘Quality’ has a broad meaning. It includes the standard of
construction, the level of maintenance, insulation, heating, comfort, size, and layout of dwellings. More
recently (the article was written in 2012), housing’s ecological ‘footprint’ (i.e., carbon emissions,
energy efficiency, and use of sustainable building materials) has become an increasingly important
,dimension of quality. Generally, regeneration is motivated by the observation that a neighborhood’s
housing stock fails to comply with basic quality standards, no longer meets residential preferences,
and attracts a highly segregated clientele.
Housing quality is usually improved as a result of housing programs. The evidence of
improved neighborhood quality is less consistent, but still largely positive. Housing programs in
regeneration policies are not exclusively targeted at existing residential areas.
2. Tenure diversity and owner-occupation
Regeneration policies can strongly alter the tenure structure of the housing stock, especially
in neighborhoods dominated by social or public rented housing. Through new construction,
conversion of rental stock to owner-occupied housing, and other strategies, more options for home
purchasers become available. This is often in line with policy goals to attract middle- and
higher-income households to provide more choice and housing career opportunities in regeneration
areas and to increase the social mix. Research shows that owner-occupiers are likely to have different
attitudes and residential behavior than renters, independent of socioeconomic or demographic
characteristics, and are more likely to maintain and improve housing quality. There are three main
reasons for this expected difference in behavior:
1) a sense of ownership and permanency makes them more likely than renters to put down
roots. There is therefore a long-term financial commitment to their dwelling. Renters depend on
housing associations, councils, or other landlords for maintenance;
2) the dwelling’s level of maintenance is a strong determinant of its economic value. Inadequate
maintenance and a deteriorating appearance will affect the value of the dwelling and the equity
accumulated by the owner;
3) research shows that owner-occupiers are more prepared to organize themselves to lobby
government officials about physical or social problems in their neighborhood. This difference
can be partly attributed to owner-occupiers typically having better education and a higher income.
They generally have more human and financial capital than renters, which enables them to deal more
successfully with problems that require a proactive approach toward local authorities, estate
managers, and other institutions. However, through successful lobbying for solutions to local
problems, the owner’s efforts can be beneficial to everyone in a neighborhood.
3. Residential mobility and housing careers
Housing career = the sequence of dwellings that a household or individual will occupy during their
lifetime
Middle- and higher-income households cannot access attractive housing career opportunities
that match their aspirations, while low-income households cannot afford to move out of these
neighborhoods. This creates selective out- and in-migration of different income groups.
Higher-income, better-educated households tend to gravitate away from deprived areas unless
attractive housing alternatives become available within the same neighborhood. Research confirms
the tendency of residential mobility flows to reinforce patterns of segregation that are the result of
financial constraints rather than preferences. There is an exception to this general migration pattern.
Lower house prices in depressed working-class neighborhoods can attract an influx of more affluent
residents which results in gentrification, a phenomenon more often associated with older
neighborhoods offering excellent access to urban amenities.
There are at least three ways that housing programs can be helpful in addressing selective
migration issues:
1) Tenure diversification strategies can be fruitful because some low-income households are just
starting their labor and housing careers and can expect sharp rises in their disposable incomes.
2) Urban regeneration may attract higher-income households from outside the area or city, especially
when housing projects are favorably located near inner cities and cultural and recreational amenities.
In practice, this strategy is difficult to successfully implement if regeneration areas continue to struggle
with a bad reputation. However, a Dutch homesteading (klushuizen) project has proven to be
,effective. Local authorities or housing associations acquire blocks of dilapidated houses and sell them
at very low prices to middle- or higher-income households, but under a contractual obligation to
fundamentally renovate and upgrade the houses.
3) The demolition of slum housing in neighborhood regeneration areas is less disruptive if
accompanied by new construction that can quickly accommodate displaced persons. An example is
the construction of new, socially rented apartment blocks designed for elderly people, and equipped
with medical and social services. The new construction may not diversify tenure or lower rents and
prices, but it will help progress the housing careers of forced movers.
The strategies mentioned above reflect the type of regeneration policies that improve the
physical quality of the buildings and environment in regeneration areas. The second type of
regeneration policy, mobility programs, uses vouchers or other incentives to motivate residents to
move to less deprived areas. In the United States, the Moving to Opportunity program, for example,
there is evidence supporting the view that voucher users' mobility allows them to benefit from strong
improvements in neighborhood quality. But voucher programs appear to have little impact on moving
families to less segregated communities, so selective migration remains a problematic issue in these
cases
4. Social Interactions and social mix
Many regeneration programs adopt broadly defined goals of ‘social cohesion’, ‘social mix’,
‘social capital’, and ‘social balance’. These are slippery concepts with an endless variety of definitions
and meanings. The general premise is that more residential diversity in terms of income,
education, social class, household type, age, and tenure can benefit neighborhoods,
especially those with concentrations of poor and deprived residents. For example, attracting
middle-class residents could strengthen the social networks of lower-income groups who, as a result,
may obtain better information on job opportunities or other knowledge that may facilitate upward
social mobility. We use the term social interaction to capture the rationale behind policies motivated by
goals of social mix, social capital, social cohesion, and social balance. Social interactions include a
wide range of acts, such as saying hello in the street, borrowing from fellow residents, and more
intensive patterns such as visiting neighbors. Research has shown that these interactions may help to
create a basic level of understanding and trust between neighbors
A large body of research has also shown that housing diversification programs do little to
promote favorable social interaction. There is considerable evidence suggesting that interaction
between owner-occupiers and renters in a neighborhood or estate is infrequent, although the sale of
socially rented dwellings to current tenants can encourage interaction in a direct way. Scale is a very
important factor. First, research findings indicate that neighborhood contacts usually occur between
neighbors who live close by. Second, the importance of building block and street level suggests that
both intratenure and inter-tenure social interaction is subject to distance decay. As proximity between
residents in different tenures increases, so does the occurrence of social networks between residents
of different tenures. Tenure is not the only cause of limited cross-tenure interaction, but it may act as a
clear marker of differences in socioeconomic characteristics. Owners and renters may live peacefully
together, but mixed neighborhoods may engender tensions and conflicts if residents do not share
values and lifestyles.
A range of nonphysical housing policies can be adopted to facilitate social interaction, as a
part of a broader regeneration policy:
1) housing associations may use deliberate housing allocation strategies to ‘select’ or tempt
households to move to certain residential areas, based on the premise of a common lifestyle or other
shared characteristics that may stimulate social interaction.
2) Another strategy is intensive social management, which may encourage residents of estates or
blocks to formulate certain ‘living rules’ (beyond contractual obligations or bans) that every resident
has to abide by. For example, residents may jointly agree that loud music is ‘forbidden’ after 10
o’clock in the evening.
3) Local authorities and landlords may adopt social programs that involve residents meeting each
, other, such as street parties, street play events for children, street spring cleanings, and so on. The
effectiveness of such efforts is debatable because local contexts differ and there are measurement
problems, but they are potentially rewarding strategies.
5. Reputation and stigma
Research has indicated that three general features are strong predictors of an area’s
reputation: physical appearance, population composition (especially the share of ethnic minorities),
and the socioeconomic status of the area. These features can be strongly affected by housing
programs, so it is not surprising that the improvement of an area’s reputation is often a regeneration
goal. However, studies have shown that lifting a neighbourhood or estate’s reputation is a
notoriously difficult task. There are four main reasons:
1) Reputations are intricately connected to the history and development of a place or area.
Current reputations may be strongly affected by past events, which, especially if negatively perceived
(e.g., the riots in the Parisian banlieues in 2005), continue to stick to a place until it recedes in the
memories of outsiders.
2) Reputation is connected to an area’s surroundings. If a successfully regenerated neighborhood
is located within a wider urban area that has a bad reputation, it may be seen as ‘an island of
improvement in a sea of decay’.
3) Reputations change slowly. The current state of affairs in regeneration areas is often far ahead of
their current reputation. The main reason is that changes, even major and highly visible ones, take
time to ‘sink in’ and then alter the perception of outsiders.
4) Small and piecemeal renewals and changes, while legitimate on their own, may not be very
noticeable from the outside.
6. Dilution and spillover effects
Throughout European and American policy discourses, there is a strong consensus around
the idea that physical measures alone cannot solve social problems. Many residents in regeneration
areas face persistent problems due to educational and language deficiencies, school absenteeism,
unemployment, poverty, substance abuse, debts, illnesses, and other problems. These problems can
be aggravated when disadvantaged residents are involuntarily concentrated in certain areas. While
housing programs may be inadequate in solving social deprivation or underlying processes of
disadvantage and exclusion, the concentration of problems can be successfully addressed by
housing programs.
Demolition (1) and new construction (2) are important strategies that relocate residents that
can include notorious ‘trouble-makers’ as well as households with multiple social problems. Both
forms of problem dilution may help the regeneration of a neighbourhood. Relocating ‘problematic
residents and introducing owner-occupation is likely to achieve significant changes to several
socioeconomic and social distress indicators by breaking up concentrations of unemployed people
and deprived households while attracting economically active households to previously depressed
areas. This can significantly improve the liveability of neighbourhoods, not just in a statistical
sense, but also the perception of residents remaining in those areas.
Furthermore, dilution strategies have an institutional advantage. If problems associated with
concentrations of disadvantaged households are addressed, dilution may relieve the workload of
care and welfare organizations whose resources are frequently overstretched. For all the
reasons mentioned above, problem dilution is a common motive justifying physical renewal projects,
though not commonly explicitly stated or written down in these terms.
Dilution strategies can also cause undesirable side effects, that is, spillover effects. In
the context of urban neighborhood regeneration, spillover effects are the impacts of phenomena,
events, or interventions in one area on (an)other area(s), typically in the same city. Demolishing
rented social housing and relocating residents may inadvertently move the manifestation of
social problems to other areas. Policy discourse strongly warns against such spillover effects.
However, empirical research underpinning causal connections between regeneration and problem
