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Unparalleled sub regional household movement, endemic racial discrimination, economic restructuring, central city population decline, and physical decay is part of the narrative that is the City of Detroit, today. But as the city faces wrenching decisions about its future, attracting the headlines of ―hollowing-out‖, ―downsizing‖, ―rightsizing‖, and more, it is important to understand that what occurred in Detroit, Michigan in the mid/late 20th century not only scarred a city it also shaped memory for a generation of residents: black and white, rich and poor, city and suburban. It is this memory and context that both frames and challenges vision and detailed prescription for the city as a whole and for its individual neighborhoods. This paper will provide detail for this narrative, focusing on citywide policies and plans that have emerged to address decline and shape the city of tomorrow. To explore constraint and opportunity, specific city neighborhoods will be used to illustrate a range of neighborhood interventions, including household relocation, that are being tested, some even reaching modest implementation.

Public policies supporting market-oriented strategies to develop mixed-income communities have become ascendant in the United States and a number of other countries around the world. Although framed as addressing both market goals of revitalization and social goals of poverty deconcentration and inclusion, these efforts at “positive gentrification” also generate a set of fundamental tensions—between integration and exclusion, use value and exchange value, appropriation and control, poverty and development—that play out in particular, concrete ways on the ground. Drawing on social control theory and the “right to the city” framework of Henri LeFebvre, this paper interrogates these tensions as they become manifest in three mixed-income communities being developed to replace public housing complexes in Chicago, focusing particularly on responses to competing expectations regarding the use of space and appropriate normative behavior, and to the negotiation of these expectations in the context of arguments about safety, order, what constitutes “public” space, and the nature and extent of rights to use that space in daily life.

This paper focuses on the relationship between voluntary and involuntary reasons for relocation, and the satisfaction with the dwelling and the neighbourhood. We distinguish between voluntary reasons to move and forced reasons to move (demolition or renovation versus divorce). While these separate reasons have been extensively studied in the field of urban regeneration and gentrification, life-course studies, or social psychology, forced reasons are hardly studied in direct comparison. We hypothesize that a forced reason to move, net of other factors, initially has a negative effect on the satisfaction with the new dwelling and the new neighbourhood. However, there may be a positive effect of time: the longer ago the forced move, the more positive the evaluation of the dwelling and the neighbourhood. Furthermore, we investigate the extent to which different forced moving reasons (demolition or renovation, divorce) have different effects on satisfaction with the dwelling and the neighbourhood. The analyses are based on the Dutch Housing Survey (2006). The results show that a forced move due to a divorce initially results in lower satisfaction with the dwelling, but this negative effect disappears after a year. A forced move due to renovation or demolition leads is not of influence on the level of satisfaction with the dwelling. Forced and voluntary movers are equally satisfied with the neighbourhood, depending on the evaluation of the characteristics of that neighbourhood.

The existence of deprived urban areas triggers many governments to change the physical and social structure of these areas. Sometimes policies are meant to change the area itself, in other cases the policies are meant to improve the situation of the residents. Urban restructuring policies change the deprived urban areas, usually because low-rent dwellings are replaced by more upmarket alternatives. But the policies also affect the inhabitants: some have to move away and find a new place somewhere else in the city or the region. It is often expected that the movement will lead to a better situation for the displaced persons and households. However, there are also severe doubts about these positive effects. Who really profits? Is there a risk that the displaced re-cluster in certain urban areas? What do they miss when they are forced to move to an area far from where they used to live? So while urban policy makers often stress the positive effects attached to urban restructuring, research has indicated that negative issues will not be absent. In this paper I will give an overview of the possible positive and negative effects of relocations as a consequence of urban restructuring. I will focus on the households that have to move away from the restructured area. The main conclusion will be that there are definitely positive effects of urban restructuring policies for forced movers, but negative side-effects should not be under-estimated. I will base my argument on existing research in the field of urban restructuring and neighbourhood effects, as well as on recent fieldwork data from the Netherlands.

Urban restructuring takes place in numerous cities in Western European countries, often in the form of the demolition of relatively cheap dwellings and replacement by new, more expensive dwellings. This phenomenon has been studied extensively. Especially the effects of urban restructuring on the restructured areas themselves have been examined. Much less is known about the residents that had to relocate because of urban restructuring measures like demolition and intensive renovation. This paper therefore focuses on the question whether and why residents improve their housing situation. Using data from four Dutch cities we first make clear how the old and new housing situation differ by focusing both on objective and evaluated changes. Then, explanations are offered for the extent to which residents do or do not experience changes, with respect to dwelling as well as neighbourhood aspects. We found that (a) displaced residents both experience objective and evaluated improvements of their housing situation; (b) that in contrast to objective improvements, evaluated improvements are hardly related to individual and household characteristics; (c) evaluated improvements can be attributed to improved characteristics of the dwelling and neighbourhood; and (d) that increased satisfaction with the dwelling and neighbourhood are strongly related.

This paper examines governance processes shaping outcomes of neighbourhood restructuring induced residential relocation (RR) in the Housing Market Renewal (HMR) areas in England. In 2002, the Housing Market Renewal proposed demolition of 100,000 properties to renew the failing housing markets of Northern England and the Midlands (Leather et al.2007). However, residential relocation has been neglected in both policy and research. HMR did not provide any policy guidance or standards for RR delivery and outcomes. The research about HMR in general and residential relocation in particular remains limited. In the UK residential relocation was extensively studied following the slum clearance in the '50s and '60s. Since then RR has been examined as a matter of social and political debates, especially gentrification studies, focusing mainly on negative RR outcomes long after the process was over. This paper argues that such focus had led the researchers to ignore subtle, practical dimensions of relocation delivery and the causal relationships between these and often very diverse RR outcomes. The main innovation of this paper resides in conceptualizing residential relocation as an integral element of urban regeneration governance processes. Using grounded theory framework (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) the paper first identifies processes shaping residential relocation and maps the networks that deliver them within the HMR framework. Rigorous application and critical appraisal of the qualitative methodology unpacks the challenges of ‘relocation governance’ at the local level by juxtaposition of the local relocation processes with contrasting outcomes for the residents. The paper draws answers from 50 interviews with RR practitioners and residents in Newcastle Gateshead case study and survey of nine Housing Market Renewal Areas in England. It concludes by providing recommendations for the future research.

Powerpointpresentations plenary

Powerpointpresentations plenary

Powerpointpresentations plenary