The broken promises of social mix: the case of the Cabrini Green/Near North area in Chicago

Abstract

Public policies of social mixing have been enacted as the reversal of what segregation and concentrated poverty are presumed to have produced: intensified social problems (i.e., “neighborhood effects”). In addition, the pervasive discourses of diversity have provided more support for the idea of social mixing. Studies on planned and unplanned diverse neighborhoods have shown how certain diverse patterns can emerge and endure over time. Yet these studies have failed to explain how such demographic diversity becomes integration. In this article, I draw on a multidimensional perspective of socio-spatial integration to present a qualitative case study of the Cabrini Green/Near North area in Chicago—a neighborhood with a long history of segregation and recent socially engineered diversity. The case shows how contentious this new coexistence has been, and how segregation has been shifting its mechanisms of enforcement from housing to other spheres of life. I conclude with reflections on four dimensions of socio-spatial integration, and on the troubling policy and theoretical implications of the “social mix” paradigm.

Keywords:

• segregation
• integration
• social mix policies
• Cabrini Green
• neighborhood effects

Acknowledgements

This case study is part of the doctoral dissertation research of the author, titled “Bringing inequality closer: A comparative urban sociology of socially diverse neighborhoods”, defended at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), with which he won the Barclay Gibbs Jones Award for best dissertation in planning from ACSP, and the Outstanding Thesis Award from UIC. The author wishes to thank Janet Smith, John Betancur, Nik Theodore, Nilda Flores-Gonzalez, and Anthony Orum for excellent guidance during his doctoral research. Also many thanks to Loïc Wacquant for wonderful comments in the process, and to the Urban Geography referees and editors for their great feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For example, there have been at least three recent special issues of prominent academic journals dedicated to social mix and desegregation policies (Housing Studies 25(2), 2010; Cities 35(December, 2013); International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38(4), 2014).

2. I conducted 20 interviews with lower-status residents (100% Black), 20 interviews with upper-status residents (21% Black, 79% White), and 10 interviews with members of key local institutions. Interviewees were recruited at NNUP meetings (see below), and at spaces of inter-group encounter.

3. The Near North Unity Program is a partnership between several grassroots, civil, public, and private organizations and institutions, led by Chicago’s 27th Ward with support from the Local Initiatives Support Corporation Chicago (LISC). Although conflictive, this was the only instance in which low-income and higher-income people met and discussed community issues during my fieldwork.

4. Local shops, parks, supermarkets, public library, and specific sidewalks.

5. I conducted 10 spatial inventories (each about two hours in length), mapping and photographing nonresidential land uses, temporary uses, signs of activity, status markers, and types of affordable housing.

6. The relationship between gentrification and decreases in crime could be based on: the displacement of a high number of public housing residents; the strict screenings performed on returning public housing residents; the role of condo associations in evicting “problematic” poor Blacks; the revitalized role of the police, the CHA and the City of Chicago; the outsourcing of public housing management to private developers; new security services and devices, etc.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an annual studentship from the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies (FURS).