TRACK 12: Responsibility for Social Cohesion in Housing, Cohousing and Neighbourhood Planning

 

Co-chairs: Nikos Karadimitriou, Roelof Verhage

Favouring socially mixed neighbourhoods has been a cornerstone of cohesion policies for the last couple of decades. The assumption behind the promotion of the spatial mixing of social groups in a residential area is that it improves upward social mobility and favours social integration. Thus planning and housing policies promote a mix of uses, tenures and housing types for a variety of social strata in both new and established neighbourhoods.

Is the policy objective of socially mixed neighbourhoods worth pursuing further? What exactly are the links between spatial organisation and social cohesion? What evidence is there to show that we can improve social cohesion by altering the spatial organisation of a neighbourhood? Should policy put more emphasis on horizontal social policy measures instead?

If creating socially mixed neighbourhoods contributes to a more cohesive society, then a key challenge is to identify and reach an effective compromise between individual and group preferences, interests and resentments, keeping the ‘public interest’ in mind. How can planning and housing policies contribute to the pursuit of this goal? What legitimacy do these policies have and what are the rights and responsibilities of different stakeholders involved in the making of socially cohesive residential spaces? 

The track would welcome papers focusing on theoretical reflections and applied analysis of urban policies and projects dealing with the relation between spatial organisation, social mix, social cohesion and housing and planning policy.