Creating Mixed-Income Neighborhoods Unintentionally: Public Housing Residualization and Socioeconomic Segregation in Hong Kong

Abstract

Public housing affects the segregation of ethnic and socioeconomic groups in different ways in different cities, depending on the residents and its location. This paper analyzes how Hong Kong’s public housing system affects segregation by income using a combination of methods, including indexes that explicitly account for space and the ordinal nature of income data. Findings document show that public housing unintentionally reduces the city’s spatial segregation, though the effect varies across space and income groups. The spatial distance between low-income and middle-income households is reduced, creating mixed-income neighborhoods but also increasing the segregation of high-income households.