Residents' Views on Social Mix: Social Mix, Social Networks and Stigmatisation in Post-war Housing Estates in Europe

Abstract

Social mix is one of the supposedly promising keywords in today's urban policies. Many players in the field believe that social mix enhances opportunities and the quality of life of urban dwellers. However, there are alternative views of social mix. This paper addresses questions about the relation between—perceived—levels of social mix and the strength of social networks and the reputation of the neighbourhood. In addition, residents' opinions about social mix are investigated taking individual, household and housing situations into account. The main source of information are interview data from the RESTATE project and the paper has a focus on large post-war housing estates in various European cities. It is concluded that there is a wide variety of social mix perceptions in estates built to similar designs in a similar period in different European cities and that these perceptions relate positively, albeit weakly, to the strength of social networks as well as to a good reputation of the estates. However, the context people find themselves in appears to be highly important for the opinions on social mix. People with strong social networks were more in favour of social mix if they perceived themselves living in socially mixed situations, but not if they perceived themselves living in homogeneous environments; people with negative opinions about their neighbours were more negative about social mix in general, but even more so if they had the perception of living in mixed situations themselves, and even more so if they were owner-occupiers. The paper concludes with some implications of these results for urban restructuring policies.