This book provides insights in how the lack of coherent social policy leads to the displacement of vulnerable low-income families in inner-city neighborhoods facing gentrification. First, it makes a case for how social policy by its racist setup has failed vulnerable families in the history of U.S. public housing. Second, it shows that today's public housing transformation puts the same disadvantaged socio-economic clientele at risk, while the neighborhoods they call their homes are taken over by gentrification. It raises the powerful argument that the continuing privatization of Housing Authorities in the U.S. will likely lead to greater income diversity in formerly neglected neighborhoods, but it will happen at the expense of vulnerable families being displaced and resegregated further outside the city, if no regulatory planning measures for their protection are initiated by the government. By providing a solid empirical portrait of public housing in New York City's Harlem, this book provides a great resource to students, academics and planners interested in gentrification with specific concern for race and class.

Autorentext

Brigitte Zamzow is research associate and lecturer at Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany. She teaches seminars on Slum Clearance and Urban Renewal with a strong emphasis on post-modernist thinking. During a research stay in Amman, Jordan, she studied the societal implications of modernization on an a-typical Arab City. She has stayed in New York City several times and continues her ethnographic research in this field. Her MA thesis won the DGS (German Association for Sociology) prize for outstanding theses and is the groundwork to this book. Overcoming racial and social inequality remains the focus of all her work. Her educational background lies in cultural studies, development studies and sociology.

Inhalt

1. The Status Quo: Observations on a Gentrified Harlem

2. Rise and Fall: Harlem Renaissance and Ghettoization

3. Urban Poverty in Theory

4. Public Housing

5. Listening to Harlem: Tenants, Activists, Experts Conclusion: Understanding Harlem: The Making of a Mixed-Income Neighbo