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Local effects of a misleading rhetoric: social mix and housing policies in Milan

Published in “Urban Studies”, Vol. 53, n. 1/2016, pp. 77-91

Abstract

The article focuses on different uses of the concept of social mix and on

emerging criticalities of its use as a planning principle by discussing the results of

empirical research on recent housing projects in Milan, Italy.

Although the concept of social mix is generally represented as a tool to improve the

living condition of disadvantaged social groups, the praise for social mix in new

housing projects may also be driven by the will of targeting the needs of specific

medium-low income groups considered functional to urban growth, and by the

increase of real estate values that it may provide. In urban contexts affected by a

severe shortage of rental housing, social mix strategies may foster the exclusion of

lowest-income groups from access to social housing and favour their segregation.

Especially with reference to southern European cities, social mix risks becoming a

catchword with paradoxical effects in local policy agendas and the topic of mixed

communities being used as a socio-political lever for developer-led, profit-making

developments.

1. Introduction: Policies (and shifting arguments) regarding social mix in

Europe and North America

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This article focuses on different implementations and implications of the social mix

rhetoric in housing policies, with special attention on the case of Milan, Italy1.

Milan represents an interesting case study for two main reasons: firstly, there is a

gap in the literature about social mix policies in the Mediterranean Countries and

especially in Italy, while there are many investigations about the effects of social

mixing in the Anglo-Saxon Countries, as well as in Northern and Continental

Europe (Bridge, Butler, Lees 2012); secondly, this case study points out a new

understanding on the use and the effects of social mix policies, enriching the

existing body of analysis and classifications (Bolt, 2009; Harlander, Kuhn, 2012).

After an overview of the literature accounting how social mix has been fostered in

several contexts, the paper focuses on the experience of Milan in order to

investigate how social mix interventions are entering the policy agenda in a country

characterised by continuing low levels of spatial segregation and by a

Mediterranean welfare regime. These two features are important to understand the

peculiarity of the Milan case study, because social mix policies have been

traditionally fostered in Countries where segregation on ethnic or socio-economic

basis represents an important characteristic of the spatial configuration of the city

(i.e. in USA), and/or the municipal or social housing stock amounts to a high

percentage of the total housing stock (i.e. the Netherlands).

In North America, social mix interventions have been strongly connected with the

phenomenon of residential segregation of low-income people (Arbaci, 2007) and

the presumed risks connected to “neighbourhood effects” limiting the chances of

1 With a population of about 1.3 million inhabitants and four million throughout its metropolitan area,

Milan is the most important economic centre of the country. Once considered to be the core of

industrial production, the city has largely recovered from industrial decay and developed finance,

tertiary and service activities instead.

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social mobility for the resident population. As widely investigated in a recent

comprehensive research by Harlander and Kuhn (2012), a historical overview on

the forms and conditions of social mix in the urban context displays a variety of

issues that have strongly influenced the development of European cities as well as

a variety of ways in which social mix has been interpreted and fostered (Harlander,

Kuhn, 2012).

The image of a compact and mixed city (both in terms of social groups and

functions) is widely considered as a main and fundamental feature of the European

city, standing for its consolidated urbanity, stratified identity and culture as well as

for overall conditions favoring social cohesion (Siebel, 2004). In fact, in this

respect even the walls of the medieval city while producing separation, were also

organizing integration and it is definitely very relevant to assume that the socio-

spatial organization of cities is strongly influenced by urban planning and policies

which reflect specific forms of government and conditions of citizenship.

The consolidation of the bourgeois city at the end of the 19th century featured in

fact a vivid debate between the supporters of forms of urban development which

would organize the construction of homogeneous housing areas for the different

social classes (that is the case of the Garden cities or of cooperative housing

developments) and those rather supporting the development of a compact city

model along principles of density and intense mix of social groups and functions.

The first orientation was mainly wide spreading in Great Britain and the United

States along with a concept of good “neighbourliness” among inhabitants with a

similar socio-economic profile and with a urban development pattern which was

aimed at preserving the stability of real estate values.

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Continental Europe was mainly featuring the second mode. Dense urban

developments at the turn of the century were featuring social mix within compact

urban blocks such as in the cases of Paris, Vienna and Berlin. As Gerd Kuhn is

recalling, James Hobrecht (appointed in 1858 chief planner of the city of Berlin)

supported social mix in dense urban blocks as a factor of social stabilization: the

offer of dwelling in various sizes would somehow determine the combination of

different social classes in the same building. In 1907, the Berlin association of

homeowners was even stating its own social mission in contributing to support

social mix under a same roof as a condition for mutual learning and cultural

equality between different social classes (Teuteberg and Wischermann, 1985, p.

415).

Although this historical background, recently, the praise for social mix in housing

policies has become quite popular in European Cities, where especially the spatial

concentration of recent immigrants has started to be managed as a sort of ‘public

emergency’, not only in terms of the risks connected to possible effects of social

exclusion for people living in these areas, but also as a perceived danger to ‘social

cohesion’ (Musterd, 2003; Musterd, and Andersson, 2005; van Kempen and Bolt,

2009; Cento Bull, 2010; Manzo, 2012). Because desegregation/dispersal has been

progressively regarded as a form or process of integration or even assimilation

(Bolt et al., 2010; Murdie and Ghosh, 2010), several policies with the aim of

creating a so-called ‘social mix’ have been introduced to reduce or to prevent

spatial segregation (Arbaci and Malheiros, 2010).

Beside the issue of spatial segregation, a second relevant aspect is that in

Europe these policies have been especially fostered in contexts characterised by a

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high availability of Municipal or Social Housing. In these countries social housing

does not represents a residual segment of the housing stock, being also a suitable

option for the middle class.

The programs to avoid the concentration of particular social groups are fostered

through several measures often following three main overlapping directions (CLIP,

2007): (1) to reduce or prevent spatial segregation through the diversification of

housing (type of housing and tenure) in disadvantaged areas; (2) to contain the

possible negative effects of spatial segregation through the definition of criteria and

procedures governing the allocation of dwellings in the Social and Municipal

Housing sector; (3) to make positive use of the opportunities that segregation (and

more specifically ethnic segregation) presents through area-based programs aiming

at the renewal of the housing stock and the promotion of social services and

initiatives to empower the social capital at local level.

It is worth considering more specifically arguments and features of these

different orientations.

In the first direction, tenure mix, as the diversification of housing (type of housing

and tenure) in disadvantaged areas has been introduced especially in UK under a

variety of rubrics - ‘sustainable communities’ (ODPM, 2005a), ‘mixed and

inclusive communities’ (ODPM,2005b) - and is now a central ingredient of

government neighbourhood regeneration policies. The assumption at the basis of

these initiatives is that the promotion of tenure diversification in areas

characterised by concentrated social housing will be a driver for the local economy,

increasing the overall levels of social well-being of local residents. However, rather

than endorsing the policy, researches on the efficacy of the policy as a mechanism

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for neighbourhood improvement tend to give ambiguous results and state the

absence of a strong and consistent relationship between tenure mixing and

beneficial social well-being outcomes (Arbaci, 2007; Graham et Al., 2009)

A second direction concerns the definition of criteria and procedures governing the

allocation of dwellings in the Social and Municipal Housing sector, as a combined

tool to disperse low-income earners and immigrant families. This orientation is

definitely the one guiding recent housing policies in France. From 2003 onwards,

under the lead of ANRU (National Agency for Urban Renewal), populating -

Péuplement – has been actively used as a tool for spatially reorganising social

groups in the vast public housing estates around the country (Donzelot, 2006; ;

Desage et al., 2011; Epstein, 2011) and administrators can act to prevent the

concentration of ‘problematic’ families in areas considered ‘at risk’. In other

contexts local authorities have even stated a maximum quota of foreign presence

that must not be exceeded in designated areas: in some German municipalities,

such as Stuttgart, the proportion of foreign inhabitants in public housing estates is

limited to 30% (Simon, 2003; Munch, 2009).

These policies, however, have a long history of analysis and critical opposition.

(Bridge, Butler, Lees 2012). A first critical issue is the questionable belief that the

spatial proximity between groups or classes contributes to the social proximity of

these groups or classes. According to Elias and Scotson (2004), for example,

policies of social mix may collide with a substantial lack of willingness among the

different social groups to make contact and build cohesive relationships (Atkinson

and Kintrea, 2001; Bolt et al., 2010). Indeed, in certain circumstances, specifically

when people live together against their will, proximity can exacerbate conflicts and

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enhance their class and status (De Rudder, 1989; Blanc, 2010). In addition, albeit

the large majority of these interventions try to achieve a balance of socio-ethnic

population at the neighbourhood level, it is not completely clear what exactly

constitutes a ‘fair mix’ (Bolt, 2009). To sum up, the policy of deliberately mixing

tenures in housing developments in order to improve social well-being remains

largely unsupported by research evidence (Graham, 2009)

A third orientation is the one which favours policies to renovate the housing stock

and to promote social services and initiatives empowering the social capital at local

level. Many European countries have developed such urban policies, known as

area-based policies, at different times. The various measures and instruments used

to implement these policies are action-oriented, interactive, and multi-purpose in

nature (Power et al., 2010). Often they focus both on the renovation of housing

facilities and on the dynamics of social inclusion, while incorporating training and

employment programmes. In areas with a strong ethnic concentration, actions are

oriented towards strengthening the resources available locally; for example, by

consolidating ethnic economies, providing opportunities for vocational training,

offering language courses, opening channels of trade with the rest of the city,

fostering appreciation for the contribution of ethnic institutions, and facilitating the

participation of foreign families in the design of housing (Edgar, 2004). In 1998,

the Swedish government launched the ‘Metropolitan Development Initiative’, a

project intended to improve the quality of public spaces and facilities, to combat

early school-leaving, and to support the acquisition of professional skills. The goal

was not to transform the housing mix but to promote the overall development of

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people living in the area, with a focus on fighting unemployment and improving

social mobility.

Given the three orientations that have been discussed above, the aim of this

paper is to discuss an additional direction in which the reference to social mix has

been adopted in policy making. The case study of Milan can be considered with

reference to those experiences in which social mix is considered as a sort of

ingredient in urban development projects in which a significant stock of new

housing is planned. Social mix loses its character as a measure against social and

ethnic exclusion, while it appears indeed as a rhetoric sustaining a diverse urban

environment on the basis of vaguely moral arguments: diversity, the benefit of

mixing different populations and tenures, providing stronger urban qualities, more

vivid and vibrant living environments, a tool to answer to the housing needs of the

vulnerable middle class. The discourse on the virtues of social mix in this case

tends in fact to hide more significant economic interests and negotiations among

developers and public actors (Bolocan Goldstein and Bonfantini, 2007). These

issues are very much at stake in large-scale urban projects dealing with the

developments of consistent new urban areas in which, after the dismissal of the

modernist approach to zoning and separation of urban functions, the emphasis now

is very much on the combination of a variety of local and supra-local functions

(Breckner and Menzl, 2012; Bruns Berentelg, 2010). With reference to the issue of

social mix, it is interesting to observe the shifting arguments which are used in the

design and implementation of new interventions. The aim more then preventing the

exclusion of the disadvantaged, seems more significantly to consist in the

production of new values and qualities as well as conditions for feasibility and

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profit of real-estate investments. In a rather different way, social mix has been

advancing both in new housing projects and in social housing programmes. The

principle has been affirmed more and more as the equitable combination of

inhabitants and this is significantly evident in all those new social housing projects

which benefit from public funding (for example, through the allocation of publicly

owned plots in favourable sites) but are privately driven.

In order to explain this approach, before describing the different policies and

interventions oriented to foster social mix in the city, we next present some overall

information concerning the housing stock, the conditions of socio-economic and

ethnic segregation and challenges in the city of Milan. The article draws on

extensive investigations conducted between 2009 and 2013. The investigation has

been developed through 1. the analysis of documents and programs in order to

understand how social mix has entered the agenda of local housing and planning

policies at local level; 2. interviews with key informants (the Former Director of

Housing policies at the Municipality of Milan, several civic servants working on

specific social mix programs and housing policies, NGOs representatives involved

in these programs, representatives of Tenants’ Unions); 3. Field work and

ethnographical research, direct observation of the places and the social interactions,

interviews with residents.

3. The housing question in Milan and the emerging rhetoric of social mix

Together with a vast majority of citizens who enjoy home-ownership, a very

limited stock of social and public housing is a general feature of Italy and of

southern European countries characterised by the so-called Mediterranean welfare

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regime (Allen et al., 2008; Poggio, 2008). Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal have

high home ownership rates, and this form of tenure is widely distributed within all

social strata. However the “democratisation” of this tenure (Poggio, 2008) is

incomplete, because social inequality still fosters differences within the home

ownership sector as regards, for example, the timing of home ownership, housing

conditions, and the implications for household budgets.

Another shared feature among South European Countries is the limited

incidence of the social housing sector, and of rental arrangements with social

connotations, such as the cooperatives. A general lack of secure and affordable

alternatives in the rental sector is due to both this underdevelopment of social

housing and to ineffective regulation – or non-regulation – of the private rental

market (Allen, Barlow, Leal, Thomas & Padovani 2004).

Within this context, access to home ownership has been a rational strategy with

which to satisfy housing needs and to invest savings in face of a relatively

underdeveloped financial market.

Among the European Countries, Italy is one of those with the highest home-

ownership rates: in 2008 the proportion of those living in their own flats was

81.5% and the 17.2% of the people renting their dwellings was significantly

concentrated in the last two quintiles of the income’s distribution ladder (Cittalia,

2010). The public and social housing stock play a very residual role. Only 4% of

the housing stock is in public hands, against 36% in the Netherlands, 22% in the

UK and 20% of the EU average.

Moreover, along with similar processes in northern European countries, in

recent years right-to-buy policies have been locally delivered by public housing

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companies and local authorities without any public debate on the consequences

they may have on the overall availability of affordable rental housing. While very

limited new public housing projects has been undertaken in the last thirty years, the

overall public housing stock has shrunk by more than 20%: from one million

dwellings in 1991 to 900,000 in 2001 and 800,000 in 2007 (Cittalia, 2010).

Meanwhile, the annual production of social housing decreased from 34,000

dwellings in 1984 to only 1,900 in 2004. It must be assumed that the poor

consistency of the stock has limited the width of the effects of social segregation:

although public housing estates tend to witness a significant concentration of

distressed and multiply disadvantaged families, these estates are rather limited in

their number and extension.

In fact, Milan - with a current population of 1,354.000 - despite being one of the

most unequal cities in Europe in terms of income distribution, is not particularly

affected by spatial segregation in comparison with other urban contexts in Europe

and especially in North America. This represents an important issue in any

discussion of social mix in Milan. Essentially, although the city centre is the area

where the richest inhabitants are more likely to settle, in the rest of the urban

context the distribution of medium- and low-income people is ‘spotted’ (Zajczyk,

2003). The social housing stock plays a very residual role indeed representing the

11% of the overall housing stock. Given the very small and unregulated rental

market, affordable housing is quite limited and the public housing stock (composed

of dwellings either owned by the Regional Public housing agency - Aler - or by

the City of Milano) is rather small in comparison to the potential number of those

who are entitled to access public housing. The official list of those who have made

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an application to access public housing includes large numbers of families who

would be fully entitled to a social dwelling but will never be granted one in the

medium term. In 2007 the official list numbered 13,000 families, in 2011, 19,000,

in 2013 23,000 and these numbers are considered to underestimating considerably

the actual demand. As far as the provision is concerned, on an annual basis, the

availability of social housing flats was limited in 2013 to only 1,000, mostly

consisting of older dwellings released because of deaths or ready after renovation.

This has resulted in a situation in which the only people who have a chance of

being assigned a social dwelling are those who are under eviction orders (more

then 10,000 in 2012) or multiply disadvantaged families.

Few areas of municipal and deprived private housing are characterised by the

large presence of recent immigrants (Agustoni et al., 2012), who are the social

groups at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder in Milan; other municipal

housing areas are places where families with particular social problems are

concentrated (mentally and physically disabled people, elderly people living alone,

evicted families, etc).

More than residential segregation, the main problem in Milan is the scarcity of

affordable housing (Mugnano and Palvarini, 2011), that has been the result of a

particular approach to urban development characterising the government of the city

in the past twenty years. While on the one hand, the production of new social

housing was extremely limited, on the other hand significant quantities of new

housing stock has been provided for the private market targeting a well off market

in a time in which the real estate market has been booming and driven by rather

speculative investments (Bolocan, Bonfantini, 2007; Nicolin, 2007; Bricocoli,

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Savoldi, 2010). Over this period, the city has adopted 'entrepreneurial' policies

aimed at the maximization of property values which closely mirrors the ideal type

of pro-growth urban regimes (Harvey, 1989). This has been done especially

through strategies of urban planning that have favoured the intensive use of land

for private investment while the proportion and quality of public benefits has been

very limited. The former city administration explicitely accounted the raise of real

estate values by themselves as a comprehensive index of good performance of the

city, without taking into account any negative impact this may have as well nor

contrasting the tendency towards an increase of social and urban polarisation.

Consistently with this approach, housing policies aiming to foster affordability

have been more or less abandoned for more than two decades, and this can be

considered as one of the most important institutional factor worsening the

conditions of social and spatial inequalities in Milan, which is accounted as the

most unequal city in Italy (D’Ovidio, 2009) and one of the most unequal urban

contexts in Europe. The analysis of this path has been the focus of a large body of

literature developed over the last decade on Milan and its transformation, both in

terms of social and economic trends (Ranci, Torri, 2007; Bonomi, 2012; Lodigiani,

2010) and in terms of style of governance.

The main result of this approach to urban development has been an unjustified

increase in the housing costs. Between 1991 and 2009, the average increase in

salaries was in the region of 18%, but the boom in the real estate market saw costs

in the private rental market rise by up to 105%. This has resulted in a generalised

increase of the number of evictions (Cittalia, 2010) and an increasingly tense

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situation for those who can hardly afford housing in the current situation of

economic crisis.

The reduction of the average family size, the increase of their absolute numbers,

changes in the traditional family structures (singles, single-parent families, etc.),

the ageing of the urban population and the large numbers of new immigrants are

significant demographic factors influencing a more articulated and atypical housing

demand. At the same time, the spread of uncertainties in the labour market is

placing vast numbers of citizens in conditions of housing risk (Torri, 2006; Baldini,

2010).

4. Social mix and neighbourhood regeneration: acquiring new tenants and

creating value?

Within this framework, identifying the specific period in which social mix started

to be a reference for public in Lombardy and in Milan is a complex task. According

to some key informants, a public discussion on mix started in the late 1980s, during

the process of deindustrialisation, when beside the housing demand of the working

class, new needs and demand for public intervention in the provision of affordable

housing started to be heard from the lower-middle class. For some decades, this

request has been satisfied by the public support for ownership and partially

implemented through the privatisation of public housing stock. Over the same

period, the decreasing intervention of national and local authorities resulted in a

drastic reduction in the production of municipal housing and the turnover in

existing municipal housing was quite low, fostering a progressive process of

‘filtering down’ the inhabitants into public buildings. This has basically determined

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a concentration of disadvantaged social groups, especially in the most deprived

neighbourhoods, as well as a rising stigmatisation of the municipal housing stock

(Agustoni and Rozza, 2005). Nevertheless, as reported by the key informants, from

the very beginning, the reference to social mix has not been oriented to contrast

segregation processes in the most disadvantaged areas, but rather to open up access

to housing provisions supported by the state to low-middle-income social groups,

and not to the most disadvantaged population as a priority. Within this framework

social mix represented a tool to promote a different type of 'social justice', whose

beneficiaries were to be the (new) vulnerable people of the middle class. This

clearly represents a specific characteristic of the interpretation and reference to

social mix adopted in planning documents and housing policies in Milan.

According to some key informants, however, the first introduction of

interventions oriented to social mix in Milan dates back to 2000, during a season of

urban regeneration programs (Briata et al., 2008), mainly developed through the

EU ‘Urban’ programme and the national programme ‘Contratti di quartiere’

(neighbourhood contracts) which specifically targeted the regeneration and

development of public housing estates. For the first time, attempts to reduce the

concentration of particular social groups, such as the elderly or migrants, were

introduced as implicit or hidden objectives in the agenda of the programmes. In

particular, the increasing attention to the relocation of some immigrant families is

owed to an emerging public concerned about their progressive access to the

municipal housing stock. The access of immigrant families to the public housing

stock, usually the most deprived housing stock unwanted by the Italians, has been

seen not only as a potential threat to the urban social cohesion, but especially as the

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‘expropriation’ of part of the already poor municipal housing stock (Agustoni and

Alietti, 2011) in favour of the ‘strangers’. In any case, after a few years, this

‘problem’ was partially ‘solved’ through the introduction of a regional law in 2004,

which provided strict entry barriers for people not resident in Lombardy for at least

five years, and paved the way for a very restrictive law at national level (2008)

excluding (Gargiulo, 2011) a significant proportion of recent immigrants, who are

now affected by extremely difficult conditions in the private housing market

(Agustoni et al., 2012).

In the neighbourhood regeneration programmes in Milan, social mix has been

often promoted through the allocation of the new units obtained as a result of the

renewal process to less problematic social groups, such as students; additionally, in

situations characterised by an ‘excessive homogeneity’, social mix has been

fostered through the mobility of the residents: the very rare situation of a

concentrated presence of mentally disabled people in some units has systematically

provided a scapegoat. It is interesting that these interventions have been driven by

remarkably vague criteria about the concept of social mix; both the assignments

and the new destinations of the tenants obliged to move have been decided by the

project managers on the basis of 'common sense' regarding what a balanced

community should be. The idea of social mix has from the beginning been assumed

as an indisputable necessity, without regard to the problems that the coexistence of

different social groups may represent. The first experimental programmes,

however, were integrated with social interventions vaguely recalling the need to

build new communities (Calvaresi, Cossa, 2011); however, these interventions

worked only for a very short time, because of the few financial resources available

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to these experimental programmes. After a very short experimental phase, social

mix interventions have been promoted by different actors simply placing different

‘categories’ of people, also defined through the ‘common sense’ of the operators,

closer to other social categories generally able to pay a higher rent.

4. Social mix and new urban development projects: organising

separation?

Besides being used as an argument for the filtering of tenants in terms of

access to the existing available stock, social mix in Milan has been used as a main

argument for gradually excluding a relevant number of publicly owned flats from

the stock which is reserved for social housing and allocated through the official

waiting list. In spite of the tremendous demand for housing by socially deprived

people, the publicly owned housing company has been increasingly urging more

rewarding uses of the stock in its control. Significant parts of the housing stock

have been reserved for other users. In many cases the allocation has targeted those

who have jobs which are considered of advantage to the city (the police, nurses,

bus drivers) as well as students. Although the limited individual resources of

students, the agreements developed between the housing company and the state

universities and the city generally allow much higher rents than those paid by the

social tenants. The interpretation of social mix is somehow very functional as it is

implemented though the simple development of single different buildings and

populations and there is no consideration of any concrete and real processes of

social interaction among the people. In Stadera, a public housing estate from the

1920s located in a semi-central area of dense traditional blocks, social mix is

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implemented through densification and new construction. Two buildings have

ceased to be dedicated to social housing and are allocated to the elderly and to

students. In both cases, housing is organised as a specialised function – a nursing

home and student housing - which in fact prevents any interaction with the

surroundings; no promiscuous use of the facilities is allowed, and not even a

reading room is open to a mixed set of users (Marzorati, 2010). In Gratosoglio a

housing unit with 45 small apartments has been allocated to a category of tenants

recently identified as a target: divorced men who need a place to welcome their

children to from time to time. This suggests that for the sake of social mix, new

classifications and separations are being produced (Coppola, 2010).

New development projects developed in the last decade show how a set of

devices and rules which have been orienting public-private negotiations as well as

the design and organisation of urban space have been systematically producing

fine-tuned and significant separation. An interesting example is the case of the

Pompeo Leoni project. The case is representative of a set of interventions which

were devised in the late 1990s for the redevelopment of vacant industrial sites (in

this case, a former Fiat plant) The development has been regulated according to an

agreement which was widely shared and welcomed even by progressive Milanese

planners. The negotiation with the private investors resulted in a public green area

(50%), a residential area (private, cooperative, public) (25%) and a commercial

area (25%). What was in absolute and general terms considered as a quite positive

planning result for the public is now a very introverted development, with no

significant connection to the existing mixed context, dominated by one single

shopping centre and by a fenced and separate organisation of each different

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housing block according to its specific tenure. Whereas all the housing

developments consist essentially of buildings detached from the street-line,

surrounded by very small yards and strong fences, the green areas clearly denote

the separated character of this development from the surrounding existing urban

pattern. In the words of many inhabitants, this separation is exactly what gives

added value to the project. Whereas open spaces are expected to be designed as flat

and with as little vegetation as possible to ensure high visibility, the settlement of

some groups of homeless people along the borders of a railway line, the use of the

area by youngsters, the noise produced by the student housing block, and the noise

produced by an established and successful disco meant that the inhabitants

activated themselves and successfully lobbied for more police intervention and

control. The destiny of these open spaces that were gained from the city as a

compensation for market-led development seem to constitute more the valorisation

of the surrounding housing than any sort of shared use. But, more generally, the

effects of the pre-set combination of different housing tenures which were the

rhetorical arguments for social mix - if any (Graham et al., 2009) - are here

neutralised by the overall design and organisation of space, which prevents a

variety of encounters and uses that could translate a generic call for social mix into

concrete social practices.

Beside the recurrent reference to urbanity and to the need to avoid the

shortcomings of socially homogeneous and mono-functional housing areas (which

is often assumed to be a criticism of social housing estates) our exploration of the

case reveals that many of the features which are supposed to be urban qualities in

the eyes of the inhabitants have turned into negative externalities of the city. The

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possibility of the coexistence of a multiplicity of different uses and populations is

definitely seen as a risk rather than a valuable opportunity. Within a urban space

which is ideally flat and smooth, any unforeseen and eventually controversial use

does not find any chance of mediation and produces conflicts which are

immediately conceived and treated as issues of public order (de Leonardis, 2008).

In Pompeo Leoni as well as in several other urban development projects, the

principle of spatial organisation that is experiencing growing momentum is

separation. It is the physical separation of barriers and fences, as well as the

separation produced by public green areas. Their role mainly seems to consist in

buffering, setting people at a distance and separating them. Separation is moreover

enforced by an organisation of collective housing which is mainly driven by a

limited investment in the innovation of typologies, that is, avoiding any sort of risk

in merging and combining uses and populations in the same building.

5. The use of social mix in new social housing projects: profiling good

communities and raising profits?

In the last few years, the reference to social mix has become increasingly

frequent, especially with reference to new housing projects (Fondazione Housing

Sociale, 2010). First, a neoliberal discourse has ideologically stigmatised and

rejected public housing estates as areas at risk of ghettoisation, over-representing

once more the social homogeneity of these housing areas which is not indeed to be

compared to that of other major large cities in Europe and America. On the other

hand, the involvement of private actors (for profit and not for profit) as promoters

of new social housing initiatives has been presented in public debate as the only

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feasible approach to the provision of affordable housing, reducing the public actor

to the role of the enabler of projects mainly driven by the private actor (Plebani,

2011). In this respect, social mix has become an appealing argument which may be

combined with principles of competitiveness, feasibility and rentability of the

projects.

Although a combination of tenures and clients in different economic

situations are definitely relevant factors in the production of social housing by non-

profit actors, it is still interesting to observe the intertwining and convergence of

these different elements within a vision in which social housing is increasingly

defined as a field of action in which the target of the lowest rental costs for the

social tenant appears to be no longer the main focus. At the core of the debate and

of local programmes, the main issues are the economic feasibility and short-term

rentability of projects for the promoters. This has resulted in a general rule which

regulates social housing projects being planned in plots owned by the city and

which is very much limiting the ratio of social housing dwellings rented at social

costs in comparison with the quota of flats which are built by the developer and

sold at market prices. Although in the general debate this has led to extension of

the notion of social housing to include private ownership, the lack of any

consideration and debate on innovation and reducing housing construction costs

must be stressed. We can observe that social housing projects are providing a small

quota of social rental flats while representing significant opportunities for

developers who are granted significant public support and direct benefits at a time

of economic crisis, in which the market is definitely not offering the high profits of

the recent past. Besides this, broad emphasis has been laid on a whole set of issues

22

concerning community development within (and through) housing projects, along

with a rather moralistic interpretation of the virtues of ‘living together’ and of

collective housing which is very much keen on envisioning ‘good’ combinations

of ‘good’ tenants as major factors of success in the development of new housing

(Sampieri, 2011; Bianchetti, 2014).

For the current state of the art in the development of new social housing

projects and public and policy discourse, one needs to consider ‘Abitare Milano 1’,

a pioneer programme which introduced relevant innovations and shows how the

interpretation of social mix has been controversially orientating not only the social

housing initiatives led by the private actors but the design of housing policies and

projects even when they are fully public.

As emerged during intensive field research in 2011 and 2012, the housing

programme ‘Abitare Milano 1’ offers a very interesting perspective on the

influence of the social mix rhetoric on the design of local public policies. Abitare

Milano 1 is the main initiative for the construction of new social housing units

launched by the city of Milan in the last two decades (Infussi, 2011). The

programme was launched in 2005 with four new housing projects to be developed

on publicly owned land. The projects were developed along guidelines provided by

the city and selected though an international competition. The principle of social

mix was targeted through a very normative approach aiming at identifying and

selecting specific numbers of flats and categories of tenants. The introduction of a

new category of rent, so-called convenzionato (‘conventioned’) and calculated on

the basis of the return on the investment by the developer was adopted, although

the land and the construction costs were fully covered by public funding. In the

23

convenzionato solution, the rent is proportional to the size of the apartments and

independent of family income. During the implementation of the programme, the

previous city administration even increased the number of flats to be allocated at a

higher rent to specific categories of tenants. The reduction of the number of flats to

be let at social rent was motivated by the desire for a variety of socio-economic

profiles and to avoid the concentration of disadvantaged families. In fact, these

housing projects are quite small in size (a maximum of 180 units) and they are

located in socially mixed areas. Also, the imperative of mix produces controversial

effects: the identification of limited and specific categories of tenants on the one

hand and a new allocation procedure on the other resulted in paradoxical effects of

homogeneity. In one of the housing projects, for example, more than half of the

tenants are police officers.

In a context in which the housing situation is very tense, affordable rental

housing for low-income families is so limited and socio-spatial segregation very

modest, the systematic return to social mix seems to contribute to the exclusion

from welfare policies of a significant number of potential recipients. In fact, the

reference to social mix – considered and debated as would be any technical issue –

produces a sort of de-politicisation of the social nature of housing policies (Epstein,

2011).

6. Conclusions

The aim of this paper has been to focus on the possible different implementations

and effects of social mix in housing policies. As already stated by a large body of

literature, social mix cannot be considered as a scientific concept, rather as a

24

legitimative construct suggesting to solve social problems indifferently from their

reasons. As stated by Bacque et al. (2012), social mix cannot settle the issue of

poverty through social dispersion, while this can be done only through vital social

redistribution. In fact, many investigations have already show not only the weak

impacts of social mix policies on the presumed negative impact of the

“neighbourhood effect”, but also possible unexpected consequences, such as the

raise of new conflicts, more stigmatization, the weakening of social networks .

By analysing the case study of Milan, the article has discussed a new use and risk

in the implementation of this rhetoric in urban planning, especially in Countries

characterized by low level of spatial segregation and a low availability of

Municipal and social housing solutions.

In Milan, policies are promoting social mix in the name of a broad and often

generic set of arguments, such as the necessity to respond to the housing needs not

only of the most disadvantaged social groups but also of other targets (key workers,

students, divorced fathers with children, young couples, etc.) in terms of access to

public housing provision. In general, what we argue here is that in the introduction

of social mix as a value guiding new social housing projects in Milan – most of

which have a private (although non-profit) nature - the drivers of social mix are

different and what is often being traded is a reduced blend of social tenants for the

advantage of higher rents and overall rentability of housing projects. This is

definitely much beyond the will of including disadvantaged people into the benefits

and wellness of a new housing environment. Within this context, social mix can

foster more new inequalities and forms of spatial segregation than innovative

approaches to urban justice. While in other Countries the risk is more related to

25

gentrification (Bridge et Al., 2012), in Italian cities the effects are more connected

to displacement, implications for households budget and right to access the city.

Additionally, the case of Milan highlights the problems related to the

implementation of social mix strategies in contexts where affordable housing and

the availability of social and municipal housing stock is low, because it usually

fosters the exclusion of low-income groups from access to affordable housing. As

the case of Abitare 1 program shows, it does represents an issue that the 30% of the

new 500 dwellings provided have been devoted to households not on the waiting

list of the Municipal Housing sector, while poor families entitled to public

provision are more than 20.000 . Also, when the social mix has been promoted

through strategies of tenure mix, it has led largely to a permanent loss of public

land potentially suitable for public investments, while obtaining a low percentage

of affordable housing that is usually placed in the most deprived locations,

fostering separation, segregation and stigmatisation. Additionally, in a context of

decline for the Residential sector in Milan due to the crisis, the strategy to provide

affordable housing through these programs is not forward-looking.

In general, we can argue that although the call for social mix has been driven

by the will to focus on the housing demands of the impoverished lower-middle

classes, recent dynamics rather suggest the need for a closer investigation of the

housing conditions of the most disadvantaged social groups, who are definitely

more exposed to the current economic recession.

Finally, another concern is related to the process of ‘translation’ of the concept in

different contexts. The issue of social mix has mostly arisen in the academic and

policy debate in North America and in Northern Europe, but we need to discuss

26

whether and how it has become a sort of catchword, a passe-partout category

which is transported into the academic and policy debate of urban and national

contexts in which conditions are quite different from the ones which originated the

desire for it. This investigation, for example has highlighted the risks involved in

promoting social mix strategies in Countries characterised by a Mediterrean

Housing Regime. However, this may be true for several other concepts and

categories as well; the case of Milan shows the extent to which an instrumental use

of a shared and recognised concept can be achieved.

This is definitely a matter of interest to urban studies and critical academic work at

the international level, which may be influential in identifying differences and

contextualising issues in mainstream discourse, avoiding the ambiguity of a generic

application of analytical categories which are very often translated into normative

attitudes.

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