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veen  ·  2919 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What urban planners can learn from trailer parks

Thanks! Missed it entirely as well.

    When we stop treating low-income communities as objects of scorn, to be subjected to top-down, paternalistic planning, we might find that we have a lot to learn from them

I think that the efforts to eradicate low-income housing are strongly correlated with the externalities of said housing. A bunch of low-income neighborhoods in the Netherlands got labeled "Problematic Neigborhoods" due to their high levels of crime, pollution and joblessness. Interestingly, the homogenous housing and income types were deemed the core of the problem. So almost all new developments need to have a certain amount of social housing to make sure that people and classes are mixed more. That seems like the polar opposite of how I think the US dealt with it, which is to let the markets rule the day leading to gated communities on the one hand and ghettos on the other instead of a mixed environment.