Introduction

The ‘genealogy’ of British mixed communities discourse and policy can be traced back as far as the mid-19th century (Cole and Goodchild, 2001). In the past three decades alone, both Conservative and Labour governments have introduced a wide variety of housing and urban policies which have aimed, at least in part, to increase or maintain tenure or social mix within residential neighbourhoods. Under the 1997–2010 New Labour government, ‘mixed communities’ looked set to become the overarching goal of all urban and housing policy. Mixed communities policies have been intertwined with the shrinking of social housing from its peak in 1980, increases in home ownership, and growing reliance on the private sector not only as a partner in urban policy but as a principal source of funding for regeneration and new affordable housing (Lupton and Tunstall, 2008), and have run in parallel with high income inequality (Hills et al, 2010).

Over the past three decades, the most overt mixed communities policies have been neighbourhood regeneration policies and planning policies for new developments. First, a series of neighbourhood redevelopment projects have aimed to increase tenure mix in social housing areas and social mix in deprived areas, including Estate Action, which aimed to improve 500 council estates in England (1985–94) (Pinto, 1993), and the Single Regeneration Budget which supported a wide range of schemes in deprived areas (1994–98). More recently, the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal (1998–2009) (Amion Consulting Ltd, 2010) aimed to reduce the gaps between all more deprived neighbourhoods in England and the national average across a wide range of indicators though multifaceted regeneration projects, the New Deal for Communities which did the same in 39 particularly deprived neighbourhoods (1998–2009) (Batty et al, 2010), and Housing Market Renewal pathfinders, which aimed to restructure local housing markets and increase demand and social mix in nine areas exhibiting housing market weaknesses, such as high vacancy rates, low sales values and neighbourhood abandonment (Cole and Flint, 2007; Allen, 2008). Individual local authorities, social landlords and other partners have developed their own projects, a handful of which came together under the banner of the Mixed Communities Initiative: Demonstration Project (2006 and ongoing) (Lupton et al, 2009).