Introduction

Mixed-income development is an increasingly popular strategy to deconcentrate poverty in the US (Brophy and Smith, 1997; Popkin et al, 2004; Joseph, 2006). In several US cities, mixed-income housing is linked to newly created mixed-income schools (Raffel et al, 2003; Lipman, 2008). Mixed-income strategies in housing and education share a similar set of assumptions: deconcentrating the ‘poor’ and dispersing them into mixed-income contexts will give them access to the cultural and social capital and political and economic resources of the middle class, thus improving their economic and academic situation. Proposals to move low-income students to mixed-income schools and low-income families to mixed-income developments invoke the democratic goals of the common school and struggles for racial integration and open housing. They also invoke the New Urbanist programme for liveable and communitarian cities designed to encourage social mixing and integrated housing, work and recreation in a people-centred urban environment. Although framed in terms of class, or poverty, in the US the subtext is ‘race’ – students and families to be displaced and relocated are generally African American.

Chicago, the third largest public school system in the US, has been at the forefront of neoliberal education initiatives in the US. In 2004, Chicago launched Renaissance 2010 (hereafter Ren2010), the first phase of a radical reform to close ‘failing’ public schools and open new schools of ‘choice’, the majority run by private operators (charter schools). Some charter and Ren2010 public schools were to be ‘mixed income’. The origins of this plan are in the city's corporate boardrooms. Ren2010 was proposed by the Commercial Club of Chicago, a civic organisation of the city's most powerful corporate and financial leaders, and was announced by the mayor at a Commercial Club event.

In 2000, Chicago also launched a $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation of public housing (PFT), as part of the HOPE VI programme (Home ownership and Opportunity for People Everywhere). The PFT was to demolish or ‘rehab’ high-rise public housing projects. The residents were dispersed to scattered-site, small public housing projects or the private rental housing market, and 6,000 of the original 25,000 public housing households were to be relocated in 10 new mixed-income developments. This is the most extensive revamp of public housing in the US (Bennett et al, 2006b).