Yvonne Franz Libri

Focusing on the demographic characteristics of social housing in the United States, this thesis provides a thorough overview of the housing market and the evolution of social housing, particularly in New York City. It examines the current situation and delves into the demographics of social housing tenants. By evaluating demographic trends and existing challenges, the work culminates in a critical assessment of the social housing system and its tenants, offering insights into both contemporary issues and future implications.

This book aims at a comprehensive understanding of diverging urban rejuvenation practices and gentrification processes in New York City, Berlin and Vienna. Regulative and supportive mechanisms at policy and planning level have been identified through a comparative analysis of urban rejuvenation policies and actors’ embeddedness. Those mechanisms enable the development of contextualised parameters that support projection attempts of future gentrification processes at the neighbourhood level. As a result, a reflective understanding of gentrification and policy recommendations are drawn at a general level. The recommendations refer to the political understanding of gentrification and its role in urban development. This analysis argues that cities should include gentrification as a driving force in urban policies. However, processes of gentrification require mediation and monitoring by public authorities who should be aware of the risk of social fragmentation. As a consequence, cities should move towards a social entrepreneurial city that moves beyond the simple distribution of financial resources and responsibilities and ensures social responsibility within the force field of ongoing neoliberal forces.

This policy handbook discusses the policy-relevant results of the JPI Urban Europe project "Interethnic Coexistence in European Cities" (ICEC). A more detailed documentation of the research approach, methodology and local results on Amsterdam, Stockholm and Vienna can be found in various publications available for download from www.icecproject.com There is not one specific mode of interethnic coexistence - neither in the same city nor in the same neighbourhood. This is one remarkable fact uncovered by the authors of this report during their intensive field research. Interethnic coexistence works in many different ways and is extremely diverse. In our interviews, coexistence, for example in Vienna, generated such polarised messages as "[...] they have their own communities, where they meet and don't want to have contact with us", but also this statement of an Austrian lady: "With Turkish residents one gets a different kind of contact, as there is immediate understanding and openness [...]". The quality of coexistence and the quantity of interethnic interaction are as heterogeneous as the case study neighbourhoods and individuals with whom we spoke. Patterns of interethnic relations are clearly marked by the social and economic status of the neighbourhoods, but are also influenced to a lesser degree by the proportion of the migrant population and the ethnic mix.