The Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory
The proposed strategy, which goes under the slogan of ‘mixed neighborhoods’, aims at counter balance the concentration of poor households in some areas of the city and attracting more middle and higher income people to the problematic areas. However, this appealing upgrading areas idea using the ‘injection of middle class’ come across with a big side effect. It creates a massive displacement as such it “solves the problem” in one area by imposing it on another one.
This program drastically reduces the number of social rented dwellings from 395 to 106.
At the same time, 168 new dwellings of more expensive housing typologies will be constructed. This reduces the total number of dwellings in 121 units. Half of the public green area will be transformed to private gardens. The commercial space will be doubled. On the square 90% of the old business space is renewed. This change will impose a higher rent prices which will make it almost impossible for the immigrant’s small businesses to go back. The plan for mixing is actually a plan of replacing and clearing one more spot in the city map.
The first signs of the transformation are already visible: a large amount of the original inhabitants has been displaced, most of the trees have been chopped off to provide the necessary space for the new construction and most of the businesses have moved out of the neighborhood.