Between 1993 and 2010, the Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) Program sought to transform public housing by demolishing large spatially concentrated developments and replacing them with mixed-income housing. Drawing on postcolonial geographical thought, this article interrogates HOPE VI as a colonial project. Through the displacement of public housing residents, the razing of the development in which they lived, and the rebuilding of mixed-income housing, including new public housing units, HOPE VI projects seek to revitalize neighborhoods by attracting higher-income homeowners to relocate in these areas. Proponents of HOPE VI and other mixed-income housing strategies contend that socioeconomic mixing will provide a range of benefits for low-income residents in these environments. Yet, there is a growing body of research suggesting that income mixing itself can be a problem for public housing residents because the neighborhood social relations operate to marginalize them. Using a case study conducted in a midsized southern city, we build on this prior work by examining the sociospatial narratives that neighbors surrounding the HOPE VI site use to identify themselves. The article focuses on how new homeowners, residing at VANDERBILT UNIV LIBRARY on November 29, 2012 uar.sagepub.com Downloaded from 2 Urban Affairs Review XX(X) in a self-contained development right across the street from a HOPE VI site, construct themselves as a community by situating public housing residents as their other. We conclude that these sociospatial distinctions are integral to the broader, state-led effort to colonize and transform this low-income neighborhood situated next to the downtown business district.

Much of the pivotal debate concerning the validity of affirmative action is situated in a legal context of defending or challenging claims that there may be broad societal gains from increased diversity. Race-conscious affirmative action policies originally advanced legal sanctions to promote racial equity in the United States. Today, increasingly detached from its historical context, defense or rejection of affirmative action is otherwise upheld to achieve diversity. A “diversity” rationale for affirmative action calls for increasing tolerance of the “other,” reducing negative stereotypes, and moderating prejudice as goals—all objectives that deviate from the former aim of race-targeted inclusion intended to resolve racial discrimination in employment and college admissions. Diversity policy provides a tapered defense for affirmative action, one detached from principles of justice and equity. The current article suggests that, despite the fact that the ostensible benefits of “racial inclusion as diversity” may be the remaining legal prop for affirmative action in the U.S., there is a need to consider whether diversity intrinsically can engender the benefits that affirmative action policy seeks to provide.