Optimists may be willing to believe in the promise, perennially made to inner-city residents by promoters of development, that a community of racially mixed and economically diverse mixed-income housing will evolve, in which the benefits in public education and other public services that generally accrue to neighborhoods in which substantial numbers of the affluent or middle class reside will go to poor people as well. I would like very much to believe that this could happen, although it hasn’t often been the case in any other city that I know. In most cities, “development” unfortunately has also meant “displacement.”
Jonathan Kozol
Fire in the Ashes
