Australian public housing and the diverse histories of social mix

In Australia, the concept of social mix has strong currency in contemporary public housing estate regeneration policy, where balancing social mix is attached to addressing social and behavioral issues on the postwar public housing estates. However, contemporary debates about social mix tend to ignore the finding that interest in social mix is by no means new. Attention to social mix has informed Australian new town planning and housing policy since the post–World War II years, although the origins of the concept can be seen earlier in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. The focus of this article is on examining the relevance of the concept of social mix through history by drawing on South Australian housing policy and the Salisbury North housing estate as a specific case study of social mix in practice. The aim is to show how the concept of social mix is constructed differently over time and how it has been adapted to the present situation of dealing with concentrations of impoverished residents on public housing estates. The article draws on context, practice, and texts as important variables that help to constitute the meaning of social mix.