balanced neighbourhood

A neighbourhood which contains groups from all levels of society. Such a neighbourhood does not usually occur spontaneously and has to be planned, usually in order to counteract the processes of social segregation; Uttermark (2003) Urb. Studs. 40, 3 concludes that planning balanced neighbourhoods in the Netherlands mitigates the problematic integration of ethnic minorities, but Tunstall (2003) Housing Theory & Soc. 20, 3 thinks that the UK policy of ‘tenure mix’ ‘appears to have been used as a euphemism, initially for privatisation and latterly, for ‘social mix’.