“You Got to Remember you Live in Public Housing”: Place‐Making in an American Housing Project

Housing projects in the USA have suffered from stigma and a negative image ever since the first projects were built. An examination of the history of American housing policy can help us to understand this on one level. The strength of the dominant discourse, of housing projects as the last resort for those who fail to be part of mainstream society, is reflected in the fact that the mental geography among residents and outsiders of “The Ghetto”, a small housing project in an otherwise mixed neighbourhood in New Haven, CT, USA, is one of a “fucking depressing” place one would rather not be. This paper discusses how this stigma developed, why residents incorporate this image and the low status of their neighbourhood into their accounts of what the place where they live is like, and what problems this causes. In particular, it addresses the issues of the absence of neighbourhood attachment as place attachment, even though residents “do community” all the time, and the consequences of the lack of place attachments for bringing neighbours together to get things done. It uses Charles Tilly's theory of durable inequality, especially his concept of “emulation”, to reflect theoretically on the connection between place attachment, stigma and wider social structures in which people's life projects are embedded. The paper shows that, in contrast to what urban policy‐makers might like to see, residents refuse to engage with their neighbourhood, as attaching themselves through neighbourhood action to “the community” would imply a recognition that they are in fact the type of person the projects are “meant” for in the dominant discourse of subsidized housing; losers with whom no‐one wants to identify or be identified.