This thesis explores Chicago Public Housing in the period between 1940 and 1960 through analyzing the experience of its white residents. It finds that CHA housing served as a uniquely positive inter-ethnic mixing space in an era of conflict, that white property owners seemed more opposed to integration than white public housing residents, and reinforces the idea the later explosion of black residents in public housing was due to racial inequality than overtly racist decision making. This work adds to and critiques others in the field such as Hirsch's "Making the Second Ghetto" and William Bradford Hunt's "Blueprint for Disaster."
Samuel Edmundson (2024) studied this question.