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Public housing has been on the chopping block for almost two decades now in an effort to deconcentrate poverty. In 1992 the federal government created the Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE) VI program. HOPE VI is driven by the assumption that deconcentrating neighborhood‐level poverty will yield better access to upward mobility opportunities for former public housing residents. To accomplish this, existing public housing is demolished and replaced with mixed‐income developments. Public housing residents are relocated, many with Housing Choice Voucher subsidies to private‐market rental housing. However, by its very definition mixed income means that only a small percentage of former residents get the opportunity to return. Do voucher relocated residents end up in lower poverty neighborhoods with greater upward mobility opportunities? We examine the spatial organization of relocation within the critical discourse on the deconcentration imperative. We highlight Atlanta because it recently became the first city in the nation to eliminate all of its public housing. Findings reveal that voucher relocatees end up in neighborhoods with modestly less poverty than the public housing neighborhoods they left. Questions remain about what poverty deconcentration means vis‐à‐vis policy goals. We provide recommendations for future research.

Many cities in the United States are pursuing agendas to implement ICT-based solutions to tackle urban challenges, thus achieving the 'smart city' label. While the discussion on this urban development paradigm has revolved around the intensive use of technologies, the academic literature increasingly calls for shifting the focus to the people living in the cities. This paper argues that to achieve a people-centered smart city, cities should include the perspectives of all the local stakeholders. Under this assumption, this paper provides the views of the local stakeholders in a medium-sized city in Tennessee, Chattanooga. Particularly, this study explores their perceived smart city concept, the ethical standards that should guide smart city projects, the desired future projects in their community, and the barriers to implementing them. The data was collected using a combination of participatory budgeting, five focus groups, and twenty-eight interviews with city dwellers, entrepreneurs, university faculty, non-profit members, and government officials. The results suggest that, far from the image of a highly technological city, the stakeholders' envision a city dedicated to improving the quality of life and environmental sustainability. Furthermore, to achieve this smart city, the projects need to be based on full transparency and the promotion of social inclusion. In contrast to the dominant trend towards the privatization of urban space, this study finds that the stakeholders prefer public based smart city projects such as ICT-based public transport services. However, its successful implementation will have to overcome the barriers caused by funding constraints, public acceptance, and political interests. Cities may use the results of this study to design more responsible smart city projects that strike an optimal point between citizen engagement and technological applications and innovations while supporting all stakeholders' needs.

The terms urban restructuring and growth are political economy terms meant to signify positive recreation of urban space within the urban imaginary. While this idea may actually produce positive benefits for some, the urban restructuring products like urban renewal for low-income people of color, have come to represent the way in which inequality is spatially articulated in the urban landscape. Using the city of Atlanta as a case study, four examples of urban restructuring in the last century is explored to further this argument: segregation and zoning (1913–1931); The Downtown Connector (1946–1950); Federal Urban Renewal (1950's – 1960's); and the 1996 Summer Olympics (1990–1996). Here, I will discuss how power and capital interact with race and class to determine how these restructuring projects differentially affect spatial arrangements along class and racial lines in Atlanta. In doing so, the article will consider how urban restructuring has been a mechanism of power by the state and the private sector to advance capitalists interests of growth and profit, and while also to achieving goals of racial and class segregation, thereby displacing low-income people, often of color, with little to no access to power in order to advance their own economic interests.

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