mixplace is an experiment in the Mantua neighborhood of West Philadelphia that brings together non-profit organizations to develop new approaches to housing and public culture.

The mixplace project developed from the basic idea that housing is more than static units for rent or ownership. Housing can be understood as an economic and social engine that amplifies the role of communities in producing alternative forms of affordability, sociability, and definitions of property. The recent economic downturn, and in particular the housing mortgage crisis, suggests that current approaches to home ownership in disenfranchised neighborhoods are not sustainable. Our very understanding of ownership must be redefined: it must be better integrated through micro infrastructures and spaces supporting social services and cultural and pedagogical programming. It is from supposedly marginal parcels and communities that new and informal economies and practices can be produced.

Download the Flash Player The frame structure depicted here will be built in phases, in response to community needs and to minimize start-up costs.

Housing is about more than just shelter: it is about the people who live here in Philadelphia in neighborhoods such as Belmont and Mantua, which experience poverty rates well above the city's average of 19%, which is already the highest among the ten largest US cities. Philadelphia is a city of 1.4 million that has been struggling economically since the near total loss of its manufacturing base decades ago. Our level of unemployment exceeds the national average, and the city's education system is in shambles. The high-school dropout rate is the second highest among large US cities. The digital divide is great as well--roughly half of Philadelphia residents lack a computer or home Internet access. The pursuit of stability in affordable housing will only be effective if it is accompanied by efforts to remedy these problems. From this perspective, rhetoric about environmental sustainability and green urbanism only camouflages larger problems involving public policy and consumer tendencies that remain relatively unchanged. Advances in environmental sustainability will only be meaningful if they are accompanied by a radical questioning of existing approaches to development, and transformations in the existing political and economic frameworks. We believe that a new paradigm can be encouraged, where social programs intersecting with diverse ways of living and alternative housing economies produce new designs for affordable housing. We believe that instead of adapting social programs to generic spaces, social programs can have an impact in shaping space.