The focus of this paper is different as it deals with the mobility of the households displaced by the urban restructuring process. The displaced households have found alternative (affordable) housing has not received much attention at least in the Netherlands. The policy of urban restructuring aims to diminish the spatial concentrations of low income households in specific neighborhoods. urban renewal areas already contained an over-representation of low-income households, the policy resulted in the stabilization of the concentrations and many middle class households had also kept on living in subsidized housing, contributing to a situation of misappropriation of subsidies . The policy did bring about a gradual shift in the tenure pattern.

Numerous studies have been devoted to documenting the shifting patterns of ethnic segregation in the cities of the Netherlands during the past few decades. But an analysis of residential mobility that would reveal the mechanisms of change has rarely been included. In this paper such household mobility is studied against the background of the current urban restructuring policy. This policy consists of the selective demolition of inexpensive rented housing and the construction of homeowner dwellings in its stead, leading to changes in the social make-up of neighborhoods.

The change is caused by the displacement of ethnic and other low-income households, the result of their decisions how to use the incentives to move offered by the policy. Thus, this paper deals with the question how urban restructuring affects segregation patterns. Ethnic and socioeconomic variables are at the core of the analysis. The outcome is that while the social make-up of neighborhoods is altered, and low-income households shift in space, the displacement does not contribute to desegregation.