Abstract
In the United States, the aspiration to homeownership, as a personal achievement and as a goal of social mobility, has lent itself to a collective bypartisan narrative fueled for almost a century by federal policies in support of affordable housing and local development programs ruled by public-private partnerships. From the early Sixties onwards the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has moved away from huge urban renewal activities justified by decay yet spurred by profit expectations, towards more people-oriented and path-dependent regeneration initiatives. The longstanding approach of cities such as Boston and San Diego frames both economic and social partnerships within planning and governance tools. Terms such as empowerment, inclusiveness, capacity building, highlight the work on communities and with communities within the interplay among housing policies, job creation, and business support. More in depth, these notions reveal an anthropological trait of the American people rooted in the dimension of freedom rather than in the domain of rights.
