Joel Kotkin has a new piece out in the Daily Beast repeating his now well-worn shtick on the unqualified preference for single-family homes for the majority of Americans and the defeat of tyrannical "retro-urbanists" who want to impose an urban lifestyle on innocent Americans. The thing with Kotkin is that I can't disagree with him on some really basic facts, but like Randal O'Toole (who's vociferous criticism of transit boondoggles like Portland's Streetcar are fairly spot on) he has such a visceral hatred for planning and the city represents that it drowns out decent points. And because he's so hell-bent on taking down folks like Richard Florida and the entire field of urban planning, he loves to stretch arguments out too far and basically turns into one of many trolls we find with an outsized voice. A few reasons why we should ignore 90% of what Kotkin ever says (while keeping the last 10%)...
Suburbs are growing but not all suburbs are the same...
Kotkin is entirely correct when he talks about consumer preferences for "suburban" living. Ignoring the idea that the "preference" for certain suburban living may be partially constructed due to marketing and that we have subsidized suburban construction while neglecting the upkeep of our central urban areas, it's not unreasonable to recognize that a lot of people would like a single-family home of their own. But this assumes a rather uniform style of suburban development.
Look, not all suburbs are the same, just as not all cities are the same. Urban oriented commentators don't pretend that Houston and New York are the same thing even though they're both large cities and central to their MSAs. We recognize that they have dramatically different forms but still call them "cities". Kotkin, like other "pro"-density urbanists are falling into a rhetorical trap here that seeks to impose one manner of development on a highly heterogeneous array of settlement patterns. The fact is that there is no clean break between the "suburb" and the "city". Yes, we've seen massive sprawl over the past 60 years but we are also seeing a return not only to the "city" but also to inner-ring suburbs and a densification of suburban areas through the development of edge cities and other areas. Frankly, the development of suburbia is much more complex than an undifferentiated spread of cul-de-sac fueled development.
We really don't try to house everyone in the city who'd like to be...
Probably the most egregious set of comments in the piece that best show Kotkin's disdain for planners and really for poorer folks, in general. Here's the quote:
Suburbs have never been popular with the chattering classes, whose members tend to cluster in a handful of denser, urban communities—and who tend to assume that place shapes behavior, so that if others are pushed to live in these communities they will also behave in a more enlightened fashion, like the chatterers. This is a fallacy with a long pedigree in planning circles, going back to the housing projects of the 1940s, which were built in no small part on the evidently absurd, and eventually discredited, assumption that if the poor had the same sort of housing stock as the rich, they would behave in the same ways.
Yes, planning has a dark history around environmental determinism and assuming physical planning tools will instantly solve social problems through either disciplining a population or demonstrating a better way of living through design. But this is a total mischaracterization of the push for greater access to housing in cities and pathologizes the poor in a way that is, frankly, indefensible. The fact is that since before the 1940s, going all the way to back to slum and tenement reform programs, planners, public health advocates, social workers, labor unions, and neighborhood groups have called for more housing in urban areas that was not hopelessly deteriorated and ill-maintained. That call still goes on today. The fact is that because this country doesn't actually have a coherent affordable housing policy the poor have consistently lived in older, more dilapidated housing stock. The recent observations around the "suburbanization of poverty" only reinforce this idea as poorer folks have moved into poorer, older inner ring suburbs who's housing stock is quickly approaching obsolescence.
The fact is that this country still does not make legitimate attempts to integrate its population with each other, preferring to let segregation by income and race be dominant factors in settlement patterns and relying on housing "filtering" to substitute for building good housing for all. It's dishonest for Kotkin to not even engage with this and its patently offensive that he'd sit there and just say that poor people can't have nice housing.
Supply
Kotkin adamantly refuses to address the question of the supply of housing because it adds a wrinkle of complexity and ambiguity to the argument and that is what are the primary motivations that push or pull people to the suburbs. Yes, it is widely recognized that construction of suburbs and even exurban areas is starting to recover and that we saw a massive bit of building before the recession. But why were builders building out in the suburbs at such high rates?
Consumer preference for suburban living is certainly a large part of this. But we must also simultaneously recognize that it is still incredibly difficult to build housing in urban areas. This is an area where I fall with many market-oriented urban planners and economists who decry density restrictions in many of our growing cities. There is a real push of potential development outside of our city borders because it is not possible for developers to make any money off of relatively low-density development in already built up areas. Combine that with a non-existent social housing policy and there are very few people building any units in our cities that are accessible to folks of all income classes. The result is that a lot of housing development goes to cheaper pastures and people follow that.
A similar idea must be broached when we discuss "job sprawl". Kotkin, correctly so, points out that job growth has been and continues to grow outward and that people are moving to follow, but the same questions regarding housing supply are open here. Job sprawl has been a constant thing in American cities for nearly 70 years. Detroit had to deal with the suburbanization of industry back in the 1940s and was never able to adequately recover its lost central city industrial sites, much to the chagrin of its planners. But the question here, again, is who leads this? In the case of Detroit, at least, according to "Redevelopment and Race" by June Manning Thomas, industry lead the way in suburbanization and residential suburbs grew up in response to industrial decentralization. Frankly, the dynamics of regional expansion are never so neat as to simply ascribe consumer residential preference as the primary factor. We see waves of decentralization, some industry led, then residential, then industry...there are cycles and historical contexts to suburbanization that call into question the assumptions we have about the preference for them (on both sides of this "debate").
"Lifestyle" and the kid question...
My friend and colleague, @tressiemcphd, made a sharp observation about this Kotkin piece. She said that probably the biggest blindspot urbanists have is that kids change everything. Her point, for my urbanist colleagues who may not see it, is that even if we take all of the celebratory commentary of the "return to the city" and the preference for urban living by millenials, that all changes when these millenials reproduce.Let's be real for a second....people want the best for their kids. Because people want the best for their kids they will often do their utmost to provide that, including moving from cities to the 'burbs. The point is not to question the values of these folks but to see why they feel it is necessary to move out of our cities. Some things we can't really do much about, like guaranteeing a big yard for everyone in the central city. We simply don't have the space and the vast majority of folks couldn't afford a house with such an amenity in most cities anyway. But a major reason why people do move is the schools and perception of safety. These are things city-leaders can, and admittedly are trying, to address. But uncritical urbanists will continue to be mystified by demographic and economic trends that show a robust demand for increasingly segregated suburbs if they don't start seriously examining the schools.
The trick here is to actually try to provide folks with the services necessary for them to live and grow without them leaving. It's especially grating that this concern is now being taken up by the usually design and development-oriented urbanist set because they don't want to lose the precious millenial population they believe makes up their cities while ignoring the millions of poor and working class, largely minority, communities that have clamored for better schools for years. All of this is to say that Kotkin is right to point out lifestyle preferences as driving residential choices, but we should be seriously asking ourselves what people find in some suburbs as opposed to central cities or denser areas of our metros?
To Conclude: On the one hand...
All of this space has been to try and say that, as with most things involving human settlement, the "truth" is much more complicated than either Kotkin or some non-reflective urbanists would have us believe. Last year I wrote a piece warning people that the vaunted "Death of Sprawl" was grossly immature and largely based on folks not moving as much due to the economic recession and a misunderstanding of the census designation of "urban areas". My point then is the same way I have now except I now aim it both at doctrinaire urbanists and trolls like Kotkin. And that is always to show me the data and give me a good theory to help explain it. Though Kotkin mocks many urbanist commentators, he suffers from the same weakness they do, creating a convenient narrative from cherry-picked data. The competing narratives are basically the same in that they both ascribe a near-universal qualitative preference for either city-living or suburban-living. Neither theory is correct or even widely applicable in most cases.
So, on the one hand, Kotkin is a troll. On the other hand, he makes some good points that planners and some urbanists absolutely have to think about. But on the other-other hand, both sides tend to ignore or gloss over the heterogeneity of our urban areas and both sides often don't try to parse out the push and pull factors that operate differently in many of our regions. This "debate" could be more fruitful if everyone were just more honest and recognized not only the messiness of the real world, but stopped trying to fit one solution onto everyone else. Suburbia is not the answer. But neither is the "city". I am close to rejecting the entire discussion because we have drawn a too-sharp, false distinction between the two that not only limits our own imagination on how to deal with our increasingly unruly regions, but it also does not accurately reflect the current dynamism and differentiation that exists in our metro regions.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Don't Weep for Richard Florida
I was not going to write on the recent spate of critical articles targeting Richard Florida and his creative class theory/evangelism because, frankly, the arguments are not very compelling and they recycle (poorly) the critiques of economic geographers and planning scholars from the early 2000s. I have always been clear on my distaste for Florida's creative class thesis and its perverse politics, but a recent article at Rustwire has forced me to respond.
The gist of the Rustwire post is that current attacks on Florida are overblown for the following reasons:
1. Florida never claimed to be a poverty researcher therefore we should not attack his theory if it doesn't alleviate poverty.
2. There is only one recent study that challenges the benefits of creative class development and it does not focus on the other potential benefits of "talent agglomeration" on the poor and that the empirical evidence on “talent agglomeration” is well supported.
3. Economic development policy was largely restricted to ineffective industrial attraction schemes and Florida changed the game up (a policy disruptive or paradigm shifting argument)
4. Florida's detractors are playing a cynical "class resentment" game
5. Florida's ideas are based on the benign wish to make cities "inviting" places to live.
I shall try to respond to these reasons in a relatively concise fashion in order to show why these reasons are not only foolish, but just an apologia for current urban development trends that many scholars and commenters, including yours truly on this blog and in other outlets, have critiqued harshly for exacerbating the worst excesses of American social inequity.
Florida never claimed to be a poverty researcher...
This may be the weakest argument of the list because it is the least accurate and relevant. I say least accurate because it would be rude to call it dishonest. Yes, if we take Richard Florida's direct quotes as gospel, then MAYBE you can claim that he has never positioned himself as a “poverty researcher” but this would favor a narrow set of statements against a decade of actions that clearly demonstrate the opposite.
Florida has spent the better part of a decade traveling around the country, and the world, advising city leaders on the benefits of a “talent attraction” strategy. A unique sub-class of cities he's visited, at least in the US? Declining Rust Belt cities. This 2009 article from the American Prospect gives only a very small sample of cities Florida advised: Baltimore, Youngstown, Cleveland, Toledo, Des Moines, Roanoke etc...Florida may not sell himself as a “poverty researcher” but many of the cities that he has consulted, at great personal profit, have huge impoverished populations and economic development policy is poverty alleviation policy. Claiming Florida never willingly took on the formal title is absurd on the face of it. You do not go to Youngstown or comment on Detroit or any number of smaller, declining cities and pretend that you aren't talking about poverty because these cities are largely defined by entrenched poverty.
Evidence on “Talent Agglomeration” and its Benefits
This critique is more subtle, and potentially legitimate, but it rests upon an ignorance of the body of work that not only precedes Florida's creative class thesis (itself a repackaging of human capital economic theory) but the large body of theoretical and empirical work developed in the past decade that support and challenge Florida's conclusions. This is largely academic, but this is an example where academic arguments and social science processes are incredibly important because Florida's approach to urban policy is the dominant policy framing of the day.
Empirically there is still an open question as to whether Florida's creative class thesis is correct (some recent papers here, here, and here demonstrate the rather mixed results of the thesis). I'm gonna get a little in the weeds here but only to demonstrate that the evidence for the creative class thesis is decidedly mixed and that part of the reason for the mixed results is that the creative class is a sub-theory of human capital theory and is not well operationalized. Simply put, human capital theory states that long term economic growth is possible thanks to the increasing returns of scale due to human knowledge. Knowledge is unique in that is inexhaustible and can combined and recombined in an infinite array. Policies built around human capital theory include subsidies for R&D, subsidizing eduation for city or regional residents, or even technological outreach programs and extension programs.
Florida goes beyond the basic human growth theory and traditional policy programs built around human capital theory. His defintion of “creatives” as those who add economic value to a city is a large step from human capital theory and he goes even further by focusing upon a set of occupations he dubs “creative” as essential to economic growth. Human capital theory is relatively agnostic on certain occupations and certainly does not posit direct growth measures to a specific set of occupations or attempts to link growth due to “creativity”. In addition, Florida also posits that the co-location of “creatives” is adequate to enable economic growth. This differs from other innovation or human capital theories that focus upon the interplay of the co-location of educated people and institutional forms necessary to convert their ideas into products. This is a little nitpicky, but it is important because it frames the decisions city leaders make and the infrastructure they decide to invest in. Basically, the creative class is an extension (some would say an overly ambitious extension) of human capital theory but it is empirically ambiguous due to the fact that there is a large overlap between variables used to measure traditional human capital variables and those that measure the creative class. This is an important point because the policy implications between following a more traditional human capital approach and a creative attraction approach are drastically different. Again, and I can't repeat this enough, human capital theory is a largely recognized and tested theoretical approach but the evidence for economic growth due to the co-location of “creatives” and basic policy around attracting these creatives through forming a portfolio of attractive urban amenities is not remotely settled. (For more on this please read this excellent review by Scott and Storper).
Economic Development was only concerned with industrial attraction before Florida showed us the light
This observation is one that is simply incorrect. Economic development policy has indeed by dominated by industrial attraction (and it still goes on, much to my chagrin) but industrial attraction and convention center construction are considered pretty old school economic development techniques that practicing economic developers. I won't go into deep detail on the history of economic development but there is an absolutely essential paper on by Bradshaw and Blakely. This paper (from 1999, by the way) talked about current economic development policy, at the time, being focused not on industrial attraction but the use of public-private partnerships, industrial clusters, human resources and human capital strategies, and is characterized by state governments moving away from expensive incentive programs and focusing uponbuilding strategic advantages within industrial clusters. This is a paper from 1999 and shows economic development practice, even then, was dynamic, imaginative and had moved beyond industry and convention center attraction as a primary form of economic development policy. Florida certainly helped to switch the economic development game up but to say economic development policy was still primarily promoting policies that were largely sidelined over a decade ago is either incredibly sloppy or dishonest.
CLASS WAR!!
Frankly, this argument is pure neoliberal, trickled-down economics. Thirty years of local, state and federal policies that have favored the interests of economic and political elites have shown us that simply assuming that the success of one group will help others is wrong. Amenity-based development, “placemaking” projects, the varied accoutrements of the sustainable city like farmers markets and bike infrastructure, the intense redevelopment of central cities, the conversion of industrial land, and any other array of city or regional policy decisions and priorities are NOT value neutral or apolitical and have a disparate impact on city populations.. Let me repeat: city and regional policy decisions and priorities are NOT value neutral or apolitical and have a disparate impact on city populations. The way many of these policies have been rolled out in American cities have seeded and exacerbated displacement, gentrification, housing affordability crises, and increased income inequality. To say that the interests of “creatives” and the poor or communities of color implies an overlap that in many cities simply does not exist. There are legitimate trad off decisions and real winners and losers when it comes to policy and planning decisions and we should honestly interrogate the disparate impacts of amenity-based planning strategies instead of effacing the real conflicts and decisions that undergird creative class policy.
He wants livable cities, though!
This argument is a good intentions argument. I'll be honest, I don't care if Richard Florida wants livable cities. If his concept of the livable city is synonomous with the creative city, then he can have it. Livability, like his own version of creativity, are not immune from political challenge or analytical critique. If livability is dependent upon the displacement of poor people and communities of color, then I will fight livability as it is presented with every fiber of my being and any planner or urbanist who is concered with social justice should be skeptical of livability discourse claims that do not deal with poverty or social inequality explicitly. The risk of perpetuating already incredibly unequal social relations is simply to great.
Don't weep...
Richard Florida is still one of the most influential urban thinkers in the world. Whether you agree with his theories and policy recommendations or not, his influence is absolutely undeniable. He dramatically changed how planners and economic developers plan and set policy and has made an ungodly amount of money from consulting, writing multiple bestsellers, and his own research center at the University of Toronto. This current “backlash” may be unfair or biased in some instances (Kotkin's critique is based on a visceral hatred of cities and astrong aversion to planning), but Florida's work needs to be tested and critiqued. The empirical weakness of his conclusions should be shouted from the rooftops because planners set their policies based on unfounded claims. The political questions around creative class planning should be challenged because they have helped to accelerate displacement of poor communities around the country and shift city government priorities away from poverty alleviation to amenity development. So, don't weep for Richard Florida. Ask wy there's such a backlash in the first place.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Austerity Planning? Land Sell-Off in NYC
A recent article in the New York Times caught my eye. The article describes the conversion of a series of public-properties, primarily old libraries and schools, into new residential towers that would include replacement space for the lost civic institutions. I don't wish to get into the disruption of students' lives or the fact that existing neighborhoods will be without convenient library services, in some cases, for multiple years. These are quite serious impacts and should not be ignored, but there are many better education and library writers who could probably do justice to those topics.
What I am intrigued about is the approach certain offices in the city are taking-selling city land to the highest bidder for repair or renovation costs. There are a LOT of overlapping factors here that I have neither the time not the skill to fully delve into but I think we should question a second as to why it is necessary for these sites to be sold. For example, the schools that are being sold off are managed by the Educational Construction Fund. The Fund, since the 1960s, has been tasked with developing new school space through mixed-use development to help support construction. The Fund has done this primarily through the issuing of bonds and leasing the land to developers. The Fund has a variety of projects listed on its page, although many seem to be older than ten years old.
I think the next question to be made here, at least in the case of Fund, is why the desire to sell-off these properties? This especially confusing when the city's Housing Authority is leasing land on existing parking lots to new residential developers to the tune of $60 million.
The city is approaching this question of redevelopment, renovation, and amenity provision in a variety of ways, but I am incredibly curious as to why the Fund, an organization with a history of leasing and bond management, has decided to sell off this land, thus losing any claim to future gains land value and control? I could not find details on the contracts between the Fund and these developers, but I am always concerned with the sell-off of public amenities, especially during times of fiscal distress/austerity. It's quite clear that NYC's libraries and schools are hurting for revenue, but the sell off of precious assets to act as one-time payments does absolutely nothing to fix the structural funding gap that exists. Since the late 1970s/early 1980s the sell off of public assets has been a central strategy that cities and nations have made in the face of structural adjustment programs imposed by financial institutions like the WorldBank. Of course, the most famous example in the US may have been Ford's mythical declaration to New York City to "Drop Dead" in 1975 when NYC was on the verge of defaulting. While Ford eventually got Congress to approve a set of federal loans to the city, the repayment of those loans involved a series of painful cuts to city services including the imposition of fees on what was once the free CUNY system. We see a similar set of events now in Detroit with the imposition of a state emergency manager to tame the city's debt. The expectation, of course, being that Detroit will see even more cuts on worker pay, available city services like fire and police, and the potential sell-off of public assets.
This is not to defend the mismanagement of city finances, but to point out that varied financial crises both domestic and abroad have been used as a way for the private sector to extract huge gains at the expense of the public sector. We should not question the efforts of cities to raise more funds to meet their financial and social obligations but we should look at the policies that cities choose to get there. Selling off land, even with a promise to rebuild the library, should be seriously analysed, especially given the strong history and ability of the city to lease land to interested developers and more fully recoup gains on land redevelopment.
The overriding question in all of this should be what is the actual problem these varied city agencies are trying to solve? If the city feels its landholdings are legitimately bloated, then selling some properties for a high return can be a solid strategy. But in the case of a persistent, structural funding gap, like in the case of the libraries and schools, it is irrational to sell off assets as a primary means of funding. What they need is a consistent stream of funding that will cover renovations and repairs and that can only be handled through policy that increases funding in order to cover capital costs or it could be done through a longer-term leasing arrangement that the schools and libraries could draw from and set up vehicles for consistent capital cost financing.
I am not privy to the political and financial dealings of the varied New York City agencies, but this current path that the schools and libraries are on seems terribly short-sighted. Only time will tell us whether this strategy will help make these agencies more solvent and support the surrounding communities.
What I am intrigued about is the approach certain offices in the city are taking-selling city land to the highest bidder for repair or renovation costs. There are a LOT of overlapping factors here that I have neither the time not the skill to fully delve into but I think we should question a second as to why it is necessary for these sites to be sold. For example, the schools that are being sold off are managed by the Educational Construction Fund. The Fund, since the 1960s, has been tasked with developing new school space through mixed-use development to help support construction. The Fund has done this primarily through the issuing of bonds and leasing the land to developers. The Fund has a variety of projects listed on its page, although many seem to be older than ten years old.
I think the next question to be made here, at least in the case of Fund, is why the desire to sell-off these properties? This especially confusing when the city's Housing Authority is leasing land on existing parking lots to new residential developers to the tune of $60 million.
The city is approaching this question of redevelopment, renovation, and amenity provision in a variety of ways, but I am incredibly curious as to why the Fund, an organization with a history of leasing and bond management, has decided to sell off this land, thus losing any claim to future gains land value and control? I could not find details on the contracts between the Fund and these developers, but I am always concerned with the sell-off of public amenities, especially during times of fiscal distress/austerity. It's quite clear that NYC's libraries and schools are hurting for revenue, but the sell off of precious assets to act as one-time payments does absolutely nothing to fix the structural funding gap that exists. Since the late 1970s/early 1980s the sell off of public assets has been a central strategy that cities and nations have made in the face of structural adjustment programs imposed by financial institutions like the WorldBank. Of course, the most famous example in the US may have been Ford's mythical declaration to New York City to "Drop Dead" in 1975 when NYC was on the verge of defaulting. While Ford eventually got Congress to approve a set of federal loans to the city, the repayment of those loans involved a series of painful cuts to city services including the imposition of fees on what was once the free CUNY system. We see a similar set of events now in Detroit with the imposition of a state emergency manager to tame the city's debt. The expectation, of course, being that Detroit will see even more cuts on worker pay, available city services like fire and police, and the potential sell-off of public assets.
This is not to defend the mismanagement of city finances, but to point out that varied financial crises both domestic and abroad have been used as a way for the private sector to extract huge gains at the expense of the public sector. We should not question the efforts of cities to raise more funds to meet their financial and social obligations but we should look at the policies that cities choose to get there. Selling off land, even with a promise to rebuild the library, should be seriously analysed, especially given the strong history and ability of the city to lease land to interested developers and more fully recoup gains on land redevelopment.
The overriding question in all of this should be what is the actual problem these varied city agencies are trying to solve? If the city feels its landholdings are legitimately bloated, then selling some properties for a high return can be a solid strategy. But in the case of a persistent, structural funding gap, like in the case of the libraries and schools, it is irrational to sell off assets as a primary means of funding. What they need is a consistent stream of funding that will cover renovations and repairs and that can only be handled through policy that increases funding in order to cover capital costs or it could be done through a longer-term leasing arrangement that the schools and libraries could draw from and set up vehicles for consistent capital cost financing.
I am not privy to the political and financial dealings of the varied New York City agencies, but this current path that the schools and libraries are on seems terribly short-sighted. Only time will tell us whether this strategy will help make these agencies more solvent and support the surrounding communities.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Gentrification is a dirty word...as it should be
The title of this piece is borrowed from Neil Smith's The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City where he tracks the spread of gentrification across New York, particularly the Lower East Side from the late 80s to the early 90s. He talks about the political, cultural, and economic aspects that drive gentrification and gives a strong critique of the forces that wipe the working class and poor from our cities.
Smith interrogates the policies of New York, from anti-homeless campaigns designed to sanitize certain neighborhoods for developers seeking "safe" neighborhoods for investment, to the subsidization of major luxury developments against the wishes of community groups and activists. He even draws upon the way development interests use art, from galleries and artist housing, as development beachheads, preparing target neighborhoods for further development by creating new edgy, trendy arts districts in former no-go zones for the well off.
The central lesson of this and other more radical critiques of gentrification is that none of this is accidental or "natural". Cities put policies in place to encourage development while ignoring the needs of existing residents. Developers systematically target neighborhoods and engage in a variety of tactics to encourage landlords to sell and to remove residents from target buildings. These are explicit strategies that are geared towards one thing- profit maximization.
This is why articles like this from The New Republic are incredibly problematic. The author laments the kind of social cleansing that is part and parcel of the gentrification process but then throws up her hands and simply walks away confused but not troubled by the apparent irony of the situation. Never does she ask the question as to why city redevelopment must inevitably lead to gentrification. In fact, the author conflates the two. It is truly sad that many of our urban commentators, from professors to practitioners, assume that gentrification is the only way to redevelop our cities. Such sentiment is best encapsulated by the false binary choice that many commentators offer where they posit that the only alternative to gentrification was the continued disinvestment and crime that characterized these neighborhoods before redevelopment. Never is the question of redevelopment without displacement ever seriously addressed. The reason for this, as these commentators know but hate to admit, is that these projects are rarely, if ever, actually about helping poorer residents escape poverty as opposed to filling up city coffers with fresh tax expenditures and encouraging more consumption by new residents. We can debate over whether this is a legitimate goal of cities, but before we can debate it we have to at least be honest about how cities have approached the questions of redevelopment and revitalization.
Unfortunately, the current mainstream commentary and even academic discourse around gentrification has largely moved away from the trenchant, unapologetic critiques embodied by Smith's work in the 90s. In a 2006 piece, "The Eviction of Critical Perspectives from Gentrification Research" (hat tip to my man RJ for this piece) , Tom Slater tracked the abandonment of more radical critiques of gentrification and the rise of gentrification research pieces that rejected materialist critiques gentrification and instead pushed an "emancipatory discourse" of gentrification. This discourse focused on the return of middle classes to the city as a rejection of suburban drudgery and monotony. This, of course, is the dominant discourse around the boosterish nature of urban development commentary today as lead by established scholar/consultants like Richard Florida of "creative class" fame and relative newcomers like Mike Lydon and his "tactical urbanism". Both commentators represent the kind of thinking that many mainstream urban commentators engage in that celebrate the "return to cities" by young, creative professionals and ignore the lived experience of poorer and working class folks.
Why does this matter? It matters because our cities, like the rest of the country, have become increasingly unequal. Income inequality has increased, poverty remains stubbornly high as well as heavily racialized and gendered (the rates of poverty among single mothers of ALL races is a national tragedy) and these factors are further compounded due to their spatial organization. It is not that people are poorer but that the poor are increasingly concentrated in smaller areas of our cities and in some cases pushed out. If we truly care about addressing profound social inequity as part of a greater call for a more inclusive, humane, and sustainable society, then we must forcefully reject the assumptions that dominate our popular understanding of urban redevelopment and gentrification. We cannot blindly celebrate the "return to the city" and the role of young urban, creatives in this urban renaissance without questioning who wins and who loses in this new equation. Recent articles, like this piece from Susie Cagle in Grist, are a great way for those of us who care about a holistic conception of sustainability to challenge the inequitable, and ultimately sustainable, development of our cities.
Smith interrogates the policies of New York, from anti-homeless campaigns designed to sanitize certain neighborhoods for developers seeking "safe" neighborhoods for investment, to the subsidization of major luxury developments against the wishes of community groups and activists. He even draws upon the way development interests use art, from galleries and artist housing, as development beachheads, preparing target neighborhoods for further development by creating new edgy, trendy arts districts in former no-go zones for the well off.
The central lesson of this and other more radical critiques of gentrification is that none of this is accidental or "natural". Cities put policies in place to encourage development while ignoring the needs of existing residents. Developers systematically target neighborhoods and engage in a variety of tactics to encourage landlords to sell and to remove residents from target buildings. These are explicit strategies that are geared towards one thing- profit maximization.
This is why articles like this from The New Republic are incredibly problematic. The author laments the kind of social cleansing that is part and parcel of the gentrification process but then throws up her hands and simply walks away confused but not troubled by the apparent irony of the situation. Never does she ask the question as to why city redevelopment must inevitably lead to gentrification. In fact, the author conflates the two. It is truly sad that many of our urban commentators, from professors to practitioners, assume that gentrification is the only way to redevelop our cities. Such sentiment is best encapsulated by the false binary choice that many commentators offer where they posit that the only alternative to gentrification was the continued disinvestment and crime that characterized these neighborhoods before redevelopment. Never is the question of redevelopment without displacement ever seriously addressed. The reason for this, as these commentators know but hate to admit, is that these projects are rarely, if ever, actually about helping poorer residents escape poverty as opposed to filling up city coffers with fresh tax expenditures and encouraging more consumption by new residents. We can debate over whether this is a legitimate goal of cities, but before we can debate it we have to at least be honest about how cities have approached the questions of redevelopment and revitalization.
Unfortunately, the current mainstream commentary and even academic discourse around gentrification has largely moved away from the trenchant, unapologetic critiques embodied by Smith's work in the 90s. In a 2006 piece, "The Eviction of Critical Perspectives from Gentrification Research" (hat tip to my man RJ for this piece) , Tom Slater tracked the abandonment of more radical critiques of gentrification and the rise of gentrification research pieces that rejected materialist critiques gentrification and instead pushed an "emancipatory discourse" of gentrification. This discourse focused on the return of middle classes to the city as a rejection of suburban drudgery and monotony. This, of course, is the dominant discourse around the boosterish nature of urban development commentary today as lead by established scholar/consultants like Richard Florida of "creative class" fame and relative newcomers like Mike Lydon and his "tactical urbanism". Both commentators represent the kind of thinking that many mainstream urban commentators engage in that celebrate the "return to cities" by young, creative professionals and ignore the lived experience of poorer and working class folks.
Why does this matter? It matters because our cities, like the rest of the country, have become increasingly unequal. Income inequality has increased, poverty remains stubbornly high as well as heavily racialized and gendered (the rates of poverty among single mothers of ALL races is a national tragedy) and these factors are further compounded due to their spatial organization. It is not that people are poorer but that the poor are increasingly concentrated in smaller areas of our cities and in some cases pushed out. If we truly care about addressing profound social inequity as part of a greater call for a more inclusive, humane, and sustainable society, then we must forcefully reject the assumptions that dominate our popular understanding of urban redevelopment and gentrification. We cannot blindly celebrate the "return to the city" and the role of young urban, creatives in this urban renaissance without questioning who wins and who loses in this new equation. Recent articles, like this piece from Susie Cagle in Grist, are a great way for those of us who care about a holistic conception of sustainability to challenge the inequitable, and ultimately sustainable, development of our cities.
Monday, February 11, 2013
The Permanence of Geography
I ran into an interesting article on the magic twitter machine from the Sustainable Cities Collective entitled "The End of Geography". Russel's thesis is that geography, specifically economic geography, no longer matters because,"People develop, not place." His evidence for this is the rise of developing countries, including Turkey and the BRIC nations, and the seeming reverse of their relations with traditional, dominant developed countries like Spain, Germany, or even the US. The reversed flows of people and remittances from the core to the periphery heralds the end of geography and speaks to the dominance of global talent.
This argument selectively picks from a wide range of urban geographical and planning theories, most notably from the global cities work of Saskia Sassen that speaks to the transformed nature of global economic relations from being primarily dominated and directed by nation-states to a collection of powerful city-regions that go into the organization and control of a global economy around the interests of global corporate actors. Within the global city framework we also come to the question of international "talent". This human capital focus is largely influenced by the likes of scholars like Ed Glaeser and Richard Florida that preach the importance of attracting and retaining such talent. This class of professionals are the technically skilled workforce that man the corporate towers of the regional control centers of capital. They are managers, research scientists, human resource specialists, accountants, legal specialists etc that all are focused on better managing the increasing complexity of the global economic system and to manage incredibly complex, deep supply chains that span the globe. This group is different from the vaunted "young creatives" that American urbanism is so enamored with but the two groups are not entirely distinct. The only difference between the global city manager and the "creative professional" is that the "creative professional" couldn't land that big job at Goldman Sachs out of school.
Where Russel moves away from Sassen and from most geographers and planning theorists is in claiming that the reversal of economic fortunes between the developed and developing world signals the end of geography-- the death of space and place. On this I could not more vehemently disagree. We can again turn to Sassen here. While she notes the similarity of many global cities in how they are organized, look, and the social relations that seem to predominate she is adamant in the position that this serves as a "re-territorialization" of global economic relations, not the obliteration of the importance of such territories. The nation-state may play a less central role (the degree to which this is the case, if at all, is still a lively area of debate) in these relations but that does not negate the importance of space or place.
Moving a little beyond Sassen a bit, the thesis that geography no longer matters in light of global talent migration entirely ignores the reason for this global talent demand--the management of a globalized production system that takes advantage of cost and political differences of different places. The existence of global supply chains speaks to the centrality of geography in corporate decision making and strategy. The massive global manufacturing complexes in developing countries until very recently were producing a variety of goods, both finished and intermediate, designed for developed nations' consumption. For example, the dominance of southeast Asian textile production was not simply due to cost differential but the conscious decisions of firms from Western countries to re-locate their production facilities in an attempt to capture cost-reductions and to better control local political conditions in light of labor intransigence and falling profits back home. This shift was only helped by the increased sophistication of transportation and communications technology.
So, while this shift may have signalled the ever-diminishing importance of distance (and with increasing carbon emission concern we may see distance become a more key variable) it actually increased the importance, or better illustrated the yawning difference, between different places. Thus we see the kind of increasing uneven development that is evident between rich and poor countries that is reflected in our own city regions by increases ethnic and income inequality and segregation.
The current rise or durability of the economies of the Global South do not signal that economic geography does not matter, but that current investment has simply shifted. This reversal of fortunes speaks to the incredible opportunism and adaptability of capitalism in light of ongoing crisis. In fact, the observation that there is a difference in economic outcomes that is largely spatially defined speaks to the inherent absurdity of declaring an "end to geography".
This argument selectively picks from a wide range of urban geographical and planning theories, most notably from the global cities work of Saskia Sassen that speaks to the transformed nature of global economic relations from being primarily dominated and directed by nation-states to a collection of powerful city-regions that go into the organization and control of a global economy around the interests of global corporate actors. Within the global city framework we also come to the question of international "talent". This human capital focus is largely influenced by the likes of scholars like Ed Glaeser and Richard Florida that preach the importance of attracting and retaining such talent. This class of professionals are the technically skilled workforce that man the corporate towers of the regional control centers of capital. They are managers, research scientists, human resource specialists, accountants, legal specialists etc that all are focused on better managing the increasing complexity of the global economic system and to manage incredibly complex, deep supply chains that span the globe. This group is different from the vaunted "young creatives" that American urbanism is so enamored with but the two groups are not entirely distinct. The only difference between the global city manager and the "creative professional" is that the "creative professional" couldn't land that big job at Goldman Sachs out of school.
Where Russel moves away from Sassen and from most geographers and planning theorists is in claiming that the reversal of economic fortunes between the developed and developing world signals the end of geography-- the death of space and place. On this I could not more vehemently disagree. We can again turn to Sassen here. While she notes the similarity of many global cities in how they are organized, look, and the social relations that seem to predominate she is adamant in the position that this serves as a "re-territorialization" of global economic relations, not the obliteration of the importance of such territories. The nation-state may play a less central role (the degree to which this is the case, if at all, is still a lively area of debate) in these relations but that does not negate the importance of space or place.
Moving a little beyond Sassen a bit, the thesis that geography no longer matters in light of global talent migration entirely ignores the reason for this global talent demand--the management of a globalized production system that takes advantage of cost and political differences of different places. The existence of global supply chains speaks to the centrality of geography in corporate decision making and strategy. The massive global manufacturing complexes in developing countries until very recently were producing a variety of goods, both finished and intermediate, designed for developed nations' consumption. For example, the dominance of southeast Asian textile production was not simply due to cost differential but the conscious decisions of firms from Western countries to re-locate their production facilities in an attempt to capture cost-reductions and to better control local political conditions in light of labor intransigence and falling profits back home. This shift was only helped by the increased sophistication of transportation and communications technology.
So, while this shift may have signalled the ever-diminishing importance of distance (and with increasing carbon emission concern we may see distance become a more key variable) it actually increased the importance, or better illustrated the yawning difference, between different places. Thus we see the kind of increasing uneven development that is evident between rich and poor countries that is reflected in our own city regions by increases ethnic and income inequality and segregation.
The current rise or durability of the economies of the Global South do not signal that economic geography does not matter, but that current investment has simply shifted. This reversal of fortunes speaks to the incredible opportunism and adaptability of capitalism in light of ongoing crisis. In fact, the observation that there is a difference in economic outcomes that is largely spatially defined speaks to the inherent absurdity of declaring an "end to geography".
Friday, January 4, 2013
When the TL's cross: Wrestling with Black Gentrification Part 2
I wrote earlier this week in response to a piece in Atlantic Cities on the Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago and perceptions of "non-white gentrifying neighborhood". Check that post for the background of the case as I'm going to in a different direction here, but know that the idea was precipitated by that piece and by some timely retweets from @metroadlib and @tnopper (both essential follows), and a challenging post from Kenyon Farrow (@kenyonfarrow).
The post I'm referring to (found here) in response to a Washington City Paper article by a woman reflecting on being a "Black gentrifier". Farrow passionately (and correctly) attacks the notion of gentrification being primarily a notion of "privilege", a term he describes as obscuring or denying issues of underlying racial and economic injustice. But I think his call for a more historical framing of the Black middle and upper classes and their roles as primarily victims of violent displacement and continued racial discrimination (as reflected in household wealth and the fact that Blacks are still unwelcome in many mixed neighborhoods) mean that Blacks cannot be gentrifiers.
It is here where I respectfully disagree, but only to a matter of degree. Citing my earlier definition of gentrification from Neil Smith it is clear the gentrification is intimately tied to displacement and dramatic neighborhood character change. In the case of the fearful "Black gentrifier" in the City Paper column such a concern over displacement and social domination is legitimate. In that particular area, gentrification is a project primarily lead by Back people-- IF there is displacement. As I said in my earlier post, simply bringing new people in or having some neighborhood development redevelopment does not equate to gentrification. I think that if we are to challenge the idea of "Black gentrification" it is not to say that due to historical and current racial discrimination that middle class and upper class Blacks cannot be gentrifiers, but to actually see as to whether we're seeing the kind of wholesale displacement and social domination that accompanies what we commonly understand to be gentrification. I would charge that in the vast majority of situations given the precariousness of the Black middle class and the decimation of household wealth in the past recession that areas of so-called "Black Gentrification" are not gentrifying at all if we are to compare income, household wealth, and displacement risk factors. But that does not mean that Blacks cannot be gentrifiers just that given current socioeconomic contexts there is simply not enough pressure to warrant the label.
Farrow does point to a larger issue of the label and what he calls obsession with the "Black gentrifier" is used as a term that deliberately distracts middle and upper class blacks from the violence visited upon their communities by attempting to shift blame. It's a provocative thought and one that holds a bit of weight. My only counter would be that this is not unique to Black folks but it is a large undercurrent of progressive critique of gentrification and many urban development issues. Gentrification is often separated from larger development decisions and the vagaries of the market and politics of urban development. Gentrification is often referred to or situated as a natural, but unfortunate situation in which the participants have little power. It's grossest form, as cited by Farrow and Tamara Nopper (@tnopper, if you didn't guess), is in the self-serving question of,"where can white people go in the city?" deflecting attention from greater forces that encourage disinvestment then reinvestment and expulsion of blacks and poor people into a framing where gentrifiers can throw up their arms and say it's not their fault. My point is that such narratives are not unique in being leveled at Black people but it has multiple incarnations throughout our cities. Blacks may be more sensitive to such charges and there may be a disproportionate attention paid to it, but that also follows larger media narratives that highlight Blacks' negative issues and portray them as dominant.
In other words, stronger critiques of gentrification are needed, in general, and these narratives are not only leveled at Black people. Although, we make more entertaining targets because the idea of class differentiation within the black community is still wild to many white people. So, I wrote all of this to say that I believe that Black people can indeed be gentrifiers, but that the evidence right now does not point to some new wave of "Black on Black gentrification". But Farrow, Nopper, and other critical race and urbanist scholars are ENTIRELY correct when they note that the way we discuss gentrification and other urban development issues obscures the greater economic and political mechanisms that encourage gentrification, in the first place. These range from disinvestment and abandonment of neighborhoods by city government, intense and concentrated poverty, massive unemployment, large-scale redevelopment dependent upon resident expulsion, and "economic development" strategies built around real-estate development and the expansion of unequal, bifurcated labor markets that turn the poor into the servant class of the preferred "creative" resident.
The post I'm referring to (found here) in response to a Washington City Paper article by a woman reflecting on being a "Black gentrifier". Farrow passionately (and correctly) attacks the notion of gentrification being primarily a notion of "privilege", a term he describes as obscuring or denying issues of underlying racial and economic injustice. But I think his call for a more historical framing of the Black middle and upper classes and their roles as primarily victims of violent displacement and continued racial discrimination (as reflected in household wealth and the fact that Blacks are still unwelcome in many mixed neighborhoods) mean that Blacks cannot be gentrifiers.
It is here where I respectfully disagree, but only to a matter of degree. Citing my earlier definition of gentrification from Neil Smith it is clear the gentrification is intimately tied to displacement and dramatic neighborhood character change. In the case of the fearful "Black gentrifier" in the City Paper column such a concern over displacement and social domination is legitimate. In that particular area, gentrification is a project primarily lead by Back people-- IF there is displacement. As I said in my earlier post, simply bringing new people in or having some neighborhood development redevelopment does not equate to gentrification. I think that if we are to challenge the idea of "Black gentrification" it is not to say that due to historical and current racial discrimination that middle class and upper class Blacks cannot be gentrifiers, but to actually see as to whether we're seeing the kind of wholesale displacement and social domination that accompanies what we commonly understand to be gentrification. I would charge that in the vast majority of situations given the precariousness of the Black middle class and the decimation of household wealth in the past recession that areas of so-called "Black Gentrification" are not gentrifying at all if we are to compare income, household wealth, and displacement risk factors. But that does not mean that Blacks cannot be gentrifiers just that given current socioeconomic contexts there is simply not enough pressure to warrant the label.
Farrow does point to a larger issue of the label and what he calls obsession with the "Black gentrifier" is used as a term that deliberately distracts middle and upper class blacks from the violence visited upon their communities by attempting to shift blame. It's a provocative thought and one that holds a bit of weight. My only counter would be that this is not unique to Black folks but it is a large undercurrent of progressive critique of gentrification and many urban development issues. Gentrification is often separated from larger development decisions and the vagaries of the market and politics of urban development. Gentrification is often referred to or situated as a natural, but unfortunate situation in which the participants have little power. It's grossest form, as cited by Farrow and Tamara Nopper (@tnopper, if you didn't guess), is in the self-serving question of,"where can white people go in the city?" deflecting attention from greater forces that encourage disinvestment then reinvestment and expulsion of blacks and poor people into a framing where gentrifiers can throw up their arms and say it's not their fault. My point is that such narratives are not unique in being leveled at Black people but it has multiple incarnations throughout our cities. Blacks may be more sensitive to such charges and there may be a disproportionate attention paid to it, but that also follows larger media narratives that highlight Blacks' negative issues and portray them as dominant.
In other words, stronger critiques of gentrification are needed, in general, and these narratives are not only leveled at Black people. Although, we make more entertaining targets because the idea of class differentiation within the black community is still wild to many white people. So, I wrote all of this to say that I believe that Black people can indeed be gentrifiers, but that the evidence right now does not point to some new wave of "Black on Black gentrification". But Farrow, Nopper, and other critical race and urbanist scholars are ENTIRELY correct when they note that the way we discuss gentrification and other urban development issues obscures the greater economic and political mechanisms that encourage gentrification, in the first place. These range from disinvestment and abandonment of neighborhoods by city government, intense and concentrated poverty, massive unemployment, large-scale redevelopment dependent upon resident expulsion, and "economic development" strategies built around real-estate development and the expansion of unequal, bifurcated labor markets that turn the poor into the servant class of the preferred "creative" resident.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
When the TL's Cross: Wrestling with "Black Gentrification" Part 1
I had a fascinating experience this past weekend on the magic twitter machine when my timeline became all aflutter over a recently published a post by Emily Badger over at Atlantic Cities looking at the Bronzeville, an historically black neighborhood, in Chicago and its ongoing gentrification due to a large influx of middle class black residents. What was unique was that this post made its way over to my particular section of "black twitter" precipitating two parallel conversations on my timeline that were quite fascinating. I hope to try and add another voice to this and maybe, if successful, better synthesize some of the disparate threads of the conversation.
Badger's post compares the perception of Bronzeville's change with that of the Pilsen neighborhood, a gentrifying primarily Mexican neighborhood that has become something of a city destination known for its colorful "Latin culture" and fun atmosphere. Bronzeville, conversely, has not become a city destination and seems to be largely invisible to many non-black residents, even though it is "gentrifying".
Badger cuts to the heart of the issue when she observes that Bronzeville's blackness makes the neighborhood less "marketable" than Pilsen and discusses how black neighborhoods have difficulty not uniformly being seen as violent ghettoes. She also makes an interesting statement that developers in Bronzeville have marketed the neighborhood to middle class blacks partially to keep the black character of the neighborhood but also due to anxiety that white residents would not be interested in living in a black neighborhood.
The post offers some interesting points but it is a bit scattered. Its biggest gap lies in its ambiguous definition of gentrification. This looseness in definition I think obscures some of the points Badger was trying to make. Gentrification has many meanings and and interpretations depending on who you talk to, but there are some commonly held understandings that should be mentioned whenever you write on gentrification. First, gentrification is more than the economic development of a neighborhood or an influx of new residents who happen to be of a higher socioeconomic class, and those who insist on a "pure" economic definition of gentrification fundamentally misunderstand the term. Neil Smith, citing Ruth Glass the creator of the term, defines gentrification explicitly as a process of displacement and the wholesale transformation of the social character of the target neighborhood/district. Displacement is the central characteristic of gentrification. Badger, unfortunately, does not actually mention whether or not there has been significant displacement of residents from Bronzeville and she gives conflicting or contradictory accounts of the neighborhood as still suffering from intense vacancy and a desire of existing residents to bring in new residents. Highlighting stubborn vacancy and the desire of existing residents to bring in newcomers without mentioning neighborhood opposition or displacement pressures leads me to believe that Bronzeville should not be called a gentrifying or gentrified neighborhood. Or if it is gentrifying, then highlighting vacant, developable land and resident desires for more people to come in is not a great way to bolster this argument.
Assuming that Bronzeville is gentrifying, the comparison to Pilsen and examining Bronzeville's "blackness" offer some other interesting ideas, but I fear Badger does not go far enough in her critique. Pilsen is apparently a favored destination for many white residents from other parts of Chicago to come to and consume the Mexican culture of the neighborhood. Lively cafes, Mexican bakeries and entertaining music all combine to help make Pilsen one of the destinations in the city. Badger contrasts this with the fact that Bronzeville, which has a rich black history concerning the blues and multiple literary and cultural figures, seems unable to attract the kind of attention that Pilsen does. She cites a study in Urban Affairs that says that Bronzeville's invisibility compared to Pilsen's is because the neighborhood has been and continues to be majority black and has a history of poverty and violence. Badger gives some quotes from different white residents across the city that speak of Bronzeville as a literal black hole in the city that they never think about or see. The neighborhood is invisible.
While the invisibility of black life and black neighborhoods is certainly not new in America, the statements that Bronzeville's "blackness" somehow overwhelms the positive aspects of the neighborhood plays into a frankly racist narrative of neighborhood identity. Bronzeville's blackness does not overwhelm anything. The insistence of white people to ignore black neighborhoods is the only thing that makes Bronzeville "invisible". Linking white resident disinterest in the neighborhood to some overwhelming blackness naturalizes incredibly troubling unequal social relations and leads to uncomfortable conclusion that Bronzeville needs to overcome this blackness handicap in some way as opposed to saying that maybe white people should hold such racist notions. Second, the idea that neighborhood value is, at least partially, based upon the desire of other (read:white) residents to visit your neighborhood and voyeuristically consume your culture is incredibly limiting for a variety of reasons, but two big ones stand out to me: it encourages developing neighborhoods not for the betterment of residents but for the consumption of a preferred outside spending group, it does nothing to address existing unequal social or economic relations but instead turns responsibility back onto target neighborhoods (i.e. Bronzeville's blackness somehow overwhelming its positive neighborhood characteristics).
We can discuss non-white gentrification. I think this will be a growing concern in some larger, historically blacker metropolitcan areas and the issues that arise from it will test traditional political relations in cities with large black populations and can potentially exacerbate existing social divides of many ethnic groups. But using Bronzeville and Pilsen as comparative examples obscures these deep issues. Bronzeville, whether gentrifying or not, is invisible because many white Chicagoans could not give a damn about the lives of black people. And I, for one, say that if white Chicagoans ignore a growing, positive neighborhood because they're too racist to care, then let's do what we black folks have always done, survive, prosper and enjoy our own company.
As always, keep it surly.
Badger's post compares the perception of Bronzeville's change with that of the Pilsen neighborhood, a gentrifying primarily Mexican neighborhood that has become something of a city destination known for its colorful "Latin culture" and fun atmosphere. Bronzeville, conversely, has not become a city destination and seems to be largely invisible to many non-black residents, even though it is "gentrifying".
Badger cuts to the heart of the issue when she observes that Bronzeville's blackness makes the neighborhood less "marketable" than Pilsen and discusses how black neighborhoods have difficulty not uniformly being seen as violent ghettoes. She also makes an interesting statement that developers in Bronzeville have marketed the neighborhood to middle class blacks partially to keep the black character of the neighborhood but also due to anxiety that white residents would not be interested in living in a black neighborhood.
The post offers some interesting points but it is a bit scattered. Its biggest gap lies in its ambiguous definition of gentrification. This looseness in definition I think obscures some of the points Badger was trying to make. Gentrification has many meanings and and interpretations depending on who you talk to, but there are some commonly held understandings that should be mentioned whenever you write on gentrification. First, gentrification is more than the economic development of a neighborhood or an influx of new residents who happen to be of a higher socioeconomic class, and those who insist on a "pure" economic definition of gentrification fundamentally misunderstand the term. Neil Smith, citing Ruth Glass the creator of the term, defines gentrification explicitly as a process of displacement and the wholesale transformation of the social character of the target neighborhood/district. Displacement is the central characteristic of gentrification. Badger, unfortunately, does not actually mention whether or not there has been significant displacement of residents from Bronzeville and she gives conflicting or contradictory accounts of the neighborhood as still suffering from intense vacancy and a desire of existing residents to bring in new residents. Highlighting stubborn vacancy and the desire of existing residents to bring in newcomers without mentioning neighborhood opposition or displacement pressures leads me to believe that Bronzeville should not be called a gentrifying or gentrified neighborhood. Or if it is gentrifying, then highlighting vacant, developable land and resident desires for more people to come in is not a great way to bolster this argument.
Assuming that Bronzeville is gentrifying, the comparison to Pilsen and examining Bronzeville's "blackness" offer some other interesting ideas, but I fear Badger does not go far enough in her critique. Pilsen is apparently a favored destination for many white residents from other parts of Chicago to come to and consume the Mexican culture of the neighborhood. Lively cafes, Mexican bakeries and entertaining music all combine to help make Pilsen one of the destinations in the city. Badger contrasts this with the fact that Bronzeville, which has a rich black history concerning the blues and multiple literary and cultural figures, seems unable to attract the kind of attention that Pilsen does. She cites a study in Urban Affairs that says that Bronzeville's invisibility compared to Pilsen's is because the neighborhood has been and continues to be majority black and has a history of poverty and violence. Badger gives some quotes from different white residents across the city that speak of Bronzeville as a literal black hole in the city that they never think about or see. The neighborhood is invisible.
While the invisibility of black life and black neighborhoods is certainly not new in America, the statements that Bronzeville's "blackness" somehow overwhelms the positive aspects of the neighborhood plays into a frankly racist narrative of neighborhood identity. Bronzeville's blackness does not overwhelm anything. The insistence of white people to ignore black neighborhoods is the only thing that makes Bronzeville "invisible". Linking white resident disinterest in the neighborhood to some overwhelming blackness naturalizes incredibly troubling unequal social relations and leads to uncomfortable conclusion that Bronzeville needs to overcome this blackness handicap in some way as opposed to saying that maybe white people should hold such racist notions. Second, the idea that neighborhood value is, at least partially, based upon the desire of other (read:white) residents to visit your neighborhood and voyeuristically consume your culture is incredibly limiting for a variety of reasons, but two big ones stand out to me: it encourages developing neighborhoods not for the betterment of residents but for the consumption of a preferred outside spending group, it does nothing to address existing unequal social or economic relations but instead turns responsibility back onto target neighborhoods (i.e. Bronzeville's blackness somehow overwhelming its positive neighborhood characteristics).
We can discuss non-white gentrification. I think this will be a growing concern in some larger, historically blacker metropolitcan areas and the issues that arise from it will test traditional political relations in cities with large black populations and can potentially exacerbate existing social divides of many ethnic groups. But using Bronzeville and Pilsen as comparative examples obscures these deep issues. Bronzeville, whether gentrifying or not, is invisible because many white Chicagoans could not give a damn about the lives of black people. And I, for one, say that if white Chicagoans ignore a growing, positive neighborhood because they're too racist to care, then let's do what we black folks have always done, survive, prosper and enjoy our own company.
As always, keep it surly.
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