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Development, Neighborhood, and Civic Life: The Question of Broader Integration

Robert J. Chaskin and Mark L. Joseph

in Integrating the Inner City: The Promise and Perils of Mixed-Income Public Housing Transformation

This chapter examines the relationships of the mixed-income developments to the broader neighborhoods in which they sit and the extent to which, beyond social and physical integration among residents ... More

This chapter examines the relationships of the mixed-income developments to the broader neighborhoods in which they sit and the extent to which, beyond social and physical integration among residents on the footprint of the development, the Plan for Transformation is more broadly integrating these new communities into the fabric of the broader neighborhoods and city. We look at the ways in which the neighborhoods in which each site is embedded are changing socially and economically and explore whether relocated public housing residents are benefiting from these changes. We examine the spatial, social, and organizational mechanisms that connect (or fail to promote) relationships between residents of the development and those in the broader neighborhood, particularly with regard to cross-class relationships and the integration of public housing residents.Less

Neighbourhood sustainability: residents' perceptions and perspectives

John Flint

in The Future of Sustainable Cities: Critical Reflections

This chapter presents qualitative evidence from six low income neighbourhoods in Britain to explore residents' perceptions of, and perspectives on, neighbourhood change and sustainability. Residents ... More

This chapter presents qualitative evidence from six low income neighbourhoods in Britain to explore residents' perceptions of, and perspectives on, neighbourhood change and sustainability. Residents identify a range of drivers, symbols and indicators of neighbourhood sustainability. There is a disconnection between the attachment and future commitment residents express towards their neighbourhoods and their ability to translate this sense of belonging into ownership and influence. The chapter argues that all neighbourhoods require a minimum standard of retail, service and housing infrastructure, which requires a combination of public policy and investment from the voluntary, community and private sectors. The vagaries of private sector investment will not deliver sustainability in lower income urban neighbourhoods and there is an inherent tension between policy aims of promoting labour and housing market flexibility and simultaneously emphasising localism, a sense of belonging, and cohesion as drivers of sustainability.Less

Prevailing Approaches to the Study of Neighborhoods and Change

John J. Betancur and Janet L. Smith

in Claiming Neighborhood: New Ways of Understanding Urban Change

This chapter examines prevailing approaches to the study of neighborhoods and neighborhood change, paying attention to how they help describe and explain as well as produce urban dynamics. It begins ... More

This chapter examines prevailing approaches to the study of neighborhoods and neighborhood change, paying attention to how they help describe and explain as well as produce urban dynamics. It begins with a chronological review of the early work of the Chicago School and subsequent theories it generated—filtering, life cycle, racial tipping, and revitalization—and the corresponding assumptions each makes about the cause of neighborhood change. It then discusses critical approaches that interpret neighborhood change in terms of the social relations of reproduction, capital accumulation, and control of surplus value. It also looks at the issue of community vs. commodity and the notion that neighborhoods are relatively homogeneous and occupied by a majority white, middle- or higher-income homeowners. It argues that both mainstream and critical frameworks not only homogenize neighborhood space in terms of class and race but also conflate the relationship between the physical place and the social space that leads to specific expectations for the site and its occupants. It shows that each variation in neighborhood change theories reproduced social norms about what constitutes a neighborhood.Less

Understanding Change in Today’s Changing Urban Mosaic

John J. Betancur and Janet L. Smith

in Claiming Neighborhood: New Ways of Understanding Urban Change

This chapter examines the effects of classifying neighborhoods based on ecological indicators, both in the form of representations of space and in the policies/interventions derived from their use. ... More

This chapter examines the effects of classifying neighborhoods based on ecological indicators, both in the form of representations of space and in the policies/interventions derived from their use. It starts with the assumption that existing theories of neighborhood change have given rise to a particular discursive space in which to interpret urban dynamics. After tracing the origin and evolution of the stable homogeneous neighborhood rooted in human ecology theory, the chapter considers two recent efforts to classify Chicago neighborhoods that demonstrate how we can investigate differently and better understand neighborhoods as sites of consumption and flexible accumulation as well as social reproduction. It shows that today's neighborhoods are spaces of social control in which institutions in a particular combination play a supervisory role and everybody inhabiting the space is expected to reproduce specific positions. The chapter concludes by proposing an alternative view for interpreting neighborhood change.Less

Changing places: the families and their neighbourhoods

Katharine Mumford and Anne Power

in East Enders: Family and community in East London

This chapter aims to show how much the families care about their community, and how much they are linked to doing things in their neighbourhood. It illustrates how the families felt their ... More

This chapter aims to show how much the families care about their community, and how much they are linked to doing things in their neighbourhood. It illustrates how the families felt their neighbourhoods were changing, the key improvements that were identified by families in West-City and the East-Docks, and how the physical and emotional conditions were improved along with the worsening social problems.Less

The Origins of Neighborhood Change

George C. Galster

in Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves

This chapter argues that the metropolitan housing market primarily drives neighborhood change. It models this market as an interconnected array of submarkets segmented by housing quality. Within each ... More

This chapter argues that the metropolitan housing market primarily drives neighborhood change. It models this market as an interconnected array of submarkets segmented by housing quality. Within each submarket, there is latitude for independent adjustments of demand and supply but submarkets also are interconnected by actions of households, owners and converters of existing dwellings, and builders of new dwellings. Exogenous shocks impinging initially on one submarket create signals that eventually lead to systematic but non-uniform repercussions throughout the submarket array. These adjustments of demanders and suppliers fundamentally engender the neighborhood change process, which manifests itself in alterations in the composition of residents and the physical character of the dwellings. If such changes are persistent and consistent across a number of neighborhoods, there will be second-round effects on the local retail sector and the fiscal capacity of the local public sector. These impacts, in turn, feedback to magnify the initial impetus of neighborhood change. The chapter presents the first fundamental proposition of this book, the proposition of externally generated neighborhood change. It states that most forces causing neighborhoods to change originate outside the boundaries of that neighborhood, often elsewhere in the metropolitan area.Less

Conclusion

John J. Betancur and Janet L. Smith

in Claiming Neighborhood: New Ways of Understanding Urban Change

This book has highlighted the shortcomings of both mainstream and critical approaches used to explain how and why neighborhoods change by focusing on the case of Chicago. The evidence it has ... More

This book has highlighted the shortcomings of both mainstream and critical approaches used to explain how and why neighborhoods change by focusing on the case of Chicago. The evidence it has presented shows that neighborhoods are important yet limited spaces for study, policy making, and activism. This concluding chapter discusses the three broad categories of forces that shape neighborhood space and change over time in the current regime, both conceptually and practically: flexible accumulation, accumulation by expropriation, and the production of new space whose identity is driven by socialized consumership. It also offers a grounded set of recommendations for a different approach to how we study, document, and experience the realities of neighborhood change, arguing, for example, that we must view every neighborhood as constituted and specifically as a product for consumption or confinement; look for evidence of efforts to produce differential spaces in order to understand how and why some neighborhoods change and others do not; and historicize neighborhoods and explanations for why they change.Less

Recasting Race/Ethnicity: The Gentrification of Bronzeville and Pilsen

John J. Betancur and Janet L. Smith

in Claiming Neighborhood: New Ways of Understanding Urban Change

This chapter examines how race and ethnicity get attached to neighborhood change by comparing and contrasting the presumed gentrification of two Chicago neighborhoods, Pilsen and Bronzeville: the ... More

This chapter examines how race and ethnicity get attached to neighborhood change by comparing and contrasting the presumed gentrification of two Chicago neighborhoods, Pilsen and Bronzeville: the first is predominantly black and the other is predominantly Latino. More specifically, it considers the role played by representations in the process of facilitating a neighborhood's shift toward gentrification. Drawing on observations in both Pilsen and Bronzeville, it analyzes the notion that tension arises because the higher-income households tend to identify by class rather than race or ethnicity, while the lower-income households do the opposite. It argues that both reactions to neighborhood change are opposite sides of the same coin and linked to the widespread acceptance of higher-income, usually white people displacing lower-income, usually nonwhite people.Less

Constructing Carceral Space: How Englewood Became the Ghetto

John J. Betancur and Janet L. Smith

in Claiming Neighborhood: New Ways of Understanding Urban Change

This chapter offers a historical account of how Englewood—a South Side neighborhood that went from white to black and from middle-class to poor—became a ghetto. More specifically, it examines the ... More

This chapter offers a historical account of how Englewood—a South Side neighborhood that went from white to black and from middle-class to poor—became a ghetto. More specifically, it examines the material and representational construction of Englewood by focusing on two major moments that helped produce its current space: the production of “normal” and prosperous white Englewood followed by the production of abnormal and poor black Englewood. After providing an overview of neighborhood change in Englewood, the chapter considers how creative destruction and spatial racism worked to transform it into a ghetto and a carceral space. It then explores how Englewood has become a preferred site for police experimentation and training using ever more force and different schemes of discipline and punishment. It also discusses resident actions that are engagements in power relations and thus forms of resistance and self-determination pushing back the dominant power.Less

Selling the Neighborhood: Commodification versus Differential Space

John J. Betancur and Janet L. Smith

in Claiming Neighborhood: New Ways of Understanding Urban Change

This chapter explores various efforts to “sell” neighborhoods as well as the construction and destruction of community through commodification. Using as examples Paseo Boricua in Humboldt Park and ... More

This chapter explores various efforts to “sell” neighborhoods as well as the construction and destruction of community through commodification. Using as examples Paseo Boricua in Humboldt Park and Halsted North (Boys Town) in Lakeview, it shows how particular ethnicities or lifestyles have been appropriated by cities and capital to be commodified and consumed. It also considers how some residents benefit while others confront the daily realities of continuous displacement and impoverishment created by the commodification process. While forces within Paseo Boricua and Halsted North carved out differential spaces, the chapter argues that commodification has transformed them into spaces for sale and what they represent—gayness and Puerto Ricanness. These cases illustrate the openings, dynamics, and contradictions involved in neighborhood change.Less

Reinventing Neighborhood?: Transforming Chicago’s Public Housing

John J. Betancur and Janet L. Smith

in Claiming Neighborhood: New Ways of Understanding Urban Change

This chapter examines how the transformation of public housing leads to neighborhood change by focusing on two Chicago neighborhoods: Cabrini Green on the Lower North Side and Lakefront Properties on ... More

This chapter examines how the transformation of public housing leads to neighborhood change by focusing on two Chicago neighborhoods: Cabrini Green on the Lower North Side and Lakefront Properties on the South Side. More specifically, it considers how each neighborhood was transformed over decades into a space of flexible accumulation in which to build new mixed-income communities. It first reviews the U.S. housing policy that made transformation necessary and goes on to show how policy implementation controlled to some extent the market forces that normally shape the cycles of creative destruction over time, while also making accumulation and commodification more surgical and calculating in the two neighborhoods. It also demonstrates how social science research in combination with public policy and market mechanisms can result in the gentrification of the public housing ghetto. It argues that public housing residents—the presumed beneficiaries—can be contained and diminished in both the physical and social space of Chicago.Less

Living with diversity or living with difference? International perspectives on everyday perceptions of the social composition of diverse neighbourhoods

Katrin Großmann, Georgia Alexandri, Maria Budnik, Annegret Haase, Christian Haid, Christoph Hedtke, Katharina Kullmann, and Galia Shokry

in Divercities: Understanding Super Diversity in Deprived and Mixed Neighbourhoods

This chapter analyses which categories are mobilised by residents to describe the social groups in their area and which normative assessments are attached to those descriptions. This ... More

This chapter analyses which categories are mobilised by residents to describe the social groups in their area and which normative assessments are attached to those descriptions. This intersectionality approach allows one to see social stratification at work in how inhabitants of diverse neighbourhoods in Leipzig, Paris, and Athens perceive, describe, and judge their social environment. The three cities that are analysed represent different histories of diversification, and all three of them have experienced societal disruptions and change. The residents' own positionality shapes how they categorise other residents and judge their social environment. Moreover, the construction of social groups in diverse neighbourhoods in these cities draws on a variety of rather classic social categories and is influenced by national discourses. Stigmatisation often occurs at the intersections of these categories. Also, neighbourhood change is an important factor in the construction of social groups.Less

Race and Resistance: Gentrification and the Critique of Historic Preservation

Cameron Logan

in Historic Capital: Preservation, Race, and Real Estate in Washington, D.C.

tells the story of resistance to the restoration and preservation movement focusing in particular on the racially salient critique of the restoration culture and its impact on poor, black incumbent ... More

tells the story of resistance to the restoration and preservation movement focusing in particular on the racially salient critique of the restoration culture and its impact on poor, black incumbent residents in the intown areas of Washington.Less

Whose Neighborhood? Whose History?: Expanding Dupont Circle, 1975–1985

Cameron Logan

in Historic Capital: Preservation, Race, and Real Estate in Washington, D.C.

looks at the success of the neighborhood preservation movement in the 1970s and early 1980s and the fine grain of neighborhood conflict inspired by preservation’s assertiveness in that period.

Taste: Architectural Complexity and Social Diversity in the 1960s

Cameron Logan

in Historic Capital: Preservation, Race, and Real Estate in Washington, D.C.

argues that architectural taste was central to the expansion of preservation in the later decades of the twentieth century. The chapter analyses shifts in taste and the impact of those shifts on the ... More

argues that architectural taste was central to the expansion of preservation in the later decades of the twentieth century. The chapter analyses shifts in taste and the impact of those shifts on the possibilities for successful neighborhood restoration and preservation.Less

Value: Property, History, and Homeliness in Georgetown

Cameron Logan

in Historic Capital: Preservation, Race, and Real Estate in Washington, D.C.

explores the economic and planning rationale for an expanded historic preservation movement particularly as it emerged in Georgetown in the 1920s. This Georgetown model was adopted by a succession of ... More

explores the economic and planning rationale for an expanded historic preservation movement particularly as it emerged in Georgetown in the 1920s. This Georgetown model was adopted by a succession of neighborhoods in later decades but also became a source of instability for the preservation movement.Less

Modernist Urbanism as History: Preserving the Southwest Urban Renewal Area

Cameron Logan

in Historic Capital: Preservation, Race, and Real Estate in Washington, D.C.

brings the preservation story in Washington DC full circle by looking carefully at the highly contested attempt in the early years of the 21st century to protect and preserve Capitol Park (1959). ... More

brings the preservation story in Washington DC full circle by looking carefully at the highly contested attempt in the early years of the 21st century to protect and preserve Capitol Park (1959). This landmark of modern design in the national capital was built as part of Washington’s massive Southwest urban renewal project and thus remained a deeply ambivalent place for Washington’s preservationists.Less