SO306 Midterm Study Guide

Redlining

• Federal policy that rated different neighborhoods that enshrined, embedded, and stabilized inequalities along the lines of race and ethnicity in the city

  • Systematically outlined by government intervention

  • Housing discrimination where mortgage sellers refused to hand out mortgages to POC communities—>white flight intertwined with suburbanization

Natural area

• Neighborhood or part of a neighborhood that forms within borders set by natural features of the environment (hills, waterways) or human-made features (highways, bridges, railroad lines)

  • People with similar characteristics or culture (relatively typically homogenous) come to occupy those spaces

Neighborhood succession (definition and example)

• Replacement of one group or use in a bounded area by another 

• Ex) Fenway less than 100 years ago vs. now 

  • Sports, entertainment, healthcare, high-end apartments, shopping and dining out 

Land fill

• Trash dumped in the bay or marsh and infrastructures built on top of that 

Annexation (definition and reason)

• Joining of an independent municipality area into an existing, larger, unified area

  • Charlestown, Brighton, West Roxbury, Dorchester, Hyde Park

  • Reason: Basic municipal utilities that the city has access to (attractive to other municipalities) 

    • Sewage, transit system  

Urban renewal and eminent domain

• Federally-sponsored government programs that partnered with state and local city partners to reconstruct downtown/cities that prioritized the car, business, and the middle class as a way of revitalizing the culture and economy of cities (officially starts in the late 1940s) 

• Arose from anxieties of social disorganization, and what was left behind as cities deindustrialized 

• A way of reintroducing order into this city, controlling and moving around populations that people were anxious to control in this period

• Eminent domain: Legal power of the government to seize private property if it’s believed to be for the public good (without owner’s consent)

Deindustrialization

• Manufacturing and trade decline: Manufacturing and trade were important components of industrial communities in the 1800s 

• Cities shift away from being massive sites of manufacturing, restructuring towards modernizing lifestyles 

Suburbanization

• People moving further from urban communities while maintaining urban business interests

  • Federally subsidized loans to promote suburban development

  • Racially unevenly distributed mortgages 

  • Highway construction connected suburbs to the city 

  • Traditional nuclear, middle-class patriarchal heterosexual families narrative 

    • One partner (typically male) going out and the other (typically female) staying at home 

White flight

• Post-WWII with the construction of public highways, subsidized suburbanization, and urban renewal that pushed white working class populations out of urban cities 

  • Partially facilitated by suburbanization 

  • Moral and social fears along racialized lines 

  • Really ascended in Boston with school desegregation

    • White populations moved out to the suburbs during this time period 

Concentric zone theory (concept and criticisms)

• Proposes that cities grow outward from a central core in a series of concentric rings

• Dominance, invasion, and succession shaped urban life

• Typically a city included 5 areas

  • Central business district: Economic and political (downtown heart of commerce, retail stores, banks, offices, hotels, entertainment)

  • Manufacturing/light manufacturing: Mix of light manufacturing, wholesale businesses

  • Low/working class residential: Lived close to workplaces within the city (blue-collar workers); apartments

  • Medium/middle class residential: Composed of better-educated, higher-income families living in larger single-family houses

  • High class residential: Exclusive suburban neighborhoods buffered by low-class residents who lived near the city (wealthy residents commute long distances into the city)

• Invasion and succession: Neighborhoods continuously change as inner-city expansion pushes outward, causing groups to shift or “succeed” into new outer rings 

• Criticisms

  • Hard to define natural features and similar characteristics

  • Based on Chicago (used a model for all cities) 

  • Reifies segregation (race, class, religion) as though it is natural and inevitable rather than is something socially constructed

    • Argued that planning had nothing to do this, that it was the division of labor naturally organizing people into their "appropriate" places

• Do more affluent people live closer to the city now? 

  • Wealthy elites are back into inner-city core neighborhoods

  • Industrialization→allowed for urban proximity and walkable communities 

    • The use has changed because of economic organization within cities (succession) 

  • Division of labor 

Sector theory

• While the city is divided into separate districts with distinct uses, expansion tends to happen along transportation use (i.e., trains)

  • Transportation shapes city organization 

Multiple nuclei theory

• Competition between different sectors is not as important and instead, urban districts are formed around certain land uses which requires proximity to certain resources; land uses may also be separate from each other; believed that price and use have to compliment one another 

  • Ex) Seaport is next to the coast

  • Ex) Light manufacturing is near the railroad lines 

Robert Park’s beliefs of urban life (inspired by ecology)

• “As the city increases in population, the subtler influences of sympathy, rivalry, and economic necessity tend to control the distribution of the population” 

• Believed that every urban resident found their own niche in the city 

  • The city was going under a continuous process of adjustment 

  • Darwinian framework of people finding their own niches through their behaviors 

• Competition

  • West End seen as a slum to be demolished 

  • Yankees vs. the Irish 

• Cities are structural and cultural at the same time 

  • Structurally mapping a city it but also a place of beliefs, sentiments, and where communities form

• Argued that cities are not chaotic, they have a predictable order of growth

  • Cities find their own natural equilibrium, and that that equilibrium is not the result of planning, but a natural order closely related to the division of labor associated with capitalism

  • People fell into their “appropriate” place in the division of labor and therefore, the city was broken up into natural areas 

    • Spatial organization but little cultures and moralities develop in these natural areas→created stability where people found similar traditions and sentiments with one another 

  • City was a constant site of competition; competition itself helped to order the city 

  • Believed that capitalism provided an organized structure that helped cities survive (least likely to agree with Marx’s values) 

    • Capitalism as the backbone of urban organization

  • Change is the basic fact of urban life 

Gans’ urban villagers (what he wanted to challenge)

• Challenge the idea that the West End was a place without community and various social problems, and that slum dwellers would benefit from middle-class values

• The idea that concentration of poverty leads to social disorder and disorganization

• Concerns of rescuing people from these conditions as a way of justifying urban renewal; moral and social anxieties of negative social behaviors developed and were associated with the slum (crime, apathy or laziness, disease, socially disorganized, destitute, unsanitary)

• West Enders rejected the slum narrative, it was a place of liveliness, seeing and hearing everyone’s activities

  • Areas of people for low-class and low rent

  • Poorly maintained housing and public infrastructure

  • Decreasing population size due to building deterioration—>suburbanization of wealthier people and the lowering of rent which increased lower SES families and immigrants

Gans’ urban villagers (main ideas)

• Peer group society contests social cohesion and disorganization: Routinized gathering of a relatively unchanging group that takes place several times a week (kitchen, living room) 

  • The individual is extensively surrounded by peers for majority of their childhood and adolescence and into adulthood (often same gender, age, similar interests)

  • From afar, they may have looked socially isolated between peer groups but had strong contact within peer groups 

  • Exchange of news is crucial→keeps people up to date, reinforces social control by judging/ostracizing deviant behaviors, and ultimately holds the network together 

  • West Enders don’t like to be alone; competition is encouraged and reinforced through passively aggressive jokes, bragging, wisecracks

    • Yet it is unspoken that no one individual has dominance over the others, every member in the group gets to contribute and those who are self-centered, will be ostracized 

• Secondary group: Italian institutions that function to support daily living

  • Commercial establishments served as meeting places for peer groups, becoming sites of exchange of news and gossip, and subrosa activities 

    • Stores/bars provided hangout spaces for men to play cards and drink; the prestige and status that comes with being a regular customer

• Subcultures: Built great social support intra-ethnically 

  • An exotic quality: Culturally diverse, LIFE is on the streets (seeing familiar faces, observing teenagers “hanging” on the corner, retired people)

  • Object-oriented: People strive toward the achievement of an object, and may detach oneself from the groups, or attach onto others 

  • Person-oriented: People staying within and maintain friendship ties; a desire to be liked and noticed within the group

    • Their way of life and circumstances reinforced the cultural importance of being in a group that they feel satisfied with their lifestyles; they’re not particularly attached to object-goals in the outside world which they deem as exploitative, selfish, and a one-sided pursuit that neglects others 

    • Self-differentiation was problematic: Those who boast their status or certain skills may result in ostracization (equality was most desired)

    • Gossip: A form of social control/organization and mechanism of policing social norms (keeping people in line)

  • Active seekers: People living adventurous episodes (partially lives a quiet life but in preparation for thrill-seeking), present-oriented, more likely to have lower-pay jobs, anti-government, routine activities are viewed as boring to the young lower-income male 

    • Younger folks were action-seeking, as a way of non-conforming to adult and teacher figures (content to staying in that way indefinitely); these were the times when people were most alive (a period of achievement, talent, and freedom) and able to temporarily escape the overbearingness of routine-seeking

    • Upward mobility frowned upon (little regard for the future): Marriage disrupts the balance and structure of peer groups

  • Routine seekers: People aiming to live economically and emotionally stable lives; their activities are revolved around a schedule, more likely to have a stable job, assign some level of agency to a greater authority, make rational purchases (majority grew into this)

  • Maladapted: Entirely unable to control behavior (may have psychiatric problems or lack self-control)

  • Middle-class mobiles: Strive to move themselves into the middle class (must socially detach themselves to integrate into a new setting) 

• Highly gender segregated society (patriarchal values) 

  • Women and girls in the household (judged primarily by their maternal/housekeeping roles), men and boys out on the streets

• Indicators of social organization: Neighborhood watch party, community center, churches, formal/public associations and institutions 

  • However, Gans argues that social organization is invisible unless you’re enmeshed in the community 

  • Lack of visibility to outsiders 

• Smaller networks

  • Unlikely people knew higher-status individuals (lawyers, etc.) 

  • Peer group societies were divided from other groups 

  • Did not think of themselves as West Enders, and instead were worried of what was happening within their peer group 

    • Felt a strong identity within the peer group, but detached from the West End as a whole 

Tach’s Orchard Gardens

• Hope VI project (1990s): National plan to take down public housing

  • Public housing design was problematic (too many high poverty neighborhoods in too tight of a space)→bulldoze several public housing all over the US 

  • Replaced by mixed income housing

  • Selective public housing for “qualified” residents (more screening)  

  • Scattered site public housing: Believed that poverty concentration led to social disorganization→smaller, scattered houses 

  • Voucher system: Those who qualified for public housing get vouchers to purchase affordable rentals 

    • Problems: Waitlist, 30-90 days to find somewhere to live, dependent on landlords willing to accept vouchers (had reasons to not accept)  

  • Belief that something inherently problematic about poverty creates social disorganization and disorder 

• Orchard Gardens: Selected as a candidate for Hope VI because it had high crime rate, not a desirable place to live, and one of the most dangerous places in Chicago→reduce poverty and increase opportunity by turning it into a mixed-income community (middle-class neighbors) 

  • 1. Cultural change exposure to middle-class norms 

  • 2. Role models 

  • 3. Exposure and access to social networks 

  • Hoped for reduced social isolation/disorganization and higher levels of social control 

  • Anticipated that those living in poverty would be brought to the middle class (spillover effect), and that higher-income people would take the lead and provide a model for those living in poverty 

    • Did not happen; change came from the lower-income people; they were highly engaged with the development (ran community organizations)  

    • Peoples’ perspective about their neighborhood shapes how they behave in the neighborhood→squelches participation 

    • Your cultural experience of your neighborhood shapes your participation (lower-income people became more involved because of nicer conditions)

Social disorganization and social isolation

• Social disorganization: Lack of formal and informal mechanisms of social control

• You’d expect there to be religious, social, and educational institutions supporting rules governing individual and collective behavior, and not having to remain on the police or government entities to maintain social control (policing as the last resort) 

• People policing one another to promote conformity and unity  

  • Relatively collective agreement on rules allows permission for policing

• Social isolation: Weak contact between individuals and groups who share space and institutions 

Carolyn Crockett’s People Before Highways

• What factors led to the plan to bulldoze part of the city to extend highway 95?

  • Efficient automobile transmit 

  • Necessary to relieve traffic congestion 

  • To connect roads passing through Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville 

  • Connect to suburbs

  • Modern vision of transforming and advancing the country 

  • Ethos urban framework: Cities function the best when they’re highly functional and efficient→high rise buildings, automobile industry 

    • Accompanied by suburbanization and deindustrialization, and fears of social disorganization

  • City is becoming poorer and minority majority

    • Disregard for neighborhoods primarily constituted by lower-income minorities 

    • Deep pessimism and abandonment of urban space → urban renewal and suburbanization 

• What factors explain why the highway was not built? 

  • Community resistance (sense of ownership of where they live) 

    • Cross-class and cross-race solidarity to work together 

  • Community displacement: Demolish several housing units and contribute to spatial segregation  

  • Change in leadership who is a conservationist, and thought prioritizing highways was the wrong way to precede 

Janes Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities (main ideas)

• Observed and participated in showing how urban dwellers are active agents in shaping their urban environments, not just passive recipients

• City planners viewed cities to be efficient, modern, socially detached spaces that prioritize productivity

• Thought that strangers were a good thing because it increases alertness (routine makes us numb, strangers bring us back to attention)

• Three kinds of neighborhoods are useful

  • 1. The city as a whole: Parent community made of smaller parts (similar interests)

  • 2. Street neighborhoods: Miniscule neighborhoods formed that do not have clear-cut boundaries separating them; the interweaving of these neighborhoods that promote diversity whereas the opposite–rigid, strict neighborhoods that run long and monotonous–offer isolation and exclusion 

  • 3. District: Help bring resources where it’s needed, able to seamlessly translate policies, large enough, possesses power to contend with serious problems 

• How monotony of a city deters mobility, socialization, and cross-use 

  • Urban residents/travelers want new sights and difference, they want individuality, flavor, tradition, surprise, whim

  • Cities should aim to have lively streets, a breadth of vast intimate networks, and shared public spaces that aren’t exclusionary

  • Cross-use is impeded by huge traffic arteries

  • Every city ought to offer uniqueness, a distinct vitality that differs from another city, it is not a collection of repetition towns 

• Disruption of city relationships: When social capital disappears, income from it follows 

  • City relationships start on street neighborhoods (handle strangers well); as a social structure is slowly formed, this improves stability, leadership, and advocacy

  • Slum clearances disrupt this process entirely, destroying relationships and the very foundation of their community→hundreds of new faces enter (unfamiliarity, tension)

• Fluidity of opportunities in cities: Cities offer quick turnover in many aspects of life due to its diversified setting→retains inhabitants (living rather than merely existing) 

• Diversity in of itself reproduces diversity within the city

  • Visitors are attracted and drawn to this

  • Cities offer the coexistence of retail, cultural establishments, entertainment 

  • Within the social proximity of people in the city, each has their unique skill, need, supply

  • Lively, diverse city is constituted by an enormous collection of smaller elements

• Sidewalk ballet: Intricate ballet in which the individual dancers all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole (keep the streets busy all day long)–develops with a tight, diverse space 

• Four conditions must be met for diversity to generate in a city

  • 1. Must serve more than one-preferably two–primary functions

    • To provide enough variety by understanding the need to spread people through time of day (residential, community, commerce)

      • Unique appeals at leisure hours (weekends, midday, evening)

      • Ex) Aquariums, an attractive waterfront with embarkation points for voyages, public library, special events (theater/opera)

    • Primary use: Brings people to a specific place because they’re anchorages (offices, factories, education, recreation, libraries)

      • Secondary diversity: Enterprises that grow in response to the presence of primary uses 

    • Cycle of mixed users utilizing primary uses reproduces a larger, diverse clientele 

    • Must have people on the same streets (some using the same facilities)

      • Ineffective juncture: A new opera shared with a low-income housing project; arbitrary facilities that are used separately but in close conjunction 

    • Must always have life/eyes on the streets to increase safety (baker, restaurant, residential area, laundry mat, banks, etc.)

    • Arterial highways and parking lots disguise the deliberate erosion of urban life by sorting out leisure uses from work uses 

  • 2. Short blocks; opportunities and streets must be close together (keeps one on their toes, alert/aware, and to look forward to turning the corner)

    • Advantages: Choice (various attractive, engaging routes), supply and convenience of commerce, fluidity, mixture, increased security

    • “Orderly city planning”: Dismally long strips of monotony and darkness→isolation, anonymity, consolidation of commerce, different uses are blocked off from one another, homogeneity

    • Reciprocal relationship between the means by which frequent streets work and the results they can help accomplish 

  • 3. Mingling of old and new buildings that are closely-grained

  • 4. Dense concentration of people (privacy is dangerous, proximity with all other ingredients improves safety)  

Joseph M. Conforti’s Ghettos as Tourism Attractions (main ideas, definition)

• Ghetto: One part of the city inhabited by a particular group of people due to restriction and oppression from other parts of the city through discrimination (fear surrounding immigrants)

• Preserving New York’s Little Italy: Commodified, repackaged attractive result; a pronounced, entrenched image shared and understood by insiders and outsiders (symbols: flags, banners, decoration, tshirts, bumper stickers)

• North End: Romantic vision that doesn’t exist in its original form anymore (seen by outsiders as Little Italy, not Italian residents living in East Boston)

  • As gentrification continues, Italian-American residents will most likely leave while tourism attraction interests increases

• Implications of preserving these ghettos

  • Positive: Nostalgic tourism attractions for Italian-Americans–to proximate themselves closer to their ancestral roots; commercial value by providing employment opportunities and entertainment 

  • Negative: Perpetuation of negative stereotypes based upon mass media images that are exaggerated to keep the Italian ghetto alive 

    • The very idea of preserving a ghetto

  • Neutral: Selective mythical reconstruction

Smajda and Gerteis’ Ethnic Community and Ethnic Boundaries in a “Sauce-Scented Neighborhood” (main ideas and definitions)

• Ethnicity: Framed as the subjective happening where people make claims about their shared history, culture, and descent that creates meaningful identities

  • Ethnic communities in the North End changing over time due to economic and social mobility, and out-group marriage→greater generational distance from immigrant routes 

  • Group boundaries and boundary processes: How ethnicity is maintained and what tensions may arise over different definitions of the ethnic community

• Category divergence: Decline of overlapping categories that reinforced ethnic boundaries; blurs the definition of what it means to be Italian

• Three community disputes

  • Italians vs. Yuppies: Long-term Italian residents against the growing number of relatively wealthy professionals moving into the neighborhood

    • Italians: Strong, tight-knit communities (everyone knows each other)

      • Yuppies were attracted by cheap rent, convenience, and a promise of the traditional community 

    • Yuppies threatened ethnic identity by encroaching on traditional community and class basis→segregated spaces separating Italians and Yuppies

    • Social tension and conflict

      • Urban renewal (high rises) diminish small neighborhood feel

      • Yuppies showing no care for socialization whereas long-term residents still display strong forms of intimate connections

      • Being Italian as a prerequisite to accessing social opportunities/privileges 

  • Residents vs. restaurants: A community-centered version emphasizing neighborhood residence against the more commercialized vision of nonresident owners of restaurants and bars

    • North End as a residential neighborhood foremost, yet is disrupted by the noise and violence prompted by the encroaching presence of restaurants/bars

    • Restaurants preserve an idealized version of “Little Italy”→attracts tourists who consume mass media portrayals (and stereotypes) of Italians

    • Attempts to reduce growing commercialization of the North End in hopes of preserving the “small town within a big city” community

  • North Enders vs. the Big Dig: A unifying, rallying outcry for organizing against powerful political and economic interests

    • Utilization and function of connections with Italian politicians and networks within the North End (churches→regularly informed residents of meetings and updates)

    • Committee established to mitigate the effects of the Big Dig; planners failed to realize the extent to which the project will impact the North End

      • Had influential decision making and authority through relentless activism (air pollution checks, stopping construction during night, 24 hour hotline, monthly meetings with contractors) 

Mario Luis Small’s Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio (main ideas and definitions)

• Tremont Street has the full spectrum (POC, LGTBQ+, classes) living peacefully and harmoniously, but remains highly segregated 

  • Street corners used by POC→socialization, community, meaning making 

• South End

  • Large settlement of immigrants (working poor)

    • Affluent single family homes→four-five apartment complexes

    • Residents lived in distinct sections (mainly by ethnicity), yet it was highly integrated and inclusive→support for each other, similar financial circumstances, blending/sharing of cultures

    • Ordered segmentation: Territorial boundaries marking the turfs of different ethnic groups that both perpetuate the mutual exclusiveness of the groups and maintain order by minimizing opportunities for conflict 

  • Puerto Rican enclave: South End as a place where cheap housing could be found in the center of a bright, industrial city

• Undesirability of the South End: Became a hub for drinking, gambling, prostitution, drug trafficking, and crime

  • “Bad side” of the tracks (spatially zoned off from the rest of Boston)

  • Urban flight and goals to move out→decline in population and concentration of minority population

  • Many South Enders resented negative depictions of their neighborhood as a slum

    • Playing cards was a way to socialize, not a reliable income source

  • Institutional and state neglect of deteriorating housing and dirty streets

    • Train line didn’t even have a stop point in the South End; elevated train tracks casting a dark shadow

• Urban renewal of the South End

  • Increased suspicion of BRA housing renewal efforts→several neighborhood groups fought different, contradictory efforts

  • Rehabilitation of infrastructure, reconstruction of houses, and creation of new subsidized units→brought increased hardship to the poor and working families who lived there for a long time, gentrification went underway 

  • Young white professionals lived in expensive brownstones (desire for a great urban adventure) while poor minority families lived in subsidized units

  • Emergency Tenants’ Council: Small advocacy group of mostly Puerto Ricans concerned with poor housing conditions and urban renewal

    • Fierce mobilization and participation, demonstrations, meetings

    • Active agents in constructing their community ground-up; finally approved to build the housing project (took note of Puerto Rico’s cultural architecture)→hybrid between the classic South End and traditional Puerto Rican architecture 

• Diversity segregation: When people occupy different spheres 

• Neighborhood narrative frame: Cultural frames for thinking about a neighborhood

• Villa Victoria

  • Parks and plazas with various activities→sites of socialization 

  • Against impersonal high rises, opted for bright colors and pastels, backyard and green space, safe communities to raise children in (parental supervision)

• Declining social participation

  • High poverty, ethnic homogeneity, residential instability were oversimplified inferences (not just material, but cultural conditions) 

  • Strong cohort effect and neighborhood narrative frame: When people first resisted urban renewal, they had positive, powerful, tangible stories to tell about the creation of this community (their participation rates were high); as that memory faded, participation declined 

Sylvie Tissot’s Of Dogs and Men: The Making of Spatial Boundaries in a Gentrifying Neighborhood (main ideas and definitions)

• Pets constitute social markers, denoting one’s wealth/SES

• Gentrifiers actively use public spaces (dog runs) to create and establish social boundaries to exclude others and define insiders, allowing them to distinguish themselves from the poor ethnic and “deviant” populations

• Gentrification: Primarily a process of exclusion that results in displacement and a loss of sense of community among long-time residents

  • Development of trendy boutiques, upscale restaurants, art galleries, and the progressive closing of ethnic establishments

  • Newcomers pursuing that image of an authentic urban experience despite impersonal, superficial interactions with long-time residents 

  • Social preservationists: Those who carefully support family-owned bars and restaurants in order to slow down the impact of gentrification 

• The habitus occupied by these newcomers reveal the subtle ways in which they perpetuate and uphold broader social structures and power 

  • Relationships between dog owners and their animals as one dimension of a class habitus; a distinct lifestyle through practices and tastes 

• Conflict between “deviant” populations and upper middle class residents who impose their norms on urban spaces (not exposed to the concept of shared space) 

  • Public space epitomizes both their longing for the attractions of urban life and their fear of “others”

  • Will only obtain the benefits of urban life and once they had enough, retreat back into their enclaves

• Dogs as tools of distinction and objects of love

• Ownership of particular dogs is an expression of conspicuous consumption→wealthier expenses for certain breeds

• Pets that move around within a small distance of their owners are like accessories (clothes, jewelry), revealing a specific habitus

  • Body attitude revealed by dog breed: Eloquent, sophisticated, miniscule, huge dogs associated with higher-income residents

• Sidewalks used as scenes to exhibit social distinction 

• Stores catering to dog owners: Bakery, dog daycare, dog spa

  • Importance of “socializing dogs” with other dogs and other human beings; no longer in the private sphere of obedience or mastery, but social integration into the larger group to maintain socially controlled interactions

• Newcomers attracted to the economic/racial/age/LGBTQ+ diversity (analyzed through three themes)

  • 1. Dog run is a major contribution to the community as a whole

    • Hub of activity that connects people together (friendships, relationships, origin of business deals) 

    • Dogs are social facilitators; dog runs reinforce stranger (to friendly) proximity and for long periods of time

    • Dog owners feel entitled to have a dog run because they pay taxes

  • 2. Dog run reinforces safety for the whole neighborhood

    • Dogwalking deters crime and enhances neighborhood security (a sense that everyone knows each other) 

    • Creation and function of the dog run was to prevent homeless people from entering the dog park→displaces “deviant” populations

    • Wariness toward residents not part of the community group or non-residents

  • 3. Dog run as an incentive for business

    • Attracted newcomers to live nearby the dog run→more buildings adopting pet-friendly signs 

    • Generated a lucrative market for a wide range of products and services

• Dover newcomers perceive and value/interpret “diversity” as being dog friendly

  • Allows them to manage tensions while drawing strong boundaries

  • Uses the disability trope as a selling argument that gentrification reduces poverty concentration and enhances diversity

    • Downplays the gap between wealthy white members while rarely questioning their relative positions of power 

    • Praises economic and racial diversity in their shared space, but never criticize the structural systems of inequalities

    • Implies strong interpersonal links and multiple public interactions but are ultimately restricted to isolated peer groups 

Laura M. Tach’s Diversity, Inequality, and Microsegregation: Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion in a Racially and Economically Diverse Community (main ideas and definitions)

• Mixed income development of the South End (affordable subsidized units and unaffordable brownstones) reveal classed and racialized inequalities that seem to be largely ignored by affluent newcomers who socially and spatially isolate themselves within their little enclave while avoiding areas they perceive to be “unsafe”

• Social seams: Public neighborhood spaces where different social groups can come together through the shared use of institutions and resources

  • Both a site for cross-class and cross-race interaction, and deliberate/inadvertent exclusion

  • Parks, grocery stores, retail, schools, neighborhood organizations

• Social networks: Offer instrumental benefits (access to information and resources) and can promote social mobility 

  • Often though, residents stick with groups of similar tastes/preferences, class, race

  • Exposure to wealthier residents can bolster “positive role models” while visibly showing relative deprivation→may increase stress and depression

• Group threat theory: Posits that close contact with other groups may lead to increased competition and reduced trust

• Group contact theory: Argues that close proximity may yield greater understanding, tolerance, and trust

• Social organization: Ability of a community to realize the common values of its residents and maintain effective social controls 

  • Operationalized as the prevalence and strength of social networks, organizational participation, and collective supervision of local problems

  • Formal social organizations enact social control and improve neighborhood QOL

  • Constant tension between contradicting interests of competing groups

  • Common features of radically diverse communities

    • 1. Well-functioning community, institutional structures/organizations

    • 2. Substantial political and financial resources

    • 3. Skilled leadership dedicated to accommodating sensitive group differences

• What residents say: Perceptions of diversity

  • Practically all participants praised South End for its economic and racial diversity, and diverse lifestyles (came for the diversity)

    • Public and affordable housing has been maintained

    • Gentrification made it more diverse (return of the upper class) 

    • Slower neighborhood succession 

    • More limited, deliberate urban renewal processes 

    • Institutional closures (homeless shelters), BMC 

    • Reputation as a diverse, urban neighborhood 

• What residents do: Microsegregation and diversity

  • Microsegregation: Homogenous pockets of interaction and organization within the larger neighborhood

    • Occurred informally (daily routines) and formally (neighborhood organizations) 

  • Spatial differentiation: Small groupings of residential blocks containing distinct social groups and identities 

    • “Lumps” of racial/ethnic communities: Castle Square, Villa Victoria, Ruth Lillian Barkley Apartments

  • Neighborhood organizations: Differed based on each collection’s interests, race, class

    • Affluent areas: Wine tasting, gardening, coffee hour, holiday parties

    • Lower-income/minority areas: Social services, ethnic cultural celebrations

  • Most organizations were small/homogenous resident constituencies→way less involvement from youth and those renting or in subsidized housing 

    • Financial barriers: Work, perceived lack of time

    • Nonfinancial barriers: Broader form of alienation where organization is centered around those with economic/social/cultural capital, blatantly ignored those deemed not part of their “group”, failed to address issues felt by those renting or living in subsidized units, does little to promote cross-class interaction 

    • Diverse participation when the meetings generally concerns/impacted them and their community as a whole

    • Positive functions: Repositories of information, maintain development and land use regulation, serve as intermediaries with government officials, facilitate social interaction, and impose QOL  

  • Social seams and daily routines

    • Really only the parks served as significant sites for cross-class and cross-race interaction (though most were superficial)

    • Some sites reinforced inclusion and exclusion through financial markers

      • Affluent residents frequenting designer boutiques and high end grocery stores, eating at expensive restaurants→actively avoided subsidized areas

    • Positive accounts by affluent newcomers who live within a small, affluent section that they mainly stay around→ignores large swaths of the remaining neighborhood

    • Clear sense of unbelonging: Many lower income residents felt priced out of their own neighborhood, turning to more affordable options in other neighborhoods 

    • School segregation based on class (reinforced negative racial stereotypes)

  • Inclusion and exclusion

    • Snobbiness of affluent residents toward "others"; even if they seem friendly, it is superficial and personal

      • Carry implicit attitudes toward those with a lower SES status (identification through externalizing markers)

      • Certain objects that constitute social markers (baby strollers, cars, dogs)

    • Affluent residents deliberately avoid certain areas perceived as unsafe 

Great migration

• Massive, long-term internal relocation of more than six million African Americans from the rural American South to the urban North, Midwest, and West

• Led to the creation of distinct Black metropolis neighborhoods

• To maintain racial segregation, white institutional structures implemented practices like redlining, restrictive covenants, and white flight

Industrialization

• Large-scale shift of a society from an agrarian (farming) economy to a machine-driven, manufacturing-based industrial system

• Masses of people migrate rapidly from rural farming communities to dense industrial cities in search of factory work

• Clock-driven industrial schedules (not moving with the rhythm of the sun) c

Neighborhood narrative frame

• Cultural frames for thinking about a neighborhood—>consequences

Slum

• Densely populated urban residential area characterized by substandard housing, severe poverty, social disorganization, and a lack of basic municipal services