Soci 222 Final

Content from midterm until end of semester

Urban political economy perspective

• emerged in the late 1960s

• emphasized investment shifts by banks, insurance companies, and international corporations that shaped cities by transferring the ownership and uses of land from one class to another

• less concerned with problems related to social integration → viewed existing order as a cover for class interests → threats to community come not from density or anonymity of city life, but from capitalist interests and profit motive

Escape from the city thesis

moving to the suburbs was a means of escaping the waves of southern Blacks and Hispanics

Urban renewal

• Also known as slum clearance; intended to clean up blighted parts of the city

• good intentions (replacing slums with decent low-income housing) but soon morphed into attempts to clear the inner cities for offices and shopping centers

Urban growth machine

• Concept that the city is a machine controlled by business, political, and professional elites

• share a common assumption that the best interests of the city and its residents are served by continuous economic growth and development

• settlements emerged not just because they were in convenient places, but because they were backed by powerful individuals

Bilbao effect

The imagined economic boost that will ensue for cities that build their own versions of successful tourist attractions

correlation between the amount of cultural elites and urban development (economic growth)

named after the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain → designed by world-famous architect, had a profound impact on local economy

The Right to the City

• written by David Harvey

• capital surplus drives urban development

• the right to the city is increasingly falling into the hands of private interests

• the right to the city should be claimed by the inhabitants and not dictated by capitalist interests

Human ecological approach

Emphasized natural processes, focused on social order, believed everyone was striving for the same goals → increasingly seemed misguided by the 1960s & 70s

What was the context surrounding the rise of the political economy perspective?

• urban unrest in the 1960s - civil rights movement

• post-war suburbanization

• racial segregation - white flight

• urban renewal project

• rise of social justice concerns

Urban growth ideology → what are the benefits of the urban growth theory?

• strengthens local tax base, creates jobs, provides resources to solve existing problems, meets the housing needs, and allows the market to service public housing rates

• Growth has a trickle-down effect that helps everyone

Neighborhood use value

Neighborhood has use value as focal points for daily duties - food, shopping, schooling, childcare → proximity to amenities important

informal social support, sense of trust and security, identity

Pursuit of economic growth might jeopardize use-value

What are some negative consequences of the urban growth machine?

Pursuit of exchange value can jeopardize use-value through..

• gentrification

• urban renewal

• location of devalued projections in marginalized neighborhoods (ex. sewage plants, jails, halfway homes)

• overpopulation

• can exacerbate inequality

Urbanization and capitalist growth

• Capitalism requires dynamic market that can absorb surplus product → if market becomes stagnant, capitalist class risks crisis

• according to Harvey, one way to overcome stagnation is through financing projects of urbanization

• new development absorb surplus capital, and create new lifestyles → ex. suburban life built on automobiles, large homes

Crisis of accumulation

real estate developers tend to over-invest in areas because they appear profitable - soon the market is flooded, and a decline in profit occurs, leaving the original site facing economic difficulties

Urban social justice

To mobilize movements that assert democratic control over urban development and prioritize use value of urban space over and above exchange value

Cities and the Creative Class

• Written by Richard Florida

• Posits that creative people are drawn to places that are inclusive and diverse, and that the key to regional growth is attracting these highly educated and creative people

Creative class

Florida’s terms for highly educated, talented people; includes scientists, engineers, uni profs, poets, novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers, architects, high-tech sectors

The Neighborhood in Cultural Production

• Written by Richard Lloyd

• Argues that although career upside is more limited in Chicago compared to NY or LA, it is easier to get started there → lower stakes

Post-industrial restructuring of the city

• early 1970s, fiscal crisis - stagnation in economic growth

• the departure of manufacturing industries required restricting the political economy

• businesses that had been prominent in Detroit, Cleveland, moved to China, India → became the rust belt

• cities tasked with luring outside investment and tourism

Attracting the creative class

Creative class prefers loose networks that afford greater freedoms, instead of traditional tight-knit communities

want cities with culturally vibrant neighborhoods, beautiful neighborhoods, walkability, public arts

The Cumulative Texture of Local Urban Cultures

• Written by Suttles

• Cities have a rich tapestry of local collective representations, which are the cultural, historical, and architectural elements that define a city’s identity

• Includes landmarks, symbols, or songs

History Repeats Itself, But How?

• Explores the very different characters of place that have emerged for Santa Barbara and Ventura

• Argues that these two places, although fairly indistinguishable from one another, can develop very different place reputations

• Oil was discovered earlier in Ventura → embraced

• By contrast, Santa Barbara residents already had some place attachment to coastline as a natural amenity

• shaped the resistance to the freeway in Santa Barbara and lack of resistance in Ventura

Sources of collective representations

• community founders - consecrated into official cultural ex. Dusable

• notable entrepreneurs and politicians - Al Capone, Obama

• Catch phrases, songs, artifacts, goods - “Go cubs go”, fly the W, the L

Place reputation

• not artificial - an accumulation of history

• actively shaped by initiatives of local actors

Assimilation myth

Dominant assumption that immigrants assimilate, adapt, and overcome to become economically successful is a myth → immigrants are consistently lower-paid that their Canadian-born counterparts

Place stratification perspective

Locations are usually associated with resources, prestige, and status

The who live in desirable locations with more resources, greater prestige, and higher status are likely to maintain the status quo and safeguard their neighborhoods from change → some groups are less likely to move into these neighborhoods

Manhattan’s Koreatown

• The landscape of ethnic transclaves has shifted from a space of residents relying on a coethnic labor force to a space of ethnically themed leisure, consumptions and entertainment for travel

• disproves the idea of a “zone in transition” → not all immigrants are going to assimilate into larger culture

• Koreatown has become a platform for the Korean government and small Korean cooperations to market the nation and its brand for economic and political gains

Transclave

A commercialized ethnic space that exists exclusively for consumption, and entertainment for locals and tourists

Spatial assimilation perspective

• ethnic settlement shaped by socio-economic resources and duration in country

• economic integration comes with longer duration in host country

• the longer you stay in the country, you gain more resources and eventually move out → might take generations to move

Critiques of assimilation theory

Did not resonate with visible minorities the way it did for immigrants from Asia, Middle East, Africa

Ignores the fact that host societies are reshaped by immigrant populations, not just the other way around

Commodification of ethnic communities

Ethnic enclaves increasingly decoupled from places of residence

Ethnic symbolism used for place branding and profit in industrial city

Even as the number of immigrants in an area in decreasing, the number of ethnic-themed businesses increases

Maintaining an urban Native community

• Although Indigenous people may disagree on what makes someone native, they all felt that a native cultural identity is something that needs to be actively encouraged

• Some emphasize the land-based process of traditions, while urban-based natives feel that it matters that they practice the traditions their ancestors had

Settler colonialism

• Inflicted generational trauma

• by displacing cultural traditions, it upended moral order and produced anomie in the community (ex. suicide, substance abuse, crime)

• Because of this, understandings of native identity have been couched in terms of primordiality, a state in contradiction to modernity

Aboriginal peoples in urban areas

• Urban proportion of Indigenous people has grown tremendously since the second half of the 20th century

• challenges in maintaining native communities in cities

Neo-liberal urbanization

Characterized by an emphasis on economic growth, entrepreneurialism, smaller government, and the inclusion of market actors in governance

Neoliberalism proposes that human wellbeing can be best advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms → private property rights, free markets, and free trade

How do urban spaces exclude women?

• The increased decentralization and reliance on private automobiles for transport excludes low-income women in city centers and old suburbs

• inequalities arose from the assumption that caring work is a woman’s responsibility

• transit policies ignore the gendered realities of transit use in cities

How mixed-blood natives renegotiate their identities in urban environments

• challenges of continuing land-based rituals in urban settings

• economic pressures of assimilation

• inactivity of settler colonialism

• urban traditionalism as a way of achieving continuity through change

Private-public divide

• feminist scholars argue that public-private divide is important source of gender inequality

• men historically in public space (workplace, politics)

• women assigned to private sphere (home, family → labor undervalued)

The Post-WWII City

• gendered separation of spheres exacerbated by suburbanization

• gender norms promoted by government-subsidized suburbanizations

• gendered relations created points of alienation

Women and gentrification

Many women benefitted from the rise of the post-industrial economy

• rise of condos attractive to female one-person households

• women both agents and victims of gentrification

Changing cityscapes within a social construction of gender

Strict private public separation challenged in contemporary metropolis, but gendered separation of spaces still persists

• women’s centers, credit unions, bookstores, created by and for women

Sex and the City during “closeted era”

• persecution of LGBT meant there wasn’t a concentrated gay neighborhood, mostly scattered spaces

• homosexuality pushed to margins; dependent on discrete urban spaces

Post-WWII and coming out era

• stonewall riots 1969 formative for gay liberation movement

• formal gay neighborhoods (gayborhoods) emerged soon after

• gayborhoods form when businesses that cater primarily to LGBT people open up in the same area and nurture “institutional completeness” of a quasi-ethnic community

Explanations for gayborhoods

• greater discretionary income allows for supporting more vibrant community in inner city

• gayborhoods as a safe space from bigotry

• provides solidarity congruent with lifestyle

Post-gay era (?)

• characterized not by a proud sense of difference but by a rapid assimilation of gay people into the mainstream

• public opinion became more supportive of gay relations

• government policy increasingly favorable (legalizing same-sex marriage)

Shift from gayborhoods to archipelago (group of islands)

• Ghaziani argues that we should shift from seeing singular gayborhoods to a cultural archipelago that sees spatial expressions of sexuality as more diverse

• consider variation among lesbians, transgender, radicalized concentrations

• ex. trans people might feel unsafe in a typical gay neighborhood, same-sex black couples rather live near other black people than with members of LGBT community

What are the five harms associated with gentrification

• residential displacement

• exclusion

• transformation of public, social, and commercial space

• polarization

• homogenization

Gentrification

the process by which poor and working-class neighborhoods in the inner city are refurbished by an influx of private capital and middle-class home buyers and renters

Rent-gap

• describes the disparity between the current rental income of a property and the potentially achievable rental income

• ultimately renders poor neighborhoods potentially profitable sites of reinvestment

Bad price luck

Refers to poor people who wish to remain in their gentrifying neighborhoods

• cannot be reasonably held responsible for the expensiveness of their taste

• they moved into a low-cost area and developed an attachment, and subsequently the area became expensive

What is the most serious harm of gentrification?

Residential displacement → it distributes the cost of neighborhood transition to people who are not responsible for the change

“Safety Activists” and gentrification

In Chicago, white safety activists would use shootings and other serious incidents as justification for displacing low-income African Americans from Northside neighborhoods

Positive loitering

Groups would stand on street corners to deter crime

• strategic performance of racial neutralization → sat hi to black people, emphasized how black residents have thanked them

• racially unaware → if a group of black people were standing on a corner, the safety activists might call the police, but when white people did it, it raised no red flags

Demographic reasons for gentrification

• changing household structure

• fewer children and growing proportion of dual-earning households

• more suited to city, where concentration of amenities and services preferred over large suburban lots that require a lot of maintenance

Cultural explanations for gentrification

• gentrification related to changing cultural preferences of population

• pro-urban ethos that perceived inauthenticity and sterility of suburbs in favor of “character neighborhoods”

• grit as glamor

3 waves of gentrification

1. initial wave of bohemains/artists, who have a high cultural capital but low economic capital, and are risk-takers

2. second wave of middle class bourgeois-bohemains → drawn to vibrancy of bubbling artistic scene, prices still low

3. neighborhood becomes attractive to developers, real-estate agencies, investors, and upper-middle class professionals

Public policy as explanation for gentrification

• concerted effort by municipalities to refurbish inner city

• related to entrepreneurial mode of governance and fiscal crisis after deindustrialization

• revitalizing inner city seen as source of economic growth

collective efficacy

Sampson’s theory that one antidote to break the cycle of poverty is forming a sense of social cohesion combined with shared expectations for social control

Regent Park

• Toronto’s oldest and largest social housing project built in the late 1940s

• for decades, it was the poorest area in Toronto and the site of high crime rates

Strong Neighborhoods Strategy (SNS)

• response to concentrated poverty and crime in post-war suburbs in Toronto particularly after highly publicized gun murders in summer 2003

• proposal for package of initiatives that would improve public safety and build the community through a blend of programs and services for youth living in at-risk neighborhoods

Why did the Regent Park revitalization plan succeed while the SNS initiative failed?

The structure of urban political economies systematically privileges the politics of property development → revitalization more successful when joined with market appeal, like in Regent Park

SNS initiative was primarily focused on community safety and did not emphasize property redevelopment

Collective Action frames

Articulates issues, values, and concerns in ways that foster shared identity and call for engagement → required to overcome apathy and division

Three tasks of framing

• motivational framing - defines the community that acts collectively and urges them to act

• Diagnostic framing - specifies a problem and its cause

• prognostic framing - proposing the solution that involves collective action

Place-based collective identity and collective agents for change

Neighborhoods rely on creating a place-based identity (ex. Frogtown) that energized residents to feel pride and take responsibility and action in their neighborhood → makes the neighborhood a collective agent for change (bottom-up instead of top-down)

Populism

• A political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups

• populisms succeeds when it transforms the candidate into a collective representation → ex. Trumpism is separate from the Republican Party

Ford populism

Ford framed downtown elites and city government as above ordinary people in suburbs → taking advantage of blue collar workers, recent immigrants

deviated from typical right-wing populism emphasis on ethnicity and defined insider vs. outsider according to suburban vs. urban

What is the key fault-line in the political divide?

Density → Trump support concentrated with lower-density, lower income, lower education

Clinton and Biden both pulled in areas with large metro size, greater density, high levels of income and education, high concentration of immigrants, gay and lesbians

Cultural dimensions of geographies of discontent

• progressive outlooks correlate with “density divide” → greater tolerance for ethnic, cultural, and sexual diversity

• low density areas tend to be more committed to traditional norms around gender, sexuality and the family, more religious

Socialization hypothesis

exposure to others may promote progressive values

freedom to explore alternative lifestyles that are supported by urban critical mass

Selection hypothesis - “the big sort”

People are segregating and sorting themselves into places that fit with and reinforce their identities and values

Birds of a feather flock together

The unintended consequence of sorting according to residential preferences is deepening polarization

Top-down vs. bottom-up sources of urban change

Top-down → government policies/planning, large-scale infrastructure projects, economic initiatives

bottom-up → community activism, small-scale initiatives

The Metropolis and Mental Life

By George Simmel; posits that urbanites numb themselves to things that are happening in the city so you aren’t overwhelmed → emotional life results in different outward behaviors

urbanite are more free than rural inhabitants, but can also feel more alone

Blase attitude

Simmel’s idea in “The Metropolis and Mental Life” that people in the city must have a blasé attitude because the city is so busy and distracting that they must develop a lack of reaction, or else face constant overstimulation

Urbanism as a Way of Life

By Louis Wirth; there are so many people and so much is happening that compared to rural areas, cities have no tight kinship bonds, thus leading to the alienation of individuals → crime/deviance because there aren’t strong connection to the environment/stronger individualist mindset

Gemeinschaft (community) vs. Gesellschaft (society)

While community involves traditional bonds around kinship within a village or town, society is based on impersonal associations → society transitioned from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft during the Industrial Revolution