From Resistance to Gentrification: Community Gardens and their Role in Producing Gentrification

Secondary Sources:

Benjamin Looker, A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America (2015).

Benjamin Looker explores the construction of the post war urban neighborhood as a symbol and site of debate through which new visions of the nation are transformed into the cold war-era. Looker argues that a variety of political actors fought and struggled over the definition and control of the “neighborhood” that projected contradictory visions of the neighborhood in America. This text’s significance lies within his argument against the popular understanding of this period as one plagued by urban blight, decay, and dysfunction. Rather, Looker argues that the neighborhood is an imaginative space that is always in a dialectical conversation with the beliefs, and actions addressing real and perceived issues. Looker uses analysis of popular culture such as TV shows like Sesame Street to illustrate the discourse of American society in shaping imagined cities in their present challenges and futures. 

This text’s main strength to me is the conceptualization of the neighborhood as an imaginative space in which people push their conceptions on what American society is or should be. Centralizing the term “neighborhood” as a symbolic term in understanding the experience of space in the postwar U.S as not only a story of decay but also reimagined futures. The main weakness I find in this text is that it is very broad and can feel disorganized at times. Because this text goes over a large period of time over many urban sites it can feel generalizing for some time and period specific topics. The intervention here is crucial because of the characterization of this period as one of decay, decline, and despair in scholarship is drowning in the field. Scholarship often can focus on the structural inequalities and political actors that implemented this decay rather than those who reimagined or resisted it. For my research, reconceptualizing words like neighborhood are central to my work. I would like to use a similar method in the way we use the word “tenant” because it can often refer to a very specific rigid set of circumstances a person is in and often limits the imagination of how people could view themselves and their relation with their local communities. 

Brown, Lawrence T. The Black Butterfly the Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America. Johns Hopkins University Press (2021)

In The Black Butterfly Lawrence T. Brown argues that structural racism has caused the continuing destruction of Black communities in the United States proposing a five step process in order to achieve racial equity. This process consists of recognizing and stopping historical trauma and its continued effects on Black Communities. Additionally, restructuring allocation of funds, ownership, affordable housing, and decision making in Black communities. Essentially a series of policy recommendations on how to alleviate historical spatial racism. 

In this text Brown uses a combination of historical, and spatial analysis of policy and practices in Baltimore City to illustrate how the United States created a unique system of apartheid. Additionally, Brown uses Michelle Sotero’s conceptual model of historical trauma to analyze its ongoing effects in Black Neighborhoods. Finally, Brown conducts a “racial equity analysis” of various systems and institutions to understand how they further perpetuate this historical trauma. Brown uses political analysis, social science research, and archival materials in crafting his argument.

The strengths of this text is in its structural analysis of race and how it has influenced and controlled the production and use of space in the United States. Brown is able to illustrate the depth to which this spatial racism is embedded in American institutions and practices. The shortcomings are in the historical analysis and in the policy recommendations. For historical analysis it at times feels rushed and very condensed, I think a more comprehensive look into the historic policy would create a stronger argument for policy recommendations. Lastly, the policy recommendations listed here are very popular now amongst the liberal class especially in NYC where they have had significant issues and have not been very effective in achieving some of the goals Brown seeks. In my opinion, a complete restructuring of housing and spatial practice would need to be done in order to remedy any of these issues Brown analyzes. 

For my future research the definition of gentrification is useful because it describes the often conceived notion of how gentrification works as displacing low income people but often leaves out the political element to it. I believe the definition Brown uses leaves much to be desired in the political attitudes of existing and incoming residents and how they envision and enact political change. 

Forman, Murray.  The Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop. Wesleyan University Press. (2002)

Murray Forman in The Hood Comes First argues that by examining and exploring key spatial configurations that emerge from rap and hip hop discourse media that cultural production of urban sites of significance can be better understood. Forman does this by examining the ways in which members of hip-hop and rap cultures articulate notions of subjective and collective identities, urban experience, racial consciousness and spatially constructed patterns of power. Forman supports his argument by examining words and phrases such as “the real”, “the hood”, “the ghetto” that have been used in Hip hop and rap to construct the spatial conception of these communities. Additionally, he examines various rap and hip-hop songs on radio in their context to further construct the discourse of this space. This examination of discourse allows him to illustrate hip hop’s relationships to the social production of race and space, and through discourse we can see the visions and practices merging to create unique cultural identities and meanings. 

Recognizing the considerable amount of research done on rap, Forman states that there is little done on the critical study of assumed factors within the popular music industry that have aided or restricted its development. Moreover, Forman seeks to intervene in the uncritical assumption and unanswered generalities in the canon that have restricted the history of hip-hop and rap. Lastly, Forman seeks to contribute to the study of hip hop and rap from a geocultural and spatial perspective. 

This text’s biggest strength is its examination of discourse and the construction of space and place through hip hop and rap. Forman has a strong understanding of the scholarship on discourse and space and place that holds up his argument about the unique construction of rap and hip hop space in the United States. There are not many weaknesses I can point out, the argument is strong and well supported so I am going to make suggestions about additions I might make. First, I would add some oral interviews with rappers and consumers to reinforce the narrative and break up the academic jargon, it can be hard to read at times this could ease it for the reader. Secondly, I would like a more in depth exploration of the rise of stand-up comedy and its relation with hip-hop in the 90s as I see him examining the Arsenio Hall show. I would love to see an exploration into Def Comedy Jam and its position in the discourse in relation to rap. I find this text to be useful because of its framing of how space can function in urban context and provides me with a lens of media studies that I have yet to encounter. I could see myself using this text in my own framing of media and its role in the cultural production of urban space and place.

Massey, Doreen. Space, Place, and Gender. NED-New edition. University of Minnesota Press, (1994)

This book demonstrates the ways in which feminist theory and geographical concepts and contexts are central to understanding postwar capitalist society in Britain. Massey Argues that masculinist reading and writing of geography and the wholesale disregard for feminist theory/voices in the post modernist debate have enormous power in defining the terrain of geographical analysis. For example in the chapter “A Woman’s Place” Massey analyzes how economic development facing industry reworked gender relations and subsequently ideology across Britain. The key intervention Massey is making is that there has been a wholesale discounting of Feminist theory in academic scholarship. Massey argues for the recognition of the social constructedness of concepts of place and place identities.

The strengths in this text are the critique of masculinist geographic conceptions of how space and place are constructed, emphasising that they are constructed out of social relations that have multiple meanings held by varying social groups. I think this intervention is the strongest in relation to her critique of Harvey and his lack of challenging traditional geographic modes of analysis. While not a weakness but more of a left me wanting more was perhaps an investigation or comparison outside of Britain or western society to further Massey’s contention that there is far more complexity and relation of identity groups and space. 

This text will be helpful in my understanding of how capital uses the forms of geographical variation and inequality such as gender and how that formed the divisions of labor. This is fundamental to my research in understanding how private property under capitalism uses space and place to form gender relations and divisions of labor in Western Society. 

Robert Sampson, The Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring

Neighborhood Effect (2012)

In Great American City Robert Sampson reveals how the mechanisms of social causality are profoundly shaped by the spatial logic of urban life. Sampson argues that neighborhood contexts are important determinants in shaping human behavior. His analysis includes not only structural and cultural elements but also the perceptions and choices of individual residents. Sampson supports his argument by analyzing the ecologically concentrated disadvantage on individual behavioral outcomes.

Sampson makes multiple interventions with his new framework of analysis, particularly in the field of sociology. He points out that the application of “tool kits” and “scripts” are individualistic and not very suitable for a frame of persistent macrohistorical continuity, cultural mechanisms, and embedded social structures.Sampson’s most critical intervention for my work is his challenging of self selection bias. His critique of self-selection bias comes from his framework of neighborhood effects, posing the neighborhood as an entity that has a dialectical relationship with its residents. While self selection bias promotes the effect of neighborhoods are caused by characteristics of families and individuals who end up living there. Rather, he argues that “individual selection is embedded in social contexts” making it a neighborhood effect itself.

For my research Sampson’s framework is helpful in advocacy for holistic policy interventions at a local level that do not foster displacement, rather than enhance citizen participation and mobilization greatly tightening the social fabric of a neighborhood. His examination of neighborhoods as “persistent macrohistorical continuity” is useful for my research as seeing neighborhoods as woven into the fabric of their history not simply as “products” or separate. 

The only weakness I can find independently is the section on Non profits effect on neighborhoods. For such a macro historical understanding I found it curious why he did not include or hint at sociological scholarship that asserts that non profits long term effects can be negative on creating lasting social change. I am thinking of the book The Revolution Will Not Be Funded that coined the term “Non-Profit Industrial Complex” arguing that these groups are often co-opted to manage dissent and maintain existing power structures rather than radical social change that Sampson discusses.

Overall Analysis

For this annotated bibliography I have chosen to examine the sub field of space and place in American studies. Each of these texts examines a different aspect of space and place but largely centers around how localized communities are constructed and mediated by discourse through media, gender, race, class, politics, and history. Each of these texts provide different lenses, methodologies and subjects that offer insight into how space and place are constructed. The majority of these works are stemming from Henri Lefebvre’s work but primarily “The Production of Space” and others such as David Harvey and Michel Foucault. Each of these texts builds on these scholars’ notion of space as a core facet of the hegemonic order, as space is used to define dominant and subordinate relationships. Each of these texts examine discourse in a given field or subject, Massey examines a “Women’s Place”, Looker does the “Neighborhood”, and Forman does “the hood”and more. Each of these authors use the examination of common phrases in discourse to illustrate how the space is constructed and mediated by this discourse.

I have yet to examine more of the scholarship on the relation of gender and space but from this list there is a gap in the study of queerness and gender in space and place. Additionally, while authors like Forman use some ethnographic, and media studies I believe more of these kinds of primary sources including oral histories could greatly strengthen the field as well as making it more accessible to non academics. If there were to be an examination of queer space and place there would need to be oral history research conducted because of the particular historical context of the community. Lastly, I would like to see more non-western interpretations of how space and place work, this could also include how space and place are constructed in a digital age in which borders have different boundaries and new identity groups form and are mediated by an alternative discourse.