Representing “Neighborhood”: Growth Coalitions,Newspaper Reporting,and Gentrification in St. Louis

Newspaper reporters are important actors in promoting gentrification. This study of St. Louis examines their use of a prominent representation of neighborhood in this process: dying neighborhoods in need of middle‐class technical salvationists. We examine its use to help drive two processes to promoting gentrification: legitimating restructuring at actual or anticipated sites and isolating “revitalization‐contaminating” communities. We discover this neighborhood representation is applied primarily to legitimate restructuring at specific sites. Revitalization‐threatening neighborhoods, represented differently, indicates this representation is task specific in this city's “gentrification project.”     

The divergent city: unequal and uneven development in St. Louis

In St. Louis, as in many other cities, decline and displacement occurred when key policies, prejudices, and plans interacted with broad economic restructuring to devastate poor and minority communities, while leaving White and middle-class communities largely intact. Amidst overall population loss and neighborhood decline are pockets of prosperity and gentrification within the central city. In this article, we analyze three significant planning interventions in St. Louis, Missouri, that spurred displacement of populations—urban renewal, triage, and the foreclosure crisis. We argue that the differential experiences of Black and White during each of these periods represent two faces of development: one in the north of the city that is largely Black, experiencing vacant land, high crime, and crumbling infrastructure; another in the south of the city that is largely White, enjoying pockets of vibrant commercial development, larger homes, and stable real estate markets. We analyze each period through a framework of uneven and unequal development and displacement, which we call the Divergent City Theory. Based on this theory, planners face an ethical obligation to plan for the future of their cities in a way that seeks to reconcile the structured race and class inequalities of the divergent city.     

Escapism. Yi-Fu Tuan; Transnationalism from Below. Michael Peter Smith and Luis Eduardo Guarnizo,editors; Race,Place, and the Law 1836-1948. David Delaney; Hurricane Andrew: Ethnicity,Gender, and the Sociology of Disasters. Walter Gillis Peacock,Betty Hearn Morrow,and Hugh Gladwin,editors

In the second half of the 20th century, considerable resources and efforts have been devoted to revitalizing American central cities. In these redevelopment processes, however, the common byproduct of physical upgrading is social upgrading, the displacement of many of the original residents, who are often low-income and minority, from their traditional neighborhoods. This article explores the various processes of physical and social upgrading—including locally driven urban renewal, private sector "blockbusting," and gentrification—occurring in late 20th century Houston, Texas. This research also examines the neighborhood characteristics and demographic patterns that influence the occurrence of specific upgrading processes. One location of particular interest in the study is Houston's historic African American community of Freedmen's Town, which has experienced decades of conflict over land and space. Most recently, Freedmen's Town has been at the focus of Houston's urban revival, where physical upgrading has been accompanied by the displacement of the community's traditional population and the destruction of this historic neighborhood.     

Nonprofit Foundations and Grassroots Organizing: Reshaping Urban Governance

Collaborative urban governance has increased the role of community organizations in local decision-making processes. These organizations need financial resources in order to participate in urban governance. In this article, I examine the impact of foundation grants on the relationships and agendas of four community organizations in one neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Drawing on interviews, observations of organizations, and archival research, I demonstrate that in the 1990s, nonprofit foundations had a significant impact on the formation of new organizations and on their agendas in the neighborhood. Foundations are, therefore, an important player in urban governance, shaping a “neighborhood policy regime.”     

Nonprofit Foundations and Grassroots Organizing: Reshaping Urban Governance*

Collaborative urban governance has increased the role of community organizations in local decision‐making processes. These organizations need financial resources in order to participate in urban governance. In this article, I examine the impact of foundation grants on the relationships and agendas of four community organizations in one neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Drawing on interviews, observations of organizations, and archival research, I demonstrate that in the 1990s, nonprofit foundations had a significant impact on the formation of new organizations and on their agendas in the neighborhood. Foundations are, therefore, an important player in urban governance, shaping a “neighborhood policy regime.”     

Ethnic concentration and entrepreneurship: the case of African Americans in three US metropolitan areas

Using 2006–2010 American Community Survey data and a multilevel research design, this study examines how the spatial concentration of African Americans within local labor markets is associated with the probability of self-employment and job earnings from business ownership. We find a negative relationship between the spatial concentration of African Americans and their business ownership in Miami, but not in Atlanta. In Detroit, a higher percentage of US-born African Americans in the local labor market is actually associated with a higher probability of business ownership. The relationship between the percentage of African Americans and job earnings also differs across the three study areas. These results suggest that the relationship between racial/ethnic concentration and African American entrepreneurship is highly contingent on the economic conditions and demographic composition of local labor markets.     

Proximity to Job Opportunities and African American Male Unemployment: A Test of the Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis in Indianapolis

Despite the lack of substantive research, the spatial mismatch hypothesis remains a pervasive explanation for the high rate of African American male unemployment. This research tests the hypothesis that census tract African American male unemployment rates are negatively related to the number of local job opportunities. This hypothesis is tested for Marion County, Indiana, the central county of the Indianapolis MSA. Weighted partial correlation coefficients of the logit of African American male census tract unemployment rates and indices of the availability of local job opportunities in manufacturing, services, and retail trade are statistically insignificant. The findings reject the spatial mismatch hypothesis in the specific context of Indianapolis in 1990.     

Eminent domain destroys a community: leveling East Arlington to make way for the Pentagon

This study examines the eminent domain action in 1942 where the federal government took 411 acres of land, including an African American neighborhood, to construct the Pentagon building in Arlington County, Virginia. The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution acknowledges the right of the federal government to exercise eminent domain where needed for the common good, but requires that property owners be given just compensation. This study explores the issue of compensation: what the residents lost when they were forced to move, how that loss was compensated, and whether the compensation was “just.” The study data include interviews with former residents of the neighborhood, oral histories, land records, census data, photographs, and newspaper articles. The study concludes that the federal government compensated the residents for land and buildings, but was unable to compensate for a lost community. For many residents, that community is mourned even 72 years later.     

Katrina and Migration: Evacuation and Return by African Americans and Vietnamese Americans in an Eastern New Orleans Suburb

Hurricane Katrina constitutes the most costly natural as well as technology-induced disaster, in terms of both human suffering and financial loss in the history of the United States. Even years later, it continues to profoundly impact the livelihoods and the mental and physical health of those who have experienced evacuation and return and those who have begun lives anew elsewhere. Our study focuses on these geographical processes associated with the Katrina disaster experiences of African Americans and Vietnamese Americans comprising an overwhelming majority (93.4 percent) of residents in a racially mixed pre-Katrina eastern New Orleans neighborhood. We examine the spatial morphology of routes, volumes, and frequencies of evacuees; their return rates and experiences; and rationales and motivations to return or stay. The conceptual framework is based on the disaster migration, place attachment, and social network literature. Both quantitative and qualitative evidence indicates that the evacuation and return experiences of each minority group substantially differed, especially among African American women, and this was strongly influenced by existing social networks.     

GEOGRAPHIC CONTEXT AND CONCENTRATED URBAN POVERTY WITHIN THE UNITED STATES

Responding to previous analyses that assume that places are passive recipients of the various macro-level social phenomena associated with concentrated urban poverty, I hypothesize that concentrated urban poverty takes on different forms in different places as a result of how macro-level social phenomena are mediated by locally specific structures. To investigate how concentrated urban poverty takes on different forms in different places, I first decompose the poverty rates of all high-poverty urban neighborhoods in the United States into their race-specific rate and composition effects, and classify high-poverty neighborhoods based on these decomposition values. The results of the analysis demonstrate that poverty in a majority of the high-poverty neighborhoods in the United States is undoubtedly affected by geographically specific processes. For example, within one set of high-poverty neighborhoods, poverty is associated with both the lack of economic opportunity and high rates of class-based residential segregation within mixed-race immigrant ethnic/immigrant enclaves in large gateway cities. A second set of high-poverty neighborhoods, located in the metropolitan areas of the southern United States, has high rates of poverty because of the residential segregation and geographic concentration of poverty-prone African Americans. And lastly, among a third set of tracts, poverty experiences in African American ghettos are linked to declining economic and social opportunities and class-based residential segregation within large manufacturing cities. A set of recommendations for additional research includes addressing how one-size-fits-all anti-poverty public policies should be modified for the specific needs of each type of high-poverty neighborhood. [Key words: context, poverty, segregation, employment, race, ethnicity.]     

Access to supermarkets among poorer neighborhoods: a comparison of time and distance measures

This research assesses neighborhood differences in access to supermarkets for the Portland, Oregon region. Five-year American Community Survey data for the 2006–2010 period are used to compare a travel time and distance measure of supermarket access for neighborhoods of concentrated poverty relative to other neighborhoods, taking into account their distance to the city center. Poor and nonpoor outer neighborhoods have longer average travel times and distances to nearby supermarkets than their more centralized counterparts. Poor outer neighborhoods fare better on travel distance than nonpoor outer neighborhoods do, but endure penalties in longer travel times. This research demonstrates the potential for variation in results across methods measuring access to neighborhood amenities and suggests that more nuanced methodology will be required for us to understand sociospatial disparities in access.     

THE SPREAD OF CHANGE IN METROPOLITAN AND NONMETROPOLITAN GROWTH IN THE UNITED STATES, 1940–1976

This article explores the historical, economic, and social factors that shape the recent migration of middle-class Blacks to low-income, urban, Black neighborhoods. It focuses on the meanings associated with this pattern of Black gentrification and the extent to which this residential pattern is consistent with previous models of urban gentrification. Using three years of ethnographic data from a low-income neighborhood in Philadelphia that has experienced an increase in Black middle-class residents, I conclude that this pattern of neighborhood change is distinct from previous models of urban gentrification. In this article, I argue that Black gentrification represents a unique set of opportunities and constraints that produce a group of middleclass African Americans willing to invest their social, economic, and cultural capital into improving the quality of life for low-income Black neighborhoods and their residents.     

面向社区生活圈构建的郊区居民社区依赖性研究——以上海市为例

在郊区化和社区生活圈构建的背景下,提高郊区居民日常生活对社区空间的依赖性对于缓解城市发展压力、提高居民生活质量和满意度有重要意义。论文将功能性依赖和情感性依赖2个维度相结合,构建研究框架,将居民的社区依赖性划分为社区依赖、社区依靠、社区认同和社区排斥4种类型。以上海市为案例地区开展实证研究,基于2017年郊区居民行为调查的一手数据,分析居民功能性依赖和情感性依赖的基本特征及其群体间差异,并利用多项Logistics回归模型,研究社区空间特征对社区依赖性的影响。对不同群体和不同社区特征下社区依赖性的模式进行总结,以期为郊区社区生活圈规划提供研究依据。研究结果表明：不同群体的社区依赖性特征存在显著差异,小汽车拥有情况对于功能性依赖和情感性依赖的作用方向相反;社区设施密度主要影响居民对社区的功能性依赖;社区绿地率对功能性依赖和情感性依赖都有显著的积极影响;居民对社区的主观评价主要影响情感性依赖。社区生活圈的规划应改善社区环境质量,合理配置绿地、开敞空间和休闲设施,提高社区商业设施等级和质量,同时也要注重加强社会环境的建设。     

Sweet Auburn: Constructing Atlanta's Auburn Avenue as a Heritage Tourist Destination

Utilizing redevelopment plans created by Central Atlanta Progress, this study explores the process of constructing a heritage tourist landscape on Atlanta's Auburn Avenue. Once home to the wealthiest African American community in the United States, Auburn Avenue went through a period of economic decline in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2000, planners for the City of Atlanta focused on redeveloping the Auburn Avenue corridor. At that time, Central Atlanta Progress began to update plans to convert Auburn Avenue into the United States' premier African American tourist destination. Utilizing those plans, this article argues that the city's redevelopment vision ties into particular aspects of African American identity, which link to neoliberal economic policies in an effort to turn Auburn Avenue into a "culturetainment" district. This vision is juxtaposed against the reaction of community residents who seek an alternative redevelopment vision.     

CONSTRUCTING PLACE: CULTURAL HEGEMONIES AND MEDIA IMAGES OF AN INNER-CITY NEIGHBORHOOD

This paper examines place portrayals of an inner-city neighborhood by investigating the interrelationships among the representations of the neighborhood in major mainstream newspapers, the alternative neighborhood press, and local institutions. I argue that the everyday, lived experiences of neighborhood residents are represented through a series of discourses and counter-discourses between the mainstream and local newspapers. Using newspaper articles about vice in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota, I demonstrate that the negative imagery of Frogtown in the mainstream press is contested and challenged in the local neighborhood newspaper, and by activists in the neighborhood. I conclude that while the major press has a dominant role in defining the neighborhood, locally based contestations over the place identity undermine and offer challenges to the hegemony of the popular media. Both local and dominant media discourses contribute to a neighborhood place identity. [Key words: media hegemony, newspapers, neighborhood, place representation.]     

RACIAL DIFFERENCES IN THE COMMUTING BEHAVIOR OF WOMEN IN BUFFALO, 1980-1990

Disagreement persists about whether or not African American workers in U.S. metropolitan areas are more distant from centers of employment opportunities than European American workers are. But few studies on employment accessibility focus on racial differences among women. Analyses of 1980 and 1990 census Public Use Microdata Samples for Erie County (Buffalo), New York show that, by 1990, African American and European American women who use private vehicles generally spend about the same time commuting. However in both years, work trips to destinations outside the central city penalize African American women relative to European American women. If employment opportunities, especially service jobs, continue to expand in suburban locations and not in central-city locations, the African American women who have to reverse commute (even when they use a car) are unlikely to enjoy the relative convenience of short commutes that characterize the journey-to-work behavior of European American women with suburban employment.     

Comparing spatial distributions of infant mortality over time: Investigating the urban environment of Baltimore,Maryland in 1880 and 1920

Infant mortality is a sensitive indicator of urban environmental conditions, and investigating the geography of such an indicator provides insight into variables affecting public health in urban North America in 1880 and 1920. Geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial analysis now provide a means by which to view past infant mortality distributions from a new perspective, one not available at the time. This study makes use of data collected from the 1880 and 1920 Vital Statistics Death Records for Baltimore, Maryland - mapping each infant death to his or her place of residence. Previous work with the 1880 data indicates an uneven distribution of infant deaths with some degree of spatial clustering. The current study takes these findings a step further through the use of the local spatial autocorrelation statistic, Gi*, to identify the locations of clusters in one or both years. The aim of the comparison is to determine whether the location of infant mortality clusters remained the same over time indicating persistent environmental, and possibly demographic, challenges in certain neighborhoods. The data indicated hotspots of infant mortality in both years with persistence in the Fells Point area of Baltimore. The significant clusters appeared in neighborhoods with large African American and/or immigrant populations in both years. The hotspots in the primarily African American neighborhood were only significant in 1880 despite presenting some intriguing questions about what caused such a change, particular when the population in that part of the city did not change. This work offers insights into the spatial distribution of infant mortality in the past and clues regarding which parts of the city need additional investigation to better understand their social and environmental characteristics.     

Enacting Neighborhood1

Defining the concept of neighborhood has long been a goal in urban research. In this paper, I trace the various meanings of neighborhood articulated by scholars, from neighborhood-as-community to functional and demographic typologies, to examinations of the effects of residential environments on human behavior. In identifying the myriad meanings of neighborhood, this paper highlights the contingency and flexibility of the concept. I argue that it is precisely because of its blurriness and flexibility that neighborhood has salience: The concept of neighborhood is primarily a social and political product, created through activism, and through research on sociospatial relations. Rather than seeking a fixed definition that can apply to many circumstances, I argue that research on neighborhoods ought to focus on how neighborhoods are produced socially and, in turn, physically, through cooperation and conflict. I apply this framework of enacting neighborhood to a brief case study of neighborhood conflicts in Athens, Georgia.     

Downgrading – An overlooked reality in African cities: Reflections from an indigenous neighborhood of Accra,Ghana

African cities contain a range of low-income ethnic and cultural enclaves that defy conventional ‘slum’ typecasts and intervention guidelines. Further, new forms of urbanization (e.g. gated communities and informal settlements) have received heavy emphasis in recent urban geographic research. Such research emphases have many unintended consequences; one of which is that traditional indigenous neighborhoods in the older city are glossed over. This paper focuses on urban downgrading in Korle Gonno, a prominent and established indigenous community in Accra, Ghana. Using mixed-method data (including surveys), the results illustrate that a traditional neighborhood encounters many of the same dimensions of urban poverty as the more famed slums in the city, yet it experiences different poverty trajectories. We argue that the prevailing slum profiling techniques fall short of capturing these trajectories; more nuanced approaches that capture continuity and discontinuity with past and present socioeconomic processes are necessary. Attention must be rebalanced toward understanding the deterioration of these neighborhoods if policymakers, planners and urban theorists are to obtain a comprehensive picture of poverty dynamics and appropriate interventions in African cities.     

居住区环境与噪音污染对居民心理健康的影响——以北京为例

心理健康作为当代城市居民面临的主要问题之一,已有研究证实居住区建成环境和社会环境对心理健康的影响。然而,此类研究主要聚焦于西方发达国家,而且对于噪音污染因素考虑不足,未能同时研究居住区环境和噪音污染对居民心理健康的影响。论文基于2017年北京市26个居住区居民的健康问卷调查数据,采用多层Logistic模型,探讨居住区环境(包括建成环境及社会环境)与居民感知的多种来源的噪音污染(包括道路交通噪音、轨道交通噪音、商店餐饮噪音和住房装修噪音)等多种因素与居民心理健康的相关关系。研究发现,居住区环境和噪音污染水平均与居民心理健康显著相关。与西方发达国家居住区环境与心理健康关系的研究类似,论文发现居住区医疗设施和休闲娱乐设施可达性、居民邻里关系、居住区满意度等因素与心理健康显著相关;不同的是,论文发现公园可达性、居住区交通噪音等因素与心理健康相关性不显著。此外,本文发现住房装修噪音是影响北京居民心理健康的主要噪音来源。