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.     

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.     

The Entrepreneurial City: Fabricating Urban Development in Syracuse,New York

This paper presents a case study of contemporary urban redevelopment in Syracuse, New York, within a theoretical framework drawn from urban political economy. Our analysis integrates the role of the local state in assuming the financial risk for a redevelopment project with an understanding of the meanings and role of a fabricated cultural landscape in ensuring the success of the project. We argue that the urban landscape is fundamentally embedded and implicated in the ongoing political economy of American urban places.     

A Street Fit for a King: Naming Places and Commemoration in the American South

The naming of streets after Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) is an importantarena for African Americans as they rewrite the landscape of southern identity and commemoration. While less ornate and ostentatious than museums and monuments, MLK streets are powerful and highly contested cultural geographies because of their potential to connect disparate communities and incorporate a vision of the past into the spatial practices of everyday life. They reveal the importance of location, particularly intra‐urban location, to public memorialization. Naming streets for King is a significant part of the nonmetropolitan South as well as larger cities and dependent upon the relative size of a city's African‐American population. When estimating the intra‐urban character of MLK streets within several southern states, findings suggest that they are located in census areas that are generally poorer and with more African Americans than citywide averages. Analysis reveals a geographic unevenness in the frequency of businesses having an address identified with King. When compared with the stereotypical American thoroughfare of “Main” Street, the address composition of MLK streets appears to be more residential in nature, although there is significant state by state variation.     

BETWEEN A REFUGE AND A BATTLEGROUND: BEIRUT'S DISCREPANT COSMOPOLITANISMS*

Beirut has experienced cosmopolitanism and its opposite. It is a site of multicultural encounters and communal entrenchment: a refuge and a battleground. How and where does Beirut's cosmopolitan project turn into violence? The notion of “discrepant cosmopolitanism” provides two answers, blurring accepted distinctions between multicultural openness and communitarian entrenchment. First, openness and closure are not opposed but part of discrepant cosmopolitanisms immanent in urban space. Second, these discrepant cosmopolitanisms originate in Lebanon's encounter with colonial modernity. The making of the Lebanese nation‐state has revolved around the sectarian spatiality of the ta'ifa (religious community), which produced contested but coexisting discourses and practices of rivalry and harmony. The rise of Beirut's international hotels in the 1960s, their destruction, and their role in contemporary urban redevelopment are treated here as embodiments of discrepant cosmopolitanisms. Within Beirut's recurrent tensions, a renegotiation of its cosmopolitan project could stem from a different relationship between the urban and national policies.     

School Names as Cultural Arenas: The Naming of U.S. Public Schools after Martin Luther King,Jr.

The commemoration of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) is a growing movement in many American cities and towns. School naming is an important yet underanalyzed part of this project. A recent struggle in Riverside, California over naming a high school for MLK is used as a springboard for: (1) conceptualizing school names as cultural arenas for debating student and community identity and (2) conducting a general study of the types of U.S. public schools named for King. As illustrated in California, school naming can be interpreted by one social group as a means of integrating and inspiring students historically and viewed by another group as a means of drawing boundaries around students in terms of race and local heritage. According to 1997-1998 data, 110 public schools bear King's name. They are located most often in the central cities of large and mid-size urban areas. King's name is most frequently found on schools that teach early and middle grades. Schools named for Martin Luther King do not necessarily denote a "Black" school in terms of the racial characteristics of students, although they do not fully integrate Whites with African Americans or Whites with minorities in general. Naming schools for King is part of a larger refashioning of the urban cultural landscape as racial and ethnic groups increasingly seek public recognition of their historical achievements.     

SYMBOLIZING PLACE: JOURNALISTIC NARRATIVES OF THE CITY

As scholarship in a variety of disciplines acknowledges the power of symbolic systems to shape human conception, geographical research has increasingly scrutinized popular culture texts as repositories of spatial understanding. The newspaper particularly repays such study because it is tied functionally and symbolically to conceptions of place and describes characteristic inflections of the narrative of city life. Strategies in news narrative typically mediate between the newspaper's economic self-interest in regional development and the journalistic ideal of public service. A rhetorical analysis of stories announcing a redevelopment project demonstrates how conventions of journalistic representation can work subtly to present, yet subordinate, critical views of urban redevelopment.     

文化身份视角下移民城市的城中村更新模式探讨 ——基于新加坡与深圳的实证研究

选取新加坡和深圳的3个城中村作为实证研究对象,从文化身份的理论视角切入,剖析移民城市的城中村更新的文化塑造过程;指出要理解文化身份的内涵与本质,需要理解地方蕴含的全球性与在地性、过去与现在这两组关系.在解读宏观文化政策的内在政治和经济推动力的基础上,基于参与式观察和半结构化访谈资料,运用质性分析方法,比较探讨典型移民城...     

Re-Envisioning the City: Lefebvre,HOPE VI,and the Neoliberalization of Urban Space

This study draws upon the urban theory of Henri Lefebvre to examine HOPE VI, a public housing demolition and redevelopment program administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Hailed as a new approach to urban policy, the HOPE VI program embodies many of the key tenets of neoliberal urbanization, including an emphasis on entrepreneurial forms of urban regeneration and a focus on individual responsibility. To provide a lens for understanding this neoliberalization of space, we first detail Lefebvre's theorization of abstract space and transparency, highlighting in particular its nondialectical and depoliticized character. We then turn to examine the HOPE VI model and its implementation in Charlotte, North Carolina. Lefebvre's analysis, we argue, provides a useful entry point for interpreting the re-envisioning of urban space that underlies HOPE VI-style redevelopment, and therefore can potentially inform contemporary struggles against neoliberal urban policy.     

Failing to Grow "Their" Own Justice? The Co-Production of Racial/Gendered Labor and Milwaukee's Urban Forest

Little attention is paid to the ways that labor market inequalities within urban institutions enforce governance regimes that (re)produce urban environmental unevenness. Milwaukee's Bureau of Forestry is one such institution that has historically been dependent on state-sanctioned labor market inequalities to perpetuate an explicitly White/male regime of environmental governance and production. Historically, the Bureau's management employed and promoted very few African Americans and women within its arboricultural workforce, based on its racist and gendered categories of laboring individuals. Furthermore, and for identical reasons, these workers—and by extension their communities—face distributional injustices as they are not allowed to channel their labors into the production of equitable and/or alternative forms of urban forests more suitable to their own social reproduction. This paper investigates the changing relations between Milwaukee's Bureau of Forestry and its African American and female employees as they attempt to legally (re)articulate their laboring identities and capabilities within a disempowering institution. We use in-depth interviews and archival materials to show that the Bureau of Forestry has consequently been forced to publicly confront its racist/patriarchal legacy in light of two recent high-profile lawsuits and an ambassadors program. We conclude by discussing how changes that allow some African Americans and women to work in Milwaukee's urban forest have affected the Bureau of Forestry and potentially the forest itself.     

转型期城市居住用地更新的空间加密化研究——广州市金花街改造再考

选择具有代表性的广州市金花街改造项目（1988~2003年）为案例研究对象,分析了政府主导下改造方案的调整过程和改造空间特征,探讨居民诉求和政府旧改政策对旧城空间的影响。研究表明：金花街居民的原地安置诉求和城市政府依此设计的以民生为导向的改造安排,乃是影响旧城空间的重要原因;在准市场化融资方式和福利化拆迁安置方式下,城市政府提出的有关提供公共服务设施、解决居民临时安置问题和让居民原地安置的要求,使改造规划多次提高改造容积率,以保持改造经济平衡;改造后的金花街在房屋和人口两个维度呈现空间加密化的态势,即存在原地安置房叠加融资商品房、原地安置居民叠加购房迁入居民的社会空间现象,金花街改造并未出现以外来中产人口大规模替代原住低收入人口为基本特征的绅士化过程。最后,从引入转让开发权和鼓励微改造两方面对当前广州的旧城改造提出政策建议。     

亚运会城市更新对社区居民影响的跟踪研究——基于广州市三个社区的实证调查

亚运会的成功举办对广州的经济、社会、文化产生了深远影响,同时也触发了广州新一轮的城市更新,涉及颇多社区与居民。现有研究仅关注亚运会前期的影响,缺乏对其后续影响的跟踪研究。本文对亚运会期间更新改造的三个案例进行跟踪研究,对比更新前后社区居民在物质、社会和心理层面上所受影响。研究表明:由于城市更新缺乏对社区居民的全面考虑,更新改造导致部分居民的社会经济地位降低,社会网络破坏,邻里关系拆散,社区满意度下降。这场快速、效果显著的城市更新,在物质层面上一定程度地改善了居民的居住环境和质量,但在社会层面和心理层面却对社区居民造成了较大负面影响。作为与政府和开发商不均衡博弈中的弱势方,社区居民成为亚运轰轰烈烈的城市更新改造中的社会成本承担者。城市更新应更多关注社会利益与公众参与,提倡多元化的城市更新目标。     

Rethinking the Growth Machine: How to Erase a Chinatown from the Urban Core

Abstract

This article explores Houston's two Chinatowns within the context of the city's recent urban reinvestment and revitalization initiatives. It provides a history of the Chinatowns and examines their changing condition during the years that Houston was promoting ethnic diversity and urban revival. The analysis is framed within the growth machine perspective, as initially explored in Houston by Joe Feagin, and later by Jan Lin and Igor Vojnovic. Houston's late-20th-century urban redevelopment initiatives occurred during a period in history when Houston's Chinese entrepreneurs lost their influence over the local growth machine. The eventual outcome was the erasure of Houston's downtown Chinatown and the displacement of its residents from their lucrative urban core location. The disappearance of Old Chinatown and other urban ethnic neighborhoods—including Little Saigon and Freedmen's Town—from the urban core all took place as the Houston media and public were celebrating diversity, pluralism, and ethnicity in the city.     

Lacan on urban development and national identity in a global city: Integrated Resorts in Singapore

Lacanian psychoanalysis has been used in film, literature and other areas of social thought, but rarely in the domain of urban studies and human/cultural geography. Following its introduction by urban planners Michael Gunder and Jean Hillier, I apply the theory of the four discourses and the mirror stage of development to Singapore's urban development of the two Integrated Resorts at Marina Bay and Sentosa. The decision to allow gambling and build casinos was a contentious one and provides a point of departure for insight into the identity issues and planning decision making processes in Singapore. I critically analyse the rhetoric of the public debate from 2004–2005 to draw conclusions about the government's self‐perception of Singapore as a city‐state and the manifestation of this identity through the creation of cosmopolitan spaces as an attempt to project that identity onto its citizens. The aim of Lacanian psychoanalysis is to provide an understanding and recognition by analysis to enable a change of signifiers, values and ideology among the masters and the subjects to better represent the true needs and wants of the community. This reflective position enables a movement toward postcolonial urban studies and planning.     

Bridging equity? Washington,D.C.’s new elevated park as a test case for just planning

In the last decade, justice has been revived as a primary criterion for the analysis and evaluation of planning policies. This paper continues this line of research by examining a proposed redevelopment project in Washington, D.C. that sets equitable development as its goal . The proposed 11th Street Bridge Park would be a top-notch elevated park, physically and symbolically connecting D.C’s wealthy west with the disadvantaged east. The project is managed by a nonprofit organization and seemingly stands out in its progressive vision: An Equitable Development Plan has been developed in an attempt to secure the future of the local residents in light of the neighborhood's anticipated gentrification. However, preliminary findings show that despite explicit commitment to equity, the planning of the park also resurfaces racial and class tensions . The analysis of procedural and substantive aspects of justice in this case suggests that issues of recognition, power and representation are instrumental to fully understand urban (in)justices.     

Growth coalitions in declining cities: casinos,redevelopment, and inter-urban competition

Casino development is a popular strategy for urban redevelopment in declining cities. I examine the process of casino acquisition in the former Canadian automotive capital, Windsor, Ontario – one of the first cities in North America, outside of Atlantic City and Las Vegas, to host a resort casino. Drawing on 20 interviews with urban elites and the local news media, I explore the interplay between a local growth coalition and State interests in the development of Casino Windsor. To capture maximum revenue for provincial coffers, provincial interests used competition between economically depressed cities to co-opt the Windsor casino alliance’s project . Windsor’s urban elites, however, continue to “talk” urban entrepreneurialism, perpetuating the myth that municipal entrepreneurialism was an effective strategy for this struggling city. These findings suggest that the importance placed on the entrepreneurial capacity of local growth coalitions in urban redevelopment studies may be misplaced, especially in peripheral and declining cities.     

城市再生视野下的棚户区改造实践问题

棚户区改造的目的是为了改善城市面貌和居民居住环境,提高城市品位和居民生活质量.目前,我国城市开展了大规模棚户区改造工程,然而大多数改造工作重心仍以拆建房屋为主,对棚户区的系统改建不足.针对这一问题,从棚户区改造与城市再生的关系入手,结合国内外大量棚户区改造的经验与教训,强调棚户区的改造不仅是单纯意义上的物质再生,更是涵盖经济复兴、社区重构、文化重建的社会再生.以辽宁省阜新市棚户区改造作为实证案例进行分析,指出当前棚户区改造中存在的诸多问题.在棚户区改造中,需要将建筑、就业、环境、文化、社会等因素融合一起,以促进城市再生与可持续发展.     

城市“屋顶农业”开发的适宜性试验—以柑桔栽培为例

本文通过对屋顶栽培柑桔的对比试验和分析，认为通过开发“屋顶农业”来绿化城市屋面，不仅具有生态效益，而且具有社会效益和经济效益。值得推广。     

On The Waterfront: Globalization and Urbanization in Singapore

Although many cities aspire to "global-city status," few have been as explicit as Singapore in its quest to create urban landscapes to project its global aspirations. This paper presents the case of the Singapore River development zone as a "hyper-symbol" of Singapore's global urbanism. By creating a world-class riverfront not unlike the acclaimed waterfronts of London, Sydney, or San Francisco, Singapore's urban planners hope to project the city as a venue worthy of world-class tourism and leisure activities, an important node in international circuits of capital, and a vibrant city for both foreign visitors and local residents. Our paper, however, also argues that local forces and influences play a significant role in the waterfront's development. The Singapore River landscape is the negotiated outcome of both globalism and localism—a dialectical landscape formed by dominant global influences on the one hand, and emerging local processes on the other. Fieldwork comprising a questionnaire survey, in-depth interviews, and on-site observations provide evidence of such global-local interactions. The paper contends that the challenges at the river are symptomatic of the broader Singapore experience as the city-state grapples with issues of national identity, local empowerment, and community rights in the midst of a global convergence of tourists, capital, people, and cultures.     

Enacting immanent potentialities: Tcheb‐tchib strategies at the centre of the urban fringe in Nouakchott,Mauritania

The urban fringe areas of Nouakchott, the capital city of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, have become virtual epicentres of informal property speculation, as the state‐owned land that people illegally inhabit becomes an increasingly valuable commodity in the wake of urban redevelopment plans and vast infrastructural development projects. By applying ingenious ‘poaching’ strategies based on anticipation, the marginalized, impoverished people inhabiting these areas appropriate and manipulate space in order to survive. In their attempt to counter the state's technologies of governance through what is commonly known as tcheb‐tchib, a form of creative improvisation, they become a driving force in the dynamic and contested reconfigurations of the urban landscape. Based on extended ethnographic fieldwork focusing on the strategies of former nomads who are now sedentarized on the urban fringe, this article conceives large‐scale urban renewal as a dynamic process that generates an emergent space of immanent potentiality that the urban poor attempt to strategically appropriate and enact to make the most of a potentially destructive process.