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Building a Better Chicago: Race and Community Resistance to Urban Redevelopment

Teresa Irene Gonzales

Building a Better Chicago explores the complex ecosystem of nonprofits within Chicago and highlights the tensions between formal nonprofits and informal grassroots organizations. As scholars of urban ... More

Building a Better Chicago explores the complex ecosystem of nonprofits within Chicago and highlights the tensions between formal nonprofits and informal grassroots organizations. As scholars of urban neighborhoods argue, such field-level analysis allows one to more fully understand how relationships between community members within the neighborhoods and external agencies and groups frame neighborhood dynamics. Throughout the text, the author analyzes how urban elites, nonprofit staff, and residents use interorganizational trust and mistrust to respond to large-scale redevelopment initiatives. As part of this, the author analyzes the New Communities Program, a ten-year, multimillion-dollar urban redevelopment initiative that was led by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a national community development intermediary. Problematizing normative understandings of organizational trust and mistrust, the author examines the ways that Chicago’s poor Black and Mexican American communities leveraged collective skepticism as a tactical tool in order to ensure more equitable redevelopment occurred in their neighborhoods. Organizational trust is not always a positive force—rather, it can be co-opted as a mode of control, used to minimize dissent and to socialize members into a homogenous organizational culture. This book demonstrates how organizational mistrust, or collective skepticism, can yield a number of positive outcomes.Less

Market Cities, People Cities: The Shape of Our Urban Future

Kevin T. Smiley

Michael Oluf Emerson (ed.)

Cities are diverging in our contemporary era. Specifically, we use our analysis of Copenhagen and Houston to argue that cities exist for one of two reasons: for markets or for people. Market Cities ... More

Cities are diverging in our contemporary era. Specifically, we use our analysis of Copenhagen and Houston to argue that cities exist for one of two reasons: for markets or for people. Market Cities (such as Houston) are dedicated to an unfettered free market ethos, individualism, and tolerance of high levels of inequality and decentralized governance, among other characteristics. By contrast, People Cities (such as Copenhagen) have a much greater collective ideal that drives the city toward attenuating inequality, strengthening government, and sanctioning “people-focused” policies and urban form. The first four chapters of the book showcase “how it happens” by introducing the perspective and studying the histories of the cities. We also showcase how government deeply shapes each type of city as well as the critical role that residents play in underpinning or contesting their city. The second part of the book (chapters 5 through 9) investigates “why it matters.” We discuss the implications of living in a Market City or People City for transportation, land-use planning, the environment, diversity, inequality, segregation, crime, and immigration. We also extend our perspective to a wider range of cities, making suggestions on how to apply the ideas presented in the book. Finally, we conclude by discussing how social change within the city might occur and best be accomplished.Less

The New Arab Urban: Gulf Cities of Wealth, Ambition, and Distress

Harvey Molotch and Davide Ponzini (eds)

This book is a way to learn from the Persian Gulf – to use its cities, cultures, and politics to broaden our understanding of how wealth and power operate in the world today. To learn from cities of ... More

This book is a way to learn from the Persian Gulf – to use its cities, cultures, and politics to broaden our understanding of how wealth and power operate in the world today. To learn from cities of the Arabian Peninsula -- places like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha -- does not mean celebrating them or ridiculing them either. It means looking closely at how they operate and their prospects for future impacts inside and outside the region. Here, a group of scholars from across the disciplines and much of the world, strives to emplace the new developments in wider histories of trade, of technology, and of design. They trace where the money, ideas and projects come from and where they end up going. They show how Gulf elites import planning and design solutions, along with brands and prestige cultural institutions, from the West – and also what they then send out. The Gulf set-ups – in real estate, finance, and governance -- function as “test beds” for new state-market arrangements. Also involved is the massive import of temporary labor and, almost incidentally, severe ecological deficit. Gulf Cities display extreme manifestations of urbanization trends that, however unanticipated in the grand traditions of urban scholarship, now impact the world.Less

A Recipe for Gentrification: Food, Power, and Resistance in the City

Alison Hope Alkon, Yuki Kato, and Joshua Sbicca (eds)

From upscale restaurants to community gardens, food often reflects shifts in taste that are emblematic of gentrification. The prestige that food retail and urban agriculture can lend to a ... More

From upscale restaurants to community gardens, food often reflects shifts in taste that are emblematic of gentrification. The prestige that food retail and urban agriculture can lend to a neighborhood helps to increase property values, fostering the displacement of long-term residents while shifting local culture to create new inclusions and exclusions. And yet, many activists who oppose this dynamic have found food both a powerful symbol and an important tool through which to fight against it at scales ranging from individual consumption to state and national policy. The book argues that food and gentrification are deeply entangled, and that examining food retail and food practices is critical to understanding urban development. A series of case studies, from super-gentrifying cities like New York, to oft-neglected places like Oklahoma City, show that while gentrification always has its own local flavor, there are many commonalities. In the context of displacement, food reflects power struggles between differently situated class and ethnoracial groups. Through the lens of food, we can see that who has a right to the gentrifying city is not just about housing, but also includes the everyday practices of living, working, and eating in the places we call home.Less

Vegas Brews: Craft Beer and the Birth of a Local Scene

Michael Ian Borer

Equally reviled and revered as “Sin City,” Las Vegas is both exceptional and emblematic of contemporary American cultural practices and tastes. Michael Ian Borer takes us inside the burgeoning Las ... More

Equally reviled and revered as “Sin City,” Las Vegas is both exceptional and emblematic of contemporary American cultural practices and tastes. Michael Ian Borer takes us inside the burgeoning Las Vegas craft beer scene to witness how locals use craft beer to create and foster not just a local culture but a locals’ culture. Through compelling detailed ethnographic accounts and interviews, Vegas Brews provides an unprecedented look into the ways that brewers, distributors, bartenders, and drinkers fight against the perceived and preconceived norm about what “happens in Vegas” and lay claim to a part of their city that is too often overshadowed by the bright lights of tourist sites. In doing so, Borer shows how our interactions with the things we care about—and the ways that we care about how they’re made, treated, and consumed—can lead to new senses of belonging and connections with and to others and the places where we live. In a world where people and things move around at an extraordinary rate, the folks Borer spent time talking (and drinking) with remind us to slow down and learn how to taste the “good life,” or at least a semblance of it, even in a city where style is often valued over substance.Less