“There’s money to be made in community”: Real estate developers, community organizing, and profit-making in a shrinking city

《“There’s money to be made in community”: Real estate developers, community organizing, and profit-making in a shrinking city》

打印

作者: Philip Garboden;Christine Jang-Trettien

来源: JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS,Vol.42,Issue3,P.414-434

语言: 英文

关键字

作者单位: Johns Hopkins University

摘要: Ethnographic studies of neighborhood change have painted vivid portraits of the conflicts between new and legacy residents over norms, power, and resources. These findings, however, are out of sync with shrinking cities where gentrification and revitalization are inexorably intertwined. In particular, they neglect the expanded role of supply-side actors in molding the social life of changing communities. This article uses ethnographic data combined with 72 interviews with developers, landlords, and residents in a Baltimore neighborhood undergoing unprecedented levels of reinvestment. In a context where neighborhood change is driven primarily through public–private partnerships, we find that for-profit actors invest well beyond bricks and mortar and into arenas typically reserved for the government and nonprofit sectors. In our case, developers organize community events, take over or replicate existing community organizations, and monopolize online organizing tools. Though these activities are designed ultimately to serve the interests of developers, we argue for a more dialectical relationship: whereas the state becomes increasingly reliant on private firms for neighborhood revitalization, those firms become increasingly reliant on the best practices of community organizing for profit-making.Additional informationAuthor informationPhilip GarbodenPhilip M. E. Garboden is a doctoral student in Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. His work examines how housing policy impacts the lives of poor families. His work has been published in City & Community, Housing Policy Debate, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and Cityscape. He holds an MPP from Johns Hopkins University.Christine Jang-TrettienChristine Jang-Trettien is a doctoral student in Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. Her research examines urban sociology, economic sociology, social inequality, and public policy. She is currently managing a large-scale, longitudinal study on neighborhood revitalization in Baltimore. She holds an MA from Columbia University.FundingThis work was supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Johns Hopkins University Office of the President.AcknowledgmentsThe authors thank Elaine Carpenter for her invaluable research assistance with the preparation of this article. Members of the JHU Poverty and Inequality Research Lab, specifically Stefanie DeLuca, Kathryn Edin, Tim Nelson, Eva Rosen, and Rachel Butler, provided detailed and helpful comments. The authors further acknowledge Christina Ambrosino, Brianna Bueltmann, Mollie Cueva-Dabkoski, Darriel Harris, Lily Kairis, Freddie McCall, Mia Monkovic, Deirdre Powell, Ben Schwartz, and Will Shefelman for assistance with data collection and coding.