I thought...

I thought that I would get away from tornadoes when I moved out of the midwest. Apparently not.

Blogging the "Forum"

Through Commercial Break #1: Dodd can't complete a response without bringing up some piece of legislation that he has supported and exactly when he supported it. Hillary's answer to NAFTA was saved at the last minute by her invective against Republicans. BTW, I am tired of her line about Democrats fighting each other. On the one hand, Edwards seems like he is trying to fit pre-defined answers into any question and, on the other, Obama seems ill-prepared and hesitant on all of his answers (and, a stadium!!! that's your solution for economic development!?!? granted, it plays well to the trades unions, but GOOD LORD!). Kucinich knows how to get the crowd going but needs to never mention another bill number. Richardson can't give a concise answer and really, talking about getting money - that's not going to help. Did I forget any one? Oh, and Olbermann's the man.

Round 2: Damn it - NO "THREE POINT PLANS" HILLARY!!! Did you notice that KERRY LOST!!! Maybe you were too busy drinking your "no attacking Democrats" Kool-Aid. Breathe...in...out...in...out... alright, I'm good now.

None of these clowns has a good plan for Iraq. Although, I can't believe that I am saying this, Hillary sounds the best ^[1]. I think that both Dodd and Biden are literally sucking up to Clinton for the VP. She doesn't have to attack anyone because she has those two doing it for her.

Finally, a knock-out punch for Obama. Well done defending yourself. Dodd and Hillary look petty - and she got her well-deserved boos. Bringing up the American people and "not Washington-insiders" was nice.

Round Three: Can Joe Biden sound any more insincere and then talk about Pakistan when the wife of a dead coal miner is bringing up her husband? What the hell!!! Kucinich is a IATSE member? No Bill, his town is in Michigan. Don't say that his town is someone else's town. Man, if Dean got criticized for not having any beside manner, then these fools must have the emotions of a rock. He asked about his job - not his VA healthcare, Bill. Dodd has offered legislation!!! I couldn't guess that answer was coming.

If Republicans can't look at that man who just talked about losing his pension, I don't understand how they can honestly talk about workers being selfish in this country.

Edwards knocked that response out of the park! That was an amazing answer. And, telling Olbermann to shut up was awesome. I think that he and Kucinich seem to be the only two who really understand the dynamic in the stadium.

Biden is not helping himself talking about his illness and age. And, btw, if he forgot, Edwards is from a right to work state. Kucinich needs to stop quoting bill numbers. Oh, wait, I already said that. Edwards believe in one America now. Too bad, I liked his "Two Americas" speech. No scabs - nice touch. Biden looks angry and just got booed - nice job Biden, you have succeeded in sticking your foot in your mouth again.

"Green collar" and Hillary can't remember the names of anyone. Although she did a pretty good job with NCLB.

I'm bored round: Richardson doesn't make any sense on this VP candidate - although that was a nice touch saying that any of the members on stage would be a good VP. "Lobbyists are people, too" huh? Hillary didn't answer the question. Nice stance, Obama, not taking money from lobbyists. Nice explanation of "lobbying" and noting the difference between big corporations and big labor. And Hillary and John: LIGHTNING ROUND!!! Keep your response to 30 seconds. And Joe, stop talking down to people. Chris, you need to finish a sentence - particularly if it is one that doesn't answer the question you were asked. 30 SECONDS!!! Kucinich and his bills - I don't want to hear about that, I want to know about the message, not the bills. Nice job talking about the promise to remove the troops. 30 SECONDS - I'M BORED!!! Who cares about Barry Bonds? What a stupid question. Nice answer, Barack. Nice response for Hillary...until the 10 POINT PLAN. NO PLANS. Talk about the issues, not the plans. 455 days? Damn, I don't think that I can stand it?

Bill doesn't make any sense. And he's boring. Yes, we elect governors in this country - we also elect Representatives and Senators as well. I see Barack's next swing is going to be "Washington insiders." I like the fact that he is talking about organizing. Nice answer, Joe. Now don't ruin it. Wow, he didn't. Hillary had a pretty good initial answer, but she is so policy-wonky; hasn't the DLC focus-grouped this. And, Hillary, you have been the Washington insider. You can't be both an insider and an outsider when it suits you. 30 SECONDS!!! Nice answer regarding political financing and we DO need to stop playing nice. Dennis = Seabiscuit. I can guarantee you, Dennis, if you do that, people will be running against you.

Chris Matthews round: SHUT UP!!! Why don't you talk about Edward's response to the "most powerful" moment. You already told us who did well, why would you need to ask anyone else.

P.S. I love Eugene Robinson. I want to be Eugene Robinson when I grow up.

^[1]That doesn't mean that I think that she would be the best; only that she sounds the best.[return]

For the Record

The blog, No Land Grab has quoted my post yesterday about the Atlantic Yards Project. In their editorial note, lumi writes, "Ratner has been very successful in getting relatively intelligent people to think that Atlantic Yards is in Downtown Brooklyn, rather than Prospect Heights." Since No Land Grab does not have a comments section in which to reply, I feel that I should respond here.

I am a new resident of Brooklyn and it is, in fact, depressing that I might have been duped by Bruce Ratner, et al. I must say, however, that I am not alone looking at this development plan summary [pdf] put together by the NYC Planning Dept. In fact, it appears that the planning department was not so much duped as complicit with the development interests are seeking to expand the definition of "downtown" Brooklyn. As No Land Grab points out, the Atlantic Yards Project sits in Prospect Heights but it seems like a project of the planning department to expand the definition of "downtown Brooklyn" to this area. Especially galling is how the planning department declares that one of the goals of the redevelopment project is to "[s]trengthen connections with surrounding neighborhoods" ^[1]. I am not sure what building a whole series of high-rises in a community that is composed primarily of brownstones.

Yet, it is not surprising that this happening. It appears that Brooklyn (and by "Brooklyn", I mean the Brooklyn politicians and planning department officials) now has an inferiority complex that they are losing office space to gasp!!! NEW JERSEY!!! Therefore, to show how Brooklyn is a real city, we are going to move the New Jersey Brooklyn Nets to Brooklyn so that it has a real sports team. Following the same "growth machine" politics evident in so many other cities across the country, the Brooklyn elite seem to believe that Brooklyn must grow, grow, grow in order to compete with that suburban wasteland of New Jersey^[2]. Even if one buys the interpretation that a place must continually grow to become intrinsically "better" (i.e. so that land developers can earn more money), it seems useless to point out the fact that Manhattan may actually be competing more directly with Brooklyn than New Jersey.

^[1]Page 9 of the plan summary. [return]
^[2]"Growth machine" politics is described here. [return]

I Don't Think He's Going to Win the Family Values Vote...

Via Jeremy Freese, it doesn't look like Guiliani can even count on the support of his daughter. According to this Slate article, it looks like she is supporting Obama. Can't see that going down well with the "family-values" conservatives; that is, unless they are as flexible on that as they are on crime and punishment.

Speaking of Jeremy Freese, I am looking forward to seeing him talk about Blogs as a Forum for Public Sociology along with Crooked Timber contributor Kieran Healy at the American Sociological Association meetings next week.

How Timely

Today, in the Atlantic Yards Report, there is a review of Lance Freeman's book that I referenced yesterday. The Atlantic Yards Report is a blog dedicated to coverage of the gigantic development company ForestCityRatner's Atlantic Yards Development Project which is going to put expensive condo towers smack-dab in the middle of Brooklyn's downtown. The author of the blog, Norman Oder originally started his coverage in this NYT article and has expanded to cover development in much of Brooklyn.

It is a great review to read because Oder knows the Clinton Hill area that Freeman studies and so it is an interesting take on what Freeman says. I am a little disappointed that Oder didn't bring up Freeman's "political" solution (in addition to the more policy-wonk solutions) of active Alinsky-style organizing, but it still does not detract much from the review.

Race & Redevelopment I: Gentrification

In light of my recent epiphany that I need to figure out a way to make my research relevant and interesting, I am posting my first entry concerning one of the topics that I am researching: who would consider moving to redeveloped neighborhoods in Chicago and why would they consider those neighborhoods. This is the first section that describes the central role that "gentrification" has played in framing the debate.

The term “gentrification” was coined by Ruth Glass in 1964 to describe the process of working class Londoners being displaced by the wealthier “gentry” and changing the face of London as people knew it. The term, over the next four decades has been used widely in academic research as well as finding its way into the popular press and everyday vernacular. The popularity of the term as well as the subject probably has a great deal to do with the fact that the process is one that is incredibly visible. Cities, particularly those in the North American industrial “steel-belt” across the Great Lakes and Northeastern regions, were declared to be doomed in the late 1970s and 1980s. Although the reasons why cities were following this trajectory has been a cause of great debate, and included some combination of economic transformations from a manufacturing to service-based economy, the racial segregation of metropolitan areas and the concentration of poverty, there was a fairly universal agreement on the fact that cities were in a state of despair. Throughout the 1990s and the first years of the 21st century, however, many of those cities formally thought to be doomed have seen a resurgence with residents coming “back” to cities.

Perhaps it is because people’s homes and neighborhoods have such an intrinsic value to them as to make them “a special sort of commodity” ^[1] that so much attention has been garnered by the transition of neighborhoods from poor to rich. Or, perhaps it is because the polar change in this transition was so unexpected from what was predicted in the 1970s and 1980s for American urban centers. Yet, the fact is that gentrification has taken one of the leading roles in understanding urban theory both academically and in every-day life.

And, while most evidence points to the fact that migration to suburbs has outpaced that to cities, it seems appropriate that gentrification should be a major component of urban theory given the fact that it is such a visible and recognizable feature of contemporary urban contexts. But, in absolute numbers, gentrification is not a trivial occurrence, either. Two researchers, Elvin Wyly and Daniel Hammel, have found that the size of the "urban underclass" which guided much academic and political debate in the 1980s and 1990s (think: welfare reform), is about the same size as the number of people involved in gentrification.

But, I think that another key element to understanding gentrification in the U.S. context is the fact that there is a strong racial component to gentrification in the United States. As the national economy of the U.S. shifted from a manufacturing to a service base, U.S. central cities were not only divided economically, but also racially. Because of explicit racial policies of And, while many people claim that this is largely due to white flight following the urban riots in the late 1960s, the process actually began much earlier and simply increased the rate at which white flight was occurring (for a great analysis of the 1967 riot in Detroit, read Thomas Sugrue's Origins of Urban Crisis). Whether this racial division was the direct consequence of urban economic restructuring or was primarily the result of high levels of racial segregation in most northern and eastern industrial cities is a matter of debate. What is true, either way, is that the poor urban residents in most northern and eastern cities that are likely to get displaced in the process of gentrification are African Americans. In fact, the perception that white people displace people of color as a process of gentrification is so pronounced that two researchers studying predominantly African American neighborhoods where gentrification is occurring noted that their informants mark the existence of gentrification to the time that they saw white people buying houses in their neighborhoods^[2].

While gentrification is certainly an important component of the urban environment that needs to be understood to fully comprehend the contemporary development of urban environments, I argue that it is important that gentrification not become the only lens through which urban development is considered. The paper that I am working on currently describes why I think that this is the case and how, in some ways, thinking about gentrification—particularly the context in which gentrification is viewed in the U.S.—can be problematic both for understanding what is shaping residential choices among metropolitan residents and it limits the possibilities of potential urban reform. I am working on writing that part up now, and so will let you know why I think that this is the case in a following post.

[1] Logan, John R. and Harvey L. Molotch. 1987. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press. [return]
[2] One of the studies is an article written by Mary Pattillo (for those interested, I have included the entire citation) who studies the North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood in Chicago. She has very recently published a book, Black on the Block, expanding on that study and which I have not yet had a chance to read. The citation for her article is: Pattillo, Mary. 2003. "Negotiating Blackness, for Richer or for Poorer." Ethnography 4(1): 61-93.
The other study was conducted by Lance Freeman who studied communities in Harlem and the majority-black neighborhood of Clinton Hill in Brooklyn. If anyone is interested in urban issues and wants to read an incredibly written book, I would recommend it to anyone: Freeman, Lance. 2006. There goes the 'hood : views of gentrification from the ground up. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.[return]

Letter to Readers

What I am studying is interesting. I can tell people about it at parties or at the bar and people are immediately interested. I tell people the “cocktail party” version of my research topic, specifically, “I study why people move to where they move.” And, it’s funny, almost every time I bring it up, people ask something to the effect of: “So, you mean, like, gentrification and stuff.” I find it really interesting that is the first thing that people think of when I tell them that I am studying where people move. Maybe it is being in New York in my mid-twenties or maybe it is something that is so pervasive in people’s minds that people think about it as something truly transformative of urban space that is what is immediately called to mind.

But, somehow, no matter how interesting this is, I am having one hell of a time trying to transfer it to an academic paper that is also interesting. I don’t know if it is because I am trying to hard to fit within current research or if it is because I am trying too hard to fit within rigid notions of what an academic paper sounds like. If it is the former, that would seem kind of silly – the entire purpose of writing an academic paper is to expand current knowledge and trying to fit it inside of certain pre-defined boxes is probably not the best idea. If it is the latter, maybe I need to stop trying too hard to write an “academic” paper and just write what I find interesting. I can always go back and reshape it to an academic paper later. I had an English professor in college who told me, “Just write as if you were speaking to someone, that is the best kind of writing there is.” It was good advice (though I am not sure that I took it at the time; I took the class pass/fail, which, it turned out, was a wise decision). But, I have also realized that I have a difficult time even talking about it to people beyond my one-line cocktail party answer. I can get to three or four sentences without losing entire interest but by the time I finish my first paragraph I can see people's eyes glaze over and I feel like that guy at the party that no one wants to get stuck talking to.

But, I also realize that writing only for academic journals means that my work is relegated to dusty library shelves (or unexplored, dark pixelated corners of JSTOR—not that any of my work has actually been published) where the two or three dozen other people interested in my specific research area read it. I study what I study because I believe that the things that I study are important topics to consider and debate. I want my research to be relevant and therefore I want to be able to explain what I do to people who might not have an advanced knowledge of statistics or urban development or racial segregation. Therefore, I am going to try something new on this here blog: I am going to to try and focus my writing here more on my research and research topics.

I am hoping that this will accomplish two things. First, in a very selfish way I am hoping that it will help motivate me to stay on track since I don't have much of an academic community here. But, second, I want to know what people think of my work and what I write. Is it interesting, boring, incomprehensible, incorrect, actionable? So, for those of you who read my blog fairly regularly, please post (as you always do), your thoughts and comments. Also, if you can, tell friends or colleagues who might be interested in some of the same topics that I write about. Finally, if you don't hear about what I am doing in my research for a while, remind me that I need to share more.

Cheers,

Mike