Washington’s Atlas District
This chapter highlights the relationship between race, diversity, belonging, and urban development in the historical devaluation of H Street as a Black space, and its revaluation as an emerging multicultural neighborhood. In light of H Street’s violent past, the narrative describing its history reinvents itself in order to write the violent times away and repurpose the neighborhood for a new market and a new time. The chapter also focuses on local programs with intended race-neutral policies that have racial consequences. The chapter further explores how “diversity” is institutionalized as a valuable social commodity to market and constitutes the political economy of the corridor. In other words, the aestheticization of blackness and space contribute to the structuring of H Street as both universal and exclusive. Corporate brands, as well as local public/private partnership organizations, strategically incorporated “diversity” as part of their official language to justify their introduction to the space – signaling affective cohesion with the neighborhood.