Village Growth Machine:

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-102
Keyword(s):  
1981 ◽  
Vol 86 (6) ◽  
pp. 1387-1400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Lyon ◽  
Lawrence G. Felice ◽  
M. Ray Perryman ◽  
E. Stephen Parker

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 945-971 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Nathaniel Parker

Using interview data from two groups in the Woodlawn neighborhood on Chicago's South Side—mothers of young children and neighborhood merchants—this paper suggests a way of connecting two dominant ways of conceiving of physical disorder in urban spaces, one of which focuses on physical disorder as a root of social disorder and another that focuses on physical disorder as an economic prerequisite for gentrification. Specifically, elites can deploy signs of disorder in moral and reputational terms in the urban political arena to gain economic advantages for themselves. While people in the neighborhood might suffer serious consequences because of their neighborhood's bad reputation and the attendant ecological contamination, elites can exploit it. This new paradigm, in which broken windows enter the service of the growth machine, is called the opportunistic disorder paradigm.


Author(s):  
Amin Ghaziani

AbstractUrbanists have developed an extensive set of propositions about why gay neighborhoods form, how they change, shifts in their significance, and their spatial expressions. Existing research in this emerging field of “gayborhood studies” emphasizes macro-structural explanatory variables, including the economy (e.g., land values, urban governance, growth machine politics, affordability, and gentrification), culture (e.g., public opinions, societal acceptance, and assimilation), and technology (e.g., geo-coded mobile apps, online dating services). In this chapter, I use the residential logics of queer people—why they in their own words say that they live in a gay district—to show how gayborhoods acquire their significance on the streets. By shifting the analytic gaze from abstract concepts to interactions and embodied perceptions on the ground—a “street empirics” as I call it—I challenge the claim that gayborhoods as an urban form are outmoded or obsolete. More generally, my findings caution against adopting an exclusively supra-individual approach in urban studies. The reasons that residents provide for why their neighborhoods appeal to them showcase the analytic power of the streets for understanding what places mean and why they matter.


2020 ◽  
pp. 141-158
Author(s):  
Ergin Bulut

This chapter reveals how even upper-rank workers are not exempt from layoffs, financial insecurity, and the anxiety of working in a hit-driven industry. While being bought out by Digital Creatives initially provided financial security for Studio Desire's game developers, Digital Creatives' hasty, adverse investment decisions destabilized their flagship studio. When Digital Creatives eventually declared bankruptcy, Studio Desire's developers found themselves working in a perpetual-growth machine without much morale. The chapter then addresses workers' indifference toward unionization. Game developers' perception of creative work—that one needs to think outside the box, that creative work is decidedly different from blue-collar work, and that therefore unions would not be helpful—is socially structured. Yet they seem to be indifferent to facing and managing risk in more collective ways.


Author(s):  
Rebecca Amato

Before there is an aesthetic of gentrification, there is disinvestment. In between both is the production – and perception – of empty space ready to be filled. The production of empty space has a long history in New York City, from settler colonialism to urban renewal to gentrification under the neoliberal regime of today. Techniques such as filtering, investing in the aesthetic potential of aging neighbourhoods, and declaring vacancy, have helped fuel the process of gentrification. More recently, that process has accelerated to insure New York’s world city status by promising that every underutilized parcel will be filled with the tallest buildings, the greenest construction, and the densest use of land. Yet the city still has room for alternative visions that embrace a pause in the growth machine, such as cooperative centres and community gardens. These efforts, threatened though they are, provide models for inclusive cities where neoliberalism does not.


Author(s):  
Andrew Ross

Why did I choose to end this book with the Gila River Indian Community’s effort to win back its water? Because it is a parable about how democracy and its courts can not only serve but also be served by the quest for sustainability. The GRIC water settlement brought a long struggle for environmental justice to a triumphant conclusion. Delivering justice meant that a large portion of the region’s available resources would be sequestered from the growth machine. Instead of supplying a new generation of low-density tract housing, the water could now be used to produce healthy, local food for the area population, and, if nonindustrial agriculture prevailed, the result would be a double win for carbon reduction. Surely, this is how a green polity ought to act, redressing the claims of those who have been aggrieved, and doing it in a way that extends long-term benefits for all. If all responses to environmental injustice were able to follow suit, it would be a welcome model for moving forward. Even if the Gila River example is unlikely to be replicated in other places, its guiding spirit is a sound one. What if the key to sustainability lies in innovating healthy pathways out of poverty for populations at risk, rather than marketing green gizmos to those who already have many options to choose from? These are not mutually exclusive options, of course, but the lessons I took away from my research convinced me of the pressing need for clear alternatives to the eco-apartheid syndrome that afflicts Phoenix and so many other cities. Building a low-carbon economy by targeting only the LOHAS demographic (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability, the upmarket segment of 40 million, or 20 percent of consumers, nationally) will end up doing little more than adding a green gloss to patterns of chronic inequality. Likewise, placing all of our faith in clean-tech fixes will cede too much decision making to a closed circle of experts who, regardless of their technical prowess, will have no power to prevent the uneven application of their solutions.


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