The Wheels on the Bus: The Tourism Industry Development Council and Envisioning Spatial Futures in post-Rodney King Los Angeles

The aftermath of the 1992 Rodney King crisis in Los Angeles produced a flurry of debate regarding urban social policy in America that has gone unexamined by scholars. This article suggests that by exploring grassroots activists and their proposals for how the city should be rebuilt, we can gain valuable insight into the role of racialized space in motivating protest. It therefore considers a case study of the Tourism Industry Development Council (TIDC), a largely unknown coalition of some of LA's most dynamic activists, created in an attempt to reform the city's tourism policies. By examining a series of bus tours hosted by the TIDC in 1994 and 1996, this article argues that in addition to trying to establish equitable and inclusive economic development in low-income communities of colour, these activists were also reimagining the meanings and uses of urban space. In creating these tours, organizers utilized a “spatial imaginary” to challenge the ideological underpinnings of urban redevelopment and reconceptualized how social justice could be achieved through the remaking of urban spaces in ways which would have important implications for the future of protest and resistance in modern Los Angeles.

Race, Space and Place: Exploring Toronto’s Regent Park from a Marxist Perspective

Regent Park, a multi ethnic immigrant community situated in the centre of downtown Toronto, is the poorest neighbourhood in Canada. Using the spatial triadic theory of French Marxist Henri Lefebvre, Vanessa Rosa’s reformulation of his theory and Sherene Razack’s concept of “Place becomes Race”, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Regent Park has become a racially produced space through spatial practice, representations of space and representational spaces. In addition to Lefebvre, the writings of Frederick Engels, Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci and David Harvey will also be examined to put into context the historical significance of the existence of Regent Park in a capitalist society. This paper will analyze why Regent Park was built, who developed it, and who were the original residents. And the conclusion, that Regent Park was produced as a marginalized and racialized space within the periphery of the center, will be discussed.

Race, Space and Place: Exploring Toronto’s Regent Park from a Marxist Perspective

Regent Park, a multi ethnic immigrant community situated in the centre of downtown Toronto, is the poorest neighbourhood in Canada. Using the spatial triadic theory of French Marxist Henri Lefebvre, Vanessa Rosa’s reformulation of his theory and Sherene Razack’s concept of “Place becomes Race”, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Regent Park has become a racially produced space through spatial practice, representations of space and representational spaces. In addition to Lefebvre, the writings of Frederick Engels, Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci and David Harvey will also be examined to put into context the historical significance of the existence of Regent Park in a capitalist society. This paper will analyze why Regent Park was built, who developed it, and who were the original residents. And the conclusion, that Regent Park was produced as a marginalized and racialized space within the periphery of the center, will be discussed.

São Paulo metrópole e colônia: planejamento urbano, segregação racial e espaço racializado | São Paulo metropolis and colony: urban planning, racial segregation, and racialized space

Este artigo procura aproximar a disciplina do planejamento urbano e postulações de teóricos como Abdias Nascimento, Lélia Gonzalez, Csaba Deák, Sueli Schiffer, Michel Foucault e Achille Mbembe que, a partir de diferentes pontos de partida, caminham para a ideia de que o espaço urbano do século XX é resultado de relações de poder racializadas. Para tanto, recupera brevemente a história de São Paulo sob a ótica das relações econômicas, elabora um diagnóstico da atual segregação socioespacial na cidade e coloca esses elementos em uma perspectiva política e filosófica a partir da qual é possível pensar na cidade como tecnologia de controle de corpos fundada, por sua vez, por uma lógica colonizadora. Dessa forma, o presente artigo se insere em uma frente de trabalho do planejamento urbano que, levando em consideração os aspectos políticose econômicos do presente e do passado que levaram à desigualdade econômica suas diversas expressões no território, examina a cidade sob a ótica da segregação racial, entendida como fundamental para a perpetuação de práticas colonialistas.

White Space(s) and the Reproduction of White Supremacy

In the past two decades, social scientists have begun to explicitly interrogate the racialized economic, political, cultural, and ideological mechanisms of social space. This work interrogates the overt and covert racial organization of social spaces and the ways in which systemic White supremacy is facilitated by racialized space. Drawing on and synthesizing that work we explicate a critical theory of White space, explicating how geographical, physical, cultural, and ideological social spaces reproduce a racialized social structure organized by White supremacy. We argue that White spaces are integral to racialized social systems and global anti-Black racism in ways that not only normalize the existing racial and social order but ensures Whites’ fantasy(ies) of complete dominion over place and space, as well as control over brown and Black bodies.

On the Origin of White Hollywood: The Racialized Space of the U.S. Film Industry

The scholarship on White spaces has highlighted the ways in which institutions have devoted themselves to reproducing Whiteness through intentional ideological work, and how the prevalence of such ideologies impact the individuals within these spaces. It is well recognized that experiences are racialized within U.S. social institution, but there needs to be more work on highlighting the origins of such ideologies within each context. In this article, I focus on the Hollywood film industry to emphasize how its history and contemporary practices do just that. Furthermore, the effects of such practices on the content created by Hollywood reinforce mediated representations that not only reproduce stereotypes at the interactional level but also reinforce the ideological status quo of White Hollywood. I conclude with a reflection on how any changes to the structure must be strategic, lest we repeat the same mistakes of other so-called “integrated” institutions.

From Racial to Reparative Planning: Confronting the White Side of Planning

This paper advances a conceptual apparatus capable of accounting for planning’s entanglement with white supremacy and racial capitalism by developing a theory of racial planning. Racial planning, as the public production of racialized space, has been at the heart of the American planning tradition. It argues that racial planning occurs via three modes (public and private action and public inaction) and that it serves both the expropriative character of racial capitalism and the status hierarchy of white supremacy. The paper concludes with a normative call for the field to embrace reparations via a reparative planning.

“Finally Something for Us”: Black Girls Run! and Racialized Space-Making in Recreational Running

This study uses life story interviews to understand the utility of Black Girls Run!—a predominantly Black organization for women who engage in recreational distance running. Drawing from Neckerman, Carter, and Lee’s conceptual framework of the minority culture of mobility, the author suggests that Black Girls Run! serves the purpose of helping its members confront the challenges and repercussions associated with being a racial minority in a majority White space, particularly as they are experienced by middle-class Black women. The author focuses on how the organization (a) allows its members to run with others who look like them, (b) cultivates social connection and community, and (c) facilitates challenging health statistics and shifting dominant narratives about Black women. This study provides a more nuanced understanding of the latent functions of recreational sporting organizations catered to middle-class people of color.