Readings in Race, Poverty, and Place Dr. Akira Drake Rodriguez
CPLN 624 Thursday, 10:30A – 1:30P
Course Description
In recent years, long-disinvested cities have become the site of renewed investment, population growth, and economic development in a phenomenon often described as gentrification. Nonetheless, socioeconomic inequality between races, ethnicities, genders, and places within the larger metropolitan area continue to persist, suggesting that a rising tide does not raise all boats. Planners must grapple with these issues of inequality and inequity, particularly the implementation of plans and policies that may in theory provide benefits to all, but in practice continue to accumulate benefits for a select few.
This course examines the construction of race, the making of a place, and the persistence of poverty in racialized places in the city. This course will engage in a critical discussion of the aforementioned themes, such that the normative notions of race, capitalism, urbanism, gender, power, and space are upended to privilege more marginalized perspectives of these processes. Some of the questions we will revisit in the weekly discussions include:
· How does the city construct and stratify races across different places?
· How does race, ethnicity, and gender inform the boundaries of cities and places, and conversely, how do boundaries inform our notions of race, ethnicity and gender?
· How are spaces and places racialized? How is poverty racialized (and gendered)?
· How and why does poverty persist in the gentrifying/redeveloping city?
· What is the role of planner in acknowledging and addressing the relationship between race, place and poverty?
· What are some of the people, organizations, and movements that resist the spatialization of race and the persistence of poverty in these spaces?
Readings are assigned each week and students are expected to come prepared and ready to engage in discussion. We will examine the themes of race, place, and poverty as it relates to: housing, education, public health, transportation, outdoor space and recreation, public space, food, and the carceral state. Further, this class will examine the formation of race, place, and poverty in various cities across the US from the years 1960 to the present. In taking this geographical, case-driven approach to the course, the course functions as a comparative study of how race and poverty are shaped by unique places, and how different places shape race and inequality.
In addition to the weekly case studies, we will also read different frameworks for justice in the city. The readings in critical justice studies will include readings on spatial justice, racial justice, social justice, intersectionality, inclusive democracy, feminist justice, and environmental justice. Engaging in different ways of analyzing and redistributing power is meant to provide practical means for addressing the inequalities that emerge from the case reading that week. The frameworks assigned will help to determine the potential role of advocacy planners in the diverse city, whether that city is shrinking or gentrifying.
Students will submit questions weekly that will guide our discussion, in addition to submitting four 6-10 page essays in response to the readings. A longer paper analyzing the themes of the course in a city of your choice will serve as a take-home final exam.
Class Format/Guidelines
Each student will submit one question for each week to guide the small and large group discussions. The class will begin with students forming small groups and tackling half of the submitted discussion questions, for roughly 20 minutes. The class will then resume in a traditional seminar format, with the other half of submitted questions guiding the seminar.
Assignments and Grading
Weekly Discussion Questions (submit via Canvas) (20%)
4 Response Papers, between 6 and 10 pages (60%)
Final paper, between 15 and 20 pages (20%)
Course Readings (Penn Bookstore or Amazon, also on Course Reserve)
· [344] Arena, J. 2012. Driven from New Orleans: How Nonprofits Betray Public Housing and Promote Privatization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (New Orleans)
· [403] Connolly, N.D.B. 2014. A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Miami)
· [271] Davila, A. 2004. Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City. Berkeley: University of California Press. (NYC)
· [441] Davis, M. 2006. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles. New York: Verso Books. (Los Angeles)
· [432] Desmond, M. 2016. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. New York: Crown (Milwaukee)
· [320] Gillette, H. 2006. Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, DC. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. (Washington, DC)
· [412] Gilmore, R.W. 2007. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Los Angeles)
· [320] Mumford, K. 2008. Newark: A History of Race, Riots and Rights in America. New York: NYU Press. (Newark)
· [328] Murch, D. 2010. Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. (Oakland)
· [264] Sharkey, P. 2013. Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress towards Racial Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (US)
· [244] Shedd, C. 2015. Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. (Chicago)
· [352] Taylor, D. 2014. Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility. New York: NYU Press. (US)
· [232] Taylor, M. 2002. Harlem between Heaven and Hell. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Harlem, NYC)
· [289] Websdale, N. 2001. Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing. Boston: Northeastern Press. (Nashville)
Additional Readings (on Canvas):
Frameworks for justice and responses from the planning community including: Spatial Justice, Social Justice, Environmental Justice, Educational Justice, Racial Justice, Inclusive Democracy, Intersectionality, selected readings from the J. Manning Thomas and M. Ritzdorf reader Urban Planning and the African American Community: In the Shadows.
Course Schedule
SECTION 1: Making Racialized Places in the City
Week 1, January 12: Introduction
What is race? What is place? What is poverty?: Getting on the Same Page
Week 2, January 19 (Nationwide):
Case Reading: Sharkey, P. 2013. Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress towards Racial Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Framework: Equity planning and racial justice (N. Krumholz, Manning reading)
Week 3, January 26 (Washington, DC):
Case Reading: Gillette, H. 2006. Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, DC. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Framework: The persistence of racial isolation (Y. Rabin, Manning reader)
Week 4, February 2 (Miami, FL):
Case Reading: Connolly, N.D.B. 2014. A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Miami)
Framework: Racial Zoning reading (C. Silver, Manning reader)
Week 5, February 9 (Oakland, CA):
Case Reading: Murch, D. 2010. Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Framework: ‘Defend the Ghetto’: Spatial Politics of BPP (Tyner, J. A. Annals AAG, 2006)
Week 6, February 16 (Newark, NJ):
Case Reading: Mumford, K. 2008. Newark: A History of Race, Riots and Rights in America. New York: NYU Press.
Framework: Kerner Commission report
SECTION 2: Marginalizing Racialized Places in the City
Week 7, February 23 (Nashville, TN):
Case Reading: Websdale, N. 2001. Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing. Boston: Northeastern Press.
Framework: Readings in police abolition
Week 8, March 2 (Los Angeles, CA):
Case Reading: Gilmore, R.W. 2007. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press. OR
Davis, M. 2006. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles. New York: Verso Books.
Framework: Readings in prison abolition
Week 9 – SPRING BREAK –NO CLASS
Week 10, March 16 (Chicago, IL):
Case Reading: Shedd, C. 2015. Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Framework: Community Schools framework (Cincinnati/Philadelphia case)
SECTION 3: Erasing Race in Place
Week 11, March 23 (Harlem, NY):
Case Reading: Taylor, M. 2002. Harlem between Heaven and Hell. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Framework: Harlem documentary on gentrification/intra-racial tensions in CD
Week 12, March 30 (New Orleans, LA):
Case Reading: Arena, J. 2012. Driven from New Orleans: How Nonprofits Betray Public Housing and Promote Privatization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Framework: CDOs as political spaces/Public Housing as a political space (Rodriguez)
Week 13, April 6 (Milwaukee, WI): (AAG)
Case Reading: Desmond, M. 2016. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. New York: Crown
Framework: Tenant organizing/advocacy planning (compare private/public rental housing activism)
Week 14, April 13 (New York, NY): (UAA)
Case Reading: Davila, A. 2004. Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Framework: the trouble with identity politics in the neoliberal city (Nair, et al)
Week 15, April 20 (Nationwide):
Case Reading: Taylor, D. 2014. Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility. New York: NYU Press. (US)
Framework: Environmental Justice (Bullard, R.)