Who Fits the Profile?: Thoughts on Race, Class, Clusters, and Redevelopment
| Citation | Vol. 22 No. 4 |
| Publication year | 2010 |
Georgia State University Law Review
Article 1
6-1-2006
Who Fits the Profile?: Thoughts on Race, Class, Clusters, and Redevelopment
Audrey G. McFarlane
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Recommended Citation
McFarlane, Audrey G. (2005) "Who Fits the Profile?: Thoughts on Race, Class, Clusters, and Redevelopment," Georgia State University Law Review: Vol. 22: Iss. 4, Article 1.
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WHO FITS THE PROFILE?: THOUGHTS ON RACE, CLASS, CLUSTERS, AND REDEVELOPMENT
Audrey G. McFarlane*
Introduction
The way we talk about the inner city has changed so much recently. The 21st century knowledge-based economy has created an affluent, readily-available class of people seeking walkable face-to-face urban living, accessible to both work and entertainment. The formerly reviled space of the "inner city" is being normalized into simply "the city." This urban normalization seems a natural outcome of market forces as undeniably there is high demand for the relatively scarce supply of centrally-located, amenity-laden, urban space. The market for urban space does not happen in a vacuum, however. Instead, cities facilitate the hot market for urban land with a longstanding "affluent-attraction" policy and seek to attract people with resources to live, work, and shop in the city.1 The affluent-attraction policy now coincides with both the desires of developers, who find it profitable to convert properties to residential and commercial developments, as well as the burgeoning desires of national retailers, who seek to establish a presence in the city. The result is significant urban spatial restructuring—redevelopment and gentrification of underutilized and neglected urban sites, both occupied and unoccupied, into significantly more upscale developments. The types of redevelopments vary, ranging from mixed-use commercial developments that combine, rather than separate, residential and retail components to festival market places, aquariums, stadiums, convention centers, and hotels.
* Assoc. Professor, University of Baltimore School of Law. Thanks to Taunya Banks and Parris Glendening for helpful comments.
1. See Audrey G. McFarlane, The New Inner City: Class Transformation, Concentrated Affluence and the Obligations of the Police Power, 8 U. Pa. J. const. L. 1, 3-5 (2006).
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When we see a brand new redevelopment like Atlantic Station in Atlanta,2 it is sometimes difficult to articulate the problems such a development represents. With the completion of each new redevelopment project, we are seeing striking physical and social change in the city; the new structures standing in dramatic contrast to what stood there before. We see the promise of renewal and hope for the city's fiscal future in the new commercial activity with the potential for stimulating development in areas immediately surrounding the project. We also see the culmination of the local economic development project: efforts by cities and states to adjust to globalization through economic development efforts: consumption-oriented strategies heavily dominated by shopping and entertainment.3 In sum, we see much needed improvement to the economic and social well-being of the city. Or do we?
Much attention in the gentrification literature focuses on the displacement of existing neighborhood residents,4 but less attention focuses on the mechanics of exclusion that occur with redevelopment. Often redevelopment, particularly on formerly vacant urban sites such as Atlantic Station, is not acknowledged as exclusionary because the new project is such a striking improvement over what stood there before. The exclusion is obscured because there were no original residents or tenants to displace; thus, there is
2. Atlantic Station, http://www.atlanticstation.com (last visited Apr. 22,2006).
3. The redevelopment is also a reflection of an ongoing relationship between business and government, a part of the ongoing local economic development project. See Susan G. Davis, Space Jam: Media Conglomerates Build the Entertainment City, in gender, race and class in media: A text-Reader 159, 168 n.2 (Gail Dines & Jean m. Humez eds. 2002) ("The developers and promoters of the entertainment-retail projects rely heavily on financial and political help from state and local governments. As is well-known, city governments, redevelopment authorities, planning commissions, state and local tax codes, tax abatements, and zoning ordinances all play an important role in smoothing the way for large-scale commercial real estate projects, and so they actively promote the high-consumption and now retail entertainment, redefinition of social space. . . ."). But see Andres Duany, Three Cheers for "Gentrification," 12 Am. enterprise 36, 37 (2001) (noting gentrification is spontaneous and natural, but government tries to take the credit).
4. See Jacob Vigdor, Does Gentrification Harm the Poor?, in brookings-wharton papers on Urban Affairs: 2002 133, 142-46 (William G. Gale & Janet Rothenberg Pack eds. 2002) (arguing that gentrification may positively impact poor residents); Lance Freeman & Frank Braconi, Gentrification and Displacement: New York City in the 1990s, 70 J. AM. plan. ASS'n, 39, 51 (2004) (demonstrating that rates of residential mobility among low income households were lower in gentrifying neighborhoods).
2006] RACE, CLASS, CLUSTERS, AND REDEVELOPMENT 879
no open conflict between old and new.5 Notwithstanding the lack of displacement, there is still exclusion. It is easy to forget that the working class or poor people—often disproportionately black and Latino—were the old users of the neighborhood surrounding the redeveloped area. The users of the new development are disproportionately white and affluent. To the extent they are demographically present within a metropolitan area, some affluent blacks, Latinos, and Asians sprinkle the pool of patrons. This normalizes the race and class transformation, embedding it within a complex interrelationship between shopping as entertainment, privatization of public space, and racialized class perceptions of who fits the profile for upscale city living. In particular, the specific techniques to structure the retail environment in a way that shapes the new inner city by accelerating or concentrating the affluent transformation have not been adequately considered. Current retail redevelopment projects serve as an important component of American society's orientation towards mass consumption of luxury brands and images. Also, upscale redevelopment allows a city to acquire a new image as the location for upper middle class privilege, no longer devalued in the mainstream economy. In order to facilitate the aura of luxury and privilege, a level of sameness and exclusion is embedded in and intertwined with the design and operation of today's mall, including the selection of appropriate "retail concepts" for the mall.6
This Article examines the race and class implications of the geo-demographic marketing profiles, known as clusters, which are used to design and manage these arenas for consumption. It argues that today's retail shopping concepts are based on a problematic, subjective reality and unreality of marketing techniques unduly influenced by race and class assumptions and meanings. These
5. See Elvin K. Wyly & Daniel J. Hammell, Islands of Decay in Seas of Renewal: Housing Policy and the Resurgence ofGentrification, 10 HOUSING pol'y DEBATE 711,717 (1999).
6. See Michael J. Weiss, The Clustered world: How We Live, What We Buy and What It All Means About Who We Are (2000) (using census data, zip codes, and marketing surveys to classify people into lifestyle segments based on: (1) where they live—whether in a city, small town, or rural area; (2) their lifestage—whether they are young and single, married with children, or a retiree; and (3) their marketplace behavior).
clusters are used by retail mall developers whose profit needs lead them to construct predominantly upscale retail malls in ways that lead to racialized class exclusion. The structure of mass, upscale shopping and its dominance in today's urban redevelopment schemes raises the important question of who will be able to partake in this new and improved urban experience and who will not?
I. Consumption Needs: Born To Shop?
When talking about redevelopment, we are in large part talking about shopping. Retail shopping is an important, if not dominant, aspect of many redevelopment projects today. In fact, such retail opportunities are no longer limited to stand-alone shopping centers. Instead, extensive shopping areas are included in or next to condominiums, airports, train stations, hotels, and office buildings.8 The provision of shopping "opportunities" in these...
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