Taken Spaces: Perceptions of Inequity and Exclusion in Urban Development

Abstract

American cities are rampant with structural inequities, or “unfreedoms,” which manifest in the forms of poverty, housing instability, low life expectancy, low economic mobility, and other infringements on people’s abilities to do things they value in their lives and meet their full potential. These unfreedoms affect historically and systemically disenfranchised communities of color more than others. Too often, economic development that is supposed to remediate these issues leads to disproportionate economic growth for people who already have access to opportunity, without adequately creating conditions that equitably remove barriers, extend opportunities, and advance freedoms to all people. This dissertation investigates why this pattern persists. In this work, I describe the significance of the differing ways in which economic development is perceived by people living and working in an historically and systemically disinvested urban neighborhood facing socioeconomic transformation near downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, and city decision-makers in governmental, nonprofit, and quasi-governmental organizations. The ethnographic research methods I used in this study revealed that: many residents described economic development as a process that takes real and perceived neighborhood ownership away from the established community to transform the place for the benefit of outsiders and newcomers, who are, more often than not, white people; and city decision-makers contend that displacement is not a problem in Indianapolis but residents consistently see economic development leading to displacement. I contend that the type of disconnect that persists between the perceptions of people who live and work in the neighborhood and those of city decision-makers is the result of exclusionary development practices and helps perpetuate inequities. This work concludes with a solution for rebalancing the power between well-networked and well-resourced decision-makers and residents facing inequitable and exclusionary development.