Racing the creative class: diversity, racialized discourses of work, and colorblind redevelopment

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I examine a colorblind redevelopment strategy informed by Richard Florida’s creative class thesis to illustrate how it relies upon and reproduces historical socio-spatial patterns of racial inequality. Specifically, I explore the case of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a rust belt city attempting to revitalize after decades of white flight, deindustrialization, and intra-metropolitan segregation. Through an analysis of Milwaukee’s redevelopment plans, two years of participant observation, and interviews with government officials, local business elite, and nonprofit professionals, I demonstrate how colorblind redevelopment constitutes a racial project even as it nominally recognizes racial difference and embraces diversity. My analysis points to the centrality of race in colorblind redevelopment strategies like the creative class. Through Jodi Melamed’s theorizing of neoliberal multiculturalism, I contribute to the urban and feminist geographic scholarship on redevelopment by examining contemporary articulations of race that cross-cut phenotype with economic value and depoliticize structural racism into diversity and culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic development
• race
• creative class
• colorblindness
• work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Upper Midwest of the United States (states such as Minnesota and Wisconsin) is popularly known as having pleasant and friendly residents in comparison to coastal cities, such as New York and Los Angeles.

2. Here, I focus on how the interviewees and redevelopment plans delineate a Black-white divide through the tale without naming it as such. While there is a sizable Latinx community on the South side of Milwaukee who is organized around issues of immigration and dairy work, the interviewees and documents foregrounded the role of Black Milwaukeeans much more in relation to Milwaukee’s future.

3. By U.S. liberal politics, I mean left-leaning politics as categorized by figures such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party in the United States.

4. This poster is a common image in the city used to evoke nostalgia about Milwaukee’s industrial zenith.

5. Rodriguez (2014) describes the City of Milwaukee deploying New Urbanist and creative class principles even before they were coined as theses and put into practice in the 1990s and 2000s respectively. City officials and boosters promoted downtown development as one way to slow suburbanization and the depopulation of the city.

6. The Riverwalk is stretch of redevelopment along the Milwaukee River that incorporates downtown. It is a paved path that connects to other trails in the city, and is lined with luxury condominiums, parks, and corporate offices.

7. Opened in August 2017, it is a part of a broader project to redevelop the Lakefront with luxury apartments, corporate offices, efficient highway access, arts amenities, and trails.

8. On the U.S. Census, the categories Latino/a, Chicano/a, and Hispanic count as ethnicities rather than racial groups like white, Black, Native American and Pacific Islander, and Asian.

9. This is for the state of Wisconsin, but over 70% of Black Wisconsinites live in the City of Milwaukee (Wisconsin Department of Health and Human Services, 2016).

10. The MMAC is Milwaukee’s Chamber of Commerce.

11. I deploy the term “pro-business” throughout the paper as this is how some of the interviewees identified.

12. Alderman Hamilton represents the 1^st Aldermanic district located on the North side.

13. This is a U.S. Department of Labor designation for cities where unemployment is 20% or more above the national average (United States Department of Labour, 2017).

14. The Democratic nominee for the 2020 Presidential election will be elected at this convention. The local host committee reports that approximately 50,000 people are expected to come to Milwaukee because of the convention and have a $200 million impact.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Society of Woman Geographers and Economic Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers.