Interrogating narratives of urban change: disinvestment and development in two neighborhoods in Baltimore, MD

ABSTRACT

Popular press and academic narratives of neighborhood change frequently conflate the experiences of different non-white populations in working-class and poor areas, presenting them as detrimental to urban development and at risk of displacement and eviction. Such narratives provide justification for uneven disinvestment and overlook the variegated ways in which urban development strategies can be exploitative. Mislabeling urban change as gentrification and grouping multiple racial/ethnic groups can lead to inappropriate policy and misaligned forms of intervention. Building on arguments within Black geographies and critical urban studies, we seek to disentangle how Black and Latine/x populations are differently positioned in urban narratives of dis/investment. Combining archival analysis with data from the US Census, we analyze two formerly redlined neighborhoods in Baltimore whose development trajectories significantly diverged. We demonstrate that inequality is not simply due to the continued effects of historical redlining, but instead part of ongoing rounds of uneven dis/investment. We expose how racial capitalism exploits racial difference between non-white groups to extract profits. By focusing on specific neighborhoods, we enrich research interrogating how racial and ethnic hierarchies relationally shape urban change, making visible the necessity of spatially-specific contingent analyses.

KEYWORDS:

• Uneven development
• racial capitalism
• neighborhood change
• (dis)investment
• gentrification

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the editor, the three anonymous reviewers, Dawn Biehler, Alicia Sabatino, and the audience at the 2021 Race, Ethnicity, and Place Conference for comments on an earlier draft, as well as Ari Cacic and Aren Warner for contributions to this research. All errors are our own.

Data availability statement

Data are available from the corresponding author, DM, upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Data is based on Census Tract data that approximates the neighborhoods.

2 At the same time, while neighborhoods are framed as either Black or immigrant such populations are not mutually exclusive (Cahaus, 2019).

3 Black domestic workers settled around Upton, in homes proximal to wealthy whites for whom they worked (Henderson, 1994). Highlandtown attracted immigrants because of its proximity to ports and factories.

4 While comprehensive data examining ethnicity, race and immigration status together is not available, Baltimore is home to Black immigrants from Africa and Latin America, as well as other individuals that defy easy categorization by the US Census Bureau. We focus on the narratives describing particular neighborhoods in Baltimore, while recognizing that the narratives themselves only reflect partial realities.

5 When Black displacement did occur, whites were also displaced (Meehan, Baltimore Sun, 2019).

6 See for example the article in The Economist titled “Bring on the hipsters” (2015).

7 We also searched through the Afro, Baltimore”s Black-led newspaper, but did not find relevant neighborhood specific articles. The Baltimore Sun publication history spans our time period, providing a consistent view of Baltimore’s history.

8 Eventually ruled unconstitutional, Baltimore’s 1910 housing ordinance prohibiting housing sales to Black people on majority white streets (and vice-versa) became a model for cities throughout the United States.

9 Sites of Baltimore’s now defunct heavy industry are undergoing environmental remediation and redeveloped for mixed-use urban development or re-use as warehouses.