Gentrifying New Orleans: Thoughts on Race and the Movement of Capital

Abstract

This article examines contemporary discourses of race, gentrification, and demographic change in post-Katrina New Orleans. Although much public debate over gentrification has often centered on the displacement of black and brown communities, and the loss of neighborhood identity and cultural authenticity, this article emphasizes the underlying class interests and broader urban processes that drive rent-intensification. Without a critical analysis of political-economy and the complex roles that culture, race, and nostalgia play in place-making and real-estate valuation, we may well lose sight of how urban land development actually unfolds, and fail to devise effective public solutions that can guarantee adequate housing for all.

Keywords::

• capitalism
• gentrification
• housing
• New Orleans
• race
• real estate

Acknowledgments

I thank Megan French-Marcelin, Suzanne Juliette Mobley, and Jay Arena for taking the time to read drafts of this article. Their insight, criticism, and intimate knowledge of New Orleans, old and new, enriched this work in immeasurable ways. Adrienne Dixson, Roderick Sias, Adolph Reed, Jr., and Thomas J. Adams aided my efforts immensely. Their opinions, anecdotes and forwarded articles all deepened my understanding of this subject matter. Thank you all!

About the Author

Cedric Johnson is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His teaching and research interests include African American political thought, neoliberal politics, and class analysis and race. His book, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics (2007) was named the 2008 W.E.B. DuBois Outstanding Book of the Year by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. Johnson is the editor of The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans (2011).

Notes

Richard Campanella, “Gentrification and Its Discontents: Notes from New Orleans,” New Geography 1 March 2013, http://www.newgeography.com/content/003526-gentrification-and-its-discontents-notes-new-orleans (accessed April 11, 2013). For a taste of some of debates surrounding Campanella’s essay see the following: Christine Horn, “Reading the Leaves in the White Teapot,” NOLA Refugees Press March 2, 2013, http://www.nolafugeespress.com/reading-the-white-teapot/ (accessed April 11, 2013); C. W. Cannon, “Gentrification Flap Rooted in an Older Debate Over New Orleans ‘Exceptionalism,‘” The Lens, April 9, 2013, http://thelensnola.org/2013/04/09/gentrification-flap-rooted-in-an-older-debate-over-new-orleans-exceptionalism/ (accessed April 11, 2013); Jean Paul Villere, “Where Hipsters Dwell,” Uptown Messenger April 10, 2013, http://uptownmessenger.com/2013/04/jean-paul-villere-where-hipsters-dwell/ (accessed April 12, 2013); Christopher Lirette, “Category 3 Gentrification: On New Orleans’s Population Trends and the Hospitality of Internet Commenters,” Southern Spaces Blog April 17, 2013, http://southernspaces.org/blog/category-3-gentrification-new-orleanss-population-trends-and-hostility-internet-commenters (accessed August 5, 2015); Flavia Krause-Jackson, “A Streetcar Name Gentrification: Tracking New Orleans’ Decade of Crisis and Revival,” Bloomberg Business, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-05/a-streetcar-named-gentrification-tracking-new-orleans-decade-of-crisis-and-revival (accessed August 5, 2015).

Marc A. Weiss, “The Origins and Legacy of Urban Renewal,” in Urban and Regional Planning in the Age of Austerity, ed. Pierre Clavel, John Forester, and William W. Goldsmith (New York: Pergamon, 1980), 53–80; Kevin Fox Gotham, “A City without Slums: Urban Renewal, Public Housing and Downtown Revitalization in Kansas City, Missouri,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 60, no. 1 (January 2001): 285–316.

Richard Campanella, “The Laissez Faire New Orleans Rebuilding Strategy Was Exactly That,” New Geography July 21, 2015, http://www.newgeography.com/content/004995-special-report-the-laissez-faire-new-orleans-rebuilding-strategy-was-exactly-that (accessed July 25, 2015).

Alex Woodward, “New Orleans, One of the Worst Cities for Renters,” Gambit March 30, 2015, http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/new-orleans-one-of-the-worst-us-cities-for-renters/Content?oid=2609106 (accessed April 3, 2015).

Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 32. Ruth Glass is credited with coining the term “gentrification” in her 1964 study, London: Aspects of Change. Here she describes the process: “One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle classes, upper and lower. Shabby, modest mews and cottages—two rooms up and two down—have been taken over, when their leases have expired, and have become elegant, expensive residences. Large Victorian houses, downgraded in an earlier or recent period—which were used as lodging houses or were otherwise in multiple occupation—have been upgraded once again. Nowadays, many of these houses are being subdivided into costly flats or ‘houselets’ in terms of the new real estate snob jargon). The current social status and value of such dwellings are frequently in inverse relation to their size, and in any case enormously inflated by comparison with previous levels in their neighborhoods. Once this process of ‘gentrification’ starts in a district, it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working class occupiers are displaced, and the whole social character of the district is changed.” Ruth Glass, London: Aspects of Change (London: Centre for Urban Studies, 1964), xviii–ix.

Jason Hackworth, The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology and Development in American Urbanism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), 98–101, 126–31; Neil Smith and James DeFilippis, “The Reassertion of Economics: 1990s Gentrification in the Lower East Side,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 23, no. 4 (December 1999): 638–53; Kevin Fox Gotham, “Tourism Gentrification: The Case of New Orleans’ Vieux Carre (French Quarter),” Urban Studies 42, no. 7 (2005): 1099–121; Jason Hackworth, Postrecession Gentrification in New York City,” Urban Affairs Review 37, no. 6 (2002): 815–43.

Smith, The New Urban Frontier, 51.

Michael E. Crutcher, Jr. Tremé: Race and Place in a New Orleans Neighborhood (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2010), 97.

Peter Frase, “Gentrification and Racial Arbitrage,” http://www.peterfrase.com/2014/06/gentrification-and-racial-arbitrage/ (accessed June 28, 2014).

See Smith, The New Urban Frontier, xiii–vii.

Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002); For a helpful critique of Florida’s ideas, see, Jamie Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Brian Tochterman, “Theorizing Neoliberal Urban Development: A Genealogy from Richard Florida to Jane Jacobs,” Radical History Review, 2012 no. 112 (Winter 2012): 65–87.

Walter Isaacson, “Walker Percy’s Theory of Hurricanes,” New York Times August 4, 2015.

Although they both offer criticisms of government failures during the Katrina crisis and the uneven recovery that sits to the left of Isaacson, both Rebecca Solnit and Roberta Brandes Gratz share similar enthusiasm regarding the new spirit of independence and community, and perceive these elements as central to the city’s rebound. See Rebecca Solnit, Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster (New York: Penguin, 2009); Robert Brandes Gratz, We’re Still Here Ya Bastards: How the People of New Orleans Rebuilt Their City (New York: Nation Books, 2015).

Campanella, “Gentrification and its Discontents,” 1; see also, Renia Ehrenfeucht and Marla Nelson, “Young Professionals as Ambivalent Change Agents in New Orleans After the 2005 Hurricanes,” Urban Studies 50, no. 4 (March 2013): 825–41.

Campanella, “Gentrification and its Discontents,” 2.

Ibid., 3.

Ibid., 6.

Quoted in Joe Coscarelli, “Spike Lee’s Amazing Rant Against Gentrification: ‘We Been Here!’” New York February 25, 2014, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/spike-lee-amazing-rant-against-gentrification.html (accessed August 5, 2015).

See Tom Slater’s critical review of Hamnett and others, “Missing Marcuse: On Gentrification and Displacement,” in Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City, ed. Neil Brenner, Peter Marcuse, and Margit Mayer (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 171–96; Also, James Vigdor, “Does Gentrification Harm the Poor?” Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs (2002); Andres Duany, “Three Cheers for Gentrification,” American Enterprise Magazine April/May 2001, 36–39.

Lance Freeman, “Displacement or Succession? Residential Mobility in Gentrifying Neighborhoods,” Urban Affairs Review 40 (2005): 488; Lance Freeman, There Goes the ‘Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up (Philadelphia: Temple University, 2006).

“Spike Lee Blasts ‘Stupid’ Michael Rapaport Over Gentrification Debate,” HuffPost Live May 12, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/12/spike-lee-michael-rapaport_n_5312031.html (accessed July 9, 2015).

See the 2011 documentary film Brooklyn Boheme produced by Nelson George.

Errol Louis, “The Gentrification of Spike Lee,” New York Daily News February 26, 2014, http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/gentrification-spike-lee-article-1.1703113 (accessed June 23, 2015).

Touré Reed, “Why Moynihan Was Not So Misunderstood at the Time: The Mythological Prescience of the Moynihan Report and the Problem of Institutional Structuralism,” Nonsite no. 17, September 4, 2015, http://nonsite.org/article/why-moynihan-was-not-so-misunderstood-at-the-time (accessed September 4, 2015).

Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic June (2014), http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/ (accessed August 5, 2015).

Preston Smith, Racial Democracy in the Black Metropolis: Housing Policy in Postwar Chicago (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2012).

Barbara Fields, “Race and Ideology in American History,” in Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, ed. J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 143–77; Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft; The Soul of Inequality in American Life (London and New York: Verso, 2014); Adolph Reed, Jr. “Unraveling the Relation of Race and Class in American Politics,” Political Power and Social Theory 15 (2002): 265–74; Jack Bloom, Class, Race and the Civil Rights Movement (Bloomington and Indianpolis: Indiana University Press, 1987).

Crutcher, Tremé; Smith, Racial Democracy in the Black Metropolis; Michelle Boyd, “Reconstructing Bronzeville: Racial Nostalgia and Neighborhood Redevelopment,” Journal of Urban Affairs 22, no. 2 (2000): 107–22; Michelle Boyd, Jim Crow Nostalgia: Reconstructing Race in Bronzeville (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2008); John Arena, Driven from New Orleans: How Nonprofits Betray Public Housing and Promote Privatization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2008); Megan French-Marcelin, “Community Underdevelopment: Federal Aid and the Rise of Privatization in New Orleans,” PhD Dissertation (New York: Columbia University, 2014); Nathan Connolly, A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Making of Jim Crow South Florida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

Michelle Taylor, Harlem: Between Heaven and Hell (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2002); Mary Patillo, Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2008).

Kent B. Germany, New Orleans After the Promises: Poverty, Citizenship and the Search for the Great Society (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 2007); Adolph Reed, Jr. “The Black Urban Regime: Structural Origins and Constraints,” in Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era, ed. Adolph Reed, Jr. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 79–115.

Adolph Reed, Jr. “Three Tremés,” Nonsite 4 July 2011, http://nonsite.org/editorial/three-tremes (accessed June 23, 2015).

Ibid.

Smith, The New Urban Frontier, 44–47; Kristin Ross, Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune (London and New York: Verso, 2015).

Vincanne Adams, Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina (Durham, NC and London: Duke University 2013).

Adams, Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith, 55–73.

Another Crisis in the Making! How the Subprime Mortgage Industry Is Sandbagging Katrina-Affected Homeowners. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and ACORN Housing, 22 September 2005, 5–6.

See historian Christopher Manning’s oral history project on Post-Katrina volunteerism at http://www.nolaoralhistory.org/about-project (accessed May 23, 2015).

Cedric Johnson, “Charming Accommodations: Progressive Urbanism Meets Privatization in Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation,” in The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans, ed. Cedric Johnson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 187–224; Kevin Fox Gotham, “Make It Right? Brad Pitt, Post-Katrina Rebuilding and the Spectacularization of Disaster,” in Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times, ed. Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 97–113.

A Housing Plan for New Orleans, Rochon & Associates Management Consultants, 1988; See also, Arena, Driven from New Orleans, 45–50.

See, Arena, Driven from New Orleans; Adolph Reed, Jr. and Stephen Steinberg, “Liberal Bad Faith in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina,” Black Commentator. May 4, 2006, http://blackcommentator.com/182/182_cover_liberals_katrina.html (accessed June 26, 2015); Larry Bennett and Adolph Reed, Jr., “The New Face of Urban Renewal: The Near North Redevelopment Initiative and the Cabrini-Green Neighborhood,” in Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and Our Retreat from Racial Equality, ed. Adolph Reed, Jr. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 175–211; David Imbroscio, Urban America Reconsidered: Alternatives for Governance and Policy (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2010).

Arena, Driven from New Orleans; John Arena, “Black and White, Unite and Fight? Identity Politics and New Orleans’s Post-Katrina Public Housing Movement,” in The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans, ed. Cedric Johnson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 152–86.

Vicki Mack and Elaine Ortiz, “Who Lives in New Orleans and the Metro Now?” The Data Center, September 26, 2013.

Allison Plyer, Nihal Shrinath, and Vicki Mack, “The New Orleans Index at Ten” Data Center, July 2015, 52.

Stacy Seicshnaydre and Ryan C. Alright, “Expanding Choice and Opportunity in the Housing Choice Voucher Program,” The Data Center July 2015, 4.

Rebecca Mowbray, “State’s Deal for Benson Office Space May Be at the Expense of Rival Landlords,” Times-Picayune June 21, 2011, http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2011/06/states_deal_for_benson_office.html (accessed August 10, 2015); Victor Matheson and Robert Baade, “Can New Orleans Play Its Way Past Katrina? The Role of Professional Sports in the Redevelopment of New Orleans” (2006) Economics Department Working Papers, Paper 75. http://crossworks.holycross.edu/econ_work_papers_75.

See Andru Okun’s two part exposé on St. Roch market: Andru Okun, “Going Hungry at the St. Roch Market,” Antigravity June 2015; Andru Okun, “Another Round: The Remiss Management of the St. Roch Market,” Antigravity July 2015.

Lauren Zanolli, “The Sharing of New Orleans,” Motherboard. November 24, 2014, http://motherboard.vice.com/read/sharing-economy-in-new-orleans (accessed August 12, 2014); Dorian Commode and Jules Bentley, “Unfairbnb: What Unlicensed Short-Term Rentals Mean for New Orleans,” March 2014. Antigravity http://www.antigravitymagazine.com/2014/03/unfairbnb-what-unlicensed-short-term-rentals-mean-for-new-orleans/ (accessed August 12, 2014).

Crutcher, “Killing Claiborne’s Avenue,” in Tremé, 50–65; Lolis Elie, “Planners Push to Tear Out Elevated I-10 Over Claiborne,” Times-Picayune July 22, 2010, http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/photos_for_iten.html (accessed July 27, 2015).

Tom Lewis, Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life (New York: Viking Press, 1997); Richard O. Baumbach, Jr. and William Borah, The Second Battle of New Orleans: A History of the Vieux Carre Riverfront Expressway Controversy (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1981).

Lynnell L. Thomas, Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race and Historical Memory (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2014); Kevin Fox Gotham, Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture and Race in the Big Easy (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007); Sharon Zukin, Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places (Oxford and New York: University of Oxford Press, 2010).

See Reed, “Three Tremés.”

Emily Achtenberg and Peter Marcuse, “Towards the Decommodification of Housing,” in Critical Perspectives on Housing, ed. Rachel G. Bratt, Chester Hartman, and Ann Meyerson (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 474–83.