Racializing Resilience: Assemblage, Critique, and Contested Futures in Greater Miami Resilience Planning

Abstract

This article responds to the following paradox: As government actors have begun to operationalize resilience in a variety of ways and contexts, critical analyses of resilience have continued to sidestep empirical complexity in favor of “black boxing” the concept. This article advances a different analytical path. Drawing on a case study of Greater Miami resilience initiatives, and reading across literatures on critical race theory, critical resilience studies, and Foucauldian-inspired understandings of critical practice, the article develops an inductive framework for analyzing resilience politics and its intersection with prevailing racial formations. Doing so allows us to make sense of two seemingly contradictory events: how, on the one hand, resilience initiatives are topologically recalibrating techniques that produce and manage racialized difference in the Miami metropolitan economy to govern uncertain futures—specifically, segregation, centralization, expertise, and gradualism—and how, on the other hand, activists are mobilizing resilience to both critique and challenge these techniques and their legacies of racial exclusion. We thus argue that resilience is a site of indeterminate politics and that inductive modes of inquiry can help unpack how resilience comes to reinforce uneven power relations—and thus identify previously overlooked possibilities for strategic intervention.

本文对以下的矛盾现象进行了分析：当政府行动派开始以各种方式, 针对不同的情况, 致力于进行提高韧性的工作时, 对韧性持批判态度的观点继续回避实际情况的复杂性, 仍支持 “黑箱”概念。本文提出了一种不同的分析路径。作者结合有关批判性种族理论、批判性恢复能力的研究以及根据福柯理论对批判性实践进行分析的文献, 以大迈阿密致力于地区韧性的行动为例提出了一个归纳框架, 分析韧性政治及其与主流种族形态的交集。 通过这种方式, 我们可以理解两个看似矛盾的情况：一方面, 为了对不确定的未来进行治理, 这些韧性项目作为一种进行重新调整的拓扑技术—— 尤其是通过隔离、集中化、专业化和渐进化的方式, 对在迈阿密城市经济中产生的种族化差异进行管理；另一方面, 探讨了行动派们将如何利用韧性, 对这些方法及其残余的种族排斥问题提出批评和挑战。因此, 我们认为, 韧性属于不确定政治的范畴, 归纳质询模式有助于揭示韧性如何加剧不平衡的权力关系, 进而确定以往被忽略的战略干预可能性。

En este artículo se responde a la siguiente paradoja: En la medida en que actores gubernamentales han empezado a operacionalizar la resiliencia dentro de una variedad de modos y contextos, los análisis críticos de esa condición han seguido esquivando su complejidad empírica en favor de encapsular el concepto “en caja negra.” Este artículo propugna por una diferente ruta analítica. Con base en un estudio de caso de las iniciativas de resiliencia del Gran Miami, y leyendo ampliamente sobre teoría crítica de la raza, estudios de resiliencia crítica y las interpretaciones de inspiración foucauldiana de la práctica crítica, el artículo desarrolla un marco inductivo para analizar la política de resiliencia y su intersección con las formaciones raciales dominantes. Al hacer esto podremos entender mejor dos eventos aparentemente contradictorios: por una parte, cómo están recalibrando topológicamente iniciativas resilientes que producen y manejan la diferencia racializada en la economía metropolitana de Miami, para gobernar futuros inciertos—específicamente la segregación, la centralización, la experticia y el gradualismo—y cómo, por otra parte, los activistas movilizan la resiliencia tanto para criticar como para retar estas técnicas de exclusión racial y su legado. Argüimos, entonces, que la resiliencia es un escenario de política indeterminada, y que modos inductivos de indagación pueden ayudar a deshacer la manera como la resiliencia llega a reforzar relaciones de poder desiguales—identificando de esa manera posibilidades anteriormente soslayadas de intervención estratégica.

Key Words:

• assemblage
• critique
• race
• resilience
• urban techniques

关键词:

• 关键词：集会
• 批判
• 种族
• 韧性
• 城市技术。

Palabras clave:

• crítica
• ensamblaje
• raza
• resiliencia
• técnicas urbanas

Acknowledgments

We thank two anonymous reviewers, members of the Urban Resilience to Extremes Miami research team (Evelyn Gaiser, John Kominoski, Tiffany Troxler, and Rinku Roy Chowdhury), Andrew Baldwin, Elizabeth Johnson, Sarah Knuth, Sébastien Nobert, Stephanie Wakefield, and audiences at Durham University and the Université de Montréal for support and useful comments on earlier versions of this article. We also thank Nik Heynen for his helpful editorial advice. This is Publication #25 of the Sea Level Solutions Center in the Institute of Water and Environment at Florida International University.

Notes

1 The program was founded in 2013 and provided member cities over US$160 million to hire chief resilience officers and undertake consultant-driven resilience planning efforts, which were designed to transform urban governance and build capacities to handle short-term shocks and long-term stresses. Although the program was originally scheduled to begin winding down operations in 2022, philanthropic organizations in many participating cities such as Miami have picked up the funding gap left by its premature closure.

2 In this regard, the trajectory of Miami resilience planning follows other U.S. cities such as Boston and Washington, DC (Ranganathan and Bratman 2019), which have also used the resilience planning process to address each city’s legacy of segregated development and its continued impact on contemporary socioecological insecurities and vulnerabilities.

3 As part of the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network–funded research on governing green infrastructure in Miami (see Acknowledgments), two authors participated in four 100RC participatory workshops in Miami during 2017 and 2018. One author also received consultant-led training in 100RC tools to lead breakout group discussion sessions and served as one of twenty-five volunteer facilitators at the September 2016 public launch event for 100RC in Miami. These activities introduced the authors to several social and climate justice activists who played an important role in bringing racialized vulnerability and social equity issues to the fore in Miami resilience planning, particularly in workshops on planning for more equitable postdisaster responses. These dynamics encouraged the authors to focus greater analytical attention on how the region’s history of racially uneven development intersects with resilience initiatives.

4 The quoted text comes from an internal MCA action plan document that is not publicly available. Contact the authors for citation information.

5 For example, a 2019 advisory report from the Urban Land Institute for the City of Miami recommends the zoning technique of transferrable development density to “stimulate development and density in transit rich and naturally resilient neighborhoods” (Urban Land Institute 2019, 80). In Miami, “naturally resilient neighborhoods” typically refers to historically segregated black neighborhoods located along (relatively) higher ground inland, socially and spatially distanced from elite, historically white-only coastal neighborhoods now threatened with inundation.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the National Science Foundation Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (NSF SES-1444755).

Notes on contributors

Kevin Grove

KEVIN GROVE is Associate Professor in the Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199. E-mail: [email protected]. His research blends political geography, cultural geography, and environmental security studies to explore the politics of disaster management and resilience in the Anthropocene.

Savannah Cox

SAVANNAH COX is a PhD student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include climate change, urban resilience, finance, and science and technology studies.

Allain Barnett

ALLAIN BARNETT is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute for Water and Environment, School of International and Public Affairs, and Sea Level Solutions Center at Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include adaptation to climate change, urban resilience and justice, institutions and infrastructure, and natural resource management and rural livelihoods.