Gentrification today spreads and deepens in US cities. In this paper we examine the progentrification rhetoric and tactics confronted by the second largest Puerto Rican community in the United States, Chicago's Humboldt Park. Three points are documented in this current case. First, real-estate capital and the media now target and script Puerto Rican youth bodies to communicate a new gentrification-sanitizing theme: a disgust for ‘ghetto’ morals and social order. Second, this coding of bodies involves a key process, taking readers to imaginary spaces in discourse. Third, possibilities to thwart gentrification exist but organizing strategies are ineffective in that they fail to confront the politics of youth bodying. The results shed light on one of the ascendant strategies of capital to restructure Spanish-speaking neighborhoods and a subset of them, Puerto Rican communities.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BalibarEWallersteinI, 1994Race, Nation, Class (Verso, London).
2.
BauderH, 2001, “Agency, place, scale: Representations of inner-city youth identities”Tidschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie92279–291.
3.
BetancurJ, 2002, “The politics of gentrification”Urban Affairs Review37780–814.
4.
BogardusE, 1943, “Gangs of Mexican-American youth”Sociology and Social Research2855–66.
5.
BoyerC M, 1986Dreaming the Rational City (MIT, Cambridge, MA).
6.
BuckG, 2001, “Hot in Humboldt Park: Some call it West Bucktown, but whatever its name, the home-building has arrived”Chicago Tribune 27 January, page 13.
7.
BuckG, 2002, “Townhouses create a niche on North Side”Chicago Tribune 19 October, page 11.
8.
ChavezL, 1991Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation (University of Texas Press, Austin, TX).
9.
CheyfitzE, 1981The Poetics of Imperialism (Oxford University Press, Oxford).
10.
Chicago Sun-Times2003, “One gang-banger's political post”, special section, 4 July, page 11.
11.
Community Workers Co-operative2003, “Café Teatro Batey Urbano: The living-out of a dream”, June, available from Humboldt Park Institution, Unit 4, First Floor, Tuam Road Center, Tuam Road, Chicago.
12.
CresswellT, 1996In Space: Out of Space (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN).
13.
DaleyR J, 2001, “Address to Community Trust”, technical document, 14 June, available from Chicago Community Trust, 1 East Wacker Drive, Suite 2525, Chicago, IL.
14.
DectorM, 1992, “How the rioters won”Commentary May, 17–22.
15.
DenbyPaul, 1986, “Terror”Los Angeles Sentinel 15 May, page A-6.
16.
DiIulioJ, 1996, “My Black crime problem, and ours”City Journalnumber 6, 9–16.
17.
DrumD, 1951, “Pachoco Gang activities in the City of Los Angeles”, technical report, available from the City of Los Angeles Archives, Los Angeles, CA.
18.
Dubin Residential, 2003, “Dubin does the town”, marketing brochure, Dubin Development.
19.
BrunnerDuBose D, 1999Between the Masks (Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD).
20.
EvanDBurdickP, 2001, “Daley's new economic growth strategy”I-Street2–3.
21.
GarzaM M, 1999, “Humboldt power play”Chicago Tribune1 August, page 2.
22.
GreggsL, 1992, “Fighting and gangs”Chicago Tribune 3 November, page 13.
HackworthJSmithN, 2001, “The changing state of gentrification”Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie92464–477.
25.
HarawayD, 1990, “A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and social feminism in the 1980s”, in Feminism/Postmodernism Ed. NickelsonL (Routledge, London) pp 190–233.
26.
HarveyD, 1998, “The body as an accumulation strategy”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space16401–421.
27.
HidalgoN M, 1997, “A layering of family and friends: Four Puerto Rican families' meaning of community”Education and Urban Society November, 20–40.
28.
HooksB, 1993Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge, New York).
29.
IngramJ, 1986, “Solutions begin with you and me”Michigan Chronicle 13 December, page A-7.
30.
KeilR, 2002, “Common-sense neoliberalism: Progressive conservative urbanism in Toronto, Canada”, in Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe Eds BrennerNTheodoreN (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 230–254.
31.
KennedyL, 2000Race and Urban Space in Contemporary American Culture (University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh).
32.
KnoppLKujawaR, 1993, “Ideology and urban landscapes: Conceptions of the market in Portland, Maine”Antipode25114–139.
33.
LeesL, 2003, “The ambivalence of diversity and the politics of urban renaissance: The case of youth in downtown Portland, Maine”International Journal of Urban and Regional Research27613–624.
34.
LeesLDemerittD, 1998, “Envisioning the livable city: The interplay of ‘Sin City’ and ‘Sim City’ in Vancouver's planning discourse”Urban Geography19332–359.
35.
LefebvreH, 1984The Production of Space (University of Texas Press, Austin, TX).
36.
LehmannN, 1991, “The other underclass”Atlantic December, 12–21.
37.
LewisO, 1965, La Vida (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL).
38.
LottT, 1999The Invention of Race (Blackwell, Oxford).
McCarthyC, 1997, “Security in the safety zone”, unpublished manuscript, copy available from author, Department of Speech Communication, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL.
41.
McEversKMyersL, 1999, “Women of the world: For them, the gang is family and the street is home”Chicago Tribune 28 March, page 14.
42.
MalesM, 1995The Scapegoat Generation: America's War on Adolescents (Common Courage, Monroe, ME).
43.
MalesM, 1996Framing Youth: 10 Myths About the Next Generation (Common Courage, Monroe, ME).
MercerK, 1997Welcome to the Jungle (Routledge, London).
47.
MindichJ, 1995, “Americorps: Young, spirited and controversial”Chicago Tribune 9 April, page 11.
48.
MitchellD, 2000Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction (Blackwell, Oxford).
49.
MunizV, 1998Resisting Gentrification and Displacement: Voices of Puerto Rican Women of the Barrio (Garland, Hamden, CT).
50.
NakagawaG, 1993, “Deformed subjects, docile bodies: Disciplinary practices and subject-constitution in stories of Japanese-American internment”, in Narrative and Social Control: Critical Perspectives Ed. MumbyD K (Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA) pp 143–163.
51.
NortonA, 1993Economy of Signs (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL).
52.
On Duty Magazine2003, “Court battle in fight for streets”, 3 April, page 3.
53.
PeckJ, 2001Workfare States (Guilford Press, New York).
Ramos-ZayasA, 1998, “Nationalist ideologies, neighborhood based activism, and educational spaces in Puerto Rican Chicago”Harvard Educational Review68164–192.
56.
ReedA, 1992, “The underclass as myth and symbol: The poverty of discourse about poverty”Newsweek Review April/May, 1–4.
57.
RodriguezM, 2003, “Café Teatro Batey Urbano: The living out of a dream”, Community Workers Co-Operative May, 4–8.
58.
SlaterT, 2003, “Looking at the North American city through the lens of gentrification discourse”Urban Geography23131–153.
59.
SmithN, 1996The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (Routledge, New York).
60.
SmithN, 2002, “New globalism, new urbanism: Gentrification as global urban strategy”Antipode34427–445.
61.
StillB, 1974Urban America (Little, Brown, Boston, MA).
62.
Taipai Times2003, “Crime in American cities” 23 February.
63.
ThriftN, 1995, “A hyperactive world”, in Geographies of Global Change Eds JohnstonR JTaylorP JWattsM J (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 18–36.
64.
Voorhees Center, 2001, “Gentrification in West Town: Contested ground”, technical report, available from Voorhees Centre, University of Illinois at Chicago, 400 South Peoria Street, Suite 2100, Chicago, IL.
65.
WeberR, 2002, “Extracting value from the city: Neoliberalism and urban redevelopment”, in Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe Eds BrennerNTheodorN (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 172–193.
66.
WilsonD, 1996, “Metaphors, growth coalition discourses, and black poverty neighborhoods in a US city”Antipode2872–96.
67.
WilsonD, 2004, “Making historic preservation in Chicago: Space, discourse, and neoliberalism”Space and Polity843–59.
WilsonDGrammenosD, 2000, “Progress report: Spatiality and urban redevelopment movements”Urban Geography21361–370.
70.
WilsonDWoutersJGrammenosD, 2004, “Successful protect-community politics: Spatiality and discourse in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood”Environment and Planning A361173–1190.
