Neoliberal multiculturalism in Dallas: The discursive foundations of diversity-led gentrification in an aspiring U.S. global city

Introduction

Largely through neoliberal public–private partnerships, cities construct built environments in ways that pander to global capital. As they construct such urban spaces, I find that some U.S. cities such as Dallas have begun to employ and perform neoliberal discourses about multiculturalism to entice foreign capital investment. These discourses lay the groundwork to gentrify urban spaces through the devaluation of local class-poor racial and ethnic identities and concomitant exaltation of select national identities based solely upon foreign capital investment trends. This case study of the forthcoming Dallas International District elucidates an evolving logic of neoliberal multiculturalism and how it manifests in the gentrification schemes of aspiring global cities in the Global North, finding that neoliberalism retools and instrumentalizes multiculturalism to value specific international identities rather than race, ethnicity, or broad cultural affiliation. As a product of this mutated multiculturalism, selectively valorized international identities are enticed into the city, but only those who may contribute effectively to global capital flows, that is, white-collar professionals whose countries of origin have shown potential for foreign capital investment in Dallas. Finally, the case study reveals that this form of multicultural gentrification obliterates—rather than simply transforms—the past of a place under redevelopment when this history is not easily co-opted by neoliberal forces.

This investigation is important because “multiculturalism,” “internationalization,” and “globalization” have inherently positive connotations that signify the acceptance and tolerance of cultures that originate from beyond our shores, in turn contributing to notions of the inclusive city. Therefore, revealing how this is still exclusionary is an important step in the creation of a critical consciousness that can push for more inclusive urban policy and a better understanding of what constitutes inclusivity—for instance, how class and race should be understood as imbricated in planning for inclusion. Moreover, because the machinery and strategies of gentrification are ever-evolving (Sigler and Wachsmuth, 2020; Rérat et al., 2010; Hackworth and Smith, 2001), our critique and exegesis of gentrification must be ongoing and abreast of its latest forms. As cities go global and discriminatingly perform multicultural urban discourses and aesthetics to attract capital investments and international residents, the gentrification of discursively devalued/othered/erased poor and racialized communities poses a dramatic tension: because urban communities facing gentrification are often comprised of class-poor, ethnic, and racial minorities (Wyly and Hammel, 2004; Davidson, 2008; Podagrosi et al., 2011; Huse, 2018; Murdie and Teixeira, 2011; Anderson, 2016; Chronopoulos, 2016), urban space becomes a battleground between the lifeways of the existing “Other” and the newly, selectively valorized international migrant.

Through a case study of the impending Dallas International District—planned to be erected atop a former freedmen's town—I investigate the relationship between neoliberal multiculturalism and gentrification utilizing a conceptual framework informed by considerations of neoliberal urbanism, the (aspiring) global city, and racial–ethnic identity. Specifically, I interrogate prevailing discourses that set the stage for gentrification in the Dallas International District. Rather than studying gentrification after its sedimentation in a given space, this work examines the discursive foundations of gentrification which are laid before it takes hold. This paper adopts a qualitative methodology using a discourse analysis of web sources and interviews with public officials, developers, and community members to interrogate conceptual, policy, and material dimensions of ethnic-specific and race-specific multicultural “internationalization.” Based on these data, I find that plans to redevelop the area presage the gentrification of an existing Black and Latino population in Dallas, and furthermore, that this planned gentrification is enveloped in neoliberal discourses about multiculturalism which are situated squarely within Dallas’ desires to become a global and world-class city. I begin by providing a conceptual framework that brings into focus key themes which will emerge out of the case study, highlighting neoliberalism and its interaction with gentrification, global cities, multiculturalism, and race. Next, I outline my methodology and briefly sketch a background of the study area's history before delving into the case study and its implications.

Framing Dallas’ multicultural gentrification

To explore the relationship between multiculturalism and gentrification in Dallas, I discuss conceptual connections between gentrification, transnational flows and planetary gentrification, and the emergence of multicultural neoliberalism as a spatialized urban ideology. Gentrification itself has broadly been defined as “the transformation of a working-class or vacant area of the central city into middle class residential or commercial use” (Lees et al., 2010: xv). From this research, it is apparent that multicultural gentrification is driven by the burgeoning aspiration of cities to become global cities (Sassen, 1991, 2005; Ancien, 2011) or world cities (Goldman, 2011; Sigler and Martinus, 2016). Global/world cities are those which have “become increasingly disconnected from their broader hinterlands or even their national economies in favor of connectivity with other global cities in the systemic consolidation of capitalism” (Sassen, 2005: 30). Yet despite their increasing disconnection from their hinterlands, global cities often act as part of more comprehensive national strategies—rarely contradicting the general goals of the nation-states in which they are situated. Indeed, global cities are “[m]ajor nodes in the organization of the global economy: hubs of economic control, production and trade, of information circulation and cultural transmission, and of political power” (Gregory et al., 2009)—including such places as New York City, London, Paris, Tokyo, Toronto, Los Angeles, Seoul, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Bangkok.

Global city building has been spurred by the proliferation of neoliberalism around the globe. As state- and federal-level funding for municipalities has been whittled away, cities are encouraged to act entrepreneurially to entice the fixing of capital into their borders (Dugo, 2022; Harvey, 1989). This includes not only domestic inter-urban competition to secure domestic capital investment—often in the form of corporate headquarters, offices, sports stadiums, etc. from one city to another within the same nation-state—but also inter-urban competition between cities across the world. Neoliberal cities compete with one another to offer the greatest tax incentives, laxest labor laws, and least regulations in what has been called a proverbial “race to the bottom” (Johnson, 2016). Cities therefore aspire to go global by becoming connected to a globalized network of foreign cities to buttress their local economies (Sassen, 2005; Sigler and Martinus, 2016; Scott, 2001; Goldman, 2011). In metropolitan areas like Dallas, the global aspirations of cities play out in neoliberal-entrepreneurial attempts by public officials and private developers to become “world-class” through the incentivization of foreign capital investment, the clearing and beautification of blighted areas, and the displacement of the urban poor in favor of speculative (re)development projects (Ghertner, 2015; Chatterjee, 2016). Controlling and curating urban aesthetics—the visual character of the built environment in cities—comprises a key way in which aspiring global cities deploy power (Ghertner, 2015).

Further, as globalization has intensified, cities—particularly so-called global, world-class cities—receive not only vast inflows and outflows of capital, technology, and information, but also people (Appadurai, 1990; Segal, 2019). Associated with these flows of migrants is the creation of “international” urban aesthetics by way of transnational gentrification (Lees et al., 2010; Sigler and Wachsmuth, 2016), alternatively called planetary gentrification (Wyly, 2015; Hayes and Zaban, 2020; Lees et al., 2016). That is, the appropriation of urban space by privileged citizens who hail from foreign nations, consequently displacing lower-income communities and “spatialising global inequalities at the local scale in more direct ways than heretofore” (Hayes and Zaban, 2020: para. 3). Significantly, as cities attempt to go global by opening their doors to transnational gentrification and foreign capital investment, discourses about multiculturalism pervade neoliberal urban renewal projects. This is particularly the case regarding the gentrification of class-poor racial and ethnic minorities, where multiculturalism is invoked in the manipulation and rewriting of minority histories.

Summers (2019) argues that the distinctly racial history of neighborhoods may be problematically recast as being “multicultural,” and hence, made amenable to outside capital investment. Conducting a case study of the H Street Corridor, a historically Black neighborhood in Washington, D.C., Summers (2019) contends that it has been subjected to a kind of revisionism that narrativizes the neighborhood's past as being “diverse” in order to facilitate gentrification—an entanglement of discourses surrounding multiculturalism and racialized bodies. Indeed, numerous scholars have explained that gentrification is—in practice—an inherently racialized process inseparably tied to racial wealth disparities and biases (Sampson et al., 2006; Feagin, 1999; Wyly and Hammel, 2004). Chronopoulos (2016), for example, shows that low-income Black individuals and families are disproportionately displaced as a result of gentrification. Thus, the classed character of gentrification must be understood as intersecting with race, as community revitalization efforts in the U.S. often take place in low- and middle-income Black and Latino neighborhoods (Anderson, 2016).

Paralleling Summers, (2019) findings about gentrification and its interdigitation with multiculturalism, de Oliver (2016) explores gentrification and multiculturalism in San Antonio, Texas, arguing that cultural diversity as a progressive ethic anchored by ethnic and racial marginalization has been transformed into a “legitimating trope” for early-stage gentrifiers, a trope enacted through incremental cultural displacement via processes of “othering.” Certainly, much work on global urbanism and racialized gentrification explore issues of race, ethnicity, national identity, and their intersection with multiculturalism (Lie, 2014; de Oliver, 2016; Murdie and Teixeira, 2011; Huse, 2018). Questions are raised like: if multiculturalism advocates for the acceptance of diverse cultural identities within sociospatial frameworks, exactly what constitutes a cultural identity? How does a cultural identity differ from an ethnic identity, and how are they imbricated? Given the history of multicultural movements as being connected to the rights of racial minorities, is multiracialism synonymous with multiculturalism? Can we collapse projects that welcome the inclusion of diverse national identities beneath the umbrella of multiculturalism? As multicultural discourses blend the notions of culture, ethnicity, and race, we are left with an amalgam that not only proves incredibly difficult to conceptually penetrate, but that also lends itself to essentialization (Turner, 1993). For example, Giroux (1995) describes “a dangerous relationship between the ideas of race, intolerance, and the cultural membership of nationhood” (53)—wherein people of the same nationality are problematically essentialized as culturally (as well as racially, ethnically) homogenous. Conceptually convoluting multiculturalism even further, however, has been its entwinement with neoliberal notions of diversity.

Since the ushering in and solidification of neoliberalism as a regime of governance in the 1980s, some literature has considered the increasingly close relationship between multiculturalism and neoliberalism. In “Neoliberal Multiculturalism,” Kymlicka (2012) traces the history of multiculturalism as a movement that began in the 1960s closely tied with progressive social movements of the period, noting that its goals centered on minority civil rights and recognition. As the regime of neoliberal governance arose in the 1980s, Kymlicka (2012) documents neoliberalism's initial concerted resistance against the growing multiculturalism: ties between advocacy groups and the state were severed, thereby cutting funding for these groups, and discursively, a rhetorical campaign to juxtapose the “ordinary,” “hard-working” citizen, and the “special interest” and “ethnic lobbies” became pervasive (107). Yet despite this attack on multiculturalism, the movement persisted, attributable to the resilience of ethnic coalitions.

Now understanding the permanence of multiculturalism, some neoliberal actors began to enmesh market-driven motives with “multicultural” ideas. As a result, neoliberalism in practice often champions diversity. This is because discrimination—racial, ethnic, cultural, gender, and sexual—would be antithetical to maintaining a maximum availability of exploitable labor (Benn, 2008; Maloutas, 2021). Yet, some scholars have argued that neoliberal multiculturalism retains associations with “diversity,” “fairness,” and so forth—but in a vague and superficial sense that does not explicate capitalism's reliance on racism deployed in strategies of capital accumulation (Melamed, 2006; Roberts and Mahtani, 2010; Wilson and Grammenos, 2005; Wilson, 2004). The neoliberal multicultural celebration of “culture” and “diversity” is an abstraction that dilutes multiculturalism's rootedness in minority rights and antiracism. Hence, neoliberal multiculturalism as it has thus far been enacted does not redress how capitalism engages in the exclusion and othering (Laclau and Mouffe, 2014) of persons whom it deems unproductive—that is, those who “cannot compete effectively across state boundaries” (Kymlicka, 2012: 111). As scholars have demonstrated, existing neoliberal urbanism and its enmeshing with multicultural notions of diversity since the 1980s has engaged in the essentialization and commoditization of marginalized groups, namely ethnic and racial minorities such as Asians, Blacks, and Latinos.

An important vein of scholarship has explored the role of Western imaginaries of race in the production of essentialized racial enclaves. Anderson's influential work on Chinatowns (1987, 1990) considers Chinatowns as the products of a Western imaginary—as born out of classificatory discourses of race and othering. Documenting the case of Vancouver, BC's Chinatown, Anderson (1987) shows how over a period of 100 years Chinatown morphs in the white consciousness from a place fraught with negative associations and racist stereotyping to one eventually marked as a more positively tinted “ethnic neighborhood.” In her later 1990 work, Anderson probes the Chinatowns of Sydney and Melbourne. In these cases, she traces a similar trajectory from classical racism—the reviling of Chinatown—to an “acceptance” of Chinatown through a reoriented lens of cultural pluralism. Governance in Sydney and Melbourne begins to view Chinatown as a salable image demonstrative of diversity. In fact, municipal committees became invested in creating an even more “Chinese” experience for tourists by erecting “authentic” Chinese structures on the landscape like a prominent gateway, and by constructing a museum of Chinese culture (Anderson, 1990). The marketization of diversity and the rise of neoliberalism are therefore intimately conjoined.

Further work has been conducted in Houston, Texas, on the ways Hispanic and Asian cultures are capitalized upon to aid in urban growth strategies (Vojnovic, 2003; Knapp and Vojnovic, 2013). In Houston's Chinatown, the celebration of diversity has again been utilized as a strategy to promote the city's place image (Vojnovic, 2003; Knapp and Vojnovic, 2013). Critically, however, through Houston's efforts to revitalize its Chinatown, Knapp and Vojnovic (2013) reveal that what has in fact occurred is the erasure of Old Chinatown, as well as other ethnic communities in downtown Houston. Ethnically-owned land diminished as revitalization projects drove up property values, resulting in displacement. Thus, in Houston we observe the “cleansing of traditional communities” under the neoliberal guise of celebrating ethnic diversity (Knapp and Vojnovic, 2013: 84).

In one passage of Vojnovic's (2003) analysis of governance in Houston, he explains:

Hispanic and Asian communities are promoted, at least superficially, by urban governance in Houston as part of a broader celebration of ethnic diversity—but this is the case only because it is believed that these communities and their cultural landscapes can be commoditized as tourist attractions in the new service economy. Black communities are not only being left behind in this “celebration” of ethnic diversity in Houston. They are also being gentrified and displaced (Vojnovic, 2003). Like the case study that follows in this paper, the gentrification sought to be enacted is taking place in a former freedmen's town. Houston's now-downtown was once a settlement of emancipated slaves aptly known as Freedmen's Town, populated by slaves who had been freed from the cotton plantations along the Brazos River (Freedmen's Town Association, 1991). Although left unelaborated, Vojnovic (2003) begins to crystalize a critique of neoliberal multiculturalism as being a mere vessel for economic growth that is strategically deployed—selectively valorizing heritages based on their utility to the capital-driven goals of neoliberal urbanism.

A case study of gentrification and its imbrication with neoliberal multiculturalism, global city urbanism, and the transnational flows of international migrants in a construction-in-progress “International District” in Dallas, Texas, elaborates upon this work.

Colloquy and context: Dallas International District

To explore this nascent gentrification, I conduct a case study of the impending Dallas International District, relying upon a discourse analysis of interview transcripts with Dallas civic administrators, development company employees, and community members, as well as of websites or comments by city officials found in online sources. Discourse analysis is an analytical method revealing the way in which language both mediates and constructs reality. This form of analysis involves tracing changes in language practices over time and examining how “language both shapes and reflects dynamic cultural, social, and political practices” (Starks and Trinidad, 2007: 1374). In her article about discourse analysis and qualitative research, Cheek (2004) writes, “language cannot be considered to be transparent or value free. Even the language that we take to be the most ‘natural,’ that is, the spoken word or talk, does not ‘have’ universal meaning but is assigned particular meanings by both speakers and listeners according to the situation in which language is being used” (1144). Close attention, therefore, will be paid to the positionality of data sources.

In addition to analyzing quotations from web sources, I have interviewed 12 Dallas stakeholders: a civic administrator, a marketing executive connected to the Dallas International District project, and ten community members. These interviews were semistructured in nature, meaning that although I used a prepared set of questions, the interviews were open-ended, allowing the conversation to unfold naturally so that the information provided by the informant was not strictly limited within the confines of a rigid question-and-answer format, as recommended by Longhurst (2003) and LeCompte and Schensul (2010). Interviews were conducted between January and May 2022. All names of community members have been changed.

In January 2022, the City of Dallas made public a vision for the planned Dallas International District. It will be anchored in part by the Galleria Dallas mall and a luxury mixed-use development called Dallas Midtown and is set to encompass a 450-acre area of Far North Dallas. The development will be a mixed-use oriented “International District” that serves as a “global showplace” (Seeley, 2022). The project is described on the Dallas International District official website as being “a public-private partnership between the City, property owners, developers, businesses, private foundations and individuals” (dallasinternationaldistrict.com). The motivation for the project is cited as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to unite and amplify the perspectives, voices and investments of our region's fast-growing global community” (dallasinternationaldistrict.com).

Aspiring global city and “multicultural” gentrification

Dallas, like many other cities, boasts of its distinctive districts—areas characterized by agglomerations of certain functions or services. Dallas’ Design District is an “industrial-chic” section of the city which centers on the selling and exhibition of fine art, textiles, and furniture. Deep Ellum is an entertainment district revolving around live music and food. Bishop Arts is rising as a fashion- and art-centric district. But the establishment/revitalization of each of these districts has been associated with gentrification, perhaps most notably the up-and-coming Bishop Arts District which is actively gentrifying the predominantly Latino Oak Cliff community and which has received national media attention (see Holt, 2021). With gentrification as a linking thread between these districts, another commonality is how they are marketed by the City of Dallas.

On each of these Dallas districts’ websites, allusions are made to the district's history. In its “about” page, the Bishop Arts website refers to its past as a historical shopping district; the Design District's website contains a history blurb praising the district as a “pocket neighborhood” that has evolved slowly, aging “like a fine wine.” Deep Ellum's website is heavily branded with references to its history, with the home page reading “TEXAS’ DESTINATION FOR ARTS, CULTURE, MUSIC, AND INNOVATION SINCE 1873.” In the “History of Deep Ellum” section of the website, which is spelled out in font mimicking a neon sign, the district's past “as one of Dallas’ first commercial districts for African-Americans and European immigrants” is spelled out and the neighborhood is proclaimed “one of the most historically and culturally significant neighborhoods in the city” (deepellumtexas.com). History-centered neoliberal urban renewal projects like these have always involved the transformation of a place's meaning and sense of its past. What once stood as industrial buildings are commonly reconfigured into upscale lofts, restaurants, bars, and artists’ studios—now divorced from the violent extraction of surplus value that characterized dejected life in the factory. Formerly industrial spaces are aestheticized as spaces of obsolete production primed for industrial-chic design. History in such urban renewal projects is manipulated, reconfigured, and commoditized—but not erased entirely. Some semblance of history remains intact, however bastardized, and is marketed to augment the local economy.

Examining the official web page of the Dallas International District and speaking with numerous Dallas civic administrators, development company employees, and Valley View/Dallas Midtown area community members, I sought to better understand the new public-private vision for a “global showplace.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the official website for the Dallas International District is replete with quotations referencing the capture of international capital. Dallas mayor Eric Johnson is quoted as saying:

Dallas is already an international city with a diverse population, major attractions, and two world-class airports. But we still have immense untapped potential, and we can do more to promote and enhance our unique assets, strengthen our global business ties, and increase international tourism. The Dallas International District is a wonderful opportunity to boost our city's presence on the global stage while also transforming an underutilized area into an amazing gathering place that all of our residents can enjoy.

Dallas is represented in this quote as “already an international city” that contains “world-class” features (like its two prominent airports), but which has room to bolster its global business relationships through the construction of the Dallas International District overtop an “underutilized area.” Clearly, the mayor's language is born out of the brute fact of neoliberal globalization. As globalization has intensified, cities—localities—have transcended nation-states in terms of their global financial importance, becoming “nodes” that connect with other global cities more acutely (vis-à-vis communications, financial exchange, etc.) than smaller, merely local cities (Sassen, 2005, 1991). The city, then, aspires to tap into an increasingly global market to secure capital investment: emphasis on the “global,” the “international,” and the “world class” is not merely plat du jour neoliberal political vernacular; it is a necessary discursive strategy to effectuate foreign capital capture by luring international corporations and white-collar labor into the city.

Chris Wallace, CEO of the North Texas Commission—a public-private partnership created to facilitate the economic growth of the North Texas region—is also quoted on the International District website:

The NTC applauds the City of Dallas and its partners on the continued successful redevelopment of the Valley View/Galleria area. This new Dallas International District will become a highlight of Dallas and our region, attracting international businesses and residents to further embrace our diversity and inclusion while helping to grow our vibrant economy.

Here again, the attraction of international business is emphasized. Also noteworthy is the latter half of the quotation: the “embracing” of “diversity and inclusion” is to be achieved through the persuasion of international business to locate operations—and consequently white-collar labor in the form of international migrants—in the Dallas International District.

In my interview with Dallas District 11 representative Jaynie Schultz, she explained:

So, the vision for the district, and this goes beyond [Dallas Midtown], is that this will be a multicultural, mixed-use, live, work, play kind of environment, where people from all over the world can feel comfortable within various cultural milieus … If we rebrand this as a celebration of cultures that have moved to Dallas over the last 50 years that have basically been uncelebrated, right, the Pan-Asian especially, we can design the public spaces to reflect those cultures, and there's unlimited opportunity for their engagement there.

This “celebration of cultures” within the Dallas International District must be understood amid the backdrop of Dallas’ neoliberal efforts to become a global city—as Dallas is striving to make itself amenable to foreign capital investments, particularly Pan-Asian investments, by redefining this area of Far North Dallas as “international.” Representative Schultz above makes it explicit that for the neoliberal city, multiculturalism as a “celebration of cultures,” is a matter of “rebranding.” Cultural diversity becomes a spectacle employed by the city to promote itself as it petitions for the attention of global capital.

Suzanne Smith, founder of Social Impact Architects, has been hired by the City of Dallas to help frame this new vision for the International District. In our interview, she explained that the vision has been inspired by similar districts in other locales: Eastern Market in Detroit, the Chinatown-International District in Seattle, and the Vancouver International District in Washington. Notably, however, none of these analogs represents an artificial, top-down imposition of internationalism/multiculturalism, but rather organic assemblages. It is also worth noting, and surely of no coincidence, that all of these places—Detroit's Eastern Market, Seattle's Chinatown-International District, and the Vancouver International District—are battling gentrification efforts that seek to capitalize upon their diversity and aesthetics (for Detroit see Hooper, 2019; for Seattle see Kasinger, 2019; for Vancouver see Solomon, 2017).

In a quote that like a circuit board connects global neoliberal urbanism and international multiculturalism, Suzanne Smith explained:

[Dallas is] really trying to emerge as kind of a global competitor, along the lines of a Chicago or a New York or a Los Angeles or a Miami … So, we are looking at turning this area of town—since it's a blank sheet of paper—into what other communities are calling “international districts” … So, the park would be international. There would be a Japanese water garden, and an interfaith cultural center, and also there would be opportunities for us to attract companies that want to have their U.S.-based headquarters here. And obviously Texas is great for that because of our income tax and corporate taxes … Amazon could build whatever they wanted to build … So, the place becomes a place that feels different; you feel like you’re in Singapore, you know, the Middle East; there's night markets, there's souks, nightclubs. It can have a 24/7 vibe, because in theory our economy is going to be 24/7. While we’re asleep, China is awake.

Neoliberal-entrepreneurial logic pervades this excerpt; Smith refers to the inter-urban competition between Dallas and surrounding suburbs, the city's desire to attract foreign direct investments, and the aspiring global character of Dallas in the era of globalization. Although there is an existing Black and Latino community in the area, the proposed district is characterized by Smith as “a blank sheet of paper” ripe for reimagining, redevelopment, and implicitly, gentrification and displacement. More than othered, the Black and Latino communities are being erased.

Critically, the multiculturalism being proposed places particular emphasis on Asian and Middle Eastern national identities—conveniently mirroring contributors to Dallas’ foreign direct investment: in particular, China, the United Arab Emirates, and India (Kartalis, 2019; Leffert, 2021; Djinis, 2021). But even what has been championed as a celebration of “Pan-Asian” cultures must fall under suspicion, as the discourse about which Asian heritages are being celebrated conveniently omits those national cultural milieus that are not envisioned as dominant emitters of capital flows and foreign direct investment: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Nepal are unmentioned, for example, and instead, the celebration of China, Japan, Singapore, India, and Taiwan are emphasized. Hence, this “multiculturalism” prepares the stage for transnational gentrification as it centers on the exaltation of selectively valorized international identities associated with the likelihood of foreign capital investment.

I also spoke with community members about this project to inquire about the International District and rents. All interviewees live within the proposed International District. I asked Jerry, a Black small business owner who lives and works within the perimeter of the envisaged development, about his thoughts on the International District. He replied:

I heard they might want to do something international or whatever. I’m not against it, don't get me wrong, but like, what about us around here that’re, you know, Black, Hispanic? Most of my customers here are, well, Black and live around here. That's not what they want, okay … This around here looks like some hood, because, I’m going to be real, it is, yeah … So, that business is going to have to come from … you know, other areas. Somebody that's not our demographic.

Jerry begins to make clear the tension between the ethnoracial minorities who already inhabit this generally low-income space (Black and Latino residents) and the “international” vision put forward by public officials and private developers. His clientele is predominantly Black, and he conveys his understanding that the city wants “[s]omebody that's not [their] demographic.” Similarly, Raymond, a Latino community member who lives in an apartment, explained: “What they’re building will not reflect who's living around it.” This much is evident in the “multicultural” rhetoric employed by city officials as they discuss the grand new vision for the “community”—as the city's interests have shifted entrepreneurially toward the valorization of “historically uncelebrated” Pan-Asians. The area's early history as a freedmen's town—Alpha—is overlooked, and in fact, was never mentioned by any civic administrators with whom I spoke. The history of the Alpha settlement and the subsequent dispossession of land by Black Dallasites is not regarded as one which should be dredged up from Dallas’ problematic past; neither does it lend itself to an easily co-opted history ready to be romanticized and sold, nor does it benefit Dallas’ efforts to transform itself into a “global showplace” within the context of global, world-class cities which facilitate transnational flows of people and capital.

Julio—another apartment-dwelling Latino resident—remarked sarcastically, “International is great, as long as it's not Latino and Black.” Julio perceives the “celebration” of international cultures to be discriminating—an effort to change the face of the area from Latino and Black to emphasize less stigmatized demographics. Further speaking to the disillusionment about the project's motivations, Jess, a Black community member, said about the planned International District, “If you actually think this will ‘celebrate diversity,’ you’ve never been to this area … It's just a marketing ploy to get the land cheap, displace Black and Latin people, and throw up more unaffordable housing. No, to hell with that. Celebrating diversity my ass.”

Some community members expressed skepticism about the very concept of an “International District” that is manufactured and imposed in a top-down fashion. Pamela, a white community member, remarked, “I just know the districts that truly represent immigrants grow organically and gradually—think New York City, Philly. White people can't deem developments to be ‘international,’” she motioned with her fingers to denote scare quotes. Pamela continued, “That would be terribly fake. If those in power in Dallas would truly support the development of international communities, where they live, that would be the best way to support our diversity, not this.”

Concern about rising prices and rents is an additional theme that has emerged, speaking to the area's emerging gentrification. Marco, another close-by Latino apartment-dweller, explained about rising rent:

I’m worried about it … there's no telling when this [International District] thing they’re talking about will happen. Our rent's gone up over the past few years, I’ve noticed that. If it keeps going up, we might have to find another place.

Some residents have seen their rents increase like Marco, and others recognize the inevitability of rising rents in relation to the area's redevelopment. Brad, a white florist within the planned district, explained, “I would raise rent if I were a landlord, seeing what's going to happen to the area—and eventually it will happen.” This echoes what another nearby Black business owner, Douglas, told me when he spoke about his commercial rent: “[o]ur overhead here is high, extremely high now, and in my opinion, I believe it's because they know what's coming over here. Also, in my opinion, they’re probably going to raise it again, because if I owned this, I would. I’d raise this shit up to $10,000 a month.” An effect of these increased rents is expressed by yet another nearby community member, Cindia, a young Latina mother living in an apartment, who complained:

They priced everyone out of the city … how are we supposed to get teachers to come in and live here and teach our kids, or any of those people? I work in food service and it's hard making ends meet, seriously, and people like teachers and the people we really need in the community don't make much money … I don't know what all is happening with that mall [Valley View], but I don't think it's going to help—but like at the same time I want it to be nicer around here, if that makes sense … I don't want it to be too expensive.

These ethnographic data show that nearby community members are concerned about the impacts of the planned Dallas International District on their residential and commercial rents and that some have already felt the incipient effects of rising rent by landlords in anticipation of the “international” redevelopment project.

Impending gentrification in the Dallas International District is mediated by neoliberal discourses concerning multiculturalism. These discourses manifest, however, in the performance of a multiculturalism that is anchored not in minority rights and antiracism (Kymlicka, 2012), but in the devaluation, othering, and erasure of existing Black and Latino residents in favor of the selective valorization of “Pan-Asian” and Middle Eastern national identities. Rather than race, ethnicity, or common cultural affiliation, this neoliberal vision of multiculturalism instead superficially exalts (inter)national identity as the mark of multiculturalism. Furthermore, interviews of public officials and planners demonstrate that these international identities are ascribed value based solely on the potential of foreign capital investment from the nations of origin. Although it is claimed that the Dallas International District will celebrate “historically uncelebrated” Pan-Asian communities, the discourses surrounding this celebration suspiciously omit Asian nations which are not dominant emitters of capital flows and foreign capital investment.

In its efforts to become a global and world-class city, Dallas governance seeks to strengthen its connections within the global network of capital flows by enticing into its borders capital that is associated with selectively valorized international identities. The hope, therefore, is that foreign companies will be wooed by Dallas’ “celebration” of the companies’ assumed (essentialized) national identities, prompting the fixing of capital investment and the immigration of white-collar workers as new international headquarters and branches are installed in the city. We observe in this effort the potential for transnational gentrification, although in an inverse direction than is usually described (Wyly, 2015; Lees et al., 2016; Sigler and Wachsmuth, 2016; Hayes and Zaban, 2020): the luring and influx of white-collar immigrants largely from lower-income nations to accompany the fixing of foreign corporate enterprises in Dallas. And indeed, whose national identities will be “celebrated” by the city through the selective construction of “multicultural” features in the built environment—similar to strategies used in the promotion and construction of Chinatowns (see Anderson, 1990; Knapp and Vojnovic, 2013).

Further, the performance of neoliberal multiculturalism—enacted to bolster Dallas’ position in the network of global capital flows—functions to erase the Dallas International District area's history as a Black and Latino community, particularly its early history as a freedmen's town founded shortly after the American Civil War. Although renewal efforts in some other districts have relied upon the so-called preservation of historic cityscapes or the co-optation and/or revision of an area's past as part of a gentrification strategy of history “commoditization” (Herzfeld, 2010; Summers, 2019; Lawrence-Zuñiga, 2020; Meskell, 2019), the Dallas International District shifts instead toward a form of urban renewal and gentrification steeped in neoliberal multicultural discourse. Because the history of Black dispossession in the Dallas International District area is not one that may be readily romanticized and commoditized, this painful history is erased, evinced by its absence in the discourses surrounding the International District. Along with this history, the Black and Latino community are being erased via the (mis)characterization of the area as “a blank sheet of paper”—bearing witness to the well-documented modus operandi of U.S. gentrification to earmark low-income Black and Latino communities as “underutilized” targets for “rebranding” and “transformation” (Chronopoulos, 2016; Anderson, 2016).

Conclusion

In the age of the global city and transnational-planetary gentrification, the ideology of neoliberal multiculturalism is becoming woven into the fabric of some urban redevelopment projects. This emerging neoliberal multiculturalism is divorced from the minority rights advocacy and antiracism which characterized early multicultural movements (Kymlicka, 2012); no longer concerned with race, ethnicity, or broad cultural affiliation, some urban manifestations of neoliberal multiculturalism are alternatively concerned with the valorization of international identities and their association with foreign capital investment. The selective valorization of international identities based on the potential for foreign capital investment from the nation of origin is utilized in some urban contexts as part of an accumulation strategy to beckon capital into aspiring global cities (like Dallas). It is hoped that this effort to perform neoliberal multiculturalism and entice capital and associated foreign, white-collar labor will bolster the host city's position in the network of global capital flows. Furthermore, the dynamic between Dallas and its attempts to lure capital and white-collar labor from lower-income nations demonstrates the potential for transnational gentrification: enticing the immigration of white-collar workers from “Pan-Asian” nations to displace existing class-poor, racial, and ethnic minorities is precisely the project in which the City of Dallas is engaged during the construction of the Dallas International District.

Although some cities have engaged in the promotion and revitalization of existing ethnic enclaves such as Chinatowns (Anderson, 1987, 1990; Knapp and Vojnovic, 2013) and Hispanic neighborhoods (Vojnovic, 2003) upon the realization that celebrating diversity may contribute to urban growth, the case of Dallas and the Dallas International District stands apart. Rather than commoditize existing racial–ethnic groups and their histories, in this case, Blacks and Latinos, Dallas goes perhaps to an even greater extreme: the discursive erasure of existing racial–ethnic groups at the outset of revitalization in favor of the selective promotion of international identities. Moreover, rather than seek to promote a landscape and community that reflects one culture (e.g., as has been done elsewhere with respect to Chinese or Hispanic cultures), the Dallas International District will celebrate numerous cultural backgrounds—simply not those belonging to the existing community of Black and Latino residents. This is because the celebration of Black and Latino backgrounds does not advance Dallas’ goals to solidify itself as a global city.

This Dallas case study therefore provides insights into an evolving rationale of neoliberal multiculturalism and how it is performed in the urban renewal projects of some aspiring global cities within the Global North. Multiculturalism is retooled and instrumentalized by neoliberalism to valorize certain international identities rather than race, ethnicity, or broad cultural affiliation. Selectively valorized international workers are beckoned into the city, but only those who may adequately contribute to global capital flows: to wit, white-collar workers whose nations of origin show promise for foreign direct investment—suggesting the potential for transnational gentrification via the influx of people from selectively valorized “Pan-Asian” nations. Lastly, this case study documents in Dallas a form of multicultural gentrification that obliterates—not merely transforms—the history of the area under redevelopment when this history cannot be easily co-opted by neoliberal forces.

These findings are not to definitively state that neoliberalism and a more genuine form of multiculturalism are necessarily mutually exclusive. Indeed, neoliberal governance could in theory operationalize a truer multiculturalism if, as Vertovec (2007) and Zetter et al. (2006) suggest, policies consider diversity in a more variegated way. The collective identities which comprise a diverse population cannot be transected and classified merely along a single axis, such as ethnicity and/or race—but rather, as Vertovec (2007) explains, policymakers should consider “a ‘plurality of affiliations’ (recognizing multiple identifications and axes of differentiation, only some of which concern ethnicity)” (1048). However, as neoliberal governance has thus far been put into practice, little indication points toward a more authentically adopted and lived neoliberal–multicultural fusion.