Search

It is within the everyday political and economic context that we can understand the structural limits of cultural development while also recognizing the power and resistance of low-income communities of color. This dissertation explores the possibilities for urban planners to develop cultural spaces that can help address questions of inequality and uneven development. This ethnography deepens our understanding of how low income communities of color shape and articulate their experiences in the creative city. I posed the following three questions: 1) How cultural and artist practices take shape within low income communities of color that live and work in creative cities and how in turn, communities of color shape these practices? 2) How creative development processes integrate low income communities of color at the everyday level and more specifically, impact their access to a) valuable property b) political influence and c) cultural spaces? And 3) how low income communities of color participate, resist and transform the process of cultural development? This ethnography includes in-depth interviews and participant observation to understand the complexities and nuances behind cultural development in low income communities of color. I interviewed residents, businessmen, private urban planners, property owners and developers and conducted hundreds of hours of participant observation in city council meetings, planning meetings, community actions and cultural spaces. I use data from government sources, such as the city charter, city budgets, general and specific plans and permits, to understand the historic role of the state in regulating these spaces and the people who work within them. The findings contradict market based assumptions around the survival of certain cultural spaces and introduce significant tactics of actors involved in cultural production. Community members involved in the development of cultural spaces have the possibility of restructuring relationships to develop everyday solidarities and address the uneven forms of integration that currently exist. However, these tactics of resistance and solidarity can be interdependent with strategies of displacement. Furthermore, these relationships take place at different scales that extend beyond the local and extend into regional and transnational realities.