Paper short abstract:

Drawing on recent ethnographic research, this paper discusses how "revanchist" suburban tendencies and poor people's struggle for their "right to the suburb" intersect in the context of a large redevelopment project carried out by the newly-created municipality of Hillford, Georgia.

Paper long abstract:

In 2005, the affluent, historically white and conservative suburb of Hillford (a pseudonym), located about 15 miles north of Atlanta, Georgia, incorporated as an autonomous municipality, ending a thirty-year struggle against majority-African American and Democrat-controlled Barfield County. In 2012, the new administration approved an ambitious plan to transform the area's main commercial corridor into a "unique, vibrant, walkable city centre." During 15 months of ethnographic research, I analysed media representations, official plans and narratives surrounding this project, seeking to understand how it served to inscribe a particular vision of the city's future onto its landscape. I also conducted interviews and participant observation among residents of different class, racial, gender, and age backgrounds, documenting how their present daily routines, housing choices, and community organizing efforts were being affected by future redevelopment plans.

While publicly advertising the future downtown district as a diverse and inclusive civic and community space, the local administration actively supported the demolition of nearby apartment complexes, favouring instead the construction of high-end mixed-use developments in the area. In my presentation, I will discuss some of the tactics that low-income Hispanic and African American families have deployed to cope with displacement, political disempowerment, and decline of affordable housing. I will then suggest that, in a context characterized by growing racial and socioeconomic diversity, the city centre project functions as both a strategy of spatial govermentality and a discursive opportunity for civic re-branding, opening up new avenues for contestation over meanings of citizenship, community, and the "urban."