From the New Deal through the Great Society and the New Urbanism that followed, federal and local agencies, real estate developers and nongovernmental agencies have implemented, imposed or encouraged a plethora of “urban renewal” or development plans. Many of them were intended or described as efforts to uplift blighted neighborhoods, relieve poverty and improve the quality of city life. At least before the 1980s, many of those schemes succeeded only at diminishing or uprooting functional communities.
More recent projects have involved “placemaking” by creating spaces for encouraging community engagement and prosperity. Some have been successful but many such plans flowed from a top-down mentality that marginalized the lives and perspectives of city dwellers, especially people of color. The benefits have been unequally distributed and the cost of neighborhood improvement—“gentrification”—is often counted in soaring real estate prices that drive out existing residents.
In their book for the University of Chicago Press, The City Creative: The Rise of Urban Placemaking in Contemporary America, Michael H. Carriere and David Schalliol find that positive placemaking often occurs when initiated by activists within the communities they serve. Carriere is associate professor of humanities and social science at MSOE and Schalliol is an associate sociology professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. The City Creative is available (buy local!) at Boswell Books on Milwaukee’s East Side and Lion’s Tooth in Bay View. They responded to questions.
Why do cities remain important? Apart from the physical necessity of housing large numbers of people, what unique functions do they serve?
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M.C.: I think the book itself shows why cities remain important. One of those reasons is that cities produce a more comprehensive and grassroots type of innovation than what originates in, for example, Silicon Valley. In cities across the United States, local placemaking efforts are addressing some of the biggest issues of our times: employment; housing; racial equity; and even climate change — sometimes, all at once! Sweet Water Foundation, an organization with Milwaukee roots, is a great example of this. Rather than producing abstract ideas that might bring people together, the group actually unites residents from throughout Chicago to address racial and economic disparities on the city’s South Side by providing access to healthy food. In the process, they create opportunities for neighbors to connect and organize, enhancing the neighborhood’s strengths while drawing in outside resources.
Moreover, the cultures and ideas that inspire these efforts are also the products of cities. Think of how much, for example, the culture of hip hop has impacted place in so many American cities. In Milwaukee, one excellent example of linking hip hop to community development is True Skool, which uses hip hop culture to educate and empower young people. By changing the way we think about problems and solutions, these urban creations have effects far greater than what’s going on down the block.
Was racism explicit from the earliest “urban renewal” projects of the New Deal through the 20th century (and beyond)?
M.C.: There are myriad examples of explicit and implicit racism in urban renewal projects. Here in Milwaukee, one can see this troubled relationship between race and urban renewal in the disproportionate demolition and displacement of communities of color to make way for highways. Thanks to decades of scholarship and policy analysis, we have a solid understanding of the consequences of projects like these from the urban renewal era, but we don’t yet have a full understanding of the patterns of disinvestment that emerged in many U.S. cities post-urban renewal. Our book wrestles with the consequences of this next phase of disinvestment, and the strategies of dealing with it – and hopefully moving beyond it.
What’s wrong with placemaking? What’s bad about developing downtowns in the hope that they will become “centers of sociability”? Is there an academic theory-driven elitism at work in how plans based on placemaking are developed and implemented?
D.S.: We laud many efforts to produce centers of sociability, but that’s only one small part of the work that needs to be done. Unfortunately, that’s exactly where so many efforts stop: creating a beautiful mural or plaza where people can hang out.
In the book, we articulate a broader approach to creative placemaking that moves beyond these narrow development efforts. we ask, “What is sociability being used for? Is it to lure in members of the ‘creative class’ or to support and enhance existing communities?” The academic discourse has oriented this development in a narrow direction, but the limited approach has really emerged in the interplay between these ideas and policymakers’ simplistic development objectives.
On top of that, policymakers often use of populist language that asserts that everyone will benefit from this kind of investment. We know that not everyone benefits from any development, and we know that whatever benefits do emerge from these projects can take many forms. In The City Creative, we argue that we need to be careful about those distinctions so that we can craft places that create opportunities for people to connect, and to produce something meaningful for the community while redistributing resources to the places where people need them the most.
How about creating mini downtowns in neighborhoods distant from the central downtown, as in Bay View or efforts underway on N. Martin Luther King Drive? Does that address your concerns?
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M.C.: Yes and no. In a way, the development in these two neighborhoods highlight some of the strengths of placemaking and some of the unintended consequences when development projects are successful. So on one hand, the fact that development is happening out in “the neighborhoods,” and not just in downtown and the Third Ward is important for more equitable urban development, but there’s a downside too. Both communities are now dealing with rising property values, in a way that may be pricing out long-term residents and attracting more affluent newcomers.
One of the benefits of the book is seeing how other cities are handling these tensions. For example, in Indianapolis, the group Big Car is simultaneously delivering arts programming and affordable housing. Even before they publicly announced their new space, the Tube Factory, they worked with a community development corporation to rehabilitate existing affordable housing stock in the neighborhood, and they are about to build new affordable artist housing nearby. In that way, the group is trying to protect against the displacement that can come with arts-based development.
Milwaukee occupies many pages in your book. What is unique about our city in terms of placemaking as a form of urban planning?
D.S.: One of the special attributes of Milwaukee is its robust urban agriculture community. In the book, we dedicate a full chapter to tracing the history of this community from the 19th century to the present-day work of people like Will Allen and Venice Williams.
This history allows us to see placemaking as producing something not only after the end of the industrial era, but also in concert with it. In other words, when policymakers or activists think about launching creative placemaking projects, they can look to Milwaukee and see how these efforts are part of a long project of development that unites so many groups and eras. That through-line makes it easier to identify potential problems and opportunities—and then makes it possible to connect with the leaders in Milwaukee who can help contemporary actors draw from that history, wherever they are.
