An Understated Form Of Civic Engagement

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/urban-renewal-1970s-houston-inequality-activism/417594/

Houston, Texas late 1970s
sloangallery.com

Hello Everyone:

Happy to report that yours truly is in much better spirits and ready to write.  Thanks for all your patience while blogger recovers from a cold.  Onward and upward.

Today we look at the subject of urban renewal. Specifically, how the fight against urban renewal projects shaped 1970s Houston, Texas.  Our guide for the day will be Laura Bliss's CityLab article "How the Fight Against Urban Renewal Shaped 1970s Houston."  Urban renewal projects were a misguided attempt, during the 1960s and 1970s, to clean up blighted neighborhoods-i.e. low-income neighborhoods of color.  These neighborhoods were often the hardest hit and still suffer the consequences.  However, Ms. Bliss writes, "Less visible in the history of urban renewal is how it extended to well-off neighborhoods.  Residents of both types of neighborhoods fought their communities-a form of civic engagement that influenced how cities are shaped today."  Yet, the successful activist strategies in the well-off neighborhoods frequently failed in the minority neighborhoods.

Postcard from Courtlandt Place. c.1960s
Houston, Texas
urban edge.blogs.rice.edu

Cortland Place and the Third Ward

In 1970s Houston, for example, "actors in two different communities used similar rhetoric and actions to conceptualize their position against the city's, according to Kyle Shelton.  Mr. Shelton is a postdoctoral research fellow in the history of infrastructure at the Rice University Kinder Institute and recently published a paper in the Journal of Urban History, titled "The birth of 'infrastructural citizenship' in the United States," which examines the activism that emerged in 1970s Houston.  (news. rice.edu accessed Dec. 7, 2015)

The wealthy, white enclave of Courtlandt Place was established in 1900.  The gated community with its grand homes and pristine sidewalks made the ideal suburban model.  A suburban model within walking distance to Downtown Houston.  When postwar suburbanization came to the city, newer communities, established outside the highway "loop" began to attract younger, well-heeled families away from the more established community.  As its surrounding area commercialized, Courtlandt began a period of genteel decline, with little resistance from its elderly residents..

Tudor style home in Courtlandt Place
houstontx.gov

As urban renewal swept through Houston like a storm, the aging neighborhood seem like a practical location to run an off-ramp of U.S. Route 59.  Laura Bliss writes, "Construction began clipping off a handful of backyards and one of the community's beloved old gates."  Highway construction and its threats to prestige and property values was the motivation for younger residents to take action.  Mr. Shelton writes,

They staged protests wrote letters, and attended countless public meetings...They organized historic preservation campaigns, lobbied city officials, and paid for independent planning efforts.

Most of all, according to Mr. Shelton, "the Courtlandt Place residents articulated their community as a place not in decay, but as one with a rich legacy, worth saving."

Historic Third Ward
Houston, Texas
advancedreportingzcb.wordpress.com

Meanwhile, a couple miles east, the residents of the low-income Third Ward were engaging in a similar type of community activism.  The low-income, African-American, and Latino neighborhood was once known as the "Park Avenue of black Houston" in the early twentieth century.  By the 1960s, the Third Ward fell into disrepair, suffered from a high crime rate, and trash problem.  Houston city officials believed that an expanded Interstate 45 would result in economic "progress" for the community even though construction swallowed nearly 200 homes and divided the neighborhood into two halves.

Third Ward community members fought back hard against the expanded road.  Kyle Shelton writes,

[I]n meeting after meeting, Third Warders offered a vision of their neighborhood as tight-knit, vibrant, and historically important...They accused officials of purposefully underfunding infrastructure in the Third Ward to produce problems that would justify further displacement.

The Third Warder also campaigned for historic designation-similar to the strategies used by the Courtlandt Places residents.

Former Home of Flower Man Cleveland Turner
Third Ward, Houston, Texas
swamplot.com

Laura Bliss writes, "The vision of the Third Ward that activists presented was not outright ignored by Houston planners.  But the interstate was widened in the end."  The residents were moved out and the community was divided leading to economic decline.  Meanwhile, Courtlandt Places was designated a historic district and the homes were protected from commercial developers.  Currently the neighborhood is more or less back to being a desirable suburban community.

Kyle Shelton writes, There's an undeniable link between race and class, and how that translates to decision-making.  Obvious conclusion.  The Courtlandt Place residents possessed great financial and social capital.  The wealthy white activists were able to dictate the outcome in ways that their low-income minority counterparts in the Third Ward were not able to do.

1920 map of Houston's Wards
en.wikipedia.org

Infrastructural citizenship

Despite the differing outcomes, both community activist engaged in a particular, yet understated  form of civic engagement.  Kyle Shelton calls this "infrastructural citizenship," defined as "a set of actions and rhetoric that people use to advocate for their neighborhood's physical characteristics, especially when a new form of infrastructure threatens them."

Kyle Shelton concluded that "infrastructural citizenship" was only possible in the post-World War II period when the twin forces of suburbanization and urban renewal were storming through American cities, and the gains of the Civil Rights movements reinforced the power of civic action for minorities.  He says,

Americans could really start to enter civic conversations in a way that they couldn't before,...All those things were overlapping with big infrastructure decisions.

"Greetings from Houston"
playle.com

While the phrase "infrastructural citizenship" has the sound of academia to, the effect is the most important element.  The physical objects of a city-buildings, streets, rail lines, highways et al.-are artifacts of any city and available opportunities to its residents.  Civic infrastructure is typically seen the top-down results of mayors, planners, and developers.  However, tangibles and intangibles in the built environment can be filtered through the lens of infrastructural citizenship.  Kyle Shelton writes,

It acknowledges the possibility that a single highway could bring promise or dread depending upon the location of an off-ramp.  A community of residents may have supported a road because it brought them into town more quickly.  Another may have rejected it because it cut them off from a school or grocery store.

Infrastructural citizenship matters.  It matters in contemporary Los Angeles where development in the Miracle Mile and Hollywood threaten the tangible and intangible elements of both these neighborhoods.  Los Angeles civic officials are pushing ahead with transportation projects and mixed-use building developments to alleviate a number of pressing issues in the city.  While these may seem like welcome projects to some, to others the Hollywood Palladium project and construction on the Purple Line, through the Miracle Mile, threaten to destroy the unique character of these neighborhoods.  The opponents of these projects wish to preserve the unique vision they share of their respective neighborhoods.  Only time will tell if they are successful.