Deborah G. Martin

Space, Scale, Governance, and Representation: Contemporary Geographical Perspectives on Urban Politics and Policy

Urban studies has long been an interdisciplinary field, drawing from, among other disciplines, anthropology, geography, history, planning, political science, and sociology. Geographers in urban studies are distinguished first and foremost by a tradition of sustained explicit attention to spatial patterns and processes. Early research in the 1950s and 1960s proceeded largely in the human ecology and neoclassical economic traditions, examining the effect of spatial segregation on human organization, and the relationship between land use and land value (Berry & Kasarda, 1977; Harris & Ullman, 1945; Muth, 1961). That work was challenged in the 1970s and 1980s by Marxist geographers and sociologists concerned with understanding the underlying social processes that produced urban space (Castells, 1977; Cox, 1984; Dear & Scott, 1981; Harvey, 1973; Smith, 1984). The Marxist approach has itself been challenged by a range of perspectives that seek to avoid the economism of the early Marxist work. The result in geography has been an enriching proliferation of perspectives and themes in the study of the city and urban politics. While more traditional political-economic examinations of growth politics, urban regimes, and global restructuring have continued, they have been joined by feminist research (England, 1991; Hanson & Pratt, 1991), examinations of race/racism (Jackson, 1989; Peake & Kobayashi, 2002), and studies of sexuality (Bell, 1995; Valentine, 1993). The reaction to economism has introduced diverse post-structural and postmodern approaches to the city, and so questions of identity, difference, and representation have received increasing attention over the past 10 to 15 years.

Nonprofit Foundations and Grassroots Organizing: Reshaping Urban Governance*

Collaborative urban governance has increased the role of community organizations in local decision-making processes. These organizations need financial resources in order to participate in urban governance. In this article, I examine the impact of foundation grants on the relationships and agendas of four community organizations in one neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Drawing on interviews, observations of organizations, and archival research, I demonstrate that in the 1990s, nonprofit foundations had a significant impact on the formation of new organizations and on their agendas in the neighborhood. Foundations are, therefore, an important player in urban governance, shaping a “neighborhood policy regime.”

CONSTRUCTING PLACE: CULTURAL HEGEMONIES AND MEDIA IMAGES OF AN INNER-CITY NEIGHBORHOOD

This paper examines place portrayals of an inner-city neighborhood by investigating the interrelationships among the representations of the neighborhood in major mainstream newspapers, the alternative neighborhood press, and local institutions. I argue that the everyday, lived experiences of neighborhood residents are represented through a series of discourses and counter-discourses between the mainstream and local newspapers. Using newspaper articles about vice in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota, I demonstrate that the negative imagery of Frogtown in the mainstream press is contested and challenged in the local neighborhood newspaper, and by activists in the neighborhood. I conclude that while the major press has a dominant role in defining the neighborhood, locally based contestations over the place identity undermine and offer challenges to the hegemony of the popular media. Both local and dominant media discourses contribute to a neighborhood place identity. [Key words: media hegemony, newspapers, neighborhood, place representation.]

Beyond “Lawn People”: The Role of Emotions in Suburban Yard Management Practices

The lawn is a dominant feature in the suburban landscape that, under common resource-intensive management regimes, poses risks to human and broader ecosystem health and sustainability. This article examines the role played by emotions as homeowners maintain or change yard management practices, in order to extend existing understandings that focus on external drivers of yard management (e.g., Robbins 2007). Drawing on a high-resolution qualitative study of homeowners in the northern suburbs of Boston, this article describes how emotions circulate between homeowners, yards, and neighborhood political economies, creating collectivities of management practices bound by shared experience of emotions. Using a heuristic set of “yard subjectivities” drawn from interview data, we argue that emotional engagements are central to homeowners’ decision making around yard management practices. These findings provide new insight for those working to shift suburban ecologies away from resource-intensive turfgrass landscapes, by offering a better understanding of the processes that enable or inhibit change in yard management regimes.

Reconstructing Urban Politics Neighborhood Activism in Land-Use Change

In urban governance, some responsibility for services and planning may lie with private entities. Residents challenging public policies may find recourse not from elected officials but from quasi-public agencies. This article examines contestation over a hospital expansion plan in Athens, Georgia. Using archival accounts and interviews, the author investigates the responses of the local state and the hospital to neighborhood-based activism and the success of residents in restructuring the hospital’s decision-making process. The scale of contestation and negotiation differed from that of the city government. This case illustrates newstructures and scales of negotiation and accountability in quasi-public urban governance.

Transcending the fixity of jurisdictional scale

Abstract In this commentary I argue that the case study of the Hanford Reservation illustrates that local interests are not coterminous with the scale of local government. Hanford is an example of a decentralized land-use decision-making process, whereby multiple government jurisdictions and diverse interest groups are involved in the negotiations. While the governments are fixed by scale, the other actors are not, and their interests are fluid across scales. Interest groups are most concerned with land-use outcomes, whereas Morrill presents local governments as most interested in their authority over land use. Analysis of land-use conflicts, therefore, must involve examination of both scale-bounded government autonomy as well as the power struggles and cross-scale alliances of the multiple interests and social identities expressing concern about the outcome.

Characterizing tree canopy loss using multi-source GIS data in Central Massachusetts, USA

Despite numerous ecosystem services provided by urban trees, they are continually threatened by combined natural disturbances, invasive species, development and negligent management practices. This research characterizes the amount and cause of tree loss in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the northeast United States, and neighbouring towns between 2008 and 2010 using multi-source remotely sensed imagery and historical land cover maps (1976–2009). Historical land-change analysis reveals that proportional forest cover loss in the Worcester County study area exceeds that of the state by 0.26% per year, 67% of which was driven by the expansion of low-density residential land use. Between 2008 and 2010, 2% of Worcester County’s tree canopy was lost to high- and low-density urban development (47% of the total loss), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) tree removal for Asian longhorned beetle (ALB) eradication (25%), timber harvest (15%) and ice storm damage (6%). The use of multi-source geographic information system (GIS) data to characterize tree canopy loss makes it a flexible and replicable method to monitor urban tree health.

Organizing diversity: scales of demographic change and neighborhood organizing in St Paul, MN

Neighborhood involvement in urban governance remains a pressing goal in an era of globalization. Cities have instituted a variety of structures to facilitate this involvement, including quasi-formal neighborhood or district councils. At the same time, urban populations are changing rapidly because of multiple dynamics operating at multiple scales. Immigration, for example, continues to transform inner-city neighborhoods despite the emergence of suburban immigrant enclaves. Existing research inadequately addresses the interaction between efforts to organize neighborhood political involvement and the dynamic nature of urban populations. We examine St Paul, Minnesota—a locale with a well-established neighborhood district-council system and a vibrant and rapidly growing immigrant community. Indeed, immigrants from Southeast Asia and East Africa are moving into neighborhoods that up until the early 1990s were predominantly white. Using a multimethod empirical analysis, we argue that the district-council system, while recognizing and empowering local-level organization, fails to provide adequate resources for neighborhoods to address social dynamics that operate at much broader scales. An index of ethnic and racial diversity computed with census data shows that St Paul experienced a significant overall increase in diversity during the 1990s. Although inner-city neighborhoods remained the most diverse, residential areas developed after World War 2 also diversified considerably. Interviews with neighborhood organizers based in part on tabular and cartographic displays revealed a wide variety of strategies and responses to changing ethnic and racial diversity. Predominant, however, was a mismatch between the scale at which demographic change occurs, and the scale of ‘neighborhood’ action embedded within the district-council system.

Training Interdisciplinary "Wicked Problem" Solvers: Applying Lessons from HERO in Community-Based Research Experiences for Undergraduates.

Management of “wicked problems”, messy real-world problems that defy resolution, requires thinkers who can transcend disciplinary boundaries, work collaboratively, and handle complexity and obstacles. This paper explores how educators can train undergraduates in these skills through applied community-based research, using the example of an interdisciplinary research program at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. Participating students strengthened their abilities to handle setbacks in the research process, improved communication and teamwork skills, and gained familiarity with interdisciplinary investigation. Programmatic elements that could transfer well to other settings include studying local human–environment problems, working in multigenerational, small groups, and using multiple methodologies.

Mapping land development through periods of economic bubble and bust in Massachusetts using Landsat time series data

This study examines the change from undeveloped to developed land-use during the real estate bubble (2000–2006) and subsequent bust (2006–2013) in Massachusetts, USA, using a time series of Landsat-5, 7, and 8 data. Loss in undeveloped land-use was measured using standardized change detection of Landsat green vegetation and albedo fractions. Between periods of bubble and bust, a significant difference occurred in the total area of undeveloped land-use loss (bubble, 35.9 km2; bust, 29.18 km2), as well as mean loss-patch area (p < 0.001), from 4848 m2 to 4079 m2 (16% decrease). The area of undeveloped land-use loss was 81% greater in forest than agricultural land-use during the bubble and only 51% greater, post-bubble. Undeveloped urban forest loss constituted 25% of all losses during the bubble, while during the bust it was 42%. These findings indicate that total area of undeveloped land-use loss changed due to the economic recession and that those losses reorient from forest and agricultural areas toward areas adjacent to existing development (i.e., urban forests).