Sharon E. Sutton

Introduction: Place as Marginality and Possibility

Place matters to the quality of human existence. Place is not a static, empty backdrop for social relationships. It is neither an architectural model, Geographic Information System (GIS) map, census tract, Google Earth image, nor cyberspace; rather place “is filled up by people, practices, objects, and representations.”1 Place is a dynamic material form—a process that requires cultural interpretation and brings people together in particular relationships. Place makes social structures endure; patterns activities; embodies cultural norms, identities, and memories; expresses ecological values; and plays a role in creating and sustaining people’s sense of self. Place has purposefulness; it provides a framework not only for daily routines and actions but also for spectacle and revolutionary change. Within place, difference is produced, sustained, negotiated, and resisted.2

Place: A Site of Social and Environmental Inequity

Acknowledging the importance of place as the lived experience of individuals and groups,1 this part of the book explores how place irrevocably re-creates and reinforces the larger societal structures of privilege and oppression.2 Through four case studies, it looks at the ways in which hegemonic spatial policies and practices disenfranchise poor and minority communities while also reinforcing negative stereotypes of class and race. In particular, we focus in this section of the book upon race, place, and power as intersecting social constructions that limit access to opportunity and maintain social inequality.3

Place: A Site of Individual and Collective Transformation

To establish our second premise—that place provides an opportunity for liberation—we demonstrate that marginalized communities can redress social and environmental inequity via spatial interventions, which we refer to as “placemaking.” Like empowerment before it, the term placemaking has been claimed across the ideological spectrum, from grassroots activists to neoliberal New Urbanists, weakening its meaning. Nonetheless for marginalized populations, its characteristics—local activism, cooperative effort, and the struggle for place—comprise essential components of citizenship and community building. In particular, we are interested in a notion of placemaking that allows people of color to join together in collective resistance to the prevailing norms, policies, and practices that relegate them to racialized, underresourced, and politically disenfranchised surroundings.

Struggling for the Right to Housing: A Critical Analysis of the Evolution of West Seattle’s High Point

The High Point neighborhood in West Seattle is just that. Nestled into a wooded bluff atop one of the city’s highest elevations, this new development offers residents a beautifully designed, environmentally sustainable community—one of the city’s most livable places. Not fully complete as of this publication, it replaces a deteriorated public housing project with a new economically and culturally diverse neighborhood, presenting low-income residents with what the federal government predicts will be new opportunities for self-sufficiency. According to Seattle’s former mayor Greg Nickels, “the redevelopment not only revitalizes a great West Seattle neighborhood, but the sustainable buildings and design will enhance the health of the community and the environment for years to come.”1 And yet the housing policies that facilitated High Point’s reinvention are anything but sustainable for the many former residents whose dispersal to other impoverished areas made possible its New Urbanist vision of middle-class harmony.

Conclusions: Standing Shoulder-to-Shoulder in a Place-conscious Society

The overarching claim in this book is that while the material world of low-income communities reflects and reinforces social class inequities, it also provides a context for envisioning the future—one that preserves place as a site of collective action and imagined possibilities even in the face of increasing globalization, economic stratification, and environmental degradation. We began with the premise that historical patterns of domination—of people and nature—have increased to an untenable point as a global elite buys up, and sucks profits out of, more and more of the world’s ecosystems and as those ecosystems head toward their full carrying capacity. The march of global capitalism combined with global warming leave local disenfranchised communities of color without access to those land-based resources that poor people have traditionally relied upon for survival. Believing that “the subjugation of people … is further linked in the global economy to the subjugation of lands, resources, and ecosystems,”1 we set out in the first part of the book to understand the hegemonic spatial policies and practices that disenfranchise poor and minority communities while reinforcing negative stereotypes of class and race. Through four case studies, we offered evidence of the intersecting social constructions of race, place, and power that stifle opportunity and maintain social inequality.