Elizabeth Walsh

Dear fellow planners,

I write to you today as a white woman completing her doctorate in Community and Regional Planning at the University of Texas at Austin this spring, 2015. I am also a gentrifier and a neighborhood activist who moved from Boston to the Holly Neighborhood of East Austin1 in 2006. Like many other planners committed to sustainability, I strive to keep the often forgotten E of Equity at the table, along with Economy and Environment (Oden, 2010). Yet I confess that when I talk about equity, I am tempted to talk about it exclusively from an analytical and economic perspective. That is to say, I am tempted to leave two dreaded four-letter words out of the conversation: race and love. I am writing to you in the hopes that you might join me as I strive to bring them to personal and professional conversations about the future of our communities. To open the conversation, I offer my reflections on this challenge, from my particular position at this particular point in time.

Spring in Austin: new life is emerging everywhere. Each day new leaves unfurl along tree-lined streets. New development is just as abundant—each day new building permits appear along thoroughfares and neighborhoods with fertile ground for re-development. An estimated 110 new people move to Austin every day, and many are flocking to centrally located neighborhoods such as mine in the 78702 ZIP Code, just east of downtown (Hawkins & Novak, 2014).

The bees and the press are buzzing over the flowering opportunities. Earlier this spring, for instance, the AAA magazine Texas Journey featured a cover story on Reinventing East Austin that celebrated how “the once derelict neighborhood is evolving into an epicenter of creativity and panache.” The story showcases East Austin as a great example of “urban renewal on a human scale.” (Oko, 2015).

Creativity, renewal, growth—they are the hallmarks of spring and the grand prize for economic development planners whose growth strategy rests on attracting urbanites belonging to the creative class (Florida, 2014). With bright ideas, outside capital, and disposable incomes, these new residents are often credited with the revitalization of previously neglected neighborhoods.

While there are undeniable advantages of this rebirth and renewal, this year it is much more difficult to ignore the darker underbelly of this pattern of growth. The crises of Ferguson, MO, in the preceding summer and fall have drawn our attention to how many people are excluded from the promise of urban regeneration. These crises and the emergent Black Lives Matter movement have interrupted our national consciousness and directed it to the brutality of collectively-perpetuated racism and unexamined white privilege throughout the U.S. Personally, while I might have been content to talk about equity without talking about race in the past, this year I cannot help but see the unconsciously reproduced patterns of racism in my neighborhood, city, and nation.

As one prime example of the clear presence of racism operating in my neighborhood, a few days before Valentine, just blocks from my house, I witnessed the demolition of the Jumpolin piñata store by two young, white, male entrepreneurs who acquired the property in fall 2014. They were in such a hurry to level the building to put up a parking lot in time for South by Southwest that they sent the bulldozers in before the Mexican-American business owners could clear out their merchandise and personal belongings. As the developers attempted to justify their act, they compared their displaced tenants to roaches, using explicitly racist language to suggest that forcible eviction and demolition was a necessary act (Seale, 2015). As one social critic astutely noted, “the Latino community was left violated through their symbol of festivity trampled by that of their colonizers” (Ward, 2015).

The story that gentrification is a function of market forces independent of racism is untenable. As long as we can use race or ethnicity to deem some people more or less entitled to respect, dignity, and opportunity than others, racism will continue to shape our economic interactions and mask our own complicity in injustice. Ironically, the traditional seven-pointed piñata is itself a symbol of the seven deadly sins of envy, sloth, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath, and pride. The piñata stick, a symbol of love, is used to break through the sins and release the abundance contained within (San Benito Historical Society, n.d.). If there is a lesson here, perhaps it is that we have a responsibility to notice our greed, gluttony, pride, and complicity in systems of oppression, and use the force of our love to break through them. When our economic interactions become free of racism and guided instead by an invisible hand of love, we may very well discover regenerative forms of development.

Should this happen, it will start with the conversations we hold today. For me, it begins with a pledge to bring love and race to the table, both personally and professionally. In my neighborhood, that means standing in solidarity with my neighbors to hold new development accountable to community values. In my field, it means standing up and inviting uncomfortable conversations. Thankfully, I am learning more by stepping into the discomfort. I am sharing my experiences in the hopes that you might share your experiences as well.

My first real experiment in bringing love and race to a professional setting was at the national South By Southwest Eco conference (SXSW Eco) in October 2014. SXSW Eco is an annual conference for innovative environmental leadership held in Austin. I attended with other colleagues who had recently participated in Huston-Tillotson University’s First Annual Building Green Justice Forum, held in late September. Dr. Robert Bullard, the father of environmental justice scholarship, gave the opening keynote address titled “Climate Change and Vulnerability.” He argued that climate change is the number one environmental justice issue, and that when we talk about building resilience, we must consider the most vulnerable first, and we must consider how race shapes vulnerability. Dr. Bullard made a powerful call for a Southern Region Climate and Community Resilience Initiative led by a research network of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) like Huston-Tillotson. In previous years I attended, social justice concerns were generally missing at SXSW Eco. Dr. Bullard’s presence seemed to suggest that mainstream environmentalists were more willing to engage questions of race, class, gender, and power in conversations about environmental sustainability.

Given this powerful kickoff, I was excited about the workshop to be held on the last day: urban renewal and resilient design. Urban renewal and resilient design sound similar, but I imagined this panel would juxtapose the two. On the one hand, we have the top-down urban renewal programs that devastated minority communities during the era of highway construction and white flight to suburbs from the 1950s through 1970s (Hays, 2012). On the other hand, there has been growing interest in bottom-up approaches to resilient design and development to advance climate justice for the most vulnerable, as called for by Dr. Bullard.2

To my surprise, the panel did not develop this contrast. The all-white panel used urban renewal interchangeably with resilient design before the almost exclusively white audience. One of the panelists shared a historic narrative about how we built Atlanta’s highway system and suburbs in the 1950s. Without defining who was included in we, he noted that eventually we realized single family suburban development was a recipe for social isolation, and that car-dependency eroded our health and quality of life. Now, he explained, we are beginning to return to the city, transforming abandoned urban land into vibrant, healthy community spaces.

I was stunned. This story and others presented by the panelists were inspiring and innovative in many ways. Yet at no point did any panelist mention race, racism, poverty, or social inequality. The historical critique of suburbanization neglected to mention white flight or urban disinvestment. The discussion of current revitalization neglected to name gentrification or the suburbanization of poverty. As I sat there, a keen awareness settled in: if we do not talk about racism when we talk about resilience, then we are likely perpetuating it. Resilience is essentially a property of a system that can recover in the face of disruption or shock. I realized that racism and capitalism are two exceptionally resilient systems, and they have been mutually reinforcing each other for at least 400 years. As much as I loved the ideas presented by the panelists, suddenly they appeared to amount to little more than the greenwashing of an economic machine that damages people and the environment.

I was speechless. But, having recently resolved to muster the courage to speak up about racism from a place of love, I stood up and found myself at the microphone, asking the first question. I thanked them each for their efforts to advance environmental resilience, and thanked the panelist from Atlanta for giving us some historical context. I expressed my surprise that, though the panel included urban renewal in its title, there was no mention of the historic federal housing policies, let alone a discussion of their impact on low-income communities and people of color. I noted my concern about the characterization of urban land as abandoned when there were still people, usually people of color, living there. I asked them what they have done to prevent environmental gentrification, the process by which environmental improvements lead to increased costs of living and replacement of low-income communities (usually of color) with wealthier (and more white) residents (Banzhaf & McCormick, 2006).

Having spoken, I breathed in relief. I honored my word to include racism in conversations when it was missing, despite the discomfort. I spoke from my love, for the panelists and for the possibility of just, flourishing communities. I brought race and love to the table. I sat down and listened for the responses.

Interestingly, the panelist from Atlanta indicated that the Atlanta Land Trust Collaborative (ALTC) was created to maintain affordability in neighborhoods at risk of gentrification as a result of the developments discussed. He was well aware of the histories of racial segregation and Urban Renewal. It was not that he was ignorant of these issues; he chose not to bring them up. Just like I nearly did, and have done before. Later he explained to me that one can only fit so much into a talk, and one must tailor it to the audience. We were at SXSW Eco, and his audience was (mostly white) environmentalists. Does this mean that mainstream (white) environmentalists generally find discussion of vulnerable people, structural racism, and equitable development to be either off-limits or not germane to conversations about resilience and sustainability?

In truth, that is a weak question. A more powerful one going forward is: Are we, as professionals committed to the design and planning of just and resilient cities, willing to lovingly and courageously open conversations that address and dismantle racism with our colleagues and in the public?

My personal answer is yes.

What is yours? What small beginnings or bold actions are you taking to bring your love and willingness to engage the challenges of racism in the planning of our communities? What practices enable you to listen more compassionately, love more boldly, and look more critically at the systems of which we are part? Where do you find yourself stopped? How can we more powerfully challenge and support each other as we engage in these difficult dialogues? Going forward, we must work together to create thriving, resilient communities where all might flourish.

Respectfully, Elizabeth Walsh

1. This historically working class Hispanic neighborhood just north of Lady Bird Lake has experi- enced a disproportionate share of environmental burdens in the past and is currently experiencing rapid investment, expansion of amenities, and demographic change. To be more specific, from 2000 to 2010, my ZIP code experienced the second highest increase in the white share of population out of all others in the United States (Petrilli, 2012).
2. The growing literature on resilience emphasizes the importance of strong social net- works and social capital in the adaptive capacity of coupled social and ecological systems (Folke et al., 2002; Folke, Hahn, Olsson, & Norberg, 2005).

References

Banzhaf, H. S., & McCormick, E. (2006). Moving beyond cleanup: Identifying the crucibles of environmental gentrification. SSRN eLibrary. Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=990074

Florida, R. (2014). The Rise of the Creative Class—Revisited: Revised and Expanded. Basic Books.

Folke, C., Carpenter, S., Elmqvist, T., Gunderson, L., Holling, C., & Walker, B. (2002). Resilience and sustainable development: Building adaptive capacity in a world of transformations. Ambio, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 31(5). Retrieved from http://www.era-mx.org/biblio/Resilience.pdf

Folke, C., Hahn, T., Olsson, P., & Norberg, J. (2005). Adaptive governance of social-ecological systems. Annual Review of Environment and Re- sources, 30(1), 441–473. Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1146/annurev. energy.30.050504.144511

Hawkins, L., & Novak, S. (2014, November 1). Tear-down trend transforming Central Austin neighborhoods. Austin American-Statesman. Austin, TX. Retrieved from http://www.mystatesman.com/news/business/tear- down-trend transforming-central-austin-neighb/nhxt2/

Hays, R. A. (2012). The Federal Government and Urban Housing, Third Edition.

Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Oden, M. (2010). Equity: The forgotten E in sustainable development. In S. A. Moore (Ed.), Pragmatic Sustainability: Theoretical and Practical Tools. London: Routledge.

Oko, D. (2015). Reinventing East Austin. Texas Journey: The Magazine for AAA Members, (January/February).

Petrilli, M. (2012, June 14). 50 ZIP codes with greatest white population increases.   Retrieved   from                   http://edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/2012/the-50-zip-codes-with-the-largest- growth-in-white-population-share.html

San Benito Historical Society. (n.d.). Pinatas. Retrieved April 4, 2015, from http://www.sanbenitohistory.com/projects/Language_Arts/Pinatas%20%231.html#Symbols

Seale, S. (2015, February 15). Conflicting stories surround controversial demolition of East Austin piñata store. Retrieved from http://austin.culturemap.com/news/city-life/02-15-15-east-austin-pinata-store-jum- polin-demolition-property-owner/

Ward, T. (2015, February 23). Dale, dale, dale, no pierdas el tino! Retrieved from http://equilibrionorte.org/2015/02/23/23684/