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Instructors: Anna Livia Brand, Bryan WagnerTerm: Spring 2019Course #: Landscape Architecture 154 / American Studies 102Why Read This Case Study?New Orleans: Historical Memory and Urban Design, an interdisciplinary research studio, focused on the ways human history and urban design interact over time. Faculty members Anna Livia Brand (Landscape Architecture) and Bryan Wagner (English) led this undergraduate course, which posed fundamental questions: how are cities designed, and how are such designs reshaped over time – benefiting some residents and neighborhoods while imposing lasting harm on others? How can these multilayered histories be peeled back, allowing the roots of violence and injustice to be revealed and contested? And how might place-based resistance strategies reclaim the past and portend the future?This course took students from a variety of academic majors on a journey through the history of New Orleans’ Black communities. They tracked the progressive marginalization, displacement, and gentrification of these communities, and traveled to the city to explore and learn from local residents and organizations firsthand. Brand and Wagner challenged students to harness their imaginations and creativity to reimagine place-based strategies of resistance and design a map to guide residents and visitors to important cultural events. The studio partnered with the New Orleans Paper Monuments project to create public poster art about sites of deep meaning to the community, featuring individuals, social movements, and historical events that shaped the city’s social geography and landscape. Then, students developed a digital interactive map of Claiborne Avenue, a main throughway through the city’s Black community, locating important sites of resistance and cultural regeneration – historical places, public art, cultural events, and street performances.In this case study, readers are introduced to the semester-long studio’s structure and pedagogical objectives, can view a rich sample of student creative work, and gain insight into the student experience via a set of reflective essays.

This study integrates three theories of urbanism into a single framework suggesting that urban population size has a nonlinear relationship with social-world intensity. Hypotheses derived from this framework are tested in regression analyses of 1930 census data on Black Metropolis communities created in major cities by blacks' early twentieth-century urbanization. The findings show that the slope of the relationship between black population size and Black Metropolis social-world intensity varies by the type of social world under investigation. Consistent with subcultural theory, urbanism markedly intensifies blacks' cultural-expression social worlds and modestly intensifies blacks' political-action social worlds. Consistent with determinist theory, urbanism degrades blacks' religious-participation social worlds, and consistent with compositional theory, urbanism is unrelated to blacks' goods-distribution-and-consumption social worlds. These results imply that researchers should explore nonlinear relationships of urban population size and social-world intensity that are predicted by the integrated framework of urbanism theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers the depiction of gentrification of African American neighborhoods in several films. Topics discussed include the drawback of the verité approach to documentary filmmaking such as failure to clarify histories behind a moment, space and conflict, emergence of gentrification as iteration of Black city cinema in fictional films, and presence of ephemerality and ambivalence caused by displacement in the films "The Last Black Man in San Francisco" and "Residue."

This article explores the relationship between gentrification and racial segregation in Brooklyn, New York with an emphasis on Black Brooklyn. With more than 2.6 million residents, if Brooklyn was a city, it would be the fourth largest in the USA. Brooklyn is the home of approximately 788,000 Blacks with almost 692,000 of them living in an area that historian Harold X. Connolly has called Black Brooklyn. In recent decades, large portions of Brooklyn, including parts of Black Brooklyn have been gentrifying with sizable numbers of whites moving to traditionally Black neighborhoods. One would anticipate racial segregation to be declining in Brooklyn and especially in the areas that are gentrifying. However, this expectation of racial desegregation appears to be false. While there are declines in indices of racial segregation, these declines are frequently marginal, especially when the increase in the number of whites in Black neighborhoods is taken into consideration. At the same time, gentrification has contributed to the displacement or replacement of thousands of long-term African American residents from their homes. This persistence of racial segregation in a time of gentrification raises many questions about the two processes and the effects that they have on African Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of Oberlin Village, a neighborhood established by African American freedmen in Raleigh, North Carolina during the Reconstruction period. Topics explored include the notable people that contributed to the construction of the village such as then legislators James Henry Harris and Wilson W. Morgan, the freedom and land ownership opportunity given to village residents, and the sale of land by the Cameron and Mordecai families to a freedman in the 1800s.

The author explores the difference in policing in areas dominated by White citizens from areas dominated by African American citizens in the U.S., as shown in three U.S. Supreme Court cases, namely Terry v. Ohio, Whren v. United States and Illinois v. Wardlow. Topics discussed include the author's experience of a police search during his senior high school year, the Fourth Amendment as the similarity between these three cases, and the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1973 and 1850.

Detroit's Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were African-American neighborhoods that housed a vibrant and active popular music scene between World War I and the 1960s. They were home to a dense network of music venues, many of which were owned or managed by African-Americans. Urban renewal projects during the late-1950s destroyed much of the heart of these places. Unfortunately, discussion of this activity is largely missing from the academic literature on placemaking, cultural entrepreneurship, and music scenes in Detroit. To address this gap, I propose a solution that marries discussion of these neighborhoods with a method to measure and compare entrepreneurial activity in a music scene using venue density as a construct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholars have identified ways that racial conservatives exerted outsized influence on criminal justice policies, little attention has been paid to whether police departments have incentives to learn about and adopt reforms that reduce racial disparity. I present a game of imperfect information between residents and a municipal police chief to show that a chief's inability to prevent officer behavior that residents perceive to be abusive, coupled with resident unwillingness to assist police in the aftermath of this behavior, creates an incentive for the chief to choose and learn about new policing strategies that rely less on resident assistance. This induces a bias in favor of aggressive over collaborative tactics in the police chief's policy selection and learning decisions. Segregation and discrimination ensured that many black Americans lived in conditions that produced this result in the later twentieth century; thus, the model shows structural racism in local police policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the impact of perceived worthiness and financial self‐interest on charitable giving. Both participants and recipients come from a low‐income, predominantly African‐American community in the United States. To examine this issue, we introduce a "Comparative Dictator Game," where participants make dictator allocations for four possible recipients, each with different characteristics. We find higher charitable giving toward more "worthy" (i.e., disabled, females who are head of household, and individuals with more children) recipients when individuals donate money to different recipients. Additionally, subjects then select their preferred recipient/allocation. When only one recipient must be selected for a donation, individuals select recipients to whom they provided smaller donations and recipients with children. The results highlight the trade‐off between a desire to engage in philanthropy, supporting those who are deserving, and financial self‐interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much scholarship has given primacy to neighborhood context and its effect on youth violence within disadvantaged communities. The structural features of these environments, including various forms of disadvantage such as extreme poverty, unemployment and family disruption, have resulted in cultural adaptations that embrace the use of violence and the construction of violent identities as a means of survival and protection especially among youth. We adhere to and contribute to this perspective by recognizing the contributions of the symbolic interaction approach that underscores the process by which these identities are constructed. Recent developments in this area have emphasized the intersecting inequalities of race, gender and class that shape individuals' understandings of and perceptions of violence. We draw on these works and analyze in-depth interviews with 72 urban, African American adolescents to examine the process by which they perceive and negotiate violence (and thus construct violent identities) and we further consider whether these constructions of violence are gender-specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay on the conflict between San Francisco, California and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) over the adoption of the community preferences rules to a proposed senior housing development that would be located in a traditional African American neighborhood in San Francisco, is presented. Topics covered include issues raised by community preferences in line with federal fair housing law, resolution of the conflict and significance to cities undergoing gentrification.

New‐build development has become associated with the phase of gentrification that has taken shape since the mid‐1990s. This article examines the gentrification of Deep Deuce, a historically black neighborhood in Oklahoma City. An analysis of property sales identifies the major external agents involved and leads to a discussion of the area's racial turnover. Considering the relational aspects of place, specifically how the identity of Deep Deuce has been constructed in relation to the nearby area of Bricktown, provides new insights on the nature of changes affecting this neighborhood. Supplementing this with an examination of resistance to the gentrification of Deep Deuce shows how city neighborhoods can come to be defined by limited understandings of place, and how historic preservation efforts can generate symbolic capital and facilitate cultural appropriation. This article also contributes to the study of gentrification in smaller metropolitan areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the impact of neighborhood ethnoracial composition on the likelihood that neighborhoods that could gentrify do gentrify over time. Drawing on findings from the gentrification and residential preference literatures, we hypothesize that the percentage of Black and Latino residents in neighborhoods in 1980 is associated with the probability of gentrification, conditional on the racial composition of neighborhoods in 2010. We test these hypotheses with analyses of census data for tracts in the central cities of Chicago and New York in 1980 to 2010. We find that the percentage of Black residents in 1980 was negatively associated with gentrified White and positively associated with gentrified Black neighborhoods, and that percent Latino in 1980 was positively associated with gentrified Latino neighborhoods. Finally, we found strong evidence that gentrification in these cities was much more likely to occur in neighborhoods close to the central business district. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Acceptability and willingness to both take and pay for HIV self-tests (HIVSTs) in US neighbourhoods with high rates of HIV infection are not well understood. Methods: We surveyed 1,535 individuals about acceptability and willingness to take and pay for an HIVST in a predominately African American neighbourhood with 3% HIV seroprevalence. We recruited individuals presenting for HIV screening services in a community-based programme. Latent class analysis (LCA) grouped individuals with similar patterns of HIV-risk behaviours and determined which groups would be most willing to use and buy HIVSTs. Results: Nearly 90% of respondents were willing to use an HIVST; 55% were willing to buy HIVSTs, but only 23% were willing to pay the market price of US $40. Four distinct groups emerged and were characterized by risk behaviours: (1) low risk (N = 324); (2) concurrent partnerships (N = 346); (3) incarceration and substance use (N = 293); and (4) condomless sex/multiple partners (N = 538). Individuals in the low-risk class were less willing to self-test compared to concurrent sexual partners (OR = 0.39, p = .003) and incarceration and substance use (OR = 0.46, p = .011) classes. There were no significant differences across classes in the amount individuals were willing to pay for an HIVST. Conclusions: HIVSTs were overwhelmingly acceptable but cost prohibitive; most participants were unwilling to pay the market rate of US $40. Subsidizing and implementing HIVST programmes in communities with high rates of infection present a public health opportunity, particularly among individuals reporting condomless sex with multiple partners, concurrent sexual partnerships and those with incarceration and substance use histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifteen residents (20-48), formerly of the streets and/or criminal justice system, were organized into a street participatory action research team to conduct a street ethnographic community needs assessment of the Eastside and Southbridge neighborhoods of Wilmington, Delaware. This article is primarily a qualitative analysis of the educational and employment experiences of a community sample of street identified Black men and women between the ages of 18-35. This secondary analysis is guided by the question: How do street-identified Black men and women frame their experiences with educational and employment opportunity? Mixed methods were employed to collect data in the form of: (1) 520 surveys; (2) 24 individual interviews; (3) four dual interviews; (4) three group interviews; and (5) extensive ethnographic field observations. All data were collected in the actual streets of Wilmington, Delaware (e.g., street corners, local parks, barbershops, local record/DVD stores, etc.). Two core themes emerged in qualitative coding for schooling opportunity, which include institutional removal and student-teacher interactions. Also, three subcodes emerged out of the student-teacher interactions theme: (1) lack of academic preparation, (2) lack of cultural competency, and (3) home/neighborhood conditions related to schooling experiences. Further, two subcodes emerged for the core theme employment: (1) neighborhood isolation and (2) employment after incarceration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1990s, a new cycle of films emerged that depicted complex portrayals of the lives of African-Americans in the neighbourhoods in which they lived. This so-called ‘hood genre was quite radical in its foregrounding of structural racism and police violence. But Hollywood's marketing of these films muted this radical content by directly contradicting explicit signifiers in the films’ story worlds. While many of the ‘hood films take place on the urban fringe and in suburbs, their promotional materials worked to confine the action, to a mythic ‘inner city'. This essay studies the two most popular films of the genre,Boyz n the HoodandMenace II Society, to illustrate how ‘paratexts' redistricted 'hood films. Through a comparative analysis of the films and their promotional materials, this essay argues Hollywood marketed a racialized ‘imaginative geography' for this important genre of African-American cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Extending Small and McDermott’s ‘conditional perspective’, Blalock’s minority competition theory is used to explain how the relationship between African Americans and the number of supermarkets in a zip code depends on the city in which it resides. The 2010 American Community Survey and ZIP Business pattern data are examined with hierarchical general linear models to explore whether the previously observed negative relationship between the percentage of African Americans and the number of supermarkets in a zip code depends on the percentage of African Americans in the city. The results show that the relationship between the percentage of African Americans and the number of supermarkets depends on the percentage of African Americans in the city in the U-shaped pattern predicted by minority competition theory. Applications of minority competition to other theories of the unequal distribution of resources in cities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parental racial socialization is a parenting tool used to prepare African American adolescents for managing racial stressors. While it is known that parents' racial discrimination experiences affect the racial socialization messages they provide, little is known about the influence of factors that promote supportive and communal parenting, such as perceived neighborhood cohesion. In cohesive neighborhoods, neighbors may help parents address racial discrimination by monitoring youth and conveying racial socialization messages; additionally, the effect of neighborhood cohesion on parents' racial socialization may differ for boys and girls because parents socialize adolescents about race differently based on expected encounters with racial discrimination. Therefore, the current study examines how parents' perception of neighborhood cohesion and adolescents' gender moderate associations between parents' racial discrimination experiences and the racial socialization messages they deliver to their adolescents. Participants were a community sample of 608 African American adolescents (54 % girls; mean age = 15.5) and their primary caregivers (86 % biological mothers; mean age = 42.0). Structural equation modeling indicated that parental racial discrimination was associated with more promotion of mistrust messages for boys and girls in communities with low neighborhood cohesion. In addition, parental racial discrimination was associated with more cultural socialization messages about racial pride and history for boys in neighborhoods with low neighborhood cohesion. The findings suggest that parents' racial socialization messages are influenced by their own racial discrimination experiences and the cohesiveness of the neighborhood; furthermore, the content of parental messages delivered varies based on adolescents' gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown that legal cynicism is pervasive among residents of poor, black neighborhoods. However, controlling for crime rates, these residents call police at higher rates than whites and residents of middle-class neighborhoods, and ethnographic research suggests that mothers in particular sometimes exact social control over partners and children through police notification. Given these findings, how might researchers better understand how legal cynicism and occasional reliance on police fit together? Drawing on interviews with poor African-American mothers in Washington, DC, this article develops an alternative conception of cultural orientations about law: situational trust. This concept emphasizes micro-level dynamism in cultural conceptions of the police, expanding the literature on police trust by emphasizing situational contingency. Mothers deploy at least four alternative strategies that produce moments of trust: officer exceptionalism, domain specificity, therapeutic consequences, and institutional navigation. These strategies shed light on the contextual meanings of safety and legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the future of racial residential segregation of African Americans in the U.S. Topics discussesd include crisis to protests over racial insensitivity on college campuses in the country, police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, and massive social change on a number of interrelated dimensions. It also mentions the emergence of global neighborhoods in metropolitan areas.

The article presents a study which examines the geographic clustering of African American adolescent marijuana use in urban neighborhoods. Methods of the study to determine whether neighborhood-level characteristics are related to the geographic clustering of marijuana use and whether neighborhood crime, violence, and poverty impacts clustering of marijuana use are offered. Results which highlight the link between substance abuse problems and neglect or lack of parental guidance are noted.

The article examines the New York Police Department's broken windows policy that is a criminological theory of the signalling effect of urban disorder, crime and anti-social behaviour. Topics discussed include two approaches to preventing crime: civil society and martial law; degradation of civil society on racial bases; aggressive policing tactics to prevent crime in African American neighbourhoods; emergence of Broken Windows theory from an essay by George Kelling and James Wilson.

The article examines the New York Police Department's broken windows policy that is a criminological theory of the signalling effect of urban disorder, crime and anti-social behaviour. Topics discussed include two approaches to preventing crime: civil society and martial law; degradation of civil society on racial bases; and aggressive policing tactics to prevent crime in African American neighbourhoods.

The article examines the history, implementation and limitations of home rule to control urban disorder, crime and anti-social behaviour in New York. Topics discussed include approaches to preventing crime such as civil society and martial law; degradation of civil society on racial bases; and aggressive policing tactics to prevent crime in African American neighbourhoods.

The article examines the New York Police Department's broken windows policy that is a criminological theory of the signalling effect of urban disorder, crime and anti-social behaviour. Topics discussed include two approaches to preventing crime: civil society and martial law; degradation of civil society on racial bases; aggressive policing tactics to prevent crime in African American neighbourhoods; emergence of Broken Windows theory from an essay by George Kelling and James Wilson.

The article examines the New York Police Department's broken windows policy that is a criminological theory of the signalling effect of urban disorder, crime and anti-social behaviour. Topics discussed include two approaches to preventing crime: civil society and martial law; degradation of civil society on racial bases; aggressive policing tactics to prevent crime in African American neighbourhoods; emergence of Broken Windows theory from an essay by George Kelling and James Wilson.

The article examines the citywide and precinct-specific crime trends in New York City, as of February 2016. Topics discussed include two approaches to preventing crime: civil society and martial law; degradation of civil society on racial bases; and implications of using hyper aggressive policing tactics to prevent crime in African American neighborhoods. Also offered are tips for the New York Police Department (NYPD) to improve relations with black neighborhoods through civil society.

Risk factors for marijuana use in older adolescents and young adults have focused primarily on family environment and peer affiliation. A growing body of work has examined the relationship between environmental context and young adult substance use. This study builds on previous research linking neighborhood environment to young adult marijuana use by exploring two distinct features of neighborhoods, namely the physical (e.g., broken windows) and social environment (e.g., adults watching youth). Data were obtained from a longitudinal sample of 398 predominately African American young adults living in an urban environment. The data also included observational measures of physical and social order and disorder collected on the young adult's residential block. Exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) was utilized to test hypothesized relationships between these two features of the neighborhood environment and past year young adult marijuana use. A two-factor model of neighborhood environment with good fit indices was selected (CFI = 0.97, RMSEA = 0.037). There was a positive and significant direct effect from neighborhood physical disorder to marijuana use (0.219, p < 0.05) controlling for gender, race, and free and reduced price meal (FARPM) status. The direct effect from neighborhood social environment to marijuana use was not significant. These results converge with previous research linking vacant housing with young adult marijuana use but do not provide empirical support for the neighborhood social environment as a determinant of drug taking. Better explication of the social environment is needed to understand its relationship to drug use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As public service professionals become more engaged with Black Church and Black College community development corporations (CDCs), they must familiarize themselves with the literature that illuminates this sector of community development. Small in number, the efforts of some black churches and black colleges to establish CDCs can be viewed as pivotal to community revitalization and continuing a legacy of social mission for racial equality and social justice. Subsequently, this article provides a review of the literature about the Black Church and the Black College CDC. Also, it offers recommendations to public sector professionals and academics seeking to support the Black Church and the Black College and their respective CDCs quests for advancing racial equality and social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]