Urban sociology and growth potential

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Allston, considered Boston’s student neighborhood, has a historical trajectory that has been understudied, in that the neighborhood has not followed a linear path of either ascent or descent. Given Allston’s status as a hybrid neighborhood, displaying durable trends of both ascent and decline, residents and other neighborhood actors utilize cultural narratives to orient Allston’s history and future, which, in turn, reify certain aspects of the neighborhood. Based on ethnographic observations for two years and interviews with over 60 residents, students, business owners, real estate agents, and workers in Allston, this study extends previous literature on urban change in demonstrating Allston’s understudied hybridity, as well as locals’ use of cultural narratives to navigate this context. In so doing, neighborhood actors have perpetuated cultural narratives of Allston that embrace Allston’s gritty nature as the root of Allston’s legitimacy. The perception of Allston as a relatively disinvested and student neighborhood have allowed two distinct cohorts to see themselves as early stage gentrifiers, investing in the area. Nostalgia for the past also shapes residents’ cultural narratives of Allston, specifically for lifelong residents and other longtime residents. Tensions persist between the two groups, as an imagined past informs each groups distinct orientation to Allston’s future. Real estate agents and students perpetuate Allston’s student narrative by engaging in ritual interactions specifically related to “Allston Christmas,” or the September 1st moving day. Combined with Allston’s gritty nature, these rituals and interactions perpetuate an exploitative housing market characterized by poor housing conditions. This study demonstrates how neighborhood actors utilize cultural understandings to make sense of their surroundings and how these narratives reify existing conditions and perpetuate neighborhood inequality in the context of non-linear neighborhood change. This study contributes to literature on cultural understandings of place by examining how neighborhood hybridity facilitates specific neighborhood narratives, and how different cohorts utilize the same narrative frame, but with distinct orientations.

The city in the contemporary context, is witnessed as the place of many socio-spatial differentations. These are greatly manifested in its urban neighbourhoods. The better-quality urban neighbourhoods are more desirable for existing diverse potentials of social advantages and the poorer-quality urban neighbourhoods can no longer provide a considerable integration between inhabitants and the environment of their 'living place', because of poor housing conditions and the lack of local services needed. Many cities in the world are experiencing such situations. Tehran, as the capital of Iran and one of the largest cities in the Middle East is the typical example in this context. To explore its neighbourhood areas and the relationships between people and the environment of these areas, it is assumed to be a vital task to look at the important dimensions of neighbourhoods and their environment. In terms of local public services and social networks, the relation between residents and the environment of their 'living place' is indicated as the central focus of this study. The aim was to contribute to the goal of expanding choice and opportunity with special responsibility for the needs of residents as groups and as individuals. The identification of this issue in the city of Tehran has been undertaken as a contribution to bridging the existing gap between planning for this city and the reality of the urban environment of its `living places'. From this investigation and the exploration of the explained problems, it is anticipated that this study and its findings will facilitate attempts to investigate and to manage the local conditions of areas such as these A variety of research methods and tools were used. Interviewing local informants, structured observations; analysis of available documents; and a household survey of a representative sample of residents in each of the two selected neighbourhoods in Tehran. Overall, it has been found that residents in both advantaged and disadvantaged residential areas in Tehran used, interpreted, and evaluated their environment of THE residential areas through the filter of their socio-economic reference system. Their attitudes in this case were based on four socio-economic dimensions: the pattern of the dwelling, educational achievements, financial status and jobs. In addition, overall satisfaction with the environment of neighbourhoods was the result of congruence in major components such as: the affordably a suitable housing, the accessibility to public services and the formal and informal social support system in terms of local social networks. From the survey findings it was also evident how small a role social bonding played in advantaged neighbourhoods as a determinant of residential mobility while this notion has been very important to residents in disadvantaged areas. From this point of view it is concluded that social ties and their location were independent of the inclination to move to another neighbourhood in advantaged areas. But, they were related to the level of residential mobility in an area in the sense that the more stable the area, the more likely a household is to establish ties in a neighbourhood, but the existence or absence of such ties does not affect the households' desire to remain or move.

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This thesis is the product of ethnographic research conducted over a period of eighteen months on a council estate, located on the outskirts of a city in Britain. The research explores how the everyday lives of people on The Estate are shaped by their being there. It also examines the material and social conditions, which produce and legitimate knowledges of these people and this place. A central concern of the research is the exploration of classed identity formations. Conducted in ‘austerity Britain' it traces the material and social constitution of the council estate at a moment of heightened interest (popular, political and academic) as ‘other'. The thesis aims to develop a theorisation of being placed on the council estate, which maintains sensitivity to the objectifying processes of claiming to know: specifically, a political commitment to representations of ideas of difference and dissensus (Rancière, 1998; 2006). This work is produced in conversation with class theory; inspired by Bourdieu's linking of objective structures to subjective experience (Bourdieu, 1977; 1980; 1983) and feminist reflexive writings of the affective in classed beings (Hey, 2006; Walkerdine, 2010; Lucey, 2010). However, crucially, it does not produce a new categorisation of class. Rather I begin from a premise that ‘identity categories are never merely descriptive, but always normative, and as such, exclusionary' (Butler, 1992: 15-16). In this thesis, I work through a deconstruction of the concepts of class in order to ‘continue to use them, repeat them, to repeat them subversively, and to displace them from the contexts in which they have been deployed as instruments of oppressive power' (1992: 17). This work is located within academic debates around identity. Thinking with post-structural conceptualisations of gender (Butler, 1990) and race (Nayak, 1977), I develop these as a way to think class. I build upon conceptualisations of habitus (Bourdieu, 2005) as a starting point for exploring subjectivities. Drawing upon work foregrounding the affective consequences of shifts in circumstances resulting in a habitus ‘out of place' (Reay, 2007); I explore the moments of negotiation that occur when one is ‘in place'. Furthering a theorisation of class as a social placing, I bring in conceptual developments within social geography to explore the social constitution of classed places (Massey, 2005; Featherstone, 2013). Through my conceptualisation of ‘being place(d)' I posit identity formation and place making as intertwined processes. Consequently, identity formation through processes of being place(d) on The Estate is not a simple process of socialisation where one learns to be through being of a particular place; rather it is the positioning in place through being in moments of difference. Through my analysis, I theorise identity as moments of identification (Hall, 1996), within which aspects of self are formed in proximity and/or distanced with others. This conceptualisation of relational identity construction is heavily influenced by Bourdieu's thinking, yet moves beyond habitus as ‘forgotten history' (Bourdieu, 1990: 56) to habitus as ‘foregrounded history'. Finally, I bring my range of theoretical resources together in my analysis of a Community Centre as a ‘contact zone' - a social space where ‘cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power' (Pratt, 1991: 34). These momentary exposures do not occur in isolation and are entangled within histories and processes of domination that reach far beyond the moment of contact. Consequently, analysis of this interaction requires bifocality - at once interested in the moment of construction, whilst exploring the contexts within which this moment is located and thus interpreted. In so doing, I highlight the importance of power in the maintenance of structures, whilst allowing the possibility of subversion and resistance within moments of contact.

In the past two decades, changes in American housing policy have transformed the landscape of high-rise ghetto poverty. In its place, has emerged what I call the horizontal ghetto, where high-rise public housing has been demolished and poverty is turned on its side, spreading across the cityscape. Researchers are now beginning to document the reconcentration of voucher holders in moderately poor neighborhoods. This dissertation examines how residents come to live in this type of neighborhood, and how this new context shapes social organization for those who reside within it. I examine a case study neighborhood in Northwest Baltimore called Park Heights, in which I conducted 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 102 in-depth interviews. This neighborhood has a large population of working class black families who settled there in the late 1960's, a recent influx of voucher holders, and also a population of residentially unstable unassisted renters. I examine two complementary explanations for how and why voucher holders end up in neighborhoods like Park Heights. I propose that the landlord is an important piece of the puzzle; landlord practices sort the most disadvantaged voucher holders into some of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, serving as a mechanism in the reproduction of spatial inequality and the concentration of poverty. I also consider how residents' experiences in contexts like Park Heights shape their decisions to remain in, and move to similar neighborhoods. Finally, I examine how the neighborhood context shapes social organization, and I argue that although poverty may be more moderate than in neighborhoods dominated by large-scale public housing, the horizontal context of instability and clustered voucher use may have deleterious consequences for social relations. / Sociology

This dissertation explores processes of racialization, gentrification, and place reputation through a case study of Fishtown – a historically, white working-class neighborhood located along the Delaware River that generally falls within the 19125 ZIP code. Throughout the 20th century, Fishtown was an industrial hub for manufacturing. Reputationally, the neighborhood has been described as insular, racist, and hostile to outsiders, particularly toward Black folks. However, beginning in the early 2000s, Fishtown started seeing increases in median home values and the number of residents possessing at least a bachelor's degree. These changes partly came as a result of the city of Philadelphia’s tax abatement program that was designed to encourage development and spur growth. Fishtown stands as one of the bill’s biggest beneficiaries, receiving the fifth most abated properties of all neighborhoods in Philadelphia. In recent years, Fishtown has become a hub for nightlife and live music, which helps the neighborhood develop “new” reputations as “cool” and desirable. However, despite such changes in class status and the neighborhood’s reputation, Fishtown remains mostly white. Considering Fishtown’s status as a white, working-class neighborhood whose gentrifiers are also white, Fishtown presents itself as a deviant case in the gentrification literature, where cases of “white gentrification” remain understudied. In this dissertation I address the following question: how does racialization take place in a white neighborhood amidst the gentrification process? My study builds on Rucks-Ahidiana's (2021) application of Robinson’s (1983) framework of racial capitalism. Rucks-Ahidiana departs from class-based theories of gentrification to define gentrification as a racialized process of class change. In its application, this definition establishes that, while racial turnover is not necessary for gentrification, processes of racialization are. By using this framework, I find that racialization operates via three mechanisms in Fishtown’s gentrification process: 1) via gentrifiers' use of neighborhood associations, reorganizing the neighborhood’s geographic boundaries, and communicating “progressive” political ideologies to create a more socially desirable neighborhood of the future; 2) via reputational understanding of musical genre as a racialized process of organizing sound and constructing place, and 3) commercial gentrification via music venues. The empirical findings from this dissertation make several contributions to the gentrification literature. First, I identify how processes of racialization unfold in a white neighborhood amidst the gentrification process. Second, I specify the mechanisms social integrationist gentrifiers employ to create a more socially desirable neighborhood of the future. Third, I show how the racial politics of listening can be used to facilitate gentrification, and how corporate, chain-style music venues operate as powerful entities influencing neighborhoods and local music scenes. Theoretically, this dissertation highlights the importance of centering race and racialization in studies of gentrification and urban landscapes more broadly, as well as the importance of examining how places are racialized via their reputation. Policymaking for cities must work to restructure unequal social conditions so that racially biased ideologies cease to shape urban landscapes. This research utilizes qualitative data I collected in Fishtown between 2020 and 2022. The qualitative data include 29 in-depth interviews with neighborhood stakeholders, such as residents, music venue staff, musicians, DJs, business owners, and concertgoers, as well as participant observation and photography. / Sociology

This thesis seeks to understand how and if the popular claims that hockey is an integral part of the culture in Toronto and Montreal are referenced, oriented to, and/or negotiated in everyday life. Taking the cases of the moves of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens from Maple Leaf Gardens and the Montreal Forum, respectively, the thesis asks: What can these similar cases tell us about the culture of the cities in which they occurred and, if it is possible, in what ways can the culture of the cities (as a shaping force) be made recognizable in the discourse generated in, around, and by the moves? The perspective taken is a 'radical interpretive' approach, involving a critical blend of interpretive theories and methodologies - including semiology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and dialectical analysis - that aim to reflexively question the themes that the cases themselves bring to light. The thesis thus concerns itself with issues of cosmopolitanism, globalization, and modernity as well as the concomitant questions of identify, commitment to place, and practical social action in the modern city.