THE TEMPORAL DYNAMICS OF NEOLIBERAL REDEVELOPMENT GOVERNANCE AND THE RESTRUCTURING OF URBAN SPACE: CHICAGO’S BRONZEVILLE (1989 – PRESENT) BY MATTHEW B. ANDERSON DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Geography in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor David Wilson, Chair Assistant Professor Julie Cidell Professor Sara McLafferty Professor Gordon MacLeod, University of Durham, UK Abstract: The objective of this study is to nuance our understanding of the temporal trajectory and dynamics of neoliberal redevelopment governance in large American cities. Recent studies have revealed a rupture in the manifestation of this mode of governance in Chicago, IL. I suggest this shift marks a transition between the roll-out (1989-2005) and roll-with-it (2005-present) periods of neoliberal restructuring in this setting and, perhaps, beyond. Although the wider literature acknowledges the spatial contingency of neoliberal redevelopment governance, temporal contingencies within the same city remain comparatively less explored. In this context, this study chronicles the evolutionary trajectory of Chicago’s fluid and evolving neoliberal redevelopment governance with a specific focus on the contemporary socio-spatial transformation of the city’s south-side neighborhood of Bronzeville. In the current context of the global economic crisis and increased grass-roots efforts to thwart gentrification, the legitimacy of this mode of urban governance is now increasingly questioned. Set against this reality, new pragmatic strategies are now required to keep the neoliberal order alive. As a result, governance actors in this setting now articulate an evolved rhetoric that is increasingly sensitive to the historical effects of structural economic insecurity upon the urban and racialized poor. But this “revisionist” rhetorical strategy is revealed as a politically-expedient necessity merely designed to mobilize and legitimate the same revanchist redevelopment schemes. While its “humanist” clothing holds the potential for stimulating more progressive activism and fundamental change, it is a rhetoric that nonetheless remains guided by the ideological underpinnings of neoliberal theology. The study concludes by exploring the terrain of transformative possibilities and capacity of this governance to further adapt to mounting neoliberal-induced obstacles. ii Acknowledgements: I am forever indebted to David Wilson, my advisor, for his immeasurable support, encouragement, camaraderie, and inspiration throughout not just this project, but my graduate studies in general; without which, I would not have been able to execute and complete a project of this magnitude. I would also like to thank my former MA advisor at Northeastern Illinois University, Dennis Grammenos, for his unwavering confidence, and for successfully persuading me to follow the PhD path, of which I will be forever grateful. I also thank my committee members, Sara McLafferty, Julie Cidell, and Gordon MacLeod, for their insightful comments and discussions over the course of executing the study. And for their constant and unconditional support over the years, I am thankful to my parents, Christian and Diane Anderson, who have never stopped encouraging me in all my academic and personal endeavors. Last but not least, I thank Alyson Rode, for her invaluable emotional support and intellectual companionship, and for fueling my motivation and inspiration, of which has undoubtedly made this project more manageable, meaningful, and enjoyable along the way. iii Table of Contents Chapter 1 – Introduction…………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 2 – Chicago’s Bronzeville: A Brief History…………………………………………...20 Chapter 3 – Neoliberalism and the Formation of Neoliberal Redevelopment Governances……………………………………………………………………….46 Chapter 4 – Research Methods…………………………………………………………………68 Chapter 5 – Roll-Out Neoliberalization and the Revitalization of Chicago’s Bronzeville (1989-2005)………………………………...………………...............79 Chapter 6 – The Transition to Roll-With-It Neoliberalization (2005-Present)………………..162 Chapter 7 – Conclusion: What’s Next?......................................................................................244 Figures…………..……………………………………………………………………………..265 Tables…………………………………………………………………………………………..297 Bibliography.…………………………………………………………………………………..303 iv Chapter 1 Introduction This study nuances our understanding of the temporal trajectory and dynamics of neoliberal redevelopment governances in large American cities.1 Neoliberalism, since the 1970s, has emerged as a deeply engrained and defining aspect of the latest round of global capitalism. A central constitutive aspect of this neoliberal form of capitalism has been a “significant restructuring of the economic role, political environment, and spatial terrain of the city” (Sites, 2007: 116) – what Peck and Tickell (2002, 2007) have characterized as the neoliberalization of urban governance. Triggered by the welfare-state induced crisis of the 1970s, this restructuring process has entailed the crystallization of new private-public partnerships, an “entrepreneurial” business ethic (Harvey, 1989a; Hall and Hubbard, 1998), and the harsh and callous treatment of the poor coupled with an insatiable drive to redevelop long deteriorated urban cores (Smith, 1996; Brenner and Theodore, 2002a). This governance formation, the result of this process of neoliberal restructuring, is this study’s central analytic object: what I refer to as neoliberal redevelopment governance. Although there has been a tendency to treat the neoliberal mode of urban governance as a monolithic, static entity, it is increasingly recognized as best interpreted as a hybrid, constantly evolving institutional formation (Leitner, Peck, and Sheppard, 2007; Wilson, 2004a, 2007; Peck, et al., 2009; Brenner, Peck, and Theodore, 2010a, b; Peck, 2010a). It is also a process that has 1 The study focuses on the contemporary role of cities within the neoliberalization process because cities ultimately act as key sites for the installation of neoliberal policies, practices, and multi-scalar discourses (as well as the mobilization of anti-neoliberal resistance movements). Here, following Peck, Theodore, and Brenner (2009), urban regions represent strategic nodes within the complex and dynamic multi-scalar process of neoliberal regulatory restructuring. 1 unfolded in a distinctly spatially and temporally variegated manner. Indeed, it’s “generic features, family resemblances, and structural interconnections” (Peck, et al., 2009: 51-2) often give an impression of monolithic ubiquity. Yet no two neoliberal formations are manifest concretely in exactly the same way. Structure and contingency operate simultaneously as neoliberal redevelopment unfolds in accordance to both place-specific structures and the broader-scale socio-political conditions and rhythms of capital accumulation (see Pred, 1984). The literature on neoliberal redevelopment governance, however, has predominantly focused on addressing its spatial contingency and variegation between different cities (see Keil, 2002; MacLeod, 2002; Wilson, 2004a). Alternatively, the essence of its temporal contingency remains comparatively less explored. Although the evolving character of redevelopment governances is increasingly acknowledged (see Brenner and Theodore, 2002b; Peck, et al., 2009; Brenner, et al., 2010a, b), there remains a dearth of empirical studies that uncover the place- specific complexities of this evolving process (Peck and Tickell, 2007). This is not, as Peck (2010b: 20) asserts, a “matter of calling contingent exceptions” but “key to understanding the process itself,” of its spatially and temporally variegated unfolding and form of development. This study contributes toward filling this vacuum by examining the temporal dimension of neoliberal redevelopment governance in one prototypical “rust belt” neoliberal city: Chicago, Illinois. It empirically explores this formations post-1989 unfolding, in its composition and dominant attributes,2 and answers Peck and Tickell’s (2007: 48) call for “historical-geographies” of the neoliberal project “that are sensitive” to its “constructed,” “contextual,” and “hybridized” form. In the process, the study provides a specific focus on the contemporary redevelopment of 2 Although these two temporal markers (1989 and 2005) are specific to Chicago, they also reflect a similar and more general trajectory experienced in many other cities. While the roll-out period may have emerged at different moments in different cities, it has nonetheless emerged in all of them. 2 Chicago’s “historic” south-side neighborhood of Bronzeville (Fig. 1.1). 2005 is revealed as a key temporal marker, the transition point between two distinct periods of redevelopment governance in this particular urban setting: what I call the “roll-out” (1989-2005) and “roll-with-it” (2005- present) periods of neoliberal governance. The Neoliberalization of Urban Governance Following Peck and Tickell (2002), the term neoliberalization highlights the contextually-specific “path-dependency” and “path-shaping” capacity of what has essentially been a process of capitalist restructuring unfolding at a variety of inter-connected spatial scales (Swyngedouw, 1997; Brenner and Theodore, 2002a; Brenner, 2004; Brenner, et al., 2010a, b). Soja (in Brenner, 2009: 62) provides the following elaboration on the