Planners As Supporters and Enablers of Diasporic Placemaking

PLANNERS AS SUPPORTERS AND ENABLERS OF DIASPORIC PLACEMAKING: LESSONS FROM CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School Of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Courtney Elizabeth Knapp August 2014 Copyright ©2014 Courtney Elizabeth Knapp ABSTRACT Planners as Supporters and Enablers of Diasporic Placemaking: Lessons from Chattanooga, Tennessee Courtney Elizabeth Knapp, Ph.D. Cornell University 2014 Professional urban planners have long struggled with questions about how to better support the planning and development of socially equitable and racially just communities. This dissertation project expands this conversation by exploring three centuries of ‘diasporic placemaking’ in the southeastern U.S. city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. I define ‘diasporic placemaking’ as creative, everyday practices through which historically uprooted and migratory populations create communities of material security and cultural belonging from shared social and physical environments. From there, I ask how planners might come to better support and enable multiracial diasporic placemaking in Chattanooga and other complex, racially and culturally diverse cities. The project builds upon literature in citizen participation, planning education, placemaking, theories of diaspora, cultural studies, and participatory action research. Methodologically, it combined ethnographic techniques (narrative interviews, participant observation, and archival analysis) with an action research partnership between the author, Chattanooga Organized for Action and the Chattanooga Public Library. Together, we launched two experimental initiatives: the Sustaining People and Reclaiming Communities (SPARC) Initiative and the Planning Free School of Chattanooga. Both were designed to be alternatives to mainstream planning initiatives underway in Chattanooga and to be created with and for the benefit of low income residents, especially communities of color. The dissertation proposes that diasporic placemaking, as a theory and practice of sociospatial development, should be incorporated into mainstream citizen planning and equitable community development discussions. The history of multiethnic placemaking in Chattanooga provides keen insight into how collaborations and contestations between historically uprooted populations have generated local urban social and spatial orders. Assessing other cities in the same light may help planners and other urban professionals understand how to integrate anti- racism values and practices into urban planning and redevelopment in more substantive and transformative ways. Furthermore, this dissertation proposes that a new era of citizen planning for community self-determination and interdependence lies before us. This updated mode of placemaking should understand how formal politics operate and help residents understand how to navigate public bureaucracies, but it must be ultimately concerned with shifting the powers of urban storytelling, analysis, and decision-making power into the hands of society’s most underrepresented and marginalized members. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Courtney Elizabeth Knapp was awarded a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University in August 2014, where she worked under the chairmanship of Dr. John Forester to complete a participatory action research dissertation project focused on supporting and enabling multiethnic placemaking and community development in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She earned a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science (2003) and a M.A. in Gender/Cultural Studies (2006) from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. She went on to complete a second M.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts (2008). Prior to re-entering academia in 2010, Courtney worked as a researcher and community planner with several Boston-area community development corporations. She also worked as a researcher in the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s Department of Community and Economic Development, and as a research and planning fellow with Project for Public Spaces in New York City. Furthermore, she spent a year employed as a regional Economic Development and Housing Planner for the Northern Middlesex Council of Governments in Lowell, Massachusetts. Courtney’s research interests include housing, economic and cultural development, placemaking, and environmental justice. She will join the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at California State Polytechnic University-- Pomona as an Assistant Professor of Community Development beginning in the fall of 2014. She lives in downtown Los Angeles with her wife, Rebecca, a landscape architect, and their two cats, Penelope and Danzig. iii For Janice Knapp Pielert, A loving aunt, mother, sister, and daughter iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Anyone who has spent time with me over the past four years knows that this dissertation was a collaborative labor of love that would not have been possible without the generous support of several dozen intelligent, committed people. I would first and foremost like to acknowledge and thank my dissertation Chair and academic mentor, Dr. John Forester. I will never forget how thrilled I felt when I learned that I would be working as your Graduate Teaching Assistant upon entering the doctoral program in City and Regional Planning at Cornell. Little could I imagine then how much time, energy, thoughtfulness, and wisdom you’d generously offer me over the course of the next eight semesters. It is truly a privilege to have you as a mentor and a “critical friend.” I would also like to thank my committee members Dr. Carole Boyce Davies (Africana Studies and Research Center) and Dr. Fouad Makki (Development Sociology) for their feedback and encouragement as I developed and embarked upon this complex and nontraditional dissertation project. Carole, you demonstrated with humor and grace from day one what it meant to not compromise one’s personal ethics and political values for the sake of playing the academic ‘game.’ Your courses on Theorizing the Diaspora and Black Literature and Cultural Theory inspired me deeply and our time spent together organizing to preserve the Africana Studies and Research Center during my first year on campus will stay with me for my lifetime. Fouad, your passion for critical social theory is infectious and in my mind, your fall 2010 doctoral seminar entitled “Historical Sociology of Modernity” wins the grand prize for most inspiring course among all higher education coursework I’ve completed over the past fifteen years. v Thanks also to the following members of the Cornell community with whom I had the privilege to work and become close to: Dr. Mildred Warner (City and Regional Planning), Dr. Richard Kiely (Engaged Learning and Research), Dr. Davydd Greenwood (Anthropology), and Paula Horrigan (Landscape Architecture). Big thanks and love, of course, to my fellow CRP Ph.D. peeps, especially Becca Jablonski and Sheryl Ann Simpson, and to my “soul sister” SACanista and marathon dissertation-study buddy Candace Katungi from the department of History. Finally, thanks to my William J. Keeton House “family,” especially John Armstrong, Christina Black, Ethan Stephenson, Sheryl Mauricio, Deb Deweese, the “Jeffs” and all the undergraduates I had the opportunity to make a home with on West Campus. The community of friends and colleagues with whom I had the privilege to work during my year of fieldwork in Chattanooga, Tennessee, could fill pages. Thanks of course to the nearly fifty local “placemakers” who agreed to be interviewed for this project and the more than one hundred participants of the Planning Free School. I want to particularly acknowledge Chattanooga Organized for Action (COA) organizers Perrin Lance, Michael and Keely Gilliland, Chris Brooks, and Megan Hollenbeck; and members of the Westside Community Association, Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association, and Glendale Neighborhood Association, especially Reverend Leroy and Ms. Gloria Griffith, Karl Epperson, Ms. Vannice Hughley and Ms. Tiffany Rankins, and Dr. Everlena Holmes. Thanks also to members of the Concerned Citizens for Justice (CCJ) “fam” for bringing an uncompromising revolutionary spirit to the streets of Chattanooga; to Idle No More! Chattanooga leaders William Boyd Nix, and Tamra and Micah Flores for inviting me to participate in your demonstrations and round dances; and of course, a big shout out to the Occupy Chattanooga crew for helping out with the People’s Park on Central Avenue. Big love, as well, to Lauren McEntire and the Idyll Dandy Arts (IDA) folk for vi becoming my queer comrades during the final weeks I lived in Tennessee. I knew ya’ll had to be out there somewhere and I found you just in the nick of time! I’d also like to thank staff at the Chattanooga Public Library for taking a risk with the Planning Free School and allowing eight workshops to evolve into more than fifty planning- related skill-shares, critical conversations, placemaking exercises, and issue-based discussion groups. None of it would have been possible without the commitment of radical and righteous Systems Administrator Meg Backus, or the generosity of Director Corrine Hill, Assistant Director Nate Hill, or Social Media Coordinator Mary Barnett. Finally, thanks to all of the dedicated librarians working in the Local History Department who connected me with incredible archival resources, and who never complained when I asked for

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