Planning Tremd: The Community Development Field in a Post-Katrina World by MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Leigh Taylor Graham SEP 16 2010 B.A. Sociology Brandeis University, 1997 LIBRARIES M.B.A. Management and Finance ARCHIVES Leonard N. Stem School of Business, New York University, 2001 SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY September 2010 0 2010 Leigh Taylor Graham. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part. Signature of Author: 3!151 Department of Urban Studies and Planning August 20, 2010 C-) 7 Certified by: j1~ Professor J. Phillip Thompson Da ment of Urban Studies and Planning Th-+ Vpervisorit Accepted by: Professor Eran Ben-Joseph Chair, PhD Committee Department of Urban Studies and Planning Page 1 of 271 Planning Tremd: The Community Development Field in a Post-Katrina World by Leigh Taylor Graham Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning on September 3, 2010 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Urban and Regional Planning ABSTRACT A Network of community development (CD) organizations in New Orleans and nationwide collectively framed Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as the result of willful government failure to protect an original American city and its most vulnerable residents. They saw their efforts to equitably redevelop the city as seeding a renewed social movement for economic and racial justice that would result in the self-determination of local low-income communities of color. This interpretation built on their shared activist histories, especially the movement origins of the CD field that championed the self-determination of low-income urban African-American and Latino neighborhoods. Yet, chronic tension within CD between the field's enduring movement aims and its institutionalized practices emphasizing housing production seriously constrained the Network's efforts. By late 2006, Network organizations had split apart over the future of New Orleans public housing. This dissertation is an in-depth case study of the first 15 months after Katrina that uses participant-observation to explore this tension and its implications for the movement possibilities of the CD field. I argue that there are three mechanisms of institutionalization that stratify the field and constrain its movement aims: a) the marketization of community development, b) the reformation of poverty, and c) the radicalization of community organizing repertoires. In New Orleans, these three mechanisms combined with intense civil society conflict, the roll-out of neoliberal deconcentration policy, a weak local political economy, and competing cultural repertoires within the Network to undermine collective action. Institutionalized race and class inequalities were reproduced within the Network and urban space. When the federal government proposed to demolish 70% of the city's public housing, one Network cohort agreed to redevelop the Lafitte projects while another filed a resident class action lawsuit against the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Lafitte redevelopment cohort came to control a substantial portion of land in Tremd/Lafitte and the resident participation process in redevelopment. Resident participation was a narrowly construed process of site planning, especially compared to principles of resident participation enshrined in neighborhood recovery planning serving mostly middle-class New Orleanians. This unanticipated Network polarization proved instructive. Economic human rights and equitable development activism has grown out of the Network and the Gulf Coast. This suggests Page 2 of 271 possibilities for movement renewal in the institutionalized community development field, particularly by re-appropriating the mechanisms of marketization, poverty reform, and the radicalization of community organizing. Community development's incorporation into the neoliberal political economy has opened up spaces for political resistance by practitioners working within the system. A new discourse of economic human rights points to a reorientation of the field around low-income residents' right to the city. Finally, community organizing can be reintegrated into CD, beginning with internal organizing processes as a means to develop a new theory of power to transcend historical institutional distrust within the sector. Thesis Supervisor: J. Phillip Thompson Title: Associate Professor of Urban Politics Page 3 of 271 Acknowledgments This dissertation is dedicated to the residents and activists of New Orleans and beyond who rose to meet the challenges unleashed by Hurricane Katrina, and have since been tirelessly championing an equitable and just life for all current and former residents of this irrepressible city. I am writing these acknowledgements on August 29, 2010, the five year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall, as New Orleanians and residents of SE Louisiana and the Gulf Coast celebrate their recovery, honor the memories of lost lives, homes and ways of life, and simultaneously deal with new challenges brought about by the Deepwater Horizon/BP Gulf oil spill. This unique region of the country deserves our support, investment and respect long after today's tributes and reflections draw to a close. I am indebted to my committee, Chair J. Phillip Thompson and members Diane E. Davis and JoAnn Carmin, for their keen input and support not only on this thesis, but in their encouragement and feedback over the last five years of my involvement with Hurricane Katrina recovery. I am particularly grateful to Phil for opening up tremendous work and scholarship opportunities for me in the Gulf Coast. Our time together working in the region with community development practitioners and scholars was instructive and invaluable. Professor Michele Lamont of the Department of Sociology at Harvard, former Visiting Professor Gus Newport in the Department of Urban Studies & Planning (DUSP) at MIT, Professor Larry Vale at DUSP, and Professor Renia Ehrenfeucht at the University of New Orleans were also tremendously helpful in making sense of my fieldwork and research agenda. To protect anonymity, I cannot thank particular Katrina colleagues by name. But I would like to express my thanks to the individuals representing the range of community development, labor, social justice and advocacy organizations I had the privilege of working with and learning from over the past five years. From direct action pro-public housing activists to executives at national unions and community development intermediaries, Katrina responders made room for me at their tables and in their demonstrations (be they programmatic or protest). I would like to thank the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, Oxfam America, and especially The Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the Leonard & Louise Riggio Foundation/Project Home Again and the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation for underwriting my applied work in the region through 2010. The Social Science Research Council and the Hal Horowitz Fund at MIT supported my research in its later stages. My colleagues in the PhD program in the Department of Urban Studies & Planning were immensely supportive of this work; I send a special thanks to all of those who attended my defense in July 2010. Their friendly faces and encouraging words meant the world to me. Furthermore, it has been my pleasure to work with and explore New Orleans with the crew of fellow MIT students who also came to the region with good intentions and a desire to contribute to the city's rebirth. Lastly, I thank Sandy Wellford, Karen Yegian, and all the staff in the Page 4 of 271 department who facilitated my research and travel in and out of the Gulf Coast while a full-time student at MIT. I send an enthusiastic shout out to all my Facebook friends, who cheered me on while I was writing this thesis and provided regular reprieves while I was holed up in my office. I could not have considered a PhD nor seen this through to completion without the unconditional love of my parents, Sue and Steve and Jack and Julianne. Their bemused pride in my pursuit of a PhD, with its significant financial opportunity costs, has been a foundation for me in this endeavor. The chance to return home to Massachusetts to attend MIT also gave me the pleasure of living close to my extended family again, and helped me renew some wonderful relationships, especially with my aunts and cousins who shared with me their own insights on public housing while I was consumed with the fate of New Orleans's projects. Finally, I cannot imagine navigating this experience without my husband, Steve Moga, by my side. He is easily the best discovery I made at MIT. I don't recommend to any household trying to write two dissertations at once, but I do hope those who are dealing with such trials have the solid love and warmth of a partner like I have with Steve. He helped me clarify ideas, make sense of what I was seeing, fed me well, and generally made my life happier and more fulfilling. I look forward to our future explorations as we move on from MIT. Page 5 of 271 Table of Contents Chapter Page 1: Hurricane Katrina and the Community Development Field pp. 7-33 2: Mechanisms of Institutionalization and the Crisis of Katrina pp. 34-66 3: Planning