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Race, Urban Politics, and the Governance of Vacant Land in Boston from 1950

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Race, Urban Politics, and the Governance of Vacant Land in Boston from 1950 Growing Land, Growing Law: Race, Urban Politics, and the Governance of Vacant Land in Boston from 1950 by Brenna Keatinge A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Brenna Keatinge, 2018 ii Growing Land, Growing Law: Race, Urban Politics, and the Governance of Vacant Land in Boston from 1950 Brenna Keatinge Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies University of Toronto 2018 Abstract Drawing on archival research, document analysis, stakeholder interviews, and ethnographic work, this study takes an historical approach to analyze the governance of vacant land in the era of neoliberal urban governance in Boston. Previous academic and bureaucratic scholarship has established a well-worn narrative about vacant land as a critical urban problem and the importance of municipal interventions to return it to its “highest and best use.” This study investigates the physical production and ideological construction of vacant land located primarily in several historically low income racialized neighbourhoods in Boston, as well as two programmatic fixes designed by the municipality to address it: community gardening in the 1970s, and urban farming beginning around 2010. In this thesis, I contend that the identification of land as vacant is a social and administrative process that signals vacancy as an object of governance constructed alongside ideologies of the “waste” of racialized populations and their spaces. Vacancy extends the power of “blight” used to justify eminent domain takings of racialized neighbourhoods under urban renewal, while simultaneously fitting the conditions of urban development under neoliberalism and seeming, like other tools of urban planning, impartial to race. I argue that constructing vacant land in racialized neighbourhoods as an urban problem actuates particular kinds of neoliberal iii governance assemblages designed to yield its “highest and best use,” and to govern racialized populations via the rollout of seemingly community-friendly programmatic fixes. By analyzing the role of vacant land in racialized neighbourhoods as a tool used to ensure the productive capacity of land in the capitalist city, this study offers significant insights into the relationship between race and uneven urban development. This study also contributes to knowledge about urban governance by analyzing the workings of an important tool through which the heavy-handed power of the municipality, derided under neoliberalism, is both constructed and justified. iv Acknowledgments Writing a thesis is an academic task, but it also takes a lot of emotional energy, as anyone who has ever written one can attest. This project has taken the better part of 5 years from conception to completion, and wouldn't have been possible without the assistance of many individuals. I would first like to thank my dissertation committee, Deborah Cowen, Paula Maurutto, Deborah G. Martin, and especially my supervisor, Mariana Valverde, for their support and helpful comments on various stages of my numerous drafts. Thanks also to my dissertation coach, Keith Burton, who helped to keep me on task, made my dissertating more fun, and helped me to see the light at the end of what seemed at times to be an unending tunnel. I am extremely appreciative to the students in the Geography Department at Clark University where I spent the fall semester in 2013 and where I learned that I am a geographer at heart. Deborah G. Martin did a fabulous job of supervising my work there and helping me to think more geographically about law and about neoliberal urban development. I cannot thank the respondents of my study enough who gave me their time and their thoughts for this project. They met me at coffee houses and sometimes even took me into their homes, and helped me to understand their worlds. I also appreciate the farmers I worked with who showed me the ropes in the world of urban farming in Boston, and shared very personal and everyday experiences with me over the course of several months. Thank you to the archivers at the City of Boston Archives who brought out many dusty boxes for me. And of course, thank you to Rosanne and Jeff Foley who were generous enough to share their home with me for several months during 2014 when I lived in Ashmont Hill and worked on the farms. v I would like to acknowledge Julie Stone for providing several of the pictures of community gardens from the 1970s that I included in Chapter 4 and that help to bring gardens to life. I would also like to acknowledge Dexter Locke for making the map of Boston’s neighbourhoods in the Introduction. Thank you to the University of Toronto, the Province of Ontario, and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for financially supporting this project. Last but not at all least, an enormous thanks to my family and friends who helped keep me grounded and sane throughout the process, and a special mention to my long-suffering office partner, Julius Haag, who brought me lunch when I needed it most. Much love. vi Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................... IV TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................. VI LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... X LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................... XI LIST OF ACRONYMS ............................................................................................................. XIII CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 1 2 BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................................ 2 3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS .......................................................................................................... 5 4 CONTEXT ................................................................................................................................ 6 5 METHODS AND ANALYSIS .................................................................................................... 20 6 CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE STUDY .......................................................................................... 28 7 OVERVIEW OF THE THESIS ................................................................................................... 29 CHAPTER 2 CONCEPTUALIZING URBAN VACANT LAND IN THE UNITED STATES ..................... 33 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 33 2 DEFINING VACANT LAND ..................................................................................................... 35 3 CONCEPTUALIZING VACANT LAND ...................................................................................... 37 4 THEORIZING VACANCY AS AN OBJECT OF GOVERNANCE .................................................... 46 5 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................... 53 CHAPTER 3 GROWING LAND: THE ORIGINS OF VACANCY ...................................................... 55 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 55 vii 2 A NOTE ON SOURCES ........................................................................................................... 56 3 BLIGHT AND VACANCY FROM URBAN RENEWAL TO SUBURBAN REDEVELOPMENT ......... 57 4 FROM BLIGHT TO VACANCY IN BOSTON ............................................................................. 64 5 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................... 81 CHAPTER 4 GARDENS AS DEVELOPMENT AND AS EMPOWERMENT: COMMUNITY GARDENING AS A PROGRAMMATIC FIX IN BOSTON, 1970-1990 ............................................ 83 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 83 2 A NOTE ON SOURCES ........................................................................................................... 85 3 CONTEXT .............................................................................................................................. 86 4 SHARED NARRATIVES OF GARDENS IN BOSTON .................................................................. 93 5 DIVERGING NARRATIVES ................................................................................................... 102 6 EFFECTS OF THE COALESCING AND DIVERGING NARRATIVES OF LAND AND GARDENS DEVELOPMENT .................................................................................................................. 134 7 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 145 CHAPTER 5 GROWING LAW: ARTICLE 89 AND URBAN FARMING IN THE INNER CITY AS A NEW PROGRAMMATIC FIX FOR VACANT LAND ...........................................................................
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