Rhetorical Cartographies: (Re)Mapping Urban Spaces
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Rhetorical Cartographies: (Re)Mapping Urban Spaces Samantha Senda-Cook Creighton University ~ [email protected] Michael Middleton University of Utah ~ [email protected] Danielle Endres University of Utah ~ [email protected] Abstract When residents speak about Omaha, they usually break it up into three geographic areas: North Omaha, South Omaha, and West Omaha. Although these boundaries appear clear-cut through geographic demarcations, demographic data, and local perceptions, certain features create gaps between neighborhoods while other neighborhoods overlap, yielding places that challenge the widely perceived boundaries of Omaha. We introduce a material element into Ronald Walter Greene and Kevin Douglas Kuswa’s (2012) notion of rhetorical cartographies to describe the dynamic processes of making space/place wherein people challenge and support the normative articulations of space/place by reconstructing them through material changes, engaging in practices that establish vernacular boundaries and establishing (new) patterns of movement. In theorizing rhetorical cartographies, we introduce three tactics of rhetorical cartography that emerged from our field-based participatory case study in Omaha: enacting material change, undoing boundaries, and moving through the city. While much rhetorical scholarship on space/place focuses on the ways in which material structures (e.g., memorials, shopping centers, and museums) act rhetorically as places of persuasion, we want to extend our understanding of the rhetoricity of space/ place— along the lines of their material (re)construction with consequences—to think about ongoing rhetorical performances that (re)make spaces/places. Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015 Page 2 of 22 When residents speak about Omaha, they usually break it up into three geographic areas: North Omaha, South Omaha, and West Omaha. As Figure 1 illustrates, Dodge Street divides North and South Omaha in the eastern part of the city. West Omaha currently describes the area west of 72nd Street and extends to around 200th Street, but given Omaha’s urban planning and annexation policies, West Omaha is an ever-expanding region of the city. Population mapping illustrates that Omaha is one of the most severely racially and economically segregated cities in the country; segregation in Omaha roughly corresponds to these three geographic areas (Cable, 2013). Figure 1: This map provides an overview of Omaha and demonstrates that the eastern part of the city, the older part, is divided generally into North and South whereas West Omaha is not. Although we have marked some of the points referenced in this essay, this map glosses over most of the neighborhoods that exist, many with their own reputations and internal cultures. Although these boundaries appear clear-cut through geographic demarcations, demographic data, and local perceptions, features such as highways, rail lines, and decaying business districts create gaps between neighborhoods while other neighborhoods overlap, yielding places that challenge the widely perceived boundaries of Omaha. Particular neighborhoods or regions of the city within these broad geographic areas have atmospheres of their own that may reinforce or challenge the perceptions of North, South, and West Omaha. These more localized neighborhood divisions have overlapping and evolving boundaries. Furthering the ambiguity, navigating through Omaha can introduce changes from street to street, as is the case with many cities. With surprising suddenness, a person walking from one area to another can go from feeling safe to vulnerable in just a few Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015 Page 3 of 22 minutes. One such area exists about half a mile north of Dodge Street around 33rd Street; it is called Gifford Park. Gifford Park has had a reputation as a dangerous neighborhood with high crime rates and extensive drug-related activities, but recent initiatives by Gifford Park’s multiracial residents (e.g., putting community gardens in abandoned lots) are attempting to reconstruct this area into a more positive, livable, and community-centered neighborhood, while keeping it affordable (Bicak, 2014; Gonzalez, 2013; Oliver, 2013). Across Dodge Street, a few blocks south of Gifford Park, a new shopping and residential district called Midtown Crossing functions as an example of gentrification in an area of Omaha that used to have low property prices because of high crime rates. These examples not only demonstrate the ways that boundaries shift and movement patterns emerge and change as neighborhoods themselves change in material ways, but also reveal that these changes come with rhetorical consequences for current and future residents. We conceptualize the ongoing urban development and change in Omaha as an example of place- in-process. As Tim Cresswell (2004) notes, places are not static, but are always being “made, maintained and contested” through material, embodied, and emplaced rhetorics (p. 5). Before unpacking the processual nature of places, it is important to define place and its relativity to space. Following Carole Blair, Greg Dickinson, and Brian Ott (2010), space and place are mutually constitutive with space being more general than place. Space can be thought of as a broad concept, recognizing patterns and practices of space that extend beyond one location whereas place is a localized, semi-bounded, instantiation of spatial practices. Danielle Endres and Samantha Senda-Cook (2011) explain it this way: “Place refers to particular locations (e.g., a city, a particular shopping mall, or a park) that are semi-bounded, a combination of material and symbolic qualities, and embodied” whereas “[s]pace refers to a more general notion of how society and social practices are regulated (and sometimes disciplined) by spatial thinking (e.g., capitalist mode of production or gendered notions of public and private space) (p. 259).” Within this conception, both space and place are imbued with meaning. As such, place is particularized or localized whereas space is more general but not without meaning. Given their mutual constitutivity, both space and place are in a processual relationship of space/place. Our interest in this chapter is with neighborhoods and regions in Omaha—a particular set of places that are inextricably connected to larger spatial patterns. While much rhetorical scholarship on space/place focuses on the ways in which material structures (e.g., memorials, shopping centers, and museums) act rhetorically as places of persuasion (Aoki, Dickinson, & Ott, 2010; Blair, 1999; Blair & Michel, 2000; Blair, Dickinson, & Ott, 2010; Cintron, 1997; Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015 Page 4 of 22 Clark, 2010; Dickinson, 2002; Dickinson, Ott, & Aoki, 2006; Druschke, 2013; Edbauer, 2005; Rai, 2011; Rice, Jeff, 2012; Rice, Jenny, 2012), we want to extend our understanding of the rhetoricity of space/ place—along the lines of their material (re)construction with consequences—to think about ongoing rhetorical performances that (re)make spaces/places. Thinking about the processual nature of place through our examination of Omaha highlights another way of thinking about places of persuasion that focuses on the localized, everyday, rhetorical performances that can affect changing meanings of place. To do this, we build on Ronald Walter Greene and Kevin Douglas Kuswa’s (2012) notion of rhetorical cartographies as a way to focus on how people engage with and map out spaces/places, and how those mappings perform rhetorical functions. While Greene and Kuswa use rhetorical cartography as a critical tool that a rhetorician imposes on places to make sense of their uses, we contend that participants themselves deploy rhetorical cartography as a tactic of (re)creating places to negotiate power locally (Certeau, 1984). For us, rhetorical cartographies describe the dynamic processes of making space/place wherein people challenge and support the normative articulations of space/place by reconstructing them through material changes, engaging in practices that establish vernacular boundaries and establishing (new) patterns of movement. In this chapter, we begin by further theorizing rhetorical cartographies. In unpacking this concept, we introduce three tactics of rhetorical cartography that emerged from our field-based participatory case study in Omaha: enacting material change, undoing boundaries, and moving through the city. These three tactics are not meant to be exhaustive nor mutually exclusive from each other but rather to offer a starting point for thinking through the concept. Then, after briefly introducing the case study and methods, we present our analysis of the rhetorical cartographies of material changes, boundary-making, and transportation in midtown Omaha. The conclusion addresses some of the implications of rhetorical cartography for our understanding of space/place, rhetorical field methods, and for urbanization. Theorizing Rhetorical Cartographies In recent years, rhetorical