Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses Summer 2012 Narrative Processes in Urban Planning: A Case Study of Swamp Gravy in Colquitt, Georgia Ronald David Pate Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Pate, Ronald David, "Narrative Processes in Urban Planning: A Case Study of Swamp Gravy in Colquitt, Georgia" (2012). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 469. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.469 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. Narrative Processes in Urban Planning: A Case Study of Swamp Gravy in Colquitt, Georgia by Ronald David Pate A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Studies Dissertation Committee: Carl Abbott, Chair Sy Adler Katrine Barber Connie P. Ozawa Richard Wattenberg Christopher Zinn Portland State University ©2012 i ABSTRACT In 1990 many in Colquitt, Georgia considered themselves to be a dying town due to the loss of jobs and outmigration that occurred when labor intensive farming transitioned to the machine. In response citizens brought in a theater director from Chicago who helped them launch a performance series of inclusive stories that were acted by local volunteers. The resulting series called Swamp Gravy has run from 1992 to present (2012), and has led to purported claims of community revitalization. The purpose of this study was to discover what this ongoing narrative community engagement meant to the people of Colquitt in regards to: community experiences that produced new relationships (including those between Blacks and Whites); personal empowerment; the coproduction of an emerging and diverse community identity; and institutional and economic development. Methods for this case study included narrative interviews of participants, attendees and local citizens, as well as observation of the town and the performances, and document analysis. Many participant volunteers and attendees became Swamp Gravy enthusiasts, and describe their experiences as coming out into a meaningful experience of community, which included forming relationships with diverse others (including those of a different race). The enthusiasts speak of growing into ii larger community responsibilities with others for the common good, and feel that ongoing and inclusive storytelling is very important to coproducing a diverse heritage that informs the future of their city. Other attendees (predominantly the business community) describe the benefits of Swamp Gravy as instrumental to having given the town recognition (identity) as an entertaining tourist attraction that exposed individual talent, boosted individual confidence, and enhanced social connectivity. Others in Colquitt were indifferent or resistive to the coming out that the performances invite. Most everyone recognizes that Swamp Gravy has attracted outside tourists which has boosted economic development, occasioned the renovation of downtown Colquitt square and the formation of institutions to continue to attract and accommodate visitors from afar. This case is theorized in terms of the emerging communicative turn in planning that juxtaposes the planner as mediator or facilitator, and stakeholders as co-producers. The findings in this case study support that the Swamp Gravy form of narrative process has some potential for guiding stakeholders to a just diversity in cities, neighborhoods and towns, and as such should be studied further. Urban planning in situations of urban renewal may be one place where utilizing this form of meaningful engagement could lead to discovery of new identities, which may both inform and motivate a just plan to be coproduced. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are dozens of people to whom I am indebted to for their time, contributions, and support of this research case study. I am deeply grateful to Joy Jinks, CMAC and the many citizens of Colquitt who accommodated this study in so many ways. I am grateful to Richard Geer and CPI for making themselves available, including their invitations to observe their work in other places. I have benefited greatly from the input and guidance of my dissertation chair, Dr. Carl Abbott, as well as Dr. Charles Heying, Dr. Connie Ozawa, Dr. Sy Adler, and my distinguished committee members. I am appreciative of the conversations that I have had about this case study with Dr. James Throgmorton and Dr. Leonie Sandercock – both inspirations to development of narrative processes in urban planning. I owe much to fellow student Jane Waddel, who was an encouraging sounding board throughout the research process. To my wife Mary, I am most grateful for the support and encouragement that was instrumental in helping keep me moving forward on this project to completion. And lastly, to my father Robert M. Pate, who lived in endless pursuit of deliberation across boundaries of interests, I owe most of what has motivated me to study the potential for narrative processes to discover what is good for a diverse set of stakeholders. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES vii PREFACE viii CHAPTER 1: COLQUITT, GEORGIA AND SWAMP GRAVY 1 Map 4 Colquitt-Miller Arts Council (CMAC) 10 Community Performance: Theater of the People, By the People and For the People 15 CHAPTER 2: NARRATIVE PROCESSES IN URBAN PLANNING 21 The Narrative Turn in the Social Sciences 33 The Narrative Path to Active Communities 38 Story and Critical Race Theory 43 Communicative Agency and Storytelling in Community 44 Common Challenges to Narrative Theory and Praxis 46 CHAPTER 3: METHODS 50 Data Collection 51 CHAPTER 4: COMMUNITY PERFORMANCE: PROCESS & PRAXIS 56 Historical Parallelism: Beyond Confrontation 60 Proleptic Stories: Playing Forward Lessons for Today 63 Community Storytelling as Responsive Self-Regulation 67 The Holographic Story 69 Multiple Stories Equals Multiple Perspectives 71 Activating a Community of Communicative Agents 73 Community: Performance and Mimicry 76 Gathering Stories and Co-creating the Plays 80 The Ebb and Flow of Community Buy-in 93 Designing a Theater with Community in Mind 111 Collaborative Place Making 119 Experiencing Cotton Hall 125 Swamp Gravy’s Sacred Structures 130 v CHAPTER 5: BEING A PERSON IN COMMUNITY 138 Community as Experience 138 Community Experience Tracks 143 Swamp Gravy and Race: Mixing It All Up 179 Empowerment: Can Do Spirit 197 Empowerment: Confidence 200 Empowerment: Communicative Agency 203 Empowerment: Political 212 Empowerment: Making Connections 216 CHAPTER 6: BUILDING ON SUCCESS 225 Identity 225 Community and Economics 235 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION 256 Findings 258 Recommendations for Future Research 286 REFERENCES 288 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1 US Census Bureau, 2010 Census Data 8 Table 2 Estimated Economic Impact of Swamp Gravy 251 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Map Colquitt, Georgia 4 Figure 2 Peace Mural 106 Figure 3 Cotton Hall Home Base 114 Figure 4 Cotton Hall Early Sketch 115 Figure 5 Veronica Haire 154 Figure 6 Volunteer Fire Department 169 Figure 7 Bicycle Brigade Mural 169 Figure 8 CMAC Circle of Services 237 Figure 9 Saturday Morning on the Square Mural 241 Figure 10 Spirit of All Farmers Mural 243 Figure 11 Sound Stage 246 Figure 12 CMAC Income Pie Chart 248 viii NARRATIVE PROCESSES IN URBAN PLANNING: A CASE STUDY OF SWAMP GRAVY IN COLQUITT, GEORGIA Preface There are many who fail to recognize the potential value of an urban planning process such as community storytelling. The development balance in this country, especially in the past thirty years has tipped in further favor of a more hierarchical process -- from an advancing trickle-down economics, to the financial advantages given to business interests. Neo-liberal economic policies value and trust the controlling interests of the business elite when it comes to charting a successful future for everyone. Recent research on megaprojects has demonstrated that often, planning processes pose as a process of technical and economic engagement while avoiding the deeper story, which allows the economic rationalizations of development actors to marginalize the narratives of other stakeholders. It is not surprising that the consequences benefit by plotted design the narrow agendas of the economic actors, while commonly proving devastating to others (Flyvbjerg 2004). Over the past fifteen years there have been a number of planning theorists who have suggested that the business of the planner is to listen to all the stories of the stakeholders (Forester 2001; Sandercock 2003b; Throgmorton 2003b; ix Mandelbaum 2003; Healey 1992). If narrative processes in urban planning can produce better plans in terms of being socially just, economically viable, and environmentally sustainable, then it is important that planners acquire competency at understanding and facilitating a process of listening to, telling, and responding to stories about what has been (via personal stories), in order to inform and guide what could be regarding a given planning situation. Without meaningful communication storyteller to storyteller,