Slow Train Coming: Power, Politics, and Redevelopment Planning in an American City

Abstract

Who decides which neighborhoods receive affordable housing, community gardens, or job centers? How do these organizations and agencies get a seat at the decision-making table? And what can urban redevelopment politics tell us about larger links between governance and inequality in American cities? This dissertation, based on four years of ethnographic fieldwork in Boston, addresses these questions and significantly advances our understanding of urban governance and neighborhood inequality. First, I argue that influence over community development plans depends on organizational legitimacy, not unequal access to resources. Second, I illustrate a consequential realignment of political representation, showing how private community-based organizations (CBOs)—not elected politicians—represent poor neighborhoods in community development decision-making. Finally, I reveal how subtle cultural processes—not overt elite domination—undermine resident power in public participatory processes. By focusing on the day-to-day grind of governance, this dissertation reveals overlooked actors and new political processes. It is a unique urban ethnography that takes readers off of the street corner and into the conference rooms of government agencies and private development organizations—a move forcing social scientists to rethink dynamics of power, political representation, and inequality in poor neighborhoods.