Squeezed in and pushed out: dual and contradictory displacements in Santa Ana, CA
City
Understanding the Causes of Eviction-Based Urban Displacement: Bringing Critical Urban Theory Back In
Metropolitics, Sep 24, 2019
The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy & Inequality in DIY Urbanism
Journal of the American Planning Association
Little Free Libraries: an examination of micro-urbanist interventions
Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, 2017
Abstract Micro-urban interventions at the smallest scales represent a challenge for planners conc... more Abstract Micro-urban interventions at the smallest scales represent a challenge for planners concerned with social justice and urban theory. This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of micro-urbanism through an exploration of the Little Free Library phenomenon. Two case studies in Madison, Wisconsin and Santa Ana, California provide data for a combined quantitative and qualitative analysis that together support a complicated view of the phenomenon and offer insights into urban theory. In particular, the article proposes that Little Free Libraries represent micro-urbanist actions, which can be analyzed according to a theoretical terrain that often blurs the boundaries between “do-it-yourself,” tactical, and guerrilla urbanism. Our research supports the view that micro-urban interventions can take on different forms as either a grassroots contribution to resolving urban problems or a bottom-up effort reinforcing existing and developing spatial inequities.
More than gentrification: geographies of capitalist displacement in Los Angeles 1994–1999
Urban Geography, 2015
Little is understood about displacement in urban contexts. While some of the difficulties are met... more Little is understood about displacement in urban contexts. While some of the difficulties are methodological, the more serious problem is conceptual. Outside of the rent gap hypothesis or the philosophy of property rights, there has been little theoretical inquiry into the causal dynamics of displacement. In this article, I present a study of evictions in Los Angeles that addresses these conceptual and empirical shortcomings. A spatial analysis of more than 70,000 georeferenced evictions between 1994 and 1999 documents the existence of four distinct geographies of displacement, each produced by separate types of causal circumstances. Gentrification explains only one of the four displacement geographies, while the other three are nongentrifying or pre-gentrifying contexts and more appropriately described through growth machine models, global city theory, and financial restructuring. The extent of displacement in pre- and nongentrifying areas reinforces Mark Davidson’s emphasis on Lefebvre’s production of space as a crucial framework for understanding displacement processes.
Facades of Equitable Development: Santa Ana and the Affordable Housing Complex
Journal of Planning Education and Research, 2015
This article problematizes the development of affordable housing as a form of equity planning. Th... more This article problematizes the development of affordable housing as a form of equity planning. Through both qualitative and quantitative data, the article examines three affordable housing projects within a redevelopment plan in Santa Ana, California. The research finds that a narrow focus on affordable housing, as it is designed and produced within the larger affordable housing complex, facilitates the process of gentrification and displacement. The findings show that equity is more than housing production alone. When affordability is defined at a larger scale, and the planning process is stripped of substantive community participation, affordable housing loses its more equitable underpinnings.
Measuring the Effect of Gentrification on Displacement: Multifamily Housing and Eviction in Wisconsin's Madison Urban Region
Housing Policy Debate
ABSTRACT Gentrification research is often based on aerial units that function as proxies for neig... more ABSTRACT Gentrification research is often based on aerial units that function as proxies for neighborhoods. Despite the applicability of this approach, the method is susceptible to the modifiable aerial unit problem that obscures sociospatial patterns of interest both within and across units. This research seeks to complement and problematize findings from aerial unit-based approaches to gentrification through the use of georeferenced temporal data representing two specific processes that are generally understood to occur in real estate-led gentrification processes: new multifamily housing development and displacement in the form of recorded eviction filings. Interrupted time series analysis is used to compare two time points in the development process for various types of new multifamily housing projects with different distance thresholds of recorded eviction filings in the City of Madison, Wisconsin. Findings demonstrate that large multifamily housing developments produce increased eviction filings within a small radius (a tenth of a mile).
Multiple Eviction: An Investigation of Chain Displacement in Dane County, Wisconsin
Urban Affairs Review
Within a context dominated by the seemingly paradoxical juxtaposition of gentrification and aband... more Within a context dominated by the seemingly paradoxical juxtaposition of gentrification and abandonment in New York City during the early 1980s, Peter Marcuse developed an influential typology of displacement that can be conceptualized as a movement from the most readily observable forms of “last-resident” displacement to increasingly less measurable forms of “exclusionary displacement” and “displacement pressure.” While the typology depends heavily on the explanatory frame of demographic transition and the movement out of space, Marcuse also included the possibility of a contradictory form of “chain displacement” that often occurs in non- and/or pregentrification spaces without demographic change. Using geocoded data from 16 years of eviction records in Dane County Wisconsin, this research not only demonstrates the existence of chain displacement within specific neighborhoods, but also exposes sites of “multiple eviction” that combine with forms of disadvantage and relative demogra...
Multiple Eviction: An Investigation of Chain Displacement in Dane County, Wisconsin
Urban Affairs Review
Within a context dominated by the seemingly paradoxical juxtaposition of gentrification and aband... more Within a context dominated by the seemingly paradoxical juxtaposition of gentrification and abandonment in New York City during the early 1980s, Peter Marcuse developed an influential typology of displacement that can be conceptualized as a movement from the most readily observable forms of “last-resident” displacement to increasingly less measurable forms of “exclusionary displacement” and “displacement pressure.” While the typology depends heavily on the explanatory frame of demographic transition and the movement out of space, Marcuse also included the possibility of a contradictory form of “chain displacement” that often occurs in non- and/or pregentrification spaces without demographic change. Using geocoded data from 16 years of eviction records in Dane County Wisconsin, this research not only demonstrates the existence of chain displacement within specific neighborhoods, but also exposes sites of “multiple eviction” that combine with forms of disadvantage and relative demogra...
It was like dancing on a grave": Eviction and Displacement in Los Angeles 1994-1999
Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability , 2017
Micro-urban interventions at the smallest scales represent a challenge
for planners concerned wit... more Micro-urban interventions at the smallest scales represent a challenge for planners concerned with social justice and urban theory. This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of micro-urbanism through an exploration of the Little Free Library phenomenon. Two case studies in Madison, Wisconsin and Santa Ana, California provide data for a combined quantitative and qualitative analysis that together support a complicated view of the phenomenon and offer insights into urban theory. In particular, the article proposes that Little Free Libraries represent micro-urbanist actions, which can be analyzed according to a theoretical terrain that often blurs the boundaries between “do-it-yourself,” tactical, and guerrilla urbanism. Our research supports the view that micro-urban interventions can take on different forms as either a grassroots contribution to resolving urban problems or a bottom-up effort reinforcing existing and developing spatial inequities.
This article problematizes the development of affordable housing as a form of equity planning. Th... more This article problematizes the development of affordable housing as a form of equity planning. Through both qualitative and quantitative data, the article examines three affordable housing projects within a redevelopment plan in Santa Ana, California. The research finds that a narrow focus on affordable housing, as it is designed and produced within the larger affordable housing complex, facilitates the process of gentrification and displacement. The findings show that equity is more than housing production alone. When affordability is defined at a larger scale, and the planning process is stripped of substantive community participation, affordable housing loses its more equitable underpinnings.
Little is understood about displacement in urban contexts. While some of the difficulties are met... more Little is understood about displacement in urban contexts. While some of the difficulties are methodological, the more serious problem is conceptual. Outside of the rent gap hypothesis or the philosophy of property rights, there has been little theoretical inquiry into the causal dynamics of displacement. In this article, I present a study of evictions in Los Angeles that addresses these conceptual and empirical shortcomings. A spatial analysis of more than 70,000 georeferenced evictions between 1994 and 1999 documents the existence of four distinct geographies of displacement, each produced by separate types of causal circumstances. Gentrification explains only one of the four displacement geographies, while the other three are nongentrifying or pregentrifying contexts and more appropriately described through growth machine models, global city theory, and financial restructuring. The extent of displacement in pre- and nongentrifying areas reinforces Mark Davidson’s emphasis on Lefebvre’s production of space as a crucial framework for understanding displacement processes.
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Papers by Revel Sims
for planners concerned with social justice and urban theory. This
paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of micro-urbanism
through an exploration of the Little Free Library phenomenon.
Two case studies in Madison, Wisconsin and Santa Ana, California
provide data for a combined quantitative and qualitative analysis
that together support a complicated view of the phenomenon and
offer insights into urban theory. In particular, the article proposes
that Little Free Libraries represent micro-urbanist actions, which can
be analyzed according to a theoretical terrain that often blurs the
boundaries between “do-it-yourself,” tactical, and guerrilla urbanism.
Our research supports the view that micro-urban interventions
can take on different forms as either a grassroots contribution to
resolving urban problems or a bottom-up effort reinforcing existing
and developing spatial inequities.
quantitative data, the article examines three affordable housing projects within a redevelopment plan in Santa Ana, California.
The research finds that a narrow focus on affordable housing, as it is designed and produced within the larger affordable
housing complex, facilitates the process of gentrification and displacement. The findings show that equity is more than
housing production alone. When affordability is defined at a larger scale, and the planning process is stripped of substantive
community participation, affordable housing loses its more equitable underpinnings.
produced by separate types of causal circumstances. Gentrification explains only one of the four displacement geographies, while the other three are nongentrifying or pregentrifying contexts and more appropriately described through growth machine models, global city theory, and financial restructuring. The extent of displacement in pre- and nongentrifying areas reinforces Mark Davidson’s emphasis on Lefebvre’s production of space as a crucial framework for understanding displacement processes.