Tag Archives: gentrification

Built Environment Analysis: Black Atlanta and Gentrification

Atlanta Skyline from Buckhead.

Atlanta Skyline from Buckhead.

 

 

Atlanta, the most populous city and also the U.S. state of Georgia’s economic and cultural nucleus, arose out of the ashes of the Civil War in 1837. Located at the end destination to two major railroad lines Atlanta was quickly established as a metropolis hub. The city of Atlanta, although diverse with heavy spacial connotations of hip-hop culture, trap culture, and the civil-rights movement and other aspects of specifically black, minority culture, promotes the gentrification and thus the evanescence of a primary characteristic of the city’s rhetoric via neighborhood rehabilitation. Atlanta is also known colloquially as the “capital city of black america” or “black mecca” and this is particularly because of its status as as a hub for black productivity especially in terms of culture. In fact, 80 percent of Georgia’s African-American population is concentrated in the Atlanta Metro area. Atlanta’s accretion of African-Americans can be directly attributed to the prevalence of the slave trade in Antebellum South. In 1850 the city of Atlanta had 493 enslaved blacks and 18 free-blacks. By the year 1870 African-Americans comprised 46% of the total population of Atlanta (21,700) this ratio of blacks to other races remained steady well into the 19th century.

In accordance to the prevalence of African-Americans in the city, aspects of African-American culture were and are still today heavily associated, rhetorically, with the city. Hip-Hop and Trap culture and the Civil-Rights movement all are major characteristics of African-American culture and Atlanta alike. The commonality between the two subcultures and the historical movement combatting Jim Crow south is that they are exemplary of the African-American struggle. The city of Atlanta, like many others in the south is no stranger to the promotion and maintenance of gentrification and other aspects of Caucasian socioeconomic superiority. The Civil Rights Movement was the uprising of African-American’s in the south against racist and segregationist Jim Crow laws.

Sculpture outline of Martin Luther King superimposed on the Atlanta skyline

Sculpture outline of Martin Luther King superimposed on the Atlanta skyline

Atlanta’s role as an epicenter of the Civil-Rights Movement as a whole is apparent with its status as the birth and living place of perhaps the most prevalent and well know Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr and city that houses many memorials to the Civil Rights Movement and African-American culture in the city such as the King Center and the Apex Museum. Hip-Hop and its subcategory of Trap which was created in Atlanta is specifically related to and talks about the struggle of “trapping”(to sell and or cook) drugs in metro Atlanta’s lower class, demographically African-American ghettos. The history of Atlanta as a travel stop or major destination and Atlanta’s abundance of highways, interstates, explains it’s prevalence in drug trafficking and how ‘Trap’ music came to be. Trap music is a form of rap music that relies heavily “the sound of the brass, triangle, triplet hi hats, loud kicks, snappy snares and low end 808 bass samples that are used when composing tracks”. The percussion samples of choice when making trap music are usually originate from the Roland T-R 808 drum synth (RunTheTrap.com). The rise in the mainstream media popularity of aspects of African-American culture coming out of Atlanta has worked to create an Afro-centric spacial rhetoric for the city and catalyzed its coining as a “black mecca.

Designer's single "Panda" cover art.

Designer’s single “Panda” cover art.

This is especially true of Hip-Hop and Trap culture which according to Noisey Atlanta rose out of Atlanta’s Zones 1-6 and has since then rose to global popularity with songs like “Panda” by Trap artist Desiigner and Future’s trap album reaching number 1 status on Billboard’s Top 100 Charts. With the first line of the Top 100 song in America right now being “I got broads in Atlanta” Atlanta is getting a lot of popular media attention and the artists themselves as well as the city are capitalizing on Atlanta’s spacial rhetoric as an epicenter for black culture (Forbes).  Despite this, Atlanta is aiding in the dissapearance of this inherently lower socio-economic Afro-centric culture through promoting the gentrification of this city with inherent Afro-centric connotations. Atlanta is accomplishing this architecturally through neighborhood rehabilitation. Neighborhood rehabilitation also known as urban renewal, or even urban revitalization is roughly defined as “a natural process through which the urban environment, viewed as a living entity 1, undergoes transformation. “As the years pass, transformations take place, allowing the city to constantly rejuvenate itself in a natural and organic way” (mcgill.ca). Within the boundaries of metro Atlanta or greater Fulton county, examples of this gentrification are apparent everywhere. In my own research  I visited CabbageTown Atlanta, a little town adjacent to Oakland Cemetery located to the east of downtown Atlanta. Cabbage town is a clear example of a town within Atlanta that went through some neighborhood revitalization. Cabbage town started off as a the location of the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill and housing for the factory workers. Since then these houses for poor factory workers have been partially torn down and converted into lofts or business offices. The juxtaposition of traditional southern homes and bungalows with wrap around porches and A-frame roofs sitting perpendicular and parallel to high end lofts exemplified the change in not only architectural styles, but the inherent and insidious hinting towards the change in socio-economic demographic makeup of the area.

An alley in the very eclectic Cabbage Town Atlanta.

An alley in the very eclectic Cabbage Town Atlanta.

The Kirkwood area of Atlanta has also gone through some neighborhood revitalization that has resulted in a racial divide and then the over taking of a traditionally black, minority neighborhood, as Caucasians moved into these areas like Edgewood, Kirkwood, and other East Atlanta towns prevalent in the “Trap Culture” of Atlanta: “You can still find small houses in need of repair, older black men hanging out on front porches, the occasional homeless addict wandering the streets. Yet they share space now with cafes, clothing galleries, expensively renovated homes and factories converted into upscale lofts. Almost any day of the week, one finds young white couples pushing baby strollers or checking out the progress of the new Japanese restaurant that’s going in…White newcomers are picking up houses and condos in Cabbagetown and Midtown, in Edgewood, Kirkwood and Castleberry Hill, up at the new Atlantic Station project and downtown in mixed-income developments that have replaced some of the most legendarily dysfunctional public housing in America. “It has become classy,” says local political consultant Angelo Fuster, “to live in the city.”

There is really only one way to put it: Atlanta is becoming whiter, and at a pace that outstrips the rest of the nation. The white share of the city’s population, says Brookings Institution demographer William Frey, grew faster between 2000 and 2006 than that of any other U.S. city. It increased from 31 percent in 2000 to 35 percent in 2006, a numeric gain of 26,000, more than double the increase between 1990 and 2000″ (Governing.com). With gentrification comes the ideal that the “traps” and the “ghettos” of the city that house mostly African-Americans of lower socio-economic stature are blemishes on the face of the city of Atlanta, although these areas that are being stripped of their original homeowners and image, are also being stripped of the black culture that is so often attributed to Atlanta. It is not only the understandably  negative or problematic connotation of trap and drug culture that is being slowly snuffed out by the white paint of gentrification, but also areas key to African-American Civil Rights, like Auburn Avenue (the birth place, burial place, and location of Ebenezer Baptist Church of Martin Luther King’s) is slowly but surely facing white-washing as these neighborhoods are being changed over to welcome those of a higher socio-economic stature, with percentage of white collar workers in these areas averaging around 60.2% (points2homes.com).

Statistics Chart of Employment by Race and Gender.

While Atlanta is not seemingly directly targeting African-Americans, it is statistical knowledge that Caucasians possess higher paying jobs to be able to live in these rehabilitated or revitalized areas with White males averaging at about 34.8% with managerial or professional jobs and 16.7% with sales and office professions. Whereas on average, African-American males sit at about 23.5% with professional or managerial jobs and 14.1% with sales or office professions (bls.gov). Although, while the morphing and changing of a neighborhood overtime is natural, neighborhood revitalization is problematic because a lot of the time it results in the uprooting of a people and the complete loss of historic neighborhood characteristics.

 

Other examples of this are popping up everywhere as urbanism continues to promote the building up of its spaces. In regards to Atlanta, because it has such a heavy spacial connotation of African-American culture (enough for it to be mistakenly coined as a black mecca) this neighborhood rehabilitation or gentrification is resulting in the a literal white-washing or white out of a crucial part of Atlanta’s overall culture and aesthetic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

“Charts.” Billboard. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

Caldeira, T. P. R. “Fortcified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation.” Public Culture 8.2 (1996): 303-28. Web.

“Atlanta and the Urban Future.” Governing Magazine: State and Local Government News for America’s Leaders. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

Levatino, Adrienne M. Neighborhood Commercial Rehabilitation. Washington: National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, 1978. Print.

“Chapter 1: Urban Renewal.” Home Page. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

Richard Lloyd, “Urbanization and the Southern United States,” Annual Review of Sociology 38 (2012): 483–506.

The Civil Rights Movement.” The Civil Rights Movement. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

“What Is Trap Music? Trap Music Explained | Run The Trap.” Trap Music Blog Run The Trap The Best Hip Hop EDM Club. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

“Earnings and Employment by Occupation, Race, Ethnicity, and Sex, 2010 : The Economics Daily : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

United States. National Park Service. “African-American Experience–Atlanta: A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary.” National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

United States. National Park Service. “African-American Experience–Atlanta: A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary.” National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

“Segregation’s New Geography: The Atlanta Metro Region, Race, and the Declining Prospects for Upward Mobility.” Jjoh238. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

 

 

Exterior Engaging Encounters: Built Environment Description of Cabbage Town

An alley in the very eclectic Cabbage Town Atlanta.

Its 2:30 in the afternoon and the sun is shining down on the concrete road. Cars drive up and down the two way street separating the shops, boutiques, and old ward Atlanta housing from the Oakland cemeteries brick walls. The sound of birds calling, the indiscernible chatter of humans. I walk past a coffee shop called octane, boutiques and technology companies line the streets, the entrances to each of the shops not facing out towards the streets but in a partially shaded alleyway. Streets are cracked and worn, and the paint discerning left from right lane are faded. The buildings lining Memorial Ave are all some sort of business offering a service and architecturally are urban contemporary save for the refurbished brick buildings.Directly behind these buildings housing businesses or offices, old, A-frame houses line the streets, met at the end by a chain fence separating the homes from a very loud freeway. Some of these old homes are remodeled, keeping the same air of the traditional, wrap around porch home, but painted over and refurbished. Other homes are visibly original in build as well as landscaping upkeep. Cabbage town houses a mixture of businesses and residential area.

 

Actually An Annotation: Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods

Keating, W. Dennis, and Norman Krumholz. Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods: Achievements, Opportunities, and Limits. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999. Print.
Highly renowned Emeritus professor of Urban Studies and Law  Keating, and Krumholz an esteemed tenured professor of Urban Studies  also at Cleveland State University write in Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods on the social implications behind communal revitalization and gentrification stating that: “The books in this series look at cities from a multidisciplinary perspective affording students and practitioners a better understanding of the multiplicity of issues facing planning and cities and of emerging policies and techniques aimed at addressing those issues”(xi). This book acts as an expose or on the insidious social implications for people in an urban setting, focusing on section 8 housing or living in ghettos made by rebuilding communities. This book, written by esteemed researchers in the field of urban studies solidifying this piece’s logos, thus is written for other researchers as a secondary source on the topic of urbanism.  This is useful for academic scholars to come to an understanding on the implications of communal revitalization in an urban setting.

Some Summarizing Stuff: Architectural Exclusion

The Architectural Exclusion piece by Sarah Schindler: Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation Through Physical Design of the Built Environment was not only deeply insightful and thought provoking, but also maddening. In this piece Schindler breaks down exactly what architectural exclusion is and how architecture is used to alter the behavior and abilities of the people within or surrounded by said architecture, and even how it is purposely constructed to exclude.

Schindler describes architectural exclusion as “a man made built environment with specific features that make it difficult for certain individuals- usually poor people and people of color- to access certain places”. Some of these exclusionary architectural pieces are obvious, such as walls or gates, others such as bus stops and traffic signs are more insidious in their purpose of denying unwanted people into suburbia or other places of higher socioeconomic status. Lawmakers and civil activists have catalyzed progressive change in acts of exclusion towards minorities or those living in poverty such as rezoning, however when it comes to architectural exclusion many things such as lack of streets signs to allow for people who are unfamiliar with the area (people of lower socioeconomic status who couldn’t afford to live there) to be able to get around efficiently, thus discouraging people who don’t live in the neighborhood to travel in that area.

Another example of architectural exclusion given by the author is the placement of bus and train stops. It doesn’t usually come to the attention of the minds of people who don’t use public transportation, however to those who utilize public transportation, they are affected directly by the decision made by suburban predominantly white areas to blocked transportation stops from their areas. This keeps out undesirable people from living, visiting and working in their areas. This form of exclusion not only acts to keep people of lower socioeconomic out, but also inhibits them from acquiring higher paying jobs if not jobs at all. Schindler provides an example of how this form of built environment has even proved to be dangerous for those trying to escape the confines of the environment they live in. Cynthia Wiggins, a 17-year-old girl African American girl had to walk across a 7 lane highway to walk to work, and got struck and died. She was on her way to work at Walden Galleria, a suburban upscale mall. She was forced to cross the highway every time on her way to work because her bus route did not cross Walden Avenue, a street that split two cities. Transit stops also prevent those in a lower socioeconomic place from getting jobs in that they can’t get to the jobs. However money isn’t the problem. Some areas with higher socioeconomic stature will readily raise the minimum wage to encourage older people and teenagers already living in the area to work. Further proving the blocking of transit is really to architecturally exclude.

This article really shocked me in that our society has even more insidious ways of enforcing institutionalized racism and peniaphobia. Schindlers piece on architectural exclusion breaks down the many ways that we do that, and reveals how subconscious America’s exclusion of those who are not of a certain culture or socioeconomic stature really is.
http://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/architectural-exclusion