Neoliberal Urban Governance: Spaces, Culture and Discourses in Buenos Aires and Chicago 3031217179, 9783031217173

Table of contents :
Preface
Acknowledgments
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
Perspective and Definitions
Cultural Economy
Neoliberal Urban Governance
Gentrification-Led Redevelopment
Post-political Turn and Policy Mobility
Methods
Plan of the Book
References
2 Redevelopment Frontiers in Buenos Aires
Overview of the Neoliberal Governance of Buenos Aires
Neoliberal Urban Governance in the Macri and Rodriguez Larreta Administrations (2011 to the Present)
Revanchist Policies and Rhetorical Shift
Privatization and Commodification of Vacant Public Land
Neoliberal Governance’s Goals, Strategies, and Discursive Spaces
References
3 Becoming a “Socially Integrated City” Through “Creative Districts”
The Creative Districts Initiative
La Boca and San Telmo as One “Cultural, Touristic, and Versatile Artistic Pole”
Tension, Conflicts, and Contestation
Policy Overview
References
4 From Villa to Barrio
Brief Overview of Villa 31
Plans for the Urbanization and Social Integration of Villa 31
From Eradication to Urbanization
Favorable Conditions Leading to the Initial Physical Transformation of Villa 31
The Rhetoric of Transformation
Normalizing Villa 31 as “a Livable, Formalized, and Robust Space”
Sanitizing Identities in Villa 31
Barrio 31 Residents’ Concerns and the Project’s Flaws
Limited Input and Participation
Evictions
Housing Deficiencies
Housing Titles
References
5 Neoliberal Governance and Chicago’s Southwest Side
Overview of Chicago’s Ascendant Neoliberal Governance
Neoliberal Chicago Under Mayors Rahm and Lightfoot (2011 to the Present)
References
6 Chicago’s Southwest Redevelopment Frontier: Pilsen and Little Village
Pilsen, on the Lower West Side
Little Village-South Lawndale
Pushing Redevelopment Ahead on Chicago’s Southwest Side
The Paseo Trail
Physical and Socioeconomic Impacts in Pilsen and Little Village
References
7 An Inclusive and Equitable New Chicago?
References
8 Conclusion: Comparing the Urban Governances of Chicago and Buenos Aires
Public Policy Implications
References
Index

Citation preview

Neoliberal Urban Governance Spaces, Culture and Discourses in Buenos Aires and Chicago Carolina Sternberg

Neoliberal Urban Governance

Carolina Sternberg

Neoliberal Urban Governance Spaces, Culture and Discourses in Buenos Aires and Chicago

Carolina Sternberg Department of Latin American and Latino Studies DePaul University Chicago, IL, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-21717-3 ISBN 978-3-031-21718-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21718-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Alex Linch shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To the ‘Sternbergers’ and Tiago Past, present and future

Preface

As a social scientist, I am interested in understanding how space, government, and state structure and policy affect urban marginality. My perspective has been shaped by growing up in Buenos Aires and receiving my bachelor’s degree in geography and my master’s degree in public policy. In 2006, I arrived at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to pursue a Ph.D. in urban geography, hoping to expand the focus and geographical context of my research. Aware of my roots and training in the Global South, my academic advisor, David Wilson, encouraged me to embark on a comparative study of neoliberal governance in Buenos Aires and Chicago. The project drew me not just because it allowed me to make sense of these two different parts of the world, but because it offered a way to bridge gaps between the academic traditions in urban studies between the Global North and the Global South. This book is part of that journey, one that began after I was transplanted in the Midwest, one that flourished while I was in graduate school, and one that to this day has me dissecting differences and similarities between neoliberal urban governance in Buenos Aires and Chicago. Both Buenos Aires and Chicago have reputations as cities marked by stark social and economic contrasts between the cities’ north and the south sides. Both cities have been described as “two cities in one.” Buenos Aires’s south side is widely considered one of the most neglected areas in the city, marked by decades of disinvestment, while the north side is regarded as privileged and well-served. Chicago’s southwest side still

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endures an imaginary in which it is disinvested, poor, and crime-ridden, while the north side represents prosperity, vibrancy, and safety. Reporters, urban scholars, and government officials have accepted the grand simplification of both cities. Yet the broad characterizations say too little about the historical legacies, political culture, institutional trajectory, and economic structures that have shaped each city. People using these generalizations are often part of a neoliberal governance structure that relies on such imagery to pursue particular aims. They are often not interested in better understanding the two cities’ stark contrasts and inequalities. In this book, I examine the dynamics and place-based nature of neoliberal urban governance in Chicago and Buenos Aires, which largely explains the two cities’ stark contrasts and inequalities. Few studies have been conducted that explore neoliberal urban governances in urban settings on different continents. Thus, the purpose of this book is twofold: to present a different story, one of a nuanced vision of neoliberal urban governance that continues evolving and is humanly constituted, and to contribute to the existing literature in critical urban studies on the troubling impact of neoliberal ideology across cities. As critical urban scholars, we need to continue exploring neoliberalism’s many facets, interruptions, and shapes across the world and in comparative perspective, to be able to tell the story about this multitextured and restless social formation. Chicago, USA

Carolina Sternberg

Acknowledgments

I have been very fortunate to have benefitted from the guidance, encouragement, and support of numerous colleagues, family, friends (human and furry) while writing this book. This book owes much to all who contributed to bringing dreams of this project to reality. My first agent at Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature, Elizabeth Graber, for her encouragement of this project; my book coach and developmental editor Molly Mullin for her unwavering support; and the University Research Council, the Late Stage Faculty Research Grant and the Center for Latino Research Fellowship at DePaul University for financially supporting my research and writing. I am also indebted to all my interviewees from Buenos Aires, including, Lucrecia Bertelli, Soledad Arqueros, Pablo Vitale, and Eduardo (El Hormiguero) for their generous time and patience; Florencia Rivolta and Danilo Rossi, at the time staff members of the former Secretary of Social and Urban Integration from the City of Buenos Aires government (GCBA); Tomas Galmarini, current Director of Unidad de Proyectos Especiales Urbanización Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica from the GCBA. In Chicago, my compañeros of Juntos por la Villita, Teresa Gonzalez, and John Betancur have also enriched this book with their valuable insights and critical comments derived from their extensive community work. My sincere thanks to my wonderful colleagues and friends at DePaul University, Lourdes, Billy, and Delia for their immense professional and emotional support. In this long journey, my family Enrique, Marta,

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Gabriela, and Sofia, and my close friends, Nuria, Vicky, Paula, Andrea, Mónica, and Betsy, have been forever present. I am also thankful to my furry monster female cat, Malena, and her nemesis, Indiana, my sweet Brazilian Border Collie. Both have given me the calm, energy, and joy I needed along this process. My sincere thanks and appreciation to my Zumba instructor, Sarah, and her partner, Jill, who have shown me how to “dance” every sentence, every Sunday morning. I also extend my appreciation to my therapist Mihaela who has helped me go through a rollercoaster of emotions and frustrations during the pandemic and more. Finally, I thank my dearest life companion, Tiago Tel, who supports me unconditionally, and reminds me to drink coffee to change the things that I can, and to drink wine to accept the things that I cannot change.

Contents

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1

Introduction

2

Redevelopment Frontiers in Buenos Aires

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3

Becoming a “Socially Integrated City” Through “Creative Districts”

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4

From Villa to Barrio

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5

Neoliberal Governance and Chicago’s Southwest Side

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6

Chicago’s Southwest Redevelopment Frontier: Pilsen and Little Village

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7

An Inclusive and Equitable New Chicago?

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8

Conclusion: Comparing the Urban Governances of Chicago and Buenos Aires

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Index

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About the Author

Carolina Sternberg is an Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies and Critical Ethnic Studies at DePaul University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received her M.A. in Geography from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina. Her main areas of research and teaching combine urban studies, domestic workers, Latin American studies, and local urban politics in both US and Latin American settings. Her most recent publications examine race and gentrification in Latino/a/x and African American communities in Chicago, the fluid and evolving nature of neoliberal urban governance in the US and Latin American urban settings, and feminist ethics of care in Buenos Aires.

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List of Figures

Fig. 3.1

Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3

Fig. 4.4

Fig. 4.5

a Map of the Arts District. b Map of La Boca, San Telmo, and Barrio 31 (Source Elaborated by GIS specialist, Julio Villarino) Usina de las Artes (Source Photo taken by the author) Riachuelo river, La Boca (Source Photo taken by the author) La Boca neighborhood (Source Photo taken by the author) Caminito and Vuelta de Rocha (Source Photo taken by the author) Panoramic view of Barrio 31 (Source Courtesy of the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration, SECISyU, City Government of Buenos Aires) View of corrugated sheet metal and scavenged-brick houses in Barrio 31 (Source Courtesy of Pablo Vitale) Panoramic view of former Villa 31, showing stark contrast with the wealthy neighborhood of Retiro (Source Courtesy of Pablo Vitale) Before renovations (housing and infrastructure), unpaved streets and electric cables crossing the streets (Source Courtesy of Pablo Vitale) Houses were stacked so high that their roofs scraped the underside of the road (Source Courtesy of the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration SECISyU, City Government of Buenos Aires)

46 51 55 56 57

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 4.6

Fig. 4.7

Fig. 5.1

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 7.1

Fig. 7.2

Barrio 31 emerging: New housing built (Source Courtesy of the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration SECISyU, City Government of Buenos Aires) Barrio 31 emerging: Housing improved, new streets built, and sanitation installed (Source Courtesy of the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration SECISyU, City Government of Buenos Aires) Map of Chicago Latino/a/x neighborhoods: Pilsen and Little Village (Source Elaborated by GIS specialist, Julio Villarino) Pilsen, before and after gentrification (Source Photo taken by the author) View of the Crawford Power Plant (before being demolished) Courtesy of Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) Flyer distributed on September 16, 2020, against the closing of the discount mall in Little village (Source Photo taken by the author)

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 6.4 Table 8.1 Table 8.2

Price of land in La Boca and San Telmo Pilsen and Little Village socioeconomic conditions over time Cook County house price index (January 2000 through June 2021) Small-unit building stock vs. multi-unit building stock over time in Pilsen Small-unit building stock vs. multi-unit building stock over time in Little Village City of Chicago. Neoliberal governance policies and programs, redevelopment agenda, and rhetoric City of Buenos Aires. Neoliberal governance policies and programs, redevelopment agenda, and rhetoric

61 127 148 148 149 184 186

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In February 2016, one of Spain’s leading newspapers, El País, published a story about Villa 31, one of the biggest slums in the center of the city of Buenos Aires, with this headline: “The misery that is impossible to hide in the center of Buenos Aires” (La Nación 2017). Paradoxically, in October of the same year, that headline became an opportunity for the mayor of Buenos Aires, Rodríguez Larreta, to announce a monumental redevelopment plan that would profoundly change the city’s social fabric and urban form: the urbanization of Villa 31 and its social integration with the rest of the city.1 At the Habitat III Regional Conference held in Ecuador in 2016, Rodriguez Larreta explained: “I want an integrated city, in which everyone can have the same rights and responsibilities... a city without slums, integrated from north to south” (La Nación 2016, my translation). This urban plan—incomplete at the time of writing—has become the central pillar of Buenos Aires’s urban redevelopment agenda. In September 2012, during his second year as mayor of Chicago, and as part of a commitment to revitalize “underutilized” lands and former industrial areas on the city’s southwest side, Rahm Emanuel publicly announced that he aimed to: “‘Return these areas to active, productive 1 Briefly, urbanization means formalizing housing tenure and incorporating informal settlements into the domains of existing public services. Improving social integration means reducing inequalities and divisions and promoting quality interaction and a sense of belonging in diverse social environments (Lindquist 2021).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Sternberg, Neoliberal Urban Governance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21718-0_1

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use for the residents of the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods. This (…) is an important step toward creating jobs and a healthy environment for these communities’” (in Scalzitti 2012). Emanuel’s announcement marked the beginning of a series of redevelopment projects aimed at physically and socially transforming the historically disinvested communities of Pilsen and Little Village. These mayoral announcements inaugurated a new phase of urban development for each city, but most importantly, they revealed a new era of redevelopment in historically and deeply stigmatized areas. Despite decades of disinvestment in Buenos Aires’s center and south side and in Chicago’s southwest side, to governance actors, acres of property parcels and land (especially in the slums of Buenos Aires) now seem ripe for a new phase of urban restructuring. Long-time area residents neglected for decades by public and private funds in both city areas now face a wave of transformation—social as well as physical. Chicago’s Pilsen and Little Village and Buenos Aires’s La Boca, San Telmo, and Villa 31 are areas in critical need of being drawn into the social fabric and the real estate market of each city. In particular, since the 1970s Pilsen and Little Village have struggled with poverty as a result of structural racism and overall social, physical, and economic disinvestment. In Buenos Aires, La Boca and San Telmo have suffered physical and economic neglect since the 1980s. Villa 31 has historically been cast as an “eyesore of the city” because of its considerable neglect, poverty, and marginalization. In this book, I consider how the physical and social transformation of these areas is unfolding. I examine how neoliberal urban governances in Chicago and Buenos Aires—institutions, programs, and procedures— work to advance particular redevelopment agendas in a drive to transform previously disinvested and stigmatized neighborhoods. Chicago and Buenos Aires have been experiencing increasing urban gentrification that is carried out as official government policy. In both cities, neoliberal governance actors—driven by market-oriented goals rather than distributive ones—are exercising new power to upscale targeted blocks in the most neglected and stigmatized areas. In other words, neoliberal governance in each urban setting has moved into an uncharted terrain of impoverished and deeply stigmatized communities. Yet, how neoliberal governances in both cities currently operate as they

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move into these new areas remains unexplored by comparative critical urban studies literature.2 Notably, this new phase of redevelopment is not merely a decisive and determined urban project but the result of something humanly and adroitly crafted among an assemblage of actors: city officials, local boards, developers, architects, and real estate agents. I propose that Chicago’s and Buenos Aires’s neoliberal urban governances are doing more than simply producing and rationalizing new policies and procedures. These formations must work through visions of the city, its institutions, its people, and communities, whose impoverishment, stigma, and institutional neglect—the governances suggest—are obstacles to a successful urban transformation. In this context, I ask: How do neoliberal urban governances in Chicago and Buenos Aires unfold their urban plans for transformation while responding to changing political realities, contestation, growing inequalities, and obstacles to development and redevelopment? How do these formations adjust to the ongoing contestation they face in advancing redevelopment? What kind of spaces (material and imagined) and cultural understandings do these actors seek to build across Chicago and Buenos Aires? Finally, I consider how, with the encroaching commodification of urban spaces and landscapes, people living in these formerly neglected areas face new challenges, including the threat of displacement. Central to my endeavor is a consideration of how neoliberal urban governance in both cities deploys rhetoric to build acceptance, dissuade resistance, and normalize the commodification of the targeted areas. That rhetoric includes metaphors, common understandings, imagined spaces, and sanitary codes. For an example of how neoliberal governance rhetoric works, consider Chicago’s southwest side. For decades ignored or overlooked for formal redevelopment, this area is now imagined and discussed by city officials, real estate, and business leaders as what I term “prosperous and orderly ethnic spaces” (Pilsen) and “culturally rich multiethnic spaces” (Little Village) as contributors to Chicago’s neoliberal globalization efforts. Similarly, the center (Villa 31) and south sides (La Boca

2 There are few examples of comparative urban studies that explore Latin American neoliberal urban governances, see, for example, Saad-Filho (2020), Springer et al. (2016), and Kunkel and Mayer (2012). However, these studies do not address how neoliberal governances work to advance redevelopment agendas in a drive to transform previously stigmatized neighborhoods.

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and San Telmo) of Buenos Aires, also for decades, have been largely neglected and overlooked for urban transformation. Yet, these areas in Buenos Aires have been rediscovered as “cultural, touristic and versatile artistic spaces” (La Boca and San Telmo); “livable, formalized, and robust spaces” (Villa 31); and as contributors to Buenos Aires’s socioinclusive efforts. In addition, Villa 31 in Buenos Aires is now presented as an opportunity for renovated “multi-cultural and gastronomic experiences” in efforts to create more revenues for the city and new sources of profits. Identifying these spaces and governances’ dominant goals, urban agendas, and actions is important; they provide the frame to understand the current southwest side and center-south side involvement. While physically transforming these disinvested areas, neoliberal urban governances have also been cultivating positive identities in both cities. In the case of Chicago, the governance has shaped Latinos/as/x experiences by positively rendering them as, what I term, “ethnicity-infused beings.” In Buenos Aires, the term “vecinos ” rather than “villeros/as ” has been used to cultivate positive identities and encourage acceptance of the residents of Villa 31. The physical and social transformation of these areas in Chicago and Buenos Aires is still highly uneven and continues to unfold in various stages. To governance actors, these areas are in critical need of being integrated in the social composition and real estate market of each city. Rhetoric is fundamental to advancing these challenging urban projects. How are these governances framing redevelopment in Buenos Aires and Chicago around the sharp edges of the market? What are their strategies—do they emphasize consensual and depoliticized language, mobilize a large bureaucratic machine, or change their rhetoric to suit particular contexts? I find that the rhetoric deployed—“as powerful as any physical and social remaking” (Wilson 2018, p. 2)—makes possible both a physical transformation and commodification of both Chicago’s southwest and Buenos Aires’s center-south sides. Central to this process, neoliberal governance rhetoric in Chicago and Buenos Aires, along with policies and redevelopment projects, reflects specific race and class identities and anxieties. Following Wilson (2007, 2018), Derickson (2017), Bonilla-Silva (2013), and Mele (2013), I consider how race and class shape the production of governance core processes and rhetoric. Racialization and class making, and their integration into economic processes, are often nuanced and subtle: we can see them in situated meanings, expressions, and common understandings

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about people and spaces (Wilson 2007). For example, “livable spaces,” “orderly and clean neighborhoods,” “cultural and productive citizens,” and “up-and-coming neighborhoods”—all these communicate both racial and class constructs and imply that these spaces are made for particular groups of people (Wilson 2018, p. 42). In other words, identifying a governance’s redevelopment projects, policies, and rhetoric must be sensitive to the production and use of race and class. Neoliberal governances’ rhetoric and actions along these new redevelopment frontiers have both old and new racial and class roots; following Derickson (2017), we can trace how they are embedded in ways that are often not immediately apparent. My goal is to question neoliberal urban governances as forceful assemblage of institutions when they advance their redevelopment projects. When the mayors of Chicago and Buenos Aires announced their plans in 2012 and 2016, they not only presented core urban agendas for each governance, they communicated a sense of decisive and determined governances pushing their agendas forward. Such announcements often marginalize instability, contradictions, struggle, and resistance to redevelopment. In this book, I present a different kind of story, with a complex vision of neoliberal urban governance. I contend that it is crucial to nuance the official stories, recognizing that governances continuously adjust to shifting social, political, and economic circumstances as they plan and advance their projects across cities and neighborhoods. I show that to advance redevelopment, while leaving unresolved some very real dilemmas faced by residents and policymakers, governances mobilize persuasive and powerful discourse deployed by city officials, local boards, developers, architects, and real estate agents. I argue also that governances that share a common neoliberal framework operate distinctively in particular locations: they are significantly different entities as locally grounded formations. Neoliberal urban governances are constituted in the richness of particular localities, where they are mediated by distinctive socio-political institutions, institutionalized practices, cultures, and economic realities. As I discuss in the comparative analysis presented in Chapter 8, each local neoliberal governance advances processes of redevelopment and growth in a locally specific way. Each formation—locally constituted and humanly crafted— uses distinctive rhetoric (metaphors, common understandings, imagined spaces, sanitary codes), programs, and policies.

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Currently, comparative research on the locally grounded nature of neoliberal urban governance has predominantly addressed North American cities in comparison with cities in Europe, South Africa, and Asia (Springer et al. 2016; Kunkel and Mayer 2012; Leitner et al. 2007). Few comparative studies exist that feature Latin American cities (SaadFilho 2020; Kunkel and Mayer 2012; Kanai and Ortega-Alcaráz 2009). Chicago and Buenos Aires are both large and globally connected world cities3 that have not been previously examined comparatively, nor have the dynamics of their governances. At the structural level, Chicago’s and Buenos Aires’s urban governances may be seen as engaged in similar efforts: to entrepreneurialize government actions, create more responsible and business-oriented citizens, build a strong local business climate, and fashion a globally competitive, consumption-oriented city (Hackworth 2007; Bennett 2006). But if we focus on the nature of evolving places, “we see a patchwork of wildly varying neoliberal governances that often barely resemble each other” (Wilson 2004, p. 772). In this context, this book contributes to a growing comparative perspective on this type of governance, analyzing two world cities with different urban, historical, and political trajectories, drawing on scholarly traditions from the Global South and Global North (Robinson 2016).

Perspective and Definitions Cultural Economy I use a cultural economy framework that closely follows David Wilson’s approach (2007) to understanding these sorts of governances. Wilson emphasizes that economic processes do not operate in a cultural vacuum 3 There appears to be a consensus that cities and the dynamics of urbanization have been changed by the intensification of global processes. Sassen (2002 [1991]) describes “global cities” as the command and control centers for economic, political, and cultural globalization. Urban studies scholars, including Benton-Short et al. (2005), have largely defined global or world cities as major sites for the accumulation of capital, command points in the world economy, headquarters for corporations, and important hubs of global transportation and communication. While there are many limitations and biases to this definition (e.g., cities concentrated in the Global North are seen as the most networked or most highly ranked compared to the Global South), for the purpose of this study, I will follow Benton-Short and colleagues’ (2005) definition to characterize both Buenos Aires and Chicago as global cities.

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but are performed and enacted through a system of meanings and common understandings, which gives them form, coherence, and legitimacy (Wilson 2007). Neoliberal governance actors need to mobilize discourses to make sense of their policies, discourage contestation, and make policies acceptable to the general public. In brief, cultural economy is a perspective that sheds light on the inseparability of the cultural and economic realms (Presdee 2000). The approach recognizes that culture and economy are involved in a dialectical interplay; one continuously makes the other in an uninterrupted coalescing of forces that renders these spheres ontologically inseparable. In this study, a cultural economy perspective is key to critically examining the system of meanings and common understandings within discourses that neoliberal governances deploy to normalize, legitimate, and justify policies and operations (Wilson et al. 2004). Before spaces and people become objects for restructuring, they must be communicated as something comprehensible. This is accomplished by drawing on common understandings in ways that demarcate villains, victims, saviors, and threatening forces. Besides establishing the normalcy and legitimacy of urban programs, neoliberal governance in both cities has increasingly mobilized “culture” to bolster urban development projects. For example, in Chicago and Buenos Aires, cultural upscaling, aesthetic renewing, and beautification programs have become fundamental planning objects, carefully organized to help facilitate redevelopment. This study, therefore, interrogates culture as something mobilized, used, and put in the service of neoliberal redevelopment governances. Thus, neoliberal redevelopment governances work to silence some cultural forms and practices and encourage others. To put forward the best cultural forms and practices, some have to be cultivated (e.g., “hip and young culture”) and others eliminated (e.g., “underachiever culture”). Cultural forms, practices, and aesthetics are judged by governance actors for their race- and class-based content and their ability to meet a city’s needs. My cultural economy approach also considers space. Neoliberal governance relies on making and using different kinds of space, including both imagined and material spaces, as operative tools. Space is the crucial medium and outcome of the operation of neoliberal governance (Swyngedouw 2000; Peck and Tickell 2007): it is a primordial essence that is scaled, coded with meanings, and physically structured in the service of neoliberal politics. I focus on the production of absolute, material space that fosters social relations and economic processes that directly

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enable the neoliberal project to unfold in the form of, for example, gentrified neighborhoods, Planned Manufacturing Districts, and historic preservation programs. But I also focus on how actors create and mobilize imagined spaces. These spaces simultaneously frame, organize, and illuminate “facts” through which to know people and processes (Massey 1992; Lefebvre 1991).4 The ghetto, the inner city, the ethnic enclave, the villas , and the downtown communicate “facts” about culture, aesthetics, and identities as things to be measured and weighed. As I discuss in the final chapters, in both cities neoliberal governance actors have been mobilizing different forms of rhetoric to apply to once non-attractive redevelopment areas that were perceived as containment districts, in their respective contexts, for the Latino/a/x racialized poor and for the villeros . These areas have ultimately received attention for their potentially profitable real estate and commodifiable urban areas along with the corresponding ability to serve each cities’ future investment needs and economic growth. Neoliberal Urban Governance I refer to Chicago’s and Buenos Aires’s governances as neoliberal because both are driven by efforts to promote market-oriented policies,5 de-regulate businesses and government actions and procedures, shift government priorities from a politics of redistribution to a politics of growth (Harvey 2006), and create more responsible and businessoriented citizens (Sternberg 2012; Wilson 2007). In Chicago, since the early 1990s, efforts have included clearing public land through public housing demolition and replacing public housing with mixed-income housing or luxury condominiums; offering Tax Increment Financing6 (TIFs) or other subsidies to encourage private investment; converting 4 I engage with Lefebvre and define this space as the crafted and codified (sometimes institutionalized) landscape of the imagination, which can function as visual rhetoric, e.g., the ghetto, the ethnic enclave, the city, global flows, the downtown. 5 This translates into producing a hyper-commodification in which almost everything becomes something to sell or a selling point. 6 TIF is a development tool. The city declares an area “blighted” and unlikely to

be developed without the diversion of tax revenues. At the moment a local government creates a TIF district, the sum of all the properties and the property taxes they represent within the district is tallied up and frozen. As economic development increases within the district, any new property taxes generated above the frozen rate are kept in a special account not subject to normal municipal budgetary appropriations or claims by

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workspaces into expensive condos; upscaling restaurants, boutiques, and bars to attract tourism. Buenos Aires’s governance has emphasized neoliberal policies since the late 1990s, and since 2007, they have become more pronounced. The city has drastically cut public spending on education, health, and housing, and has consistently neglected declining neighborhoods, which previously were considered priorities for urban renewal. These actions have been coupled with financial strategies: selling city properties for short-term gain with revenue used to attract corporate and real estate investment, changing zoning ordinances, donating land to corporations or semi-private institutions, and offering a series of tax abatements to favor real estate speculation (Sternberg 2018). I define neoliberal urban governance as the policies, programs, and procedures, and as the assemblage of institutions and actors (mayors, city officials, builders, planners, developers, construction companies, financial institutions, the local media, and auxiliary institutions, including universities and chambers of commerce) that unify around a common vision of city redevelopment and push to make this a reality (Jonas and Wilson 1999). Such institutions and actors strive to create planning agendas, strengthen such plans through powerful rhetoric (metaphors, common understandings, imagined spaces, and sanitary codes), and implement redevelopment projects through strategies and policies. Each actor strives to help the entire group achieve their redevelopment objective as members of the group coordinate, depend on, and synergize with each other. I use the term “urban governance” to get at the physical and social transformation of urban space in my two case study cities. I identify the term “urban” as a central subset of neoliberal governance—it is its central manifestation in the land and property-restructuring realm—that carries the “neoliberal project” to this particular domain. Finally, this study adopts the perspective that neoliberal governance is too complex and variegated to be considered a singular, monolithic formation (Wilson 2018; Springer 2016; Peck et al. 2012; Peck 2010; Leitner et al. 2007; Peck and Tickell 2007; Wilson 2007; Brenner and Theodore 2002; Keil 2002; McLeod 2002; Mitchell 2001). Scholars taking this view have argued that neoliberal urban governance is constituted in the richness of distinctive localities and thus, it interacts with their socio-political institutions, institutionalized practices, cultures, and other taxing bodies to support development. TIFs supposedly pay for everything from infrastructure to direct grants to developers.

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economic realities. In this sense, following Theodore et al. (2018), I see neoliberal governance in Buenos Aires and Chicago as representing what these authors term “actually existing neoliberal governances” to the extent that these are locally grounded formations, and as such, take different shapes in different local settings. This more nuanced theoretical approach to neoliberal governance helps identify processes and outcomes that are distinctive and those that are shared with other cases, outlining the unique combination of socio-political institutions and urban processes that characterize global cities like Chicago and Buenos Aires. Gentrification-Led Redevelopment This book examines the recent drive to knit the southwest side of Chicago and the center and south side of Buenos Aires into the social fabric and real estate market of each city. Gentrification-led redevelopment (urban processes of reinvestment and redevelopment) merits brief discussion as an important process in this work. The book does not intend to generalize about how gentrification unfolds in Latin America in comparison with North America, but does attempt to properly contextualize this phenomenon and its specific manifestations in Latin America. To be clear, I consider displacement—one of the multiple outcomes of gentrification—a violent and dehumanizing consequence of the commodification of land (see Betancur 2002). In this regard, I am inspired by the work of Fullilove (2004) in her account of urban renewal programs across American cities during the second half of the twentieth century, whereby she chronicles how displacement produces psychological trauma among displaced people, who lose their homes and feel uprooted from their long-time neighborhoods. As Lees and colleagues (2016) argue, gentrification is a central concept in “truly global urban studies” (p. 12). The authors defend a “relational comparative approach” (p. 13) that emphasizes transnational and interconnected features of contemporary urban restructuring. They argue that, whether in the Global South or Global North, local governments increasingly use the secondary circuit of capital (i.e., real estate) as a capital accumulation strategy, resulting in increasing inequality and, above all, in various forms of displacement. More importantly, Lees and colleagues draw on Slater’s (2017) work on the planetary rent gap to highlight the crucial role of the state in the process of concealing the capture of capitalized ground rent by enabling and facilitating such capital reinvestment.

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I second the authors’ assertion that state-led gentrification theory is more relevant than ever when it comes to Global South settings, including the city of Buenos Aires. Over the past decade, there has been increasing debate about gentrification in Latin America, particularly because of its questionable applicability to the region. Briefly, we can identify two main trends. On the one hand, a growing number of decolonial scholars denounce use of the term in the region: importing this terminology from the Global North, it is argued, suggests a form of cultural dependence and subordination (Lacarrieu 2018; Lees et al. 2016; Lopez-Morales 2016; Robinson 2016; Ghertner 2015; Quijano 2014; Mignolo 2007). On the other hand, there is little consensus about what constitutes gentrification in the region (see Rodriguez and Di Virgilio 2016 for the uses and appropriations of the concept of gentrification in Latin America). Many scholars have argued that gentrification implies a false generalization that is irrelevant to Latin American cities and they question the Western capitalist spatial trajectory (Harvey 2003) of industrial decline, disinvestment, and a return of local middle-class residents to the “inner” city (Jaramillo 2015; Salas et al. 2018). In particular, Pradilla (in Delgadillo 2013) has argued that there is no such thing as a “gentry” class in Latin America, which should invalidate the concept’s use. Yet, many studies have discussed the term with various definitions, applications, and ways of approaching this phenomenon. Overall, I can identify two dominant and opposed approaches: one that focuses on gentrification as result of the advancement of neoliberalism and as a prominent urban policy, and the other on the role of new middle classes. The former includes a very flexible use of the term with a clear focus on the issue of displacement. Representatives of this perspective, Casgrain and Janoschka (2013), point out that “the expansion of neoliberal policies with regard to the production of space, identified mostly with the functioning of the land and capitalist housing markets, always provokes some type of displacement (material and symbolic)” (in Diaz-Parra 2021, p. 479). To these authors, symbolic displacement refers to the stigmatization and invisibilization that low-income populations are subjected to as a result of urban renewal of strategic urban areas (Janoschka and Sequera 2016). In short, to these authors, displacement should be the focus of gentrification studies. Closely following Casgrain and Janoschka (2013), Rodriguez and Di Virgilio (2016) understand gentrification in Latin America “as an effect of neoliberal socio-spatial dynamics supported by

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variegated forms of symbolic and/or material displacement of low-income people, coupled with their exclusion from political decision-making about the future of the city” (2016, p. 4). In addition, the authors acknowledge that the concept of gentrification cannot be applied without attention to the changes experienced by the working-class in Latin America (and Argentina in particular) precipitated by global processes of neoliberalization. The effects on the Latin American working-class were exacerbated by structural adjustment policies in the 1980s and 1990s. This is particularly the case in Buenos Aires, where gentrification developed in parallel to processes of economic and social restructuring. (Rodriguez and Di Virgilio 2016, p. 3). Rodriguez and Di Virgilio (2016) also make an important contribution relevant to the case of Latin America, and to the city of Buenos Aires in particular, emphasizing the role of the state in producing segregation and in the displacement of low-income people and their resources, activities, and institutions. Other scholars have argued that gentrification in Latin America does not necessarily cause displacement, but promotes social mixing by hindering high levels of segregation in the cities of the region. Jaramillo (2015) examines urban revitalization in the city of Bogotá, pointing out that middle-class people have recycled and rehabilitated buildings in historic areas. To Jaramillo, these initiatives have ultimately attracted public investment without displacing vulnerable groups. In a similar vein, John Betancur (2014) argues that historic civic renovations focused mainly on heritage tourism “in disinvested (mainly historic) inner city locations such as Mexico City, Puebla, Salvador de Bahia, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Guayaquil, Lima, Bogota, Cartagena and many others (…), have not produced residential class replacement or the return of the gentry but commercial heritage tourism” (2014, p. 5). Jacob Lederman (2020) seems to agree with Betancur (2014), questioning the use of the term gentrification to conceptualize reinvestment in historic centers, such as the one he studied in the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Lederman emphasizes the importance of tourism, commercial versus residential change, and the redevelopment of informal housing as hotels and hostels. To Lederman (2020), Buenos Aires has experienced a process of commercial gentrification such as hotel and retail construction and higher intensity land use such as condominium construction in limited and historic districts such as San Telmo. He contends that rising property taxes and rents and consumer-driven

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residential displacement do not seem to be the strongest forces of restructuring in San Telmo. Drawing on Ghertner (2015), Lederman (2020) argues that the concept of “accumulation by dispossession” appears to be more appropriate to explain, for example, the forced eviction and dispossession of precarious residents from tenement houses in the historic center of Buenos Aires. Accumulation by dispossession points to “the violent forms of expropriation that redistribute territory or wealth through relations of force. State-led evictions and commercial profit making, rather than the slow movement of middle-class residents and rising residential rents, are central to displacement in San Telmo” (Lederman 2020, pp. 195–196). Recognizing that the topic of gentrification in Latin America is complex, I use the term to describe a phenomenon shaping urban settings in both the Global North and the Global South, with myriad manifestations and reverberations. I closely follow Diaz-Parra’s (2021) lead in acknowledging that gentrification is not limited to the Anglo-Saxon world and in recognizing its explanatory capacity and diverse manifestations. According to Diaz-Parra, “the penetration levels of capitalist institutions and regulatory agreements may also be very diverse, as are local cultures and social and ethnic structures of population” (2021, p. 484). To properly contextualize the rise of gentrification in Latin America, it is important to recognize its capitalist institutions, regulatory frameworks, and local specificities. In addition, and in contrast to urban scholars who advocate for the term “urban revitalization” instead of gentrification (Jaramillo 2015), I second Diaz-Parra’s observation that displacement can rapidly affect vulnerable groups (e.g., illegal occupants of tenements and other buildings). Yet, displacement can also happen over a longer time span, in a way that is difficult to track statistically. This seems to be the case in Buenos Aires and other cities in Latin America such as Mexico City (see e.g., Diaz-Parra 2015). I agree with Janoshka and Serquera (2016) that, with respect to the restructuring of the housing market, neoliberal policies always produce some type of displacement. Another salient point made by Diaz-Parra (2015) is that price increase does not necessarily generate a massive and rapid displacement of the pre-existing population. Displacement, Diaz-Parra suggests, depends to a large extent on factors such as local politics, urban regulations, and the tenure statuses among city residents (Diaz-Parra 2015). Factors that often impede gentrification in Latin American cities include various forms of resistance, complex hybrid land and property markets with high levels of

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informality, fragmented property ownership, limited market capacity, and insufficient loans and mortgage market (see Betancur 2014). In Latin America, socioeconomic segregation and social stratification are closely intertwined with processes of racialization and ethnic difference. It is, therefore, critical to pay attention to the relationship between racialization and gentrification in the region, about which there has been little scholarship. Some of the available literature on this relationship has illustrated the destructive and racist process of ethnic cleansing. Ethnic minorities are continually victims of these processes and are often displaced or harassed by lighter-skinned westernized middleclass counterparts. Examples include the Indigenous population in the historic center of large cities (Delgadillo 2011; Crossa 2015) and immigrants from Paraguay, Peru, and Bolivia in Buenos Aires (Carman 2005). Other studies have reported that high-income households avoid settling near racialized and low-income groups (Abramo 2011). In addition, gentrification-led redevelopment processes are sensitive to the use of racial and class identities when deploying rhetorical and other strategies. In other words, both racial and class identities embedded in policies and rhetoric shape gentrification. As I note in this study, neoliberal governances’ rhetoric and actions mobilize both old and new racial and class identities along new redevelopment frontiers; these identities may be embedded in ways that are not readily apparent (see Derickson 2017). Taking all these discussions into consideration, I examine gentrification as a central policy instrument that guides the economic growth of neoliberal cities across the world (Hackworth 2007; Smith 1996), transforming the socio-spatial character of cities by creating exclusionary zones of conspicuous consumption (trendy coffee shops, glamorous restaurants, and boutiques), fine residential living, and sanitized public spaces. Over decades and across global cities, gentrification has been extolled by neoliberal urban governances as something “efficient, progressive, and unleashing of supposedly free and rational actors” (Wilson 2007, p. 191) that will heal struggling neighborhoods, enhance a positive city culture, and increasingly generate revenues for cities (see Wilson and Sternberg 2012). Some have even suggested that this redevelopment will lead to less segregated communities, with new social and class mixing (see Lees et al. 2010). Gentrification has been widely promoted all across Latin American (Janoschka and Sequera 2016) and North American cities and, with the adroit use of rhetoric, neoliberal governances have been systematically

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using it as a central urban policy to transform disinvested neighborhoods socially and physically. Post-political Turn and Policy Mobility How are governances able to mobilize socially minded values while advancing a prominent market-oriented approach to urban development? Among geographers, Wilson and Swyngedouw (2015) and Swyngedouw (2011) have contributed to an emerging body of thought about the dynamics of de-politicization, also known as “post-democracy,” or consensus politics. They have examined how recent transformations in urban governance dynamics involve consensual modes of policy-making within new institutional configurations surrounding socially minded objectives, such as sustainability, responsibility, and participation (2011, p. 371). This post-democratization combines a series of interrelated dynamics. The political process of neoliberalization, despite its heterogeneous differentiated and uneven dynamics (Peck et al. 2012; Leitner et al. 2007; Brenner and Theodore 2002), has been named “the de-politicization of the economic” (Bourdieu 2002). These dynamics result in a sort of ideal system whereby the production and organization of the distribution of resources are centered on a practice that seemingly separates economic dynamics from the political process. At the same time, many governmental policy efforts are geared at assuring the “proper” functioning of this ideal system in the real movement of economic life. As Erik Swyngedouw (2011) argues, the post-political framework offers insight into how circulating transnational urban policies and urban governances are shaped by this post-political orientation. One could argue that these policies are infused with post-political rhetoric that is difficult to challenge due to goals that appear ideologically neutral. Planning terms such as sustainability, creativity, participation, inclusion, and livability— normative and seemingly socially minded values—may be difficult to contest. The elevation of socially minded values suggests a consensual mode of urban governance deprived of political contention or forms of domination (Wilson and Swyngedouw 2015; Swyngedouw 2011). For example, as examined in Chapter 5, neoliberal urban governance in Buenos Aires bolstered the policy of “creative districts” as an open and progressive form of economic development on the south side of the

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city, which predominantly focused on improvements to the built environment to foster specific industries as technocratic choices rather than distributional ones (e.g., creating employment and affordable housing). This study suggests that many of the values embedded in neoliberal governance policies and rhetoric—including socio-inclusion, creativity, and inclusivity—are shaped by a post-political approach to urban governance that is circulating across the globe. Again, this approach suppresses political and ideological framings in favor of broad-consensus values that are difficult to challenge. Larner (2015) adds that the post-political is associated with “the diffusion of governance into a host of non-state and quasi-state institutional forms that foster consensual understandings of political action, and the particularizations of political demands. The result is a multi-scalar politics in which states act with experts, NGOs and other responsible partners, and conflict is defused and managed through dialogical processes” (p. 193). Neoliberal governance rhetoric and policies relate to broader governance transformations occurring across the world. Here, I draw on a body of literature on policy mobility that moves beyond the limited approaches of policy transfer and diffusion and focuses on complex power relations that shape global/local daily realities (McCann 2011; McCann and Ward 2010; Peck and Theodore 2010). In this sense, the neoliberal governance formulation of urban policies should be understood in relation to a global network of urban planning experts (McCann and Ward 2010) along with their locally grounded realities (McCann and Ward 2010). This tension, between the relational and grounded aspect of urban policies, is a productive one that shapes policies and places (McCann and Ward 2010).

Methods This study will be the first to chronicle neoliberal urban governances in a comparative analysis of Chicago and Buenos Aires, representing different urban, historical, and political trajectories. In Chicago, I focus my study on Pilsen and Little Village, and in Buenos Aires, on La Boca, San Telmo, and Villa 31. To governance actors, these areas are in critical need of being re-sculpted and incorporated into the real estate market of each city. Despite decades of disinvestment, long-time area residents, who have been neglected for decades by public and private funding sources, now face a wave of physical and social transformation. The neighborhood of

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Pilsen has a rich and controversial history of attempts to revitalize it, and since the early 1990s many of the plans have moved forward (see Sternberg 2012). Now governance actors have a renewed interest in Pilsen, which they consider attractive enough to draw developers and tourists and thus, to make a fundamental contribution to the city’s neoliberal global agenda. In Little Village, redevelopment policies and programs have not advanced at the same pace and intensity as in Pilsen. Since approximately 2008, neoliberal governance has been eyeing this neighborhood as a potential site for industrial-residential and/or industrial-commercial conversion and recreation. La Boca and San Telmo have experienced a series of revitalization public efforts since the early 2000s (see Sternberg 2012). However, since 2010, governance actors in Buenos Aires have intensified revitalization efforts and have created new ways for them to serve the city’s social integration urban agenda. Villa 31, one of the moststigmatized areas in the city of Buenos Aires, is of particular interest in this study as the first slum to undergo a process of urbanization, and it is near one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods. By “urbanization,” I mean the formalization of housing tenure and the incorporation of informal settlements into existing public services. I recognize that urban restructuring unfolds in different ways across different spaces and scales, and each space and scale holds a relation with the other. Within this approach, Chicago’s southwest and Buenos Aires’s center-south redevelopment processes do not unfold in isolation but are expressions of both localized and city-wide programs. In this context, taking a relationality approach means considering how urban designs to remake the social composition of Pilsen and Little Village bear the logic of governance actors seeking to restructure the entirety of Chicago. As for Buenos Aires, the remaking of the social fabric of La Boca, San Telmo, and Villa 31 is guided by a logic of restructuring the entirety of Buenos Aires. In short, disciplining and commodifying these areas and sanitizing identities serves multiple purposes for neoliberal governance’s mandates. I acquired the data for this study using qualitative techniques: conducting semi-structured and open-ended interviews, appraising research reports, deconstructing technical documents, and deciphering newspaper articles. I conducted 42 semi-structured and open-ended interviews, including in-person and virtual modality, with prominent actors in Chicago and Buenos Aires. These interviews ranged from 40 minutes to two hours, and included builders, developers, realtors, planners, city officials, urban scholars, and community activists, at different times of the

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year, between 2017 and 2021. To ensure credible responses from interviewees, they were promised anonymity via the granting of pseudonyms, if they preferred. I have added to that data by conducting extensive content analysis of thousands of technical documents and newspapers that focused on local issues (Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times , Chicago Reader, Block Club Chicago, Crain’s Chicago Business , Clarín, La Nación, Página12, and Infobae) from 2011 to 2021. I also deconstructed the content of a variety of blogs, online web sites, official statements, and public/private reports to examine the dynamics of each governance for the same period. To filter the digital archives, I used a variety of keywords and expressions including, but not limited to redevelopment, urban revitalization, urban renewal, gentrification, displacement, inclusion, economic growth, global city, Little Village, Pilsen, creative districts, art district, socio-integration/socio-territorial integration, urbanization, La Boca, San Telmo, Villa 31, Barrio 31, and urbanization. I also analyzed policy artifacts (e.g., policy brochures, renders, blueprints). This multiplicity of techniques allowed me to construct a detailed, rich data set, and to conduct a rigorous cross-verification of findings that enhanced the veracity of the database. As far as time frame, I start this study with the year 2011, when new executive authorities were elected in each city. This has allowed me to track urban agendas and redevelopment projects as they gradually advanced. When appropriate, I make note of earlier administrations to provide contextual information. Finalizing this study in 2021 marks 10 years of both governances—a sufficient time span to observe key patterns and developments.

Plan of the Book In Chapter 2, I examine current neoliberal governance in Buenos Aires as its actors operate along the center-south side redevelopment frontier, considering motivations, goals, and strategies that define the current redevelopment. I describe this governance’s core urban agenda in Buenos Aires from 2011 to 2021, through the mayoral administrations of Mauricio Macri and Horacio Rodriguez Larreta. As I argue, in Buenos Aires neoliberal urban governance has been pushing to build a city that celebrates social integration while it deepens and expands spaces and infrastructure for cultural and aesthetic consumption as a means to attract

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investment. This discussion is followed by a brief description of the strategies and rhetoric (common understandings, imagined spaces, and sanitary codes) neoliberal actors create and use to advance their redevelopment plans along the center and south side areas. In Chapter 3, I focus my analysis on how the creative districts policy unfolded on the south side of Buenos Aires (La Boca and San Telmo). This policy was one of the redevelopment policies oriented toward making the city more socially integrated. I discuss neoliberal governance operations, strategies, and rhetoric of the physical transformation of the south side. The creative districts policy laid the groundwork for what would become one of the largest and most ambitious urban projects of Mayor Rodriguez Larreta, during his second term: the urbanization and integration of Villa 31. Chapter 4 discusses the urbanization project of Villa 31, located near the center of the city. It examines the neoliberal urban governance’s drive to physically and socially transform Villa 31 into Barrio 31. Since 2016, attention has been steered to urbanizing one the most deprived and stigmatized areas of the city, Villa 31, recently renamed “Barrio Padre Mugica,” and commonly referred to as “Barrio 31.” Neoliberal governance operations, strategies, and common understandings of the physical transformation of Villa 31 into Barrio 31 are discussed in this chapter. These helped rationalize this governance’s projects and provided the frame to understand its current redevelopment incursion near the center of the city. In Chapter 5, I unearth the current neoliberal governance urban agenda in Chicago vis-à-vis how neoliberal actors operated along the city’s southwest side from 2011 to 2021. In particular, this chapter chronicles this governance through the Emanuel and Lightfoot mayoral administrations, considering how it has worked across Chicago. The chapter briefly describes the strategies and rhetoric these actors have created and used to advance their plans in the current southwest side redevelopment incursion. As I argue, Chicago’s neoliberal urban governance pushes to build a city that celebrates vibrancy, growth, and globalization while it deepens and expands spaces and infrastructure for cultural and aesthetic consumption as a means to attract investment. Chapter 6 describes Chicago’s principal urban redevelopment projects during the period of analysis, including the Planned Manufacturing Districts (PMD) zoning deregulations and the Paseo rails-to-trails project. Each of these initiatives has exercised significant market pressures on the

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community of Pilsen and its neighbor to the west, the community of Little Village. The chapter considers how the governance has deployed rhetoric alongside these projects; both policies and rhetoric attempt to refashion these neighborhoods and nearby blocks in a way that supports Chicago’s neoliberal global agenda. In Chapter 7, I examine how Chicago governance actors’ rhetoric has shifted in response to changes of leadership and mounting social and political discontent. I argue that since May 2019 Chicago’s governance has begun to frame a neoliberal urban agenda in a way that is different from previous administrations. “Building an inclusive and equitable Chicago” has become one of the core priorities for this new phase of neoliberal urban redevelopment, yet, I argue, neoliberal core policies and practices continue to go unquestioned. In the final chapter, I develop the comparative analysis, focusing on how each local neoliberal governance advances processes of redevelopment and growth, but in a locally specific way. As a major contribution to this study, I conclude that Chicago’s and Buenos Aires’ neoliberal governances can be fruitfully understood as locally constituted formations when examining the differences in their operations and political strategies and in the rhetoric they mobilize. These governances have mobilized different urban agendas and rhetoric to reconfigure once nonattractive redevelopment areas as potentially profitable real estate and as potentially commodifiable areas for cultural consumption. These areas have been rediscovered and re-imagined and discussed by city officials, real estate, and business leaders as contributors to Chicago’s neoliberal globalization efforts and as contributors to Buenos Aires’s socio-inclusive efforts. Finally, I also consider similarities and differences in how neoliberal urban governances in Chicago and Buenos Aires unfold their urban plans for transformation, while responding to changing political realities, contestation, growing inequalities, and obstacles to development and redevelopment.

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Presdee, M. (2000). Cultural criminology and the carnival of crime. London: Routledge. Quijano, A. (2014). Cuestiones y horizontes. De la dependencia históricoestructural a la colonialidad/descolonialidad del poder. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Robinson, J. (2016). Thinking cities through elsewhere: Comparative tactics for a more global urban study. Progress in Human Geography, 40 (1), 3–29. Rodriguez, M. C. & Di Virgilio, M. M. (2016). A city for all? Public policy and resistance to gentrification in the southern neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. Urban Geography, 37 (8), 1215–1234. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638. 2016.1152844 Saad-Filho, A. (2020). Endgame: From crisis in neoliberalism to crises of neoliberalism. Human Geography, 14 (1) 133–137. Salas, R., Tapia, B. V., Garza, I. & Rosas, G. (2018). Procesos de urbanización y segregación territorial en la Ciudad de México, siglos XVI–XIX. In E. Bournazou (ed.), Gentrificación, Miradas desde la academia y la ciudadanía (pp. 109–140). México City: UNAM. Sánchez, S. I., Robertazzi, M. & Guebel, C. F. (Eds.) (2020). La desintegración de la Ciudad: políticas urbanas recientes en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Publicaciones ISU. Sassen, S. (2002) The global city: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Scalzitti, J. (2012). Asphalt factory site to become park. Chicago SunTimes, September 23. https://www.pressreader.com/usa/chicago-sun-times/ 20120923/281655367280121. Accessed February 2, 2022. Slater, T. (2017). Planetary rent gaps. Antipode, 49 (S1), 114–137. Smith, N. (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the revanchist city. New York, NY: Routledge. Springer, S. (2016). The discourse of neoliberalism: An anatomy of a powerful idea. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Springer, S., Birch, K. & MacLeavy, J. (Eds.) (2016). The handbook of neoliberalism. London: Routledge. Sternberg, C. (2012). The dynamics of neoliberal contingency: Neoliberal redevelopment governances in Chicago and Buenos Aires. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Department of Geography, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/han dle/2142/31099/Sternberg_Carolina.pdf?sequence=1 Sternberg, C. (2018). Middle class shifting moralities in neoliberal Buenos Aires. In A. Jonas, B. Miller, K. Ward & D. Wilson (eds.), The Routledge handbook on spaces of urban politics (pp. 492–503). London/New York: Routledge. Swyngedouw, E. (2000). Authoritarian governance: Power and the politics of rescaling. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18, 63–76.

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Swyngedouw, E. (2011). Interrogating post-democratization: Reclaiming egalitarian political spaces. Political Geography, 30 (7), 370–380. Theodore, N., Peck, J., & Brenner, N. (2018). Actually existing neoliberalism. In D. Cahill, M. Cooper, M. Konings & D. Primrose (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of neoliberalism. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/ 9781526416001. Wilson, D. (2004). Toward a contingent urban neoliberalism. Urban Geography, 25 (8), 771–783. Wilson, D. (2007). Cities and race: America’s new black ghetto. New York, NY: Routledge. Wilson, D. (2018). Chicago’s redevelopment machine and blues clubs. New York, NY: Routledge. Wilson, D. & Sternberg, C. (2012). Changing realities: The new racialized redevelopment rhetoric in Chicago. Urban Geography, 33, 979–999. Wilson, D., Grammenos, D. & Wouters, J. (2004). Neighborhood restructuring and political conflict: Chicago’s Pilsen Neighborhood. Environment and Planning A, 36 (2), 114–131. Wilson, J. & Swyngedouw, E. (2015). Seeds of dystopia: Post-politics and the return of the political. In J. Wilson & E. Swyngedouw (eds.), The postpolitical and its discontents. Spaces of depoliticization, spectres of radical politics (pp. 1– 22). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

CHAPTER 2

Redevelopment Frontiers in Buenos Aires

Beginning in 2010 in Buenos Aires, neoliberal governance accelerated urban transformation in the center of the city and on the south side through its “Creative Districts” policy and through the urbanization of Villa 31, one of the city’s largest urban slums. With these efforts, the governance aimed to close the socioeconomic gap between the city’s wealthy north side and its deprived south side by spurring overall urban redevelopment and growth. In other words, the neoliberal urban governance pushed to build a city that celebrates “social integration” through two policies that had the intention of ultimately advancing the commodification of the city center and of the south side, freeing up public land, and bringing abundant revenues to the city. In general, the pursuit of social integration means reducing social and economic inequalities and divisions and promoting quality interaction and a sense of belonging in diverse social environments (Lindquist 2021). But to governance actors in Buenos Aires, social integration also has also meant channeling public resources to close the critical social and economic inequalities between the north and south sides of the city. To achieve its goals, neoliberal governance in Buenos Aires needed to mobilize specific understandings to rationalize and build support for its projects. This chapter examines current neoliberal governance in Buenos Aires in terms of how its actors operate along the city center and the south

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side redevelopment frontier, including their motivations, goals, and strategies. The chapter also chronicles neoliberal urban governance’s broader agenda in Buenos Aires from 2011 to the present (through the Mauricio Macri and Rodriguez Larreta administrations) and offers a brief description of the strategies and rhetoric governance actors have used to advance their redevelopment plans. By strategies, I mean strategic discourses and policies neoliberal governance has used to advance redevelopment projects and overcome obstacles across the center and south side area. I consider how governance actors mobilize rhetoric, including dominant discursive spaces, metaphors, and common understandings to rationalize projects. A short periodization of neoliberal governance’s different phases will help to situate the trajectory and ascendancy of this formation in Buenos Aires and its various redevelopment frontiers and objectives.

Overview of the Neoliberal Governance of Buenos Aires The city of Buenos Aires, with a current population of 3,054,462 (GCBA Census 2020), has often been characterized as one of the most socially progressive cities, not only within Argentina but across South America (Lacarrieu 2005).1 However, in the 1990s, structural adjustment policies across the country made Buenos Aires’s governance more business oriented and supportive of real estate capital’s drive to gentrify neighborhoods. If this orientation was incipient in the early 1990s, it became ascendant with the onset of Mayor Macri’s administration in 2007, which relied heavily on neoliberal principles and practices.

1 Yet, the apparently “socially progressive” character of Buenos Aires goes at odds with the covert institutional racism that has shaped the Argentinian society since the colonial times [see Adamovsky (2009) and Barros (2005)]. Primarily due to the intense mestizaje among Spanish, Indigenous, and African populations during colonial times, whitening policies throughout the late nineteenth century, and a process of social control through educational policies during the twentieth century, Argentina is one of the many LatinAmerican societies that has officially strived to homogenize its racial identity as white and European and has predominantly defined hierarchies in terms of class. Despite the attempts of many social scientists to raise awareness of the invisibilizing of African and Indigenous legacies since colonial times, Argentine society as a whole has not adequately grasped the impacts of racism and institutional racism and the prominent legacy of African and Indigenous Ancestors.

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While a detailed description of the early phases of neoliberal urban governance in Buenos Aires exceeds the scope of this study, I will provide a short periodization of its different phases. The first phase, from the early 1990s to 1998, was characterized by a predominant influx of global real estate capital. In this early period, global capital investment and the national government of Argentina were the principal forces that physically transformed downtown Buenos Aires, particularly Puerto Madero Waterfront. Puerto Madero is now an upscale and hip neighborhood located in downtown Buenos Aires, occupying a significant portion of the Rio de la Plata riverbank. In the early 1990s, Puerto Madero’s redevelopment in the old port of Buenos Aires was celebrated as an urban renewal project, which at the time cost international investors, and federal and local government $2.5 billion and, as of recently, over $6 billion. Until the early 1990s, Puerto Madero had been an abandoned port district of warehouses, silos, factories, mills, and customs houses, when a joint venture of local, federal government, and international capital development sought to transform the area into a living/working and entertainment complex, replete with fashionable lofts, offices, hotels, theaters, restaurants, and cafés (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 2013). The initiative did not result in population and/or commercial displacement, since the redevelopment was primarily executed in a desolated area. From 1998 to 2011, the second phase of this type of governance advanced dramatically.2 In this period, the profound deregulation of the real estate market and favorable real estate market prices compared to other markets in Latin America and abroad encouraged this governance to build an affluent, real estate profitable city with the promise that it would also be affordable for its citizens (Sternberg 2012). In pursuit of this goal, urban governance actors worked together to promote cultural and a esthetic consumption initiatives (e.g., promoting cultural and historical preservation initiatives, expanding museums, art galleries, 2 Until 1996, Buenos Aires’s mayor was appointed by the president of Argentina. But in 1996, the city of Buenos Aires became autonomous from the federal government in electing local executive and legislative authorities, and could determine its own constitution and propose its own public budget. Since then, Buenos Aires’s citizens have elected nine city mayors, namely: De La Rua, Olivera, Ibarra, Ibarra, Telerman, Macri, Macri, Rodriguez Larreta, and Rodriguez Larreta. De La Rua, former federal senator, became the first elected mayor of Buenos Aires following elections on June 30, 1996. He resigned in 1999 to become president of Argentina and was forced to resign in December 2001, at the apex of one of the country’s worst economic and political crises.

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restoring façades, sidewalks, etc.) and to upgrade specific areas of the city considered “relegated” and “disinvested” (Crot 2006). But while cultural policies and programs were flourishing, they also led to negative impacts that escalated over the years. By late 2006, neoliberal governance had managed to build a more class-segregated city on top of the ruins left by the 2001 national economic crisis.3 Notably, housing affordability and public housing accessibility were profoundly impacted when austerity policies hit the public budget, starting in late 2006 with the outgoing administration of Jorge Telerman (2005–2006). The Instituto de Vivienda de la Ciudad (Institute for Housing), a governmental unit in charge of public and affordable housing in the city of Buenos Aires, reduced its budget by 50% from 2006 to 2011. Paradoxically, this reduction was inversely proportional to the rate of housing construction geared to the middle- and upper-income sectors. This synopsis provides an indication of why an unprecedented 20% of the population (approximately 600,000 inhabitants) registered precarious housing conditions in 2010. Of these inhabitants, according to Census 2010, 100,000 were living in abandoned buildings (INDEC 2010). In response to the housing affordability crisis, first during the Telerman administration, and then during Macri’s first year in office, neoliberal governance in Buenos Aires initiated programs, including the construction of affordable housing units and the refurbishing of some of the large tenement houses (conventillos ) in the southern part of the city. Unfortunately, these efforts were abandoned during the second year of Macri’s first term as Buenos Aires city mayor (2007–2011), when more cuts were made to public housing and housing affordability programs, severely impacting programs initiated during the previous administration (see Rodriguez et al. 2008). The third phase of neoliberal governance in Buenos Aires, on which this study focuses, begins in 2011 and continues into the time of writing, through Macri’s second term and Rodriguez Larreta’s first and second (ongoing) term. This period has seen unprecedented privatization and commodification of public land and the mobilization of rhetoric that embraces both social integration principles and real estate and commercial opportunities in the center of the city and on south side. To achieve

3 From 1998 to 2006, the income gap between the richest 10% and the poorest 10% was 126 times wider and increased by 17% (Rodriguez et al. 2008).

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its goals, neoliberal urban governance in Buenos Aires has engaged in a disciplining of spaces and identities.

Neoliberal Urban Governance in the Macri and Rodriguez Larreta Administrations (2011 to the Present) Before delving into the dynamics of neoliberal governance, let us briefly consider Mauricio Macri’s political trajectory and the political party he co-founded in 2005. Macri, representing a powerful sector of the business elite in Argentina, launched his political career with the help of his economic fortune, built from a wealthy and very well connected family. In pursuit of becoming mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, in 2005 he co-founded the electoral alliance coalition Propuesta Republicana-PRO (Republican Proposal), which he led for two years. His political career thrived with the support of the corporate elite of Argentina and the middle-upper class of the city of Buenos Aires. With a successful mayoral campaign, he was elected in 2007 and governed the city of Buenos Aires through 2011. Reelected in 2011, he did not hesitate to use his last term in the mayor’s office to expand the PRO’s political support throughout the country and to campaign for the presidency. He then formed a national coalition named Cambiemos, with the support of third parties that had national projection: Union Cívica Radical-UCR and the Afirmación para una República Igualitaria-ARI. The national coalition was key to propelling him to the presidency. On November 22, 2015, he was elected president of Argentina with 51.44% of the vote, nearly three points ahead of his rival, Daniel Scioli of the Peronist Frente para la Victoria, who trailed with 48.56% (Watts and Goñi 2015). As described by sociologists Morressi and Vommaro (2013), the PRO party was formed by business and corporate national elites who lacked any previous experience in the political or public policy arena. To Moressi and Vommaro, the PRO is a highly pragmatic party, supported by the middle and upper classes, which articulates a new way of conducting politics, focusing on professionalism, creativity, and transparency (Morressi and Vommaro 2013). More important to this study is that Macri and his supporters in the PRO party represent a consolidation of a neoliberal ethos, policies, and practices.

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Neoliberalism existed in Buenos Aires before Macri became mayor in 2007, but with the onset of his administration, its principles and practices ruled the day. Profound cuts were made in public spending, including education and health, coupled with urban policies that reduced the amount of affordable housing and neglected disinvested neighborhoods that had been prioritized for urban renewal by previous administrations. Quintessential neoliberal financial strategies also characterized this period. The city would sell off city properties and public vacant land for shortterm gain of revenue that would be used to attract corporate and real estate investment and would institute changes to zoning ordinances, land donations, and a series of tax abatements to favor real estate speculation (Sternberg 2018). At the same time, the renewal of public space focused primarily on fencing parks and squares and on expanding sidewalks to reduce pedestrian traffic. Such strategies were among the main public interventions during the eight years of Macri’s era and they were primarily deployed in the North side’s affluent areas, restricting the “beautification” of the south side to clusters of previously revalorized areas.4 In 2011, Mauricio Macri was reelected for a second term (2011– 2015). Buenos Aires’s neoliberal governance continued undaunted in implementing policies and circulating rhetoric that can be described as revanchist in the way they encouraged race- and class-based fear.5 Later, Macri’s successor and PRO advocate, Rodriguez Larreta, elected in 2015 and reelected with almost 56% of the vote in 2019, followed Macri’s neoliberal ethos and revanchist policies toward the urban poor and non-European immigrants. Both the Macri and Rodriguez Larreta administrations embraced real estate and commercial opportunities as part 4 Halfway through Macri’s first term, a new policy of public transportation emerged, after the failure of the subway expansion announced at the beginning of his first term. The original name of the new system was Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) but ended up being called “metrobuses.” In addition, the local government sought to invest in pockets of differentiated and formerly revalorized areas on the south side, as seen in the proposal for the Villa Olímpica, located in the Comuna 8. 5 The term revanchism, from the French word “revanche,” was coined by Neil Smith in 1996 to refer to a sentiment of race/class terror expressed by white middle-class Americans who, during the late 1980s/early 1990s, “reclaimed” the “inner-city” areas they had left during their mass exodus to the suburbs, seeking clean air and a better living style. But, once they decided to return to the city looking for more “diversity and culture,” they began to displace entire communities of color, working-class communities, and minorities in general, who had put down roots in those “inner-city” areas white folks abandoned in the 1950s.

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of their social integration policy, including that pertaining to the Arts District and the urban transformation of Villa 31—even though this last redevelopment project began only after Rodriguez Larreta was elected major of Buenos Aires in 2015. For more than fourteen years, Buenos Aires neoliberal governance (through policies, programs and procedures, and an assemblage of institutions and actors) re-sculpted the city’s urban and social fabric. Buenos Aires governance has primarily relied on local and federal government agencies to implement redevelopment initiatives. The local government, through its core agencies (Ministry of Urban Space, Ministry of Public Space, Ministry of Economic Development and the Secretary of Habitat and Social Inclusion, later named the Secretary of Social and Urban Integration), has predominantly invested, centralized, supervised, and regulated long-standing redevelopment projects, including the Creative Districts and the urbanization of Villa 31. The federal government, mainly through the Corporation Buenos Aires Sur and the Agency of State Property Management, has transferred public land from the federal jurisdiction to the local one, as I will discuss in later sections of this chapter. Yet, the above governmental agencies, in coordination with the following assemblage of institutions and actors, local real estate capital, international developers and builders, public–private civic corporations,6 multilateral credit agencies,7 and academic institutions and media outlets,8 have pursued redevelopment objectives and have coordinated efforts to advance their planning agendas and goals. Revanchist Policies and Rhetorical Shift The revanchist shift, both in policies and rhetoric, escalated with Macri’s second term. Almost daily over the course of Macri’s first and second terms, hundreds of garbage pickers and street vendors were evicted, and the unhoused population was persecuted through the Unidad por el Control del Espacio Público (Unit for the Control of the Public Space) (Cravino and Palombi 2015). Other repressive policies included 6 IRSA, La Rural S.A., Ogden Argentina S.A, Portland S.A, AUSA, Unión Transitoria de Empresas, the Argentine Chamber of Construction, to cite a few. 7 Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the International Bank for the Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). 8 The University of Buenos Aires, Clarín, Infobae, La Nación, and Página 12.

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the criminalization of public protesters. Not surprisingly, most of these repressive policies were short lived, after public protests against police violence intensified across the city, and because some of Macri’s repressive measures went through a judicial examination process (Sánchez and Baldiviezo 2020). Yet, one of the most noticeable expressions of revanchism that marked the end of Macri’s first term and the beginning of his second was the public repression of immigrant families occupying the Parque Indoamericano (Indoamerican Park) in 2010. In early December of that year, a violent protest broke out in one of the largest public parks of Buenos Aires, leaving three people dead. The local government forcibly removed hundreds of families to “take back” the park. For many years the park had been occupied by local workingclass residents and non-European immigrant families, mostly from Bolivia. This episode triggered visceral anti-immigrant sentiment—directed mostly at immigrants coming from neighboring countries, including Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru—and anti-social-mixing sentiments among the urban middle-class of Buenos Aires. In a public speech, Macri bluntly declared that “if he had the Federal Police under his command, he would have ordered the eviction [of the entire families] from the park…usurped by 200 families” (La Voz 2010). In addition, he expressed that he was “tired of qualifying as a xenophobe for denouncing an uncontrollable immigration” (La Voz 2010). According to a prominent independent daily, the Macri’s xenophobic speech “twitched the entire city (…) fascism has begun to grow in the middle-class… this [episode] illustrates the rejection of the poor” (Bruschtein 2010, my translation). The right-wing media and many in the public celebrated these evictions, claiming that Bolivians and the “poor” had “taken over some of their valuable public space” (Mills 2011). At the time, Cristian Ritondo, at the time chief of the legislature for the PRO party, expressed similar sentiments to those of daily Página 12: “The PRO [leaders] and neighbors strongly support our eviction policy… If we allow this to happen [the people who had occupied the parks], tomorrow they will come to take Parque Las Heras, Parque Pereyra, Parque Centenario o Parque Chacabuco” (Pertot 2010, my translation). The final eviction of immigrants from the Parque Indoamericano began to cement an anti-homeless, anti-immigrant, and anti-social mixing ethos of neoliberal Buenos Aires. That ethos persists today. According to many Argentinian journalists and scholars (see Vommaro et al. 2015), the middle-class in Buenos Aires has supported revanchist governance as a reaction against populist and welfare policies at the

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national level during the twelve years (2003–2015) of the administrations of presidents Nestor Kirchner and Cristina de Kirchner (who succeeded Nestor Kirchner for two terms after his death in 2010).9 Vommaro and colleagues (2015) suggest that the unprecedented middle-class acceptance of broadly unpopular, austere, and revanchist policies, carried out since 2007 by Macri and successors, converged with their overt rejection of Kirchner’s populist national agenda. However, in an earlier study of shifting middle-class sensibilities in Buenos Aires in the aftermath of the 2001 crisis (Sternberg 2018), I argue there may be more complicated reasons for this revanchist turn. The 2001 crisis transformed social moralities, triggering class anxieties and uncertainties about the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in the imagined future of the city. Buenos Aires’s post-2001 governance has tapped a deepening insecurity, resentment, and fear among the middle-class, which has raised support for neoliberal planning, including efforts to transform downtowns, advance gentrification, and push non-European immigrants and the poor further to geographical and political peripheries. A central driver has been a middle-class fear of social mixing, including sharing public spaces such as parks, schools, and hospitals with working-class individuals, poor families, and non-European immigrants (Sternberg 2018). Privatization and Commodification of Vacant Public Land Of particular note during the period of analysis has been the ostensible privatization and commodification of vacant public land located in the district of Buenos Aires, either owned by the city government of Buenos Aires or by the federal government through the Agency of State Property Management (AABE). During Macri’s eight years in office, the privatization of public land located in the city of Buenos Aires increased every year, to the point that local journalists started calling Macri’s administration a “real estate kingdom” (Sánchez and Baldiviezo 2020). In the 1990s, Buenos Aires had been known as “a city of businesses”; by 2020 scholars were arguing that it had become “a city for businesses” (Socoloff et al. 2020, p. 17). 9 President Nestor Kirchner’s administration ran from 2003 to 2007. He died of a heart attack in 2010. Cristina de Kirchner, his wife and first lady during the tenure of her husband, continued with Nestor Kirchner’s political program after she was democratically elected for two consecutive terms (2007–2015) as president of Argentina.

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Over the whole of Macri’s two mayoral terms, more than 200 hectáreas (494 acres) of public land, mostly on the north side of Buenos Aires, were transferred to the private sector, either privatized or commodified through concessions to private builders and/or developers (Socoloff et al. 2020).10 When Macri left the mayor’s office to become president of Argentina in 2015, the privatization and commodification frenzy escalated. Macri’s right hand and vice mayor, Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, succeeded him as the new mayor. By his fourth year in power, public land transfers to prominent builders and developers had increased to 1,235 acres (Sánchez and Baldiviezo 2020). This process was made possible by several factors. The political climate was one in which the same political and ideological party, the PRO,11 dominated both the national and local (Buenos Aires) executive powers, which paved the way for an encompassing deregulatory and business-oriented climate. In addition, after the PRO won the majority of seats in the Buenos Aires legislative chamber in 2015 (34 out of 60), there was an unprecedented commodification of the public land owned by the local government, through the approval of land concession projects by the local legislative chamber. Even as president of the country, one of Macri’s most adroit moves consisted of passing an executive order in 2016 that internally restructured the powers of the Agency of State Property Management (AABE). This national agency, created in 2012 to identify and manage lands and buildings owned by the federal government, was internally restructured to accelerate the transfer of parcels of federal public land and buildings to any subnational jurisdiction (state or municipal), that would eventually sell or donate them to the private sector, without passing through the national Congress. But in addition to surpassing this approval, Macri’s executive order also gave the 10 These numbers are consistent with Socoloff et al. (2020), who studied the process of public land appropriation and concessions during the Macri and Rodriguez Larreta administrations. Their study states that between August 2016 and April 2018, the AABE authorized the auction of 111 parcels of public land across the country and overseas, 60 of which were in the jurisdiction of the city of Buenos Aires, which represented 54% of all the parcels authorized to be transferred to the private sector (either sold or offered as a concession). These were concentrated in two very affluent neighborhoods in the city of Buenos Aires, Palermo and Retiro. Interestingly, one of initiatives was to sell the Tiro Federal, or Federal Shooting Race, to finance the urbanization of Villa 31 and 31 bis that we will discuss in Chapter 4. 11 To note, except for 1994, there was never a time in the political history of Argentina where the control of the federal and city government of Buenos Aires had been controlled by the same political party, in this case, the PRO.

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AABE the power to build partnerships with the private sector to redevelop parcels of public land without seeking approval from the national legislative chamber. During this period, once parcels of federal public land or buildings were centralized in a single management institution, the AABE, they were later transferred to the jurisdiction of the city of Buenos Aires. Rodriguez Larreta, newly elected city mayor in 2015, had the green light to either privatize the lands or commercialize them as land concessions (see Sánchez and Baldiviezo 2020; Socoloff et al. 2020). Encouraging the privatization mania were Rodriguez Larreta’s elite supporters. Once in power, he assembled a coalition of CEOs, most of them long-term friends and well established in renowned corporate FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) firms, who saw an extremely lucrative opportunity to buy hundreds of acres of public land located in strategic locations around the city of Buenos Aires, at very low prices, for later redevelopment or for speculative purposes. The situation in Buenos Aires is hardly unique. State agencies have been facilitating the commodification and financialization of public land (Christophers 2017; Fields 2013) across the world over the last ten years, and these same financial agencies have speculated on public property through institutional and legal mechanisms (Beswick and Penny 2018). Yet, within local economies where the financialization process of real estate has significant limitations (Fernandez and Aalbers 2019), as is true in the Argentine case (Socoloff 2019), the selling of public land or buildings, are the result of various attempts of the local authorities to activate the construction industry at moments when there are local signs of economic vulnerability (Socoloff 2019). Here is where the role of national and local authorities is key, along with that of developers, who become allies with international investors in appropriating public land offered by local and national authorities.

Neoliberal Governance’s Goals, Strategies, and Discursive Spaces Despite directing all its efforts to promoting a business-friendly and deregulated economic climate, neoliberal urban governance in Buenos Aires never fully distanced itself from a core principle to promote a

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“socially integrated city,”12 and therefore, it began to channel public resources to close the stark social and economic inequalities between north and south sides of the city—inequalities that historically have been denounced by the general public and government officials. From 2008 through 2019, this governance firmly advocated for policies focused on bridging the city’s historical socioeconomic gap, and thus, it mobilized a glut of public resources (physical infrastructure, public land, subsidies, and political power) to supposedly build a distinctive, socially integrated city. Yet, governance actors also sought social integration as the perfect vehicle to bring together redevelopment and growth where vacant land could be seized, assembled, and later privatized for its future transformation and profitability. In other words, the neoliberal urban governance has pushed to build a city that celebrates social integration through policies that would advance the commodification of the city center of the city and of the south side by freeing public land and producing abundant revenues for the city. To this end, the governance first embarked on renewing the physical infrastructure of the long-ago de-industrialized neighborhoods of La Boca and San Telmo through its “Creative Districts” policy. To limit the extension of this study, I will only focus on the formation of the Arts District, comprising most of La Boca and San Telmo neighborhoods. In this context, starting in late 2008 and a few miles away from Buenos Aires’s downtown, governance actors launched its first set of policies. They explicitly framed the “Creative Districts” policy as an effort to overcome socioeconomic disparities between the north and south of the city by developing and subsidizing so-called clean and creative industries, including arts, design, and technology, in the historically disinvested southern area of the city. At the time, the above industries were conceived as innovative and creative.13 The core idea driving the policy was to create industrial clusters whereby specific industries, and firms associated with them, would be 12 Over the years, there have been slight changes to the term “socially integrated city,” mostly due to transitions in Buenos Aires’s governmental bureaucratic structure. Here, I use “socially integrated city,” “socio-territorial integration,” and “social inclusion and territorial integration” as interchangeable terms. 13 According to the principles of the creative city urban planning paradigm, internationally legitimized by UNESCO through its UCCN (UNESCO Creative Cities Network) program in 2004, a place where everyone has abundant opportunities to live, work, and create is recognized as a creative city.

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agglomerated in particular districts, predominantly concentrated in the historically disinvested south side, in exchange for improved infrastructure, amenities, and more importantly, large tax breaks, with all efforts to be funded by the city government (see Arqueros and Gonzalez Redondo 2017; Thomasz 2016). The Arts District, comprising most of La Boca and part of San Telmo, was the first to be created in 2013. Its main objective was to “create, produce, manage, commercialize, and distribute artistic works” (GCBA 2013) related to the visual arts, scenography, literature, and music, all to be concentrated in the same area delimited by the district, where individuals, artists’ groups, and educational institutions could work in unison and collaboratively. In this way, many governance actors contended, lands that used to be inaccessible, unattractive, and dangerous could become “salvageable” and “accessible” to the city fabric. Yet, before the Arts District project could advance, new discursive spaces needed to be activated. The publicly entrenched negative stereotypes of La Boca and San Telmo as post-industrial “impoverished and informal spaces” (see Sternberg 2012) became the aperture through which expedient new imagined spaces needed to be cultivated. In the process, Buenos Aires’s neoliberal urban governance offered discursive spaces to rationalize its projects. In the next chapter, I will discuss the “cultural, touristic, and versatile artistic spaces” mobilized by this governance to normalize the entrenched negative public imaginary of La Boca and San Telmo. As we will see, governance actors cultivated these new positive spaces for La Boca and San Telmo to fit the Arts District’s economic, cultural, and a esthetic expectations. These new imagined spaces did much to frame the Arts District policy as something a esthetically pleasing, positive, and worth pursuing while they attracted new visitors, investors, and consumers (Thomasz 2017). All in all, this redevelopment initiative has changed the physical and social fabric of the city’s south side, and in the process, La Boca and San Telmo became new “cultural, touristic and versatile artistic spaces”—which ultimately meant ideal spaces to contribute to the city’s integration, redevelopment, and growth. The other and most transformative redevelopment project this governance initiated was the urbanization of one the most neglected and historically stigmatized areas in the city, Villa 31. Three years after the creation of the Arts District, governance actors in Buenos Aires unveiled a $420 million redevelopment plan financed by the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Bank for the Reconstruction and Development, driven by the same principle of social integration, that

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is, with the goal of closing the social and economic gap between the city’s northern and southern sides (Bertelli 2021; Lederman 2020). This monumental project would primarily improve the built environment of Villa 31, supposedly without forcibly displacing its occupants. Under Rodriguez Larreta’s administration, neoliberal governance officially sought to improve living conditions and housing safety for residents, promote social integration, formalize homeownership and businesses, and support mobility and urban integration in one of the most deprived and historically stigmatized neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. For decades, the villas (slums) of Buenos Aires have been largely neglected and overlooked for restructuring. Yet, center-east areas in the city of Buenos Aires, especially the highly denounced villas , called barrios populares by RENABAP,14 became ripe for a new phase of urban restructuring. Long-time residents of the villas , neglected for decades by public funds, have experienced “urbanization” efforts since 2016. Governance actors in Buenos Aires had never before exerted similar pressure to upscale targeted blocks in an area historically considered an “eyesore” in the center-east of the city. Yet, new rhetoric mobilized by governance actors suggested that although Villa 31 was a troubled and neglected area, it could become a community that contributed something positive to the city; it could be “resuscitated” and socially and physically integrated with other neighborhoods. In this rhetoric, such change promised to do what previous governances never thought about: “civilize” the villeros (residents of Villa 31), upgrade their living conditions, and present this area as an opportunity for cultural consumption. As we will see, while public works set out to urbanize the area (i.e., formalizing housing tenure and incorporating informal settlements into the reach of existing public services), governance actors discursively mobilized a “livable, formalized, and robust space,” along with a “multi-cultural and gastronomic space” to discipline Villa 31’s urban form. They also mobilized key identities and metaphors to install and reinforce a collective identity among those who

14 According to the Registro Nacional de Barrios Populares-RENABAP (National

Registrar of Popular Neighborhoods): “Barrios populares are considered vulnerable neighborhoods in which, at least, 8 families live together or next to each other, where more than half of the population do not have a property title, neither access to two or more regular basic services (potable and running water, electricity and/or sewage).” https:// www.argentina.gob.ar/noticias/barrios-populares.

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would, according to governance actors, benefit from their redevelopment. In addition, activating these key identities and metaphors would help discourage resistance to the governance pro-growth imaginaries and attract public interest. For example, key identities such as vecinos (neighbors), along with metaphorical language such as “preserving and boosting vecinos ’ identities,” have been strategically mobilized for that purpose. In addition to identities such as that of vecinos , race and class identities have also been important to the politics of urban development. Race and class, as social constructs, are not simply an appendix of neoliberal urban policies and practices; in Wilson’s racial economy perspective, they shape neoliberal governance’s core processes, practices, and spaces (Wilson 2007, 2018). Race and class making and their integration into economic processes are often not blunt, but nuanced and subtle, found in situated meanings and common understandings about people, places, and processes (see Wilson 2007, 2018). On the one hand, the term “villa” represents a form of residency, a style of neighborhood, and a set of activity spaces that to governance actors are best peripheralized or ignored. On the other hand, race and class serve Buenos Aires’s governance as opportunities to rhetorically frame villeros ’ communities as exciting new spaces to experience authentic diversity and gastronomic culture from multiple neighboring countries, including Paraguay, Peru, and Bolivia. In this sense, three things are to be celebrated in the new governance rhetoric: “outsiders’” new opportunities for cultural and gastronomic experiences alongside the renovated culture of “vecinos ”; “barrios ” (neighborhoods) as a new urban model for what the center of the city can be socially; and ways these areas can enrich the city’s growth. Each prominent space and identity has been crafted and communicated through powerful rhetoric designed to transform the center of the city and its south side. Discussion of these spaces and identities will be the task of the next chapters.

References Adamovsky, E. (2009). Historia de la clase media Argentina. Apogeo y decadencia de una ilusión. Buenos Aires: Planeta. Arqueros, S. & Gonzalez Redondo, C. (2017). La política de distritos del sur de Buenos Aires: una mirada en perspectiva. Quid 16 (6), 7–30. Barros, R. (2005). Fuimos. Aventuras y desventuras de la clase media. Buenos Aires: Aguilar.

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Bertelli, L. (2021). What kind of global city? Circulating policies for ‘slum’ upgrading in the making of world-class Buenos Aires. EPA: Economy and Space 0 (0), 1–21. Beswick, J., & Penny, J. (2018). Demolishing the present to sell off the future? The emergence of ‘financialized municipal entrepreneurialism’ in London. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 42, 612–632. Bruschtein, L. (2010). Macri Vainilla. Página 12, December 11. https://www. pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-158495-2010-12-11.html. Accessed March 2, 2022. Christophers, B. (2017). The state and financialization of public land in the United Kingdom. Antipode, 49, 62–85. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti. 12267. Cravino, M. C. & Palombi, A. M. (2015). El macrismo ¿neoliberal? Política urbana en el sur de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Cuadernos de Vivienda y Urbanismo, 8 (15), 56–67. Crot, L. (2006). “Scenographic” and “cosmetic” planning: Globalization and territorial restructuring in Buenos Aires. Journal of Urban Affairs, 28 (3), 227–251. Fernandez, R., & Aalbers, M. B. (2019). Housing financialization in the global south: In search of a comparative framework. Housing Policy Debate, https:// doi.org/10.1080/10511482.2019.1681491. Fields, D. (2013). From property abandonment to predatory equity: Writings on financialization and urban space in New York City. CUNY Academic Works. https://www.academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2167. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (GCBA) (2013). Distrito de las Artes. Public brochure. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (GCBA) (2020). Anuario Estadístico 2020. Dirección General de Estadística y Censos, Ministerio de Hacienda y Finanzas, GCBA. Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos (INDEC) (2010). Censo Nacional de Población 2010. https://www.indec.gob.ar/indec/web/Nivel4-Tema-241-135. Accessed, March 24, 2022. Lacarrieu, M. (2005). Nuevas políticas de lugares: recorridos y fronteras entre la utopía y la crisis. In G. Welch (ed.), Buenos Aires a la deriva. Transformaciones urbanas recientes. (pp. 363–395) Buenos Aires: Biblos. La Voz (2010) Macri: Si tuviese la Federal, yo daría la orden de desalojo del parque. December 10. https://servicios.lavoz.com.ar/auth/login/?loginw all=true&continue=https://www.lavoz.com.ar/politica/macri-si-tuviese-lafederal-yo-daria-la-orden-de-desalojo-del-parque/. Accessed, June 1, 2022. Lederman, J. (2020). Chasing world class urbanism. Global policy versus everyday survival in Buenos Aires. Globalization and community 30. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

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Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (2013). Puerto Madero. Análisis de un Proyecto. https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/pubfiles/2289_1 629_puerto_madero_0713llsp.pdf. Accessed, November 30, 2021. Lindquist, J. (2021). Social mixing to social integration in urban expansions: The case of IJburg District in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Unpublished Thesis, Department of Community and Regional Planning, University of Texas at Austin. https://hdl.handle.net/2152/87708. Mills, N. (2011). Political fighting continues over evictions. Argentina Independent, March 14. Accessed, March 12, 2012. (The Argentina Independent has been discontinued and is no longer available online.) Morresi, S. D. & Vommaro, G. A. (2013). How to construct a successful party of the center-right in contemporary Argentina? https://web.archive. org/web/20160303221635/http://live.v1.udesa.edu.ar/files/UAHumanid ades/EVENTOS/PaperMorresi040413.pdf. Accessed, March 22, 2022. Pertot, W. (2010). La política de Macri es no dar la cara. Página 12, December 9. https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/subnotas/158 356-50767-2010-12-09.html. Accessed, March 8, 2017. Rodriguez, C., Bañuelos, C. & Mera, G. (2008). Intervención-no intervención: Ciudad y políticas públicas en el proceso de renovación del área sur de la ciudad de Buenos Aires. In H. Herzer (ed.), Con el Corazón Mirando al Sur. Transformaciones en el sur de la ciudad de Buenos Aires (pp. 45–92). Buenos Aires: Espacio Editorial. Sánchez, S. I. & Baldiviezo, J. (2020). Legalidades y trampas en los procesos de transformación de las villas de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: los casos de Playón de Chacarita y Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica (ex Villas 31 y 31 bis) en context. In M. Robertazzi & C. F. Guebel (eds.), La desintegración de la ciudad. Políticas urbanas recientes en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (pp. 81–150). Buenos Aires: Publicaciones ISU. Smith, N. (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the revanchist city. New York: Routledge. Socoloff, I. (2019). Subordinate financialization and housing finance: The case of indexed mortgage loans’ coalition in Argentina. Housing Policy Debate, 30 (4), 585-605. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511482.2019.1676810. Socoloff, I., Camji, N., Montagna, F., Peralta, A. & Sahakian, Y. L. (2020). Estrategias de disposición del suelo público: mercantilización e inflexiones del neoliberalismo urbano en Ciudad de Buenos Aires (2015–2018). Territorios (43), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.12804/revistas.urosario.edu.co/territ orios/a.7286.

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Sternberg, C. (2012). The dynamics of neoliberal contingency: Neoliberal redevelopment governances in Chicago and Buenos Aires. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Department of Geography, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/han dle/2142/31099/Sternberg_Carolina.pdf?sequence=1 Sternberg, C. (2018). Middle class shifting moralities in neoliberal Buenos Aires. In A. Jonas, B. Miller, K. Ward & D. Wilson (eds.), The Routledge handbook on spaces of urban politics (pp. 492–503). London/New York: Routledge. Thomasz, A. G. (2016). Los nuevos distritos creativos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires: la conversión del barrio de La Boca en el “Distrito de las Artes.” Eure, 42 (126), 145–167. Thomasz, A. G. (2017). Etnografía de un proceso de resemantización simbólico: del barrio de La Boca a Distrito de las Artes. Quid 16 (6), 67–93. Vommaro, G. A., Morressi, S. D. & Belloti, A. N. (2015). Mundo PRO. Anatomía de un partido fabricado para ganar. Buenos Aires: Planeta. Watts, J. & Goñi, U. (2015, November 22). Argentina shifts to the right after Mauricio Macri wins presidential runoff. The Guardian. https://web.archive. org/web/20151123083643/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/ nov/22/argentina-election-exit-polls-buenos-aires-mauricio-macri. Accessed, January 5, 2022. Wilson, D. (2007). Cities and race: America’s new black ghetto. New York, NY: Routledge. Wilson, D. (2018). Chicago’s redevelopment machine and blues clubs. New York, NY: Routledge.

CHAPTER 3

Becoming a “Socially Integrated City” Through “Creative Districts”

Starting in late 2008, the neoliberal urban governance of Buenos Aires launched the “Creative Districts” policy, which was framed as a strategy to drive economic growth on the city’s south side and to lessen the economic divide with the north side,1 by subsidizing and promoting so-called “clean” and “creative” industries (e.g., arts, design, and technology). In this chapter, I examine this policy and, in particular, how the Arts District unfolded on the popularly rendered “impoverished and informal” south side of Buenos Aires, including La Boca and San Telmo (see Fig. 3.1a, b). The idea behind the policy was to create clusters of economic activity related to specific industries and firms, which would be agglomerated in various districts, mostly on the south side. The clusters would provide employment and help promote the targeted industry, in exchange for its accepting a south side location where it would enjoy improved infrastructure, amenities, and most important, large tax breaks—all of these to be financed by the city (see Arqueros and Gonzalez Redondo 2017; Thomasz 2016). This was not an entirely new idea: now found worldwide, the notion of economic and industrial clusters dates from the

1 To illustrate the economic disparity with the household income level, in 2015 households on the north side made 1.5 more than on the south side. In 2021, the difference went up to 1.56.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Sternberg, Neoliberal Urban Governance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21718-0_3

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a

b

Fig. 3.1 a Map of the Arts District. b Map of La Boca, San Telmo, and Barrio 31 (Source Elaborated by GIS specialist, Julio Villarino)

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1990s2 and, in terms of planning principles and design practices, governance actors in Buenos Aires were inspired by the success of Silicon Valley and the 22@Barcelona innovation district (Gonzalez Redondo 2020).3 Two districts were planned for the center-north of the city,4 and three districts were planned in the southern neighborhoods of La Boca, San Telmo, Barracas, and Parque Patricios—places that have historically been home to the most vulnerable population and where housing has been particularly substandard (Chile Huerta and Rodríguez 2013; Arqueros 2013; Cosacov et al. 2011). Despite their poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and lack of access to transportation, various factors gave the targeted area the potential to be integrated with the nearby downtown: city subway lines could be expanded and made accessible to Parque Patricios. La Boca and San Telmo were quite close to the city center. In Barracas, the industrial infrastructure was relatively well-preserved, and both La Boca and Parque Patricios were home to large public parks. The economic activity to be situated in each district was determined by city officials, based on what they considered to be the district’s existing historical and cultural capital (Gonzalez Redondo 2020). In December 2008, the local government announced the creation of the first district, the Technology District, in the traditionally industrial neighborhood of Parque Patricios, predominantly dedicated to the food processing industry. It was followed by the Arts District (see Fig. 3.1),

2 The idea of industrial clusters returned in the early 1990s and in the early 2000s,

whereby the geographic concentration of companies, educational institutions, and civil organizations in the same district came to be understood as facilitating and enhancing innovative processes that improve competitiveness. The innovative clusters would foster territorial development processes in the district, and it is expected to potentially impact the living conditions of the residents living nearby (Porter 1998). 3 Yet, there are multiple objections to the notion of clusters and the model formulated

by Florida, in terms of optimizing productivity while promoting urban development (see, e.g., Amin and Cohendet 2004; Martin and Sunley 2003; Pacheco-Vega 2007). One of the weak points in this model is the lack of attention to the global connections in the constitution of the local (Tironi 2010; Slater and Ariztía 2009). 4 The Audiovisual District (September 2011) and the Sports District (December 2014) are not included in the main content as they are located beyond the geographical focus of this study. Four of the districts encompass 62% of Comuna 4 and 8. The city of Buenos Aires is formally divided in 48 barrios (neighborhoods), grouped into 15 Comunas (Communes), which are defined as “units of decentralized political and administrative management governed by designated residents” (Constitution of the City of Buenos Aires).

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which encompasses most of La Boca, a section of San Telmo, and a strip of Barracas (November 2012); the Design District followed, in Barracas (November 2013).5 The Arts District, the focus of this chapter, has benefited from large tax breaks and infrastructure aimed at creating a district with more amenities and better transportation, but also restaurants and market-rate housing. As the creative districts policy was put into practice on the south side of Buenos Aires, it would lay the groundwork for what would become one of the largest and most ambitious urban projects of Mayor Rodriguez Larreta during his second term (2019 to the present): the urban transformation of Villa 31.

The Creative Districts Initiative In 2012, the local government released a video promoting the “creative districts.” It began by highlighting inequalities between the north and south sides of the city and then explained the efforts underway to address them: “Seventy percent of the city’s population lives on the north side. … and this creates inequality. A district means thinking of the city as a thematic space that grows around an industry. This way, a neighborhood that was neglected is converted into a better place with more opportunities [for residents], where people can work, but also where people want to live… Commercial activity is reactivated, squares are [physically] renewed and there’s more [security]” (GCBA 2012a, my translation). Anticipating positive outcomes, in 2013, the director of the Chamber of Commerce for the Technology District described the creative district policy as “not only an economic project, but also, an urban and social one, oriented to the development of the south side of our beloved city” (GigaBA 2013, p. 4). As noted earlier, Buenos Aires’s governance actors promoted the creative districts as an effective program of social inclusion and territorial integration that would help narrow the gap between the popularly portrayed “impoverished and forgotten” south and the wealthier and

5 The creative district policy in Buenos Aires, formerly discussed in the early 2000 and

effectively materialized in 2008, combines both neo-development and neoliberal principles. In terms of the former, neo-development rationales include public investment as the main promoter of economic growth and employment. As for the latter, neoliberal strategies include deregulation of urban norms as well as land and property market, and privatization of public land (Guevara 2015).

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well-serviced north. The notion of a stark social and economic divide between the two areas was nothing new. Successive local administrations, spanning various points on the political spectrum, had invoked this type of narrative since the early 1920s when addressing the neglected infrastructure of the south side of the city and the area’s impoverishment. This time though, Buenos Aires’s urban governance sought to emphasize the potential for creativity, livability, and inclusion6 —all of them conceived as the key ingredients of social integration. Not only did these concepts frame the policy, but they also aligned it with transnational urban planning discourses and associated best practices.7 In other words, neoliberal urban governance strategically appealed to socially minded values of inclusion, creativity, and livability to situate the city within broader circuits of international authorities in development and philanthropy, capable of bestowing recognition and awards. By framing creation of the creative districts with the depoliticized term of “inclusion,” and to a lesser extent, livability and creativity, governance actors could hope to sidestep conflicting demands and priorities (Greenberg 2013). On the one hand, this strategy enabled neoliberal governance to direct investment to the south side’s inactive but promising real estate markets. On the other, relying on urban planning discourses and best practices that stressed livability, creativity, and inclusion helped cultivate a positive image for Buenos Aires, better positioning it to bridge local reinvestment goals and international planning ideals (Lederman 2020). To clarify, the governance policy demonstrated the influence of global planning ideals on local politics. The idea of inclusion, and to a lesser extent, livability and creativity, certainly shaped the creative district policies in Buenos Aires, at least in the early planning phase. However, these policies were ultimately grounded by the governance’s institutional arrangements, historical and political legacies, and ambitions. To Buenos Aires’s governance actors, the primary ways of achieving socio-territorial integration were not through employment, new economic activities, or 6 Hereafter, I will be predominantly focusing my analysis on the idea of inclusion. 7 In contrast with the previous city administrations, Mauricio Macri’s administration

sought to build ties with extra-regional organizations, through its participation in multiple international conferences and workshops, and connections with networks of international experts and organizations. Since 2010, a group of Buenos Aires governance actors have participated in dozens of such conferences, award competitions, and workshops. All of them have been specifically aimed at sharing knowledge and policy approaches related to urban problems (see Lederman 2020).

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housing. A group of governance leaders who presented at Kreanta’s Creative Cities conference of 2013, “Creative Cities: Ideas for Inclusion,” argued that socio-territorial inequalities among residents would be reduced by investing in south side infrastructure and developing the creative districts (in Lederman 2020). Governance actors conceived the contribution of the creative districts to the goal of social integration as taking place primarily through the upgrading of parks and transportation and through the stimulation of services such as tourism, dining, and real estate (see Gonzalez Redondo 2020; Goicoechea 2017). Investments and initiatives to bring about that upgrading and stimulation would make these neighborhoods livable, or as the promotional videos have put it, “places where people want to live” (GCBA 2012b). Indeed, as Lederman (2020) has noted, a rhetorical embrace of consensual values in planning through international best practices has become a key strategy worldwide for successfully transforming urban space. But more importantly, a thick rhetoric was critical to advance the creative district policy. This rhetoric has helped rationalize the supposed virtues and benefits of the creation of the Arts District to the general public while also transforming entrenched stereotypes of the south side neighborhoods. In this context, next I trace out these governance strategies and the production of a “cultural, touristic, and versatile artistic pole” that would transform the south side. This particular redevelopment initiative has changed the physical and social fabric of this area of Buenos Aires. What follows is a description of the Arts District policy and objectives, sculpted by powerful rhetoric.

La Boca and San Telmo as One “Cultural, Touristic, and Versatile Artistic Pole” Prior to the creation of the Arts District, the city government converted an old and inactive power station in La Boca into a museum and exhibition space named “Usina de las Artes.” It was inaugurated in May 2012 (see Fig. 3.2). The success of this project and spectacle of the building’s inauguration encouraged the local government to pass the bill (Law # 4353/12) that created the Arts District in late 2012. The project’s objective was to “create, produce, manage, commercialize, and distribute artistic works” (Legislatura de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires 2012) related to the visual arts, scenography, literature, and music, all to be displayed in

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the area delimited by the district, where individuals, artists’ groups, and educational institutions could work synergistically and collaboratively. Public works projects followed the institutional creation of the Arts District: parks, infrastructure, and transportation were upgraded throughout La Boca, one of the most disinvested neighborhoods included in the Arts District’s boundaries, and to a lesser extent, San Telmo. This way the district could support the physical (and aesthetic) integration of artistic venues and institutions that included fifteen art galleries, eleven museums, six theaters, four foundations, seven residencies, seven educational and research sites, one hundred artist workshops, nine cultural spaces, and nine dance and music institutions, all concentrated in the same district (GCBA 2022). Another important big step in this physical transformation was to offer incentives to existing and new artists to stay in or move to the district. Artists, art studios, cultural centers, and art institutes which met the city government’s guidelines could qualify for a ten-year exemption from a

Fig. 3.2 Usina de las Artes (Source Photo taken by the author)

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number of local taxes through the local Ministry of Economic Development8 and they could qualify for loans provided by the Banco Ciudad to support costs of moving, purchasing supplies, and even of purchasing or constructing art studios or other venues. Additionally, the local government offered a 25% tax discount on the total cost of investment to “developers of artistic infrastructure” whose projects would allocate at least 30% of their units for artistic production—those units might be studio rentals or gallery space (Aramburu 2016, pp. 40–43). From the above, and contrary to what some high-ranking city officials have expressed about the “minimal investment from the [local] state” in this type of initiatives (in Gonzalez Redondo 2020), it became clear to the general public that the creative districts’ development required considerable long-term public investment to enhance the “competitive advantages” of these districts.9 In fact, a study by sociologist Gonzalez Redondo (2020) concludes that the investment made in renovating public offices, hydraulic infrastructure, and public squares in the Arts District and its surroundings represented 56% of the public budget allocated for public works, other districts that cost much less. For example, the Audiovisual District, which comprises the neighborhoods of Palermo, Paternal, Colegiales, Chacarita, and Villa Ortúzar, absorbed 34% of the public budget, while the Technology District of Parque Patricios only 10%. Along similar lines, emphasizing the predominant presence of the local government for this initiative to be successful, a middle-level official from the Ministry of Economic Development expressed that Buenos Aires governance could not generate the same levels of investment compared 8 To note, the Arts District was originally under the supervision and management of the city’s Ministry of Culture, but it was soon transferred to the orbit of the Ministry of Economic Development (MED) and in 2018, the MED created the Directive of the General Districts (DG). In this sense, the shift is one indication that this was primarily an economic project, despite the Arts District’s name. 9 There are usually three types of public investments involved in an initiative of this kind: the fiscal costs derived from the tax benefits differentially distributed for each of the districts, the budget disbursed to each of the city government agencies involved in the execution of the policy, and the investment in infrastructure in each of the districts (see Gonzalez Redondo 2020). In terms of the tax incentives, public infrastructure, transportation, security, and public spaces improvements, sociologist Gonzalez Redondo (2020) has noted that, from 2011 to 2019, these public investments and expenditures represented a significant percentage of the total public expenditure for the city of Buenos Aires, which could have been invested in housing, education, and other pressing social needs in the period under study.

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to other global cities without major local government-led programming, investment, and execution. She argued that “…. Here [in Buenos Aires] we need more government incentives to deal with issues…, and contrary to the active and predominant role of the private sector [and private– public consortiums] in the case of Silicon Valley and Barcelona@22, the local government [in Buenos Aires] had a key role in the execution, promotion and impulse of the districts, either through the indirect/direct public investment, the urban deregulations and/or the direct fiscal incentives to the private investment” (in Arqueros and Gonzalez Redondo 2017, my translation). In addition to the flow of investment, to secure what neoliberal governance envisioned, the south side’s image needed repair, particularly in the case of the neighborhoods of La Boca and San Telmo (see Thomasz 2016). For the most part, these two neighborhoods, widely referred to as “the south side,” still bear the marks of two decades of disinvestment and neglect. In public discourse, the governance has reduced their complex history to “impoverished and informal spaces.” Such a description merits a closer look. San Telmo is near downtown Buenos Aires, just six blocks from the Plaza de Mayo, the city’s central square, and the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, as well as other monumental Hausmann-style buildings dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historically, it has been a working-class neighborhood, which since the early 2000s has slowly become a middle-class neighborhood with flourishing trendy restaurants, antique shops, coffee shops, and retail stores (see Sternberg 2012). On Sundays, the cobblestone streets are filled with artists, dancers, performers, and street vendors. While approximately 41% of San Telmo’s residents are homeowners, 41.6% are renters (Observatorio de Vivienda 2017, p. 9).10 The remaining (17.4%) and profoundly impoverished population lives in different tenancy situations, renting or occupying rooms in conventillos 11 (tenements), renting rooms in hoteles familiares

10 These are estimated numbers as data were aggregated by Comunas (units of decentralization with administrative competencies), not by individual neighborhoods. San Telmo belongs to Comuna 1 and La Boca to Comuna 4. 11 The history of the conventillos dates back to the heyday of European immigration. Between 1869 and 1904, the population of Buenos Aires quintupled and surpassed the housing capacity. It was then when the casas de inquilinato, or conventillos came to be seen as an appropriate way to house immigrants: they were houses with many rooms, all

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(short-term subdivided rental rooms where individuals or families will pay a rent and share bathrooms and kitchens), living in nearby slums, or illegally occupying privately owned or public buildings (Observatorio de Vivienda 2017, p. 9). San Telmo has better living conditions than La Boca, with an estimated 54% of the population employed (Estadística Ciudad 2019a). However, these numbers contrast with 20.3% percent of the population living in poverty (Estadística Ciudad 2019b).12 La Boca means “the mouth” in Spanish and the neighborhood’s name comes from it being the old port area at the mouth of the Riachuelo river (see Fig. 3.3). Indeed, La Boca, as the former main port, was instrumental in the city’s economic and population booms. From 1930 to 1970, La Boca remained a neighborhood oriented around the meat-packing industry. Shortly afterward, it experienced sustained de-industrialization (see Gutman and Hardoy 1992). Its industrial base was largely dismantled with the introduction of neoliberal policies in the late 1990s (Lo Vuolo 1997; CEDEM 2006). Through the mid-1990s, the neighborhood fell into a downward spiral of decline and disinvestment. Together with San Telmo, it is one of the oldest areas in Buenos Aires and was built along the Riachuelo riverbank. It retains a strong European flavor from the late nineteenth century when its early settlers arrived from the Italian city of Genoa13 (Lacarrieu 2007). The Italian settlers worked in warehouses and meat-packing plants, which were proliferating at the time as part of a developing national economy during this period based on agriculture and livestock. La Boca became a working-class district and early residents lived primarily in small multi-colored homes made of wood and metal sheets (see Fig. 3.4), usually built on stilts due to the floods that until the early 1990s continually hit the neighborhood (Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires 1988). A contemporary version of the multi-colored houses, either conventillos or hoteles familiares , exists today along the prominent streets of Caminito and Vuelta de Rocha (see

of them facing a common-use patio. The families paid rent and shared the restrooms and the kitchen (Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires 1988). 12 These are estimated numbers as data were aggregated by Comunas (units of decentralization with administrative competencies), not by individual neighborhoods. San Telmo belongs to Comuna 1 and La Boca to Comuna 4. 13 Around 6 million immigrants poured into Argentina between the years 1880 and 1930, the same time period in which Buenos Aires quickly transformed from a small town to a growing city (Gutman and Hardoy 1992).

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Fig. 3.3 Riachuelo river, La Boca (Source Photo taken by the author)

Fig. 3.5). Many of these houses were upgraded in the 1950s with sturdier materials and with the restorative skills of famous Italian-Argentine painter Quinquela Martín (1890–1977). His paintings depict daily life in the port of La Boca. The large majority of multi-colored houses or conventillos remain zinc-roofed, as in the late nineteenth century. At that time, they were made and painted with the leftover paint and other materials used to build the ships on which immigrants arrived. According to the 2010 census, 19,571 residents of Buenos Aires live in conventillos and 70% of them remain in La Boca (Sánchez 2014). Efforts were made by the city to upgrade public services and infrastructure (in particular, from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, hydraulic and sanitation works were installed along the riverfront of the Riachuelo to control flooding). There were also attempts to regulate housing occupancy and offer affordable loans. Yet, informal housing is still dominant in La Boca (Observatorio de Vivienda 2017; Herzer 2008). To be more precise, 33.2% of the residents remain renters, 40.3% are homeowners,

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Fig. 3.4 La Boca neighborhood (Source Photo taken by the author)

and the remaining residents, 26.5%, live in precarious tenancy situations (Observatorio de Vivienda 2017, p. 9). In particular, Barrio Chino, Plaza Solís, Calle Necochea, and Bajoautopista are blocks and streets in the neighborhood that continue to be publicly rendered as high crime areas (Gonzalez Redondo 2020). Along with the above conditions, an estimated 43% of the households live in poverty (Estadísticas Ciudad 2019b),14 and in cases where residents live in conventillos , access to sanitary services is shared by various families and the housing is often structurally unsound. The entrenched negative stereotypes of La Boca and San Telmo became the aperture through which the new imagined spaces were to be offered. Neoliberal governance uses language to sanitize former and disinvested spaces, in this case La Boca and San Telmo: they need language to frame urban policies as positive, and to attract new visitors, investors, and 14 Note 10 also applies here.

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Fig. 3.5 Caminito and Vuelta de Rocha (Source Photo taken by the author)

consumers (Thomasz 2017). In this context, governance actors quickly crafted rhetoric that would exploit the virtues of San Telmo’s and La Boca’s historical, cultural, and artistic legacies and re-sculpt them into a single “cultural, touristic and versatile artistic pole.” To craft new imagined and positive spaces for La Boca and San Telmo, governance actors quickly tapped into the neighborhoods’ historical, architectural, and cultural legacies.

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First, San Telmo’s preserved colonial architecture dating from the early 1800s15 is the oldest barrio that maintains traditions of ferias, art galleries, tango-related activities, and antique shops—although since 2004 the latter began to be outnumbered by restaurants and boutiques. As mentioned earlier, Sunday afternoons and evenings are usually very busy in San Telmo with antique ferias, artists, dancers, performers, and street vendors. These historical attributes helped make it possible for San Telmo to be considered rich with artistic and cultural heritage, ready to be re-imagined and celebrated. In terms of La Boca, despite its proximity to the Central Business District and political center of Buenos Aires, this neighborhood has remained peripheral and impoverished, but with an active local arts scene. It is also one of the most visited parts of Buenos Aires and offers tourists a glimpse of how the city looked during its “golden era” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. La Boca’s strong reputation for the concentration of artistic features (e.g., art galleries exhibiting legendary Italian-Argentine painters popularly known as the Grupo de La Boca,16 tango performances, and multi-colored houses along the streets of Caminito and Vuelta de Rocha, were excellent cultural assets that firmly aligned with the Arts District vision. “People breathe history and tango in La Boca,” visitors would say. But, while La Boca has enjoyed a reputation as the city’s cultural hub, in order to amplify the economic outcomes of the Arts District, governance actors decided to establish this neighborhood as an international tourist destination par excellence, where international tourists could celebrate the works of legendary artists and new artists to the area. Francisco Cabrera, local Minister of Economic Development, at the time, emphasized the important role of international tourism in terms of the economic impact to be generated in La Boca and on art-related industries (see Fronza Fernandez 2012). Building on the artistic legacy of San Telmo and La Boca and their other historical and cultural features, governance actors did not hesitate to craft a new discursive space that would collapse La Boca and 15 For example, the Parish of San Pedro González Telmo was built in 1806 and the Casa Mínima in 1812, following the abolition of slavery in Argentina. 16 The Grupo de la Boca refers to the many Italian-Argentinian plastic artists who lived by the Riachuelo riverbank, and whose works were inspired by La Boca’s urban landscape. Del Prete, Rosso, Tiglio, Menghi, Pacenza, Mandelli, and Diomede y Stagnaro are some of the names who belong to this group (Thomasz 2016).

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San Telmo into one. This would serve the expectations of a more consumer-oriented (local and international) community, and by extension, solidify the economic outcomes of the Arts District more broadly. In this context, a newly crafted space, a “cultural, touristic and versatile artistic pole,” suggested efficient services, live artistic performances, renovated parks, museums, art galleries, trendy cafes, and renovated buildings and infrastructure. By 2017, the physical transformation seemed to be progressing well in La Boca and San Telmo, and a widespread perception of upgraded infrastructure and physical improvement gained an imprint in the popular media: “The south of the city—[alluding to both La Boca and San Telmo]—is strongly growing and is turning into one of the most heterogeneous and versatile artistic poles of Buenos Aires. Spacious warehouses, abandoned factories, and former houses are turning into galleries, cultural centers, and residencies for international residences for international artists” (La Nación 2017). The physical transformation could not be entirely successful without creating and cultivating new and positive identities. Perhaps most fundamental were descriptions of residents, gallery-goers, and tourists as “culturally and artistically desirous beings.” Tourists, residents, and gallerygoers, it seemed, desired art in a vital way: the art was a kind of “oxygen to sustain them.” An official brochure showcasing one of the main corridors of the Arts District, dotted with art galleries, museums, and restaurants, noted: “[This corridor is] located below the highway Buenos Aires-La Plata, from where people will breathe art in its most pure essence (…) It’s a mandatory corridor for thousands of tourists that come to visit [La Boca], a neighborhood that immortalized Quinquela Martín (…)” (GCBA 2013, my translation). Governance actors invited these “culturally and artistically desirous beings” to participate in cultural workshops, art galleries, museums, and so on. At the same time, this governance projected these new identities as the rightful users and visitors, while making invisible the “impoverished and proletarian others”—the longterm residents of La Boca and to a lesser extent, San Telmo, who were continuing to fight for affordable housing and rights to the city. All in all, to governance actors, a new “cultural, touristic and versatile artistic pole” would have a threefold purpose: to contribute to the popularity and economic success of the Arts District, feed the appetite of a citizenry and local and international tourists, and enable the area to continue driving south side restructuring and rejuvenation.

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Tension, Conflicts, and Contestation The announcement and creation of the Arts District were not exempt from social tensions. There is a long history of vibrant activism in La Boca and, to a lesser extent, in San Telmo (see Herzer 2008; Lacarrieu 2007), so it is not surprising that hundreds of working-class neighbors, local grassroots organizations, and local artists began gathering to oppose the Arts District policy and they continued to do so throughout its creation and inauguration. They—correctly—anticipated that the Arts District project would favor real estate interests, trigger speculation, result in property and rent price increases, commodify the physical urban landscape to appeal international tourists, and ultimately, displace La Boca’s low-income and working-class residents. In addition, many claimed that the tax credits would not benefit the long-time and working-class residents and artists of La Boca and San Telmo (see Thomasz 2016). As for the artists, the law that created the Arts District was later amended to specify that only businesses that employed a minimum of five employees would qualify for tax benefits. As many predicted, these revisions excluded the many local artists who usually worked on their own. In addition, residents I interviewed in 2015 distrusted the project because they felt it would only benefit developers and not the long-time local artists and cultural producers (see Thomasz 2016 for a detailed explanation on how tax credits only benefited investors and developers who bought new property and/or land for future redevelopment). Objections began to mount in La Boca when the Arts District project gained official approval. In October 2012, in a meeting held at the office of a popular grassroots organization in La Boca, one neighbor argued: “It looks like La Boca didn’t have residents, as if it were a desert. [The local government] hasn’t requested any input from either residents or local artists who should be benefiting from this project. [They city government] doesn’t take the history of the neighborhood into consideration. There’s no need to attract more artists, there’re many already. This is a façade to cover a [major] real estate investment” (in Thomasz 2016, p. 159, my translation). This pronouncement was echoed by a representative of a community center. Amalia argued: “[This project] has nothing to do with the promotion of arts, of culture. … It’s to displace our [local] artists. The law provides incentives for the ‘great conglomerates’ to settle in La Boca [and San Telmo] oriented to cultural and entertainment industries. (…) it paves the way for the [establishment] of big chains, or

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touristic tango dance venues, but neither benefits the [local] artists, nor the local cultural centers” (in Thomasz 2016, p. 159, my translation). Similarly, Teresa Stambazzi, the director of a neighborhood organization that advocates for sustainable tourism in La Boca, warned locals about the potential negative outcomes for La Boca and the southern part of the city: “The Arts District is a business that affects not just artists, this is a big [real estate] business... we’re going to lose the conventillos that are already being evicted” (in Lederman 2015, p. 59). Local residents and artists also expressed their frustration and anger through graffiti and newspapers which displayed new representations of La Boca, including, for example: “La Boca, Distrito de las Mentiras” (La Boca, A District of Lies) and “La Boca, Distrito de los Desalojos” (A District of Evictions). All in all, everything that local resident Stambazzi and others critically denounced and anticipated came about in a linear progression. In 2014, the Arts District continued to be discussed in public forums where the participants voiced concerns that, far from a progressive and inclusive project for all neighbors, the project would result in different outcomes for different social groups. In particular, some residents voiced serious concerns about being priced out of the area and suffering displacement. In fact, while the average land prices at the city level changed little, and significantly in San Telmo (Secretaría de Planeamiento 2013, pp. 16–17), prices in the neighborhood of La Boca increased by over 61% (Lederman 2015, p. 58) soon after the district’s project was approved. Table 3.1 illustrates the spike in average land prices, particularly impacting La Boca. According to one member of a local grassroots organization, Grupo de Vivienda y Habitat de La Boca, when reflecting upon the overall speculative aspect of Arts District to daily Página 12: “The good deal was to Table 3.1 Price of land in La Boca and San Telmo

La Boca San Telmo City total

2012a

2013b

Percent change

678.45 1,102.65 1,765.8

1,094.33 1,681.4 1,790.95

+61.2 +34.4 +1.4

Source Adapted from J. Lederman (2015) and Secretaría de Planeamiento (2013) a Average of four quarters of assessment per year b Average of four quarters of assessment per year c Price of land per meter squared in US dollars, in 2012 and 2013

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buy property before the creation of the Arts District, when the land value was nothing (…)” (Rodriguez 2016, my translation). But the situation profoundly worsened in 2016. That year, an heterogeneous group of local residents, artists, members of grassroots organizations, and concerned residents denounced the increasing number of evictions affecting La Boca’s conventillos , which they attributed to real estate speculation. A report released by Observatorio del Derecho de la Ciudad17 and two grassroots organizations, La Boca Propone and Resiste16, condemned the eviction of 1,106 residents of La Boca in 2016. Furthermore, a local daily denounced the evictions of 64 families planned for early 2017 (Rodriguez 2016). Other significant policy outcomes consisted of reduced housing affordability in the area, for example, as a result of converting industrial to residential use, as in “a $150 million conversion of an abandoned meat-packing plant into condos, a hotel, and a studio and gallery space” (Lederman 2015, p. 56). By 2017, the Arts District was very heterogeneous and was comprised of 94 spaces, including artist residencies, small music theaters, museums, restaurants, and art galleries. According to scholars Arqueros and Gonzalez Redondo (2017), residents and employers interviewed in 2017 commented that the type of venues in La Boca that benefited from the creation of the Arts District were predominantly businesses and galleries oriented toward the international commercialization of art. As one of the gallery employers noted, these businesses function as islands within the neighborhood, because long-time neighbors do not visit places of this type. Additionally, Arqueros and Gonzalez Redondo (2017) have noted that the physical renovation of both La Boca and San Telmo and the government’s ability to incentivize artistic and cultural activities in the area, mostly through tax breaks, have been profoundly uneven. As they explain, the art businesses, in particular the ones with international aspirations, have partnered with firms and artistic real estate projects. To the authors, these were the parties that mostly benefited from this policy. As they conclude in their study, the cultural and artistic activities, added to new businesses and real estate developments in the area delimited by the Arts District, reinforced the already existing uneven development in the northern section of the district (see Gonzalez Redondo 2020; Goicoechea 2017). With uneven development scholars, Arqueros and 17 A multi-sector organization dedicated to advocate for the right to the city and to denounce urban rights’ violations.

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Gonzalez Redondo (2017) and Goicoechea (2017), refer to how the Arts District policy exacerbated social and economic disparities and created micro-territories within La Boca and San Telmo neighborhoods that serve more affluent residents and visitors.

Policy Overview Buenos Aires neoliberal governance has rhetorically embraced the consensual values of inclusion, and to a lesser extent, livability and creativity, as a key means of reshaping urban space across the city. Using depoliticized language to acknowledge the need to address inequality, governance touts these values in ways that reflect the priorities of planning best practices on a global scale. Yet, in the process of physically transforming the south side, the creative district policy revealed other understandings of social inclusion, which predominantly focused on outsiders’ notions of social inclusion, that is, understandings centered on improvements to the built environment, rather than on local meanings of inclusion, which emphasize access to public resources such as housing and creating employment. To be clear, beyond the socially minded (or non-market) values to which neoliberal urban governance appealed, market principles were very much part of the creative district project’s outcomes. As noted by Lederman (2020, p. 153), “the creative districts were intended to create clusters of like-minded individuals and firms on the one hand, while on the other they would promote investments by those businesses that might otherwise locate to the already well-serviced and more affluent north.” Ultimately, this policy resulted in greater territorial stratification, bringing higher-income residents and new businesses to the area (both La Boca and San Telmo), while creating conditions that would result in the displacement of renters and the urban poor (Goicoechea 2017; Thomasz 2016). The neoliberal governance’s Arts District policy, thus, created a normative vision of urban inclusion in these neighborhoods, which would renew and integrate La Boca and San Telmo with the northern part of the city through reinvestment in “creative industries” and lifestyle amenities (upgrading parks and transportation and stimulating services such as tourism, dining, and real estate). Job creation or the availability of affordable housing was not among the primary ways neoliberal governance appraised their results. Rather, the broad policy of inclusive growth was primarily mobilized to generate new urban lifestyles appreciated

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through real estate development, new middle-class residents, and new post-industrial activities such as local and international tourism. From this perspective, social inclusion meant producing spaces with amenities and activities more attuned to affluent newcomers (visitors and tourists) in a way that could revitalize the local real estate market. To the extent that neoliberal governance efforts were successful, they were achieved by embracing consensual values and language that reflected those values in addition to making physical improvements and offering tax benefits to newcomers and qualified businesses. Yet, as I have argued, this governance has ultimately gained validation, traction, and momentum by using powerful discursive metaphors of spaces and identities in efforts to re-sculpt the image of an impoverished and informal south side. New renditions, authored by governance actors, of San Telmo and La Boca’s historical, cultural, and artistic legacy were collapsed into a new “cultural, touristic and versatile artistic pole” that ultimately created a vibrant image of the south side. This newly crafted space strengthened the benefits of the Arts District, as it was noted by Francisco Cabrera, local Minister of Economic Development: “This place [the Arts District] respects the same formula of the other districts in terms of positive impact for the neighborhood[s] and the industry[ies], and adds a public one: the international tourists. We believe that, along with the growth the district will generate… tourist[s] could stay one more day in Buenos Aires, with all that would imply economically” (Fronza Fernandez 2012, my translation). Along with these crafted spaces, neoliberal governance actualized certain identities as “artistically desirous beings” and made them the “appropriate” users of the city, at the expense of the long-time renters and owners who continue protecting affordable housing and employment. Ultimately, neoliberal governance, through the Arts District policy, created new privileged white and middle-class spaces (in the form of renovated parks and buildings, trendy coffee shops and restaurants, renovated museums and new art galleries, etc.), palatable to more affluent residential lifestyles and international tourists, while largely leaving unfulfilled the promise of industrial promotion and employment to which the districts purportedly aspired. In other words, the Arts District produced little in the way of results that would be considered socially inclusive and helpful to the long-time residents of this area. However, as a strategy to increase ground rents in disinvested neighborhoods and reorient them toward new residents and visitors, the creative districts have achieved measurable success.

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The policy of establishing creative districts accomplished three goals for neoliberal governance. First, it projected an image of Buenos Aires as a creative, inclusive, and livable city. It also appealed to multiple audiences and addressed—at least rhetorically—the socio-economic disparities between the southern and northern sides of the city. Finally, it situated Buenos Aires within the most prominent networks that determine urban best practices around the region and the world. All these results substantially contributed to putting Villa 31 (see Fig. 3.1b) on the governance agenda as the next large-scale redevelopment.

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CHAPTER 4

From Villa to Barrio

We have a very ambitious development plan ready in the most visible slum in Buenos Aires. —Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, presentation at the London School of Economics, December 2017 (in Bertelli 2021)

In his 2017 presentation at the London School of Economics, Rodríguez Larreta mentioned one of the most impressive redevelopment projects Buenos Aires has undertaken in the past four decades, that of Villa 31. In Argentina, the terms villas and villas miseria are widely used to refer to any informal settlement (barrio populares ) according to the Registro Nacional de Barrios Populares (National Registrar of Popular Neighborhoods).1 Today, Villa 31,2 one of the oldest, largest, and most 1 According to the Registro Nacional de Barrios Populares-RENABAP (National Registrar of Popular Neighborhoods): “Barrios populares are considered vulnerable neighborhoods in which, at least, 8 families live together or next to each other, where more than half of the population do not have a property title, nor access to two or more regular basic services (potable and running water, electricity and/or sewage).” https://www.arg entina.gob.ar/noticias/barrios-populares. 2 Villa 31-31 bis is the original name. Between one of the main highways, the Arturo Illia Highway, and the San Martin Train Station, a new and smaller informal settlement developed next to Villa 31. It was eventually called Villa 31 bis. To simplify, I will be referring to this informal settlement as Villa 31, and alternatively to “Barrio 31”.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Sternberg, Neoliberal Urban Governance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21718-0_4

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Fig. 4.1 Panoramic view of Barrio 31 (Source Courtesy of the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration, SECISyU, City Government of Buenos Aires)

centrally located slums of Buenos Aires, is undergoing an unprecedented physical transformation. Along the way, it has acquired a new official name Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica and a new nickname “Barrio 31”, which gained immediate popularity among reporters, activists, and grassroots organizations working in the area. Here, I continue interrogating governance actors’ actions and the rhetoric they created and used to advance their plans and strategies, focusing especially on the drive to turn Villa 31 (see Fig. 4.1) into Barrio 31. Since 2016, the governance has turned its attention to urbanizing one the most of deprived and stigmatized areas of the city. I consider how the neoliberal governance rationalized and provided the frame for its redevelopment incursion into this central-southern part of the city. At the core of this urban transformation, as in the creative districts policy discussed in the previous chapter, governance actors made immense efforts to not only install the logic of socio-territorial integration, but also to cultivate and reinforce a collective identity among those who would, according to governance actors, benefit from the redevelopment. In short,

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at the center of the urbanization of Villa 31, discursive spaces and new identities were actively shaped in a way that would highlight the virtues of urban transformation while obliterating any memory of a stigmatized space and identity. Governance actors began their work by discursively transforming an historically rendered “ghetto space” to, what I term, a new “livable, formalized, and robust space.” In the process, they mobilized a wealth of public resources, including physical infrastructure, public land, tax credits, and political power. Along with the values earlier ascribed to the creative district policy, the language of social inclusion and integration was also used for this larger-scale project and became a key means of confronting the mounting demands made on this governance, which included demands regarding local constituents’ needs and those pertaining to redevelopment.3

Brief Overview of Villa 31 Between the 2001 and 2010 census, the quality of housing in Buenos Aires underwent significant deterioration. By 2010, people living in villas miserias or those renting rooms in precarious settlements or hotels represented almost 6% (163,587) of Buenos Aires’s population, an increase of 52% since 2001 (Cravino and Palombi 2015). In 2015, the Secretaría de Hábitat e Inclusión (SECHI) of the city government released an official intercensal estimate, which indicated 56 villas spread across the city, and a total population living in them of 275,000 (SECHI 2015). In the mid-twentieth century, villas in Argentina served as temporary shelter for arriving immigrants. Under the brutal military dictatorship of 1976 to 1983, they nearly disappeared. From 213,800 villeros/as (residents of villas ) registered in 1976, by 1983 only 12,600 remained, noted urban historian Valeria Snitcofsky to a BBC news reporter in 2019 (Veras Mota 2019). Villa 31 was one of the few settlements that survived the dictatorship. However, after Argentina returned to democracy in 1983, these spatial forms re-populated, and they have since become a striking

3 Some authors have argued that Buenos Aires’s governance also relied on strategic transnational urban planning language as means to gain international recognition within the international planning circles of experts and multilateral credit institutions (see Bertelli 2021; Lederman 2020).

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symbol of poverty, isolation, violence, and the city’s neglect of and indifference to this long-standing under-resourced community. Villa 31, one of the oldest and most prominent barrios populares in Buenos Aires (see Fig. 4.1), arose in the 1930s in the wake of the Great Depression and continued to grow with Argentina’s political and economic swings, rising inequality and immigration. Historically, it has been densely populated with informal renters and has lacked public services such as sanitation and street lighting (Veras Mota 2019). Various attempts to improve the housing conditions and infrastructure of the villeros/as occurred in 1990, 1994, and 1996 (Tomino 2007) and yet none resulted in significant change. Currently home to over 40,000 residents, Villa/Barrio 31, has long been considered an eyesore in a city that considers itself more akin to a European capital than an overcrowded and under-resourced South American city. For many Argentinians, especially those from Buenos Aires, Villa 31 is the most famous—and notorious—slum in Buenos Aires, synonymous with poverty and violence. It has the second-highest murder rate of the city with 9.72 cases registered per 100,000 inhabitants in 2017, compared to Villa 1-11-14, located in the west of the city, which had a rate of 18.75 in 2017 (La Nación 2018). Driving along elevated Arturo Illia Highway, parallel to the city of Buenos Aires’s port, you see the densely packed barrios populares of corrugated sheet metal, wood, and scavenged bricks stretching out in either direction (see Fig. 4.2). Although there are many barrios populares around Buenos Aires, Villa 31 is distinctive—because of its demographics (approximately 50% are migrants, primarily from Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru), location, large size, access to some public resources like public transportation and hospitals, and its more than 80 years of history (Rollenhagen 2019). In particular, Villa 31 enjoys a central and privileged location in the city of Buenos Aires. It is separated from the rest of the city by railway tracks but is adjacent to the central bus and train terminal and a major north–south commuter highway. It is within walking distance of the presidential palace and the city’s sleek post-industrial waterfront, Puerto Madero (see Fig. 4.3). Located meters from the ornate facades and posh cafés of Retiro, one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, Villa 31 has the appearance of “matter out of place” (Douglas 2003 [1966]). Within its 108 acres (44 hectáreas ), 22% of the households are overcrowded, compared to 11% in the rest of the city (Defensoría del Pueblo de la

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Fig. 4.2 View of corrugated sheet metal and scavenged-brick houses in Barrio 31 (Source Courtesy of Pablo Vitale)

Ciudad 2015). There is only 0.3 m2 (3.22 square feet) of public space per inhabitant in contrast with 6 m2 (64.58 square feet) available for residents elsewhere in the city. In terms of education, 64% of young adults (between 18 and 25) have not yet finished middle or high school compared with 18% for the rest of the city (Rojas 2017). Like most barrios populares in Buenos Aires, Villa 31 was never connected to an official power grid: cables hang across the settlement, illegally tapping electricity from nearby power lines. There are almost no paved roads and no official sewage system or running water (see Fig. 4.4). Until recently, emergency vehicles could barely manage to squeeze through the narrow streets (and most of the time could only enter accompanied by police vehicles), and sections of the neighborhood had been so packed with resident-built homes stacked on top of each other that the streets resembled a game of Jenga.

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Fig. 4.3 Panoramic view of former Villa 31, showing stark contrast with the wealthy neighborhood of Retiro (Source Courtesy of Pablo Vitale)

Out of necessity, Villa 31 developed a parallel economy, with housing, commerce, and many social services handled internally, including elementary schools, churches, and soup kitchens. But by 2005 a radical physical transformation of the area was in the works, as debates about urbanizing Villa 31 formally began at the city of Buenos Aires’s legislative chamber. Those debates continued until 2009 when, after pressure from various groups of active villeros /as and housing rights organizations, the decision to urbanize Villa 31 became Law 3342 (Ons 2018). The new law required the local government—with the coordination and approval of the federal government, because public lands where villa residents are settled had been owned by the federal government until 2015— to provide infrastructure and services to Villa 31; at the same time the local government would prohibit evictions and would provide a venue for participation, debate, and negotiation among the villa residents and government officials (SECISyU 2016a). Although this institutional movement was favorable for an urbanization project, less favorable was the strained relationship between the federal and the local government (at

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Fig. 4.4 Before renovations (housing and infrastructure), unpaved streets and electric cables crossing the streets (Source Courtesy of Pablo Vitale)

the time, each level was governed by parties on opposite ends of the political spectrum). Notably, no coordination between the two levels occurred until 2016, when the national and the city government became ruled by the same political party, the PRO party. Three key concepts have framed public debate over the future of Villa 31: eradication, urbanization, and integration. “Eradication” implies the planned removal and demolition of the barrios populares . In the history of Buenos Aires, there have been only two instances when Villa 31 and other villas across the city have been eradicated. From 1955 to 1976, the local government tore down urban dwellings and families were relocated to public housing complexes on the outskirts of the city. Then, from 1977 to 1983, and through the duration of the military dictatorship in Argentina, the villeros/as suffered brutal evictions, without either

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an alternative or temporary place to be relocated (Jauri 2011). In the opposite direction, “urbanization” implies formalizing housing tenure and incorporating informal settlements into existing public services. It could also imply the development of a space with urban characteristics and socio-spatial relations that must be maintained and strengthened, in a way that recognizes a community’s existing modes of production, values, and cultural identity (Knoerr 2019). But this concept also assumes that informal settlements are outside the city’s jurisdiction. An alternative concept, “socio-urban integration,” deepens the urbanization process by expanding the rights of informal settlers to justice, labor, education, healthcare, and access to public transport and other amenities (Knoerr 2019). Due to insufficient coordination between the federal and local levels of government, little resulted from Law 3342, which was passed in 2009. The first steps of this ambitious and monumental project did not materialize until after all the public lands4 that were originally owned by the federal government through the Agency of State Property Management were transferred, in 2016, to the local government for their future management. Yet, the 2009 law provided the institutional support needed for approval of this large-scale urbanization plan when political, financial, and institutional conditions were ripe.

Plans for the Urbanization and Social Integration of Villa 31 In 2016, the city government finally unveiled a $420 million urbanization plan, to help finance 55% of this urban project, distributed between the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the International Bank for the Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), contributing with 20% and 35%, respectively (ACIJ 2021). The plan was driven by a socially minded vision of inclusive urban upgrading (Rojas 2017). In essence, this meant that the government of the city of Buenos Aires would carry out a very ambitious and unprecedented project of physically improving Villa 31, without forcibly displacing its occupants. The centerpiece of the original plan involved the following: in exchange for improvements to their

4 As a reminder, the 108 acres is the extension where villeros/as have settled since the 1970s.

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homes and investments in basic infrastructure like water, sewer, and roads, villa residents would receive formal titles: deeds to the land and properties they have occupied and maintained for decades. Ideally, the regularization of property tenure meant that the city government of Buenos Aires would give out property deeds to villa residents for the thousands of unregistered homes and parcels of land. Residents would gain a legally binding right to their property. This also meant that residents (who have occupied and maintained their defacto properties) could now buy their properties, with the option to pay for them in regular installments (SECISyU 2016b). Receiving a property title also meant that residents could use it to apply for officially running public services (water, electricity, and sewage). In early September 2020, I discussed some of these arrangements with Danilo Rossi, one of the representatives of the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration. He explained that the city government had proposed different affordable plans for families and residents to pay for these new costs, depending on their incomes, job security, and economic possibilities. He added that, since the onset of the pandemic, these efforts to meet the villeros ’ needs had become even more critical due to residents losing employment (I will return to that topic at the end of this chapter). Finally, the urbanization plan also included the construction of new schools, a medical center, and a new branch of the education ministry, all aimed at integrating the neighborhood into the city’s social fabric. Despite the favorable financial and political conditions, neoliberal governance strategically mobilized socially minded planning rhetoric to advance this project. This time, the rhetoric was influenced by the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Bank for the Reconstruction and Development, who became key players in financing this large-scale urbanization project.5 Buenos Aires’s governance provided a rhetoric of imagined spaces and identities to normalize, legitimate, and promote the plans. From Eradication to Urbanization After renewing his second term in 2011, Mayor Mauricio Macri continued advancing neoliberal principles and practices (Cravino and 5 The Inter-American Development Bank and the International Bank for the Reconstruction and Development together contributed 55% of the budget to finance this project (ACIJ 2021).

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Palombi 2015). His eight years in the mayor’s office (2007–2015) became popularly known for the mass evictions of hotel residents, squatters, and informal settlement dwellers through the judicial method called “administrative eviction,” which enables this type of action to be executed without a judicial order, expediting the eviction process. Most of the cases documented over this period indicate that, in situations where an administrative eviction was ordered, the local government skipped the judicial order by arguing that the targeted building was at risk of collapsing6 (CELS 2009). It is no surprise then that over the course of Macri’s leadership, he overtly espoused a narrative to eradicate Villa 31, which he deemed “unproductive,” and he denounced villa residents for “usurping” public land (Tomino 2007). Even before being elected mayor, in 2007, he remarked that: “[Villa] 31 has to be eradicated, because it’s a vital area to resolve the logistical problems of the [Buenos Aires] port” (La Nación 2007). At the time, he was accusing Villa 31 of blocking the movement of containers in the port of Buenos Aires. Media articles reinforced the logic of eradication and framed the question as being “what to do about Villa 31,” stoking anxiety about the city’s potential increase of decay and crime. Over time, the eradication rhetoric changed in response to evolving social, economic, and political conditions in Buenos Aires. Local grassroots organizations, particularly from Villa 31, began to strengthen and diversify their affiliations with academic institutions and local political leaders supportive of their cause. That allowed them to put more pressure on local authorities to improve Villa 31’s housing and infrastructure conditions (Clarín 2007a, b). At the same time, the long overdue housing affordability crisis the city had been experiencing since the early 2000s (CELS 2009), along with the brutal eviction of people living in Parque Indoamericano in 2010 (see Chapter 2), critically affected Macri’s popularity and the future of his political career and party. By 2015, the eradication logic and rhetoric became too politically costly to maintain.

6 In 2008, a local law that used to prohibit evictions and displacements for occupying abandoned public buildings was repealed. This law was later followed by a government resolution that allowed evictions to be processed and executed more rapidly. In 2009, the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) reported that between January and November 2008, the city government executed 350 evictions that affected 2,800 families. Due to these amendments, since 2009 the evictions now marched steadily and faster. The trials now last less than 30 days (Clarín, September 13, 2008).

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The debate over “what to do about Villa 31” was soon framed in terms of urbanizing it, rather than eradicating it. Even though Macri’s policies were unpopular in Buenos Aires, his political career did not suffer as much as the general public in Argentina may have expected. To the contrary, Macri’s political support and party became even stronger during his years as mayor, to the point that in late 2015 he consolidated his power as president of Argentina. Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, as the city’s vice-mayor, had stood by Macri during his eight years in the local executive office. He was elected mayor in 2015, the same year that Macri was elected president, and in 2019 he was re-elected, with almost 56% of the vote. Once in office, Rodríguez Larreta seized the opportunity to resume planning Villa 31’s urbanization. In 2016, he and his advisers announced a monumental large-scale plan to advance the urbanization of five villas , including Villa 31, and their future “socio-urban integration” with the rest of the city.7 Although interrupted in March 2020 by the COVID19 outbreak in Buenos Aires, an unprecedented large-scale urbanization plan was conceived to physically transform Villa 31 into an official neighborhood and integrate it with the city’s main public services (SECISyU 2016a). The plan included better living conditions and housing safety, the formalization of all local businesses, and urban integration involving new public services and infrastructure. My focus here is on the plans related to housing and socio-urban integration. According to the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration (SECISyU 2016a), a position created in 2015 with the express purpose of overseeing the Villa 31 project,8 the urban transformation involved four pillars: (1) “human capital,” including the construction of a branch of the city’s Ministry of Education and elementary schools and health and community centers within Villa 31; (2) “habitat,” including housing improvement and the construction of 1,100 new housing units; (3) “economic development,” involving the 7 Namely, Villa 31, Villa 20, Rodrigo Bueno, Lamadrid, Playón de Chacarita. The original project proposed different modalities of housing tenure, accompanied by different plans to transfer public land from the federal to the local state and the regularization of deeds. 8 Until recently, the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration (SECISyU) depended on the Ministry of Human Development and Habitat of the city government of Buenos Aires. In December 2021, the SECISyU was removed, and the execution of the sociourban integration is now in the hands of the Unidad de Proyectos Especiales Urbanización Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica (UPE) and the Ministerio Público.

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creation of employment and training centers and the formalization of local businesses; and (4) socio-urban integration, which included building new public spaces (e.g., new public squares and football courts) and green areas, and fundamentally, connecting new public services and infrastructure with no difference in quality between Villa 31 and the rest of the city (SECISyU 2016b, my translation). As it was laid out, the project was officially committed to building roads and providing key public services and facilities and to improving housing conditions, lighting, air circulation, and accessibility.9 These four pillars were designed as pilot initiatives for other low-income settlements in the city and similar approaches were implemented in Villas 20, Rodrigo Bueno, and Playón Chacarita (Vitale 2018). Now, nothing seemed to be stopping this governance from urbanizing one of the most deprived areas of the city. Under Rodríguez Larreta’s leadership, neoliberal governance began providing the material and legal conditions for developers, builders, and investors to begin transforming Villa 31. Before investing in critical infrastructure and installing public services, the project leadership had to create public–private entities, contract large loans with multilateral financial entities, and transfer federally owned public land, including Villa 31’s 108 acres of public land, to the local government, as a crucial step. To accomplish all this, Buenos Aires’s governance has relied on an assemblage of actors and institutions that included financial credit institutions, local and federal governmental agencies—particularly the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration10 and the Agency of State Property Management11 —prominent developers, builders, construction companies (e.g., Rovella Carranza, Supercemento y Panedile, public–private-public entities (Autopistas Urbanas, academic institutions (University of Buenos Aires), and the media. Together, these 9 The urbanization plan also included a section to build new housing for those families or individuals who had to be relocated due to new construction or who were formerly living underneath the Arturo Illia Highway. 10 A very preliminary version of this body was the Secretariat of Habitat and Inclusion (SECHI), created in 2011 under Macri’s administration to co-ordinate very limited public works in Villa 31. With very limited budget and capacity, it only performed “urban acupuncture” in the villas, including, a few new squares, sports facilities, and small community centers, where residents could come to talk to city-government employees or join in exercise clubs, art projects, and other activities (The Economist 2014a, The Economist 2014b). 11 Discussed in Chapter 2.

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actors set out to transform the physical and social landscape of Villa 31 and socially integrate it with the rest of the city. Finally, to initiate a monumental urbanization project of this caliber, the governance deployed a giant bureaucratic machine,12 in the classic Weberian sense, and gained institutional support by passing laws and agreements. In 2018, before any type of public work had begun in the area, the governance assembled a multi-sectoral advisory board,13 the Consejo de Gestión Participativa (CGP) del Proceso de Re-Urbanización del Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica-Barrio 31- ex Villa 31 (Participative Management Board for the Re-Urbanization Process of Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica-Barrio 31) to oversee each stage of the project while establishing ground rules in accordance with Law 6129 (Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires 2018).14 Besides creating the CGP, which continues to operate in the present day, Law 6129—with the approval of a large number of villa residents—replaced the name Villa 31 with Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica, to commemorate Father Carlos Mugica, an activist who fearlessly fought to improve the lives of the villeros/as and was murdered in the 1970s by the military dictatorship. In addition, Law 6129 provided specific language concerning the nature, principles, and methods that would be used to conduct the urbanization and integration process. In parallel, the “Agreement for the Urbanization of the Villas,” approved on October 11, 2017, also constituted a “shared governance” document that established the right of all registered local organizations15 to participate in the various steps and oversee the process of urbanization/integration. From the beginning, many of these organizations deemed the monumental project a failure as an attempt to improve the living conditions of the villeros/as. But a favorable political climate, financial support, and institutional arrangements made it possible 12 Here I refer to a division of labor and functional specialization, a hierarchy, a formalized framework for rules and regulations, the maintenance of files and other records, and high levels of professionalism. 13 The board was assembled after Law 6129 was passed. 14 In this CGP, the following actors were represented: delegates elected by the

villeros/as , the Attorney General of the city of Buenos Aires (DG), government officials from the legislative branch of the city, a collective of community and grassroots’ organizations, and non-governmental organizations. 15 These included grassroots organizations from Villa 31, social and political nonprofits such as the Civil Association for Equality and Justice (ACIJ), representatives of universities, and individual residents of Villa 31.

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for governance actors to take critical first steps toward the settlement’s physical transformation. Favorable Conditions Leading to the Initial Physical Transformation of Villa 31 As noted, foreign aid was approved to renovate infrastructure and services in Villa 31. In late 2017, financial aid provided for this specific project by the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Bank for the Reconstruction and Development totaled $420 million (ACIJ 2021). But before this could happen, a political dispute between two governmental levels had to be resolved. As discussed in Chapter 2, political disputes between the federal and local government over the control and management of several acres of public land were finally resolved in 2016 when both levels of government came under control of the same political party, Cambiemos (formerly PRO). Part of the disputed land included the 108 acres that Villa 31 residents had been occupying since approximately the 1970s (Van Gelder et al. 2016). Thus, the consolidation of Cambiemos into the leading political force at both the federal and local levels was critical to advancing the transference of Villa 31’s public lands from the federal to the city government. Until 2015, these fiscal lands had been owned by the federal government through the Agency of State Property Management. After they were transferred, the local government had absolute discretion in determining the properties’ future use. Given this unprecedented occurrence, many journalists and city residents began to expect that a new phase of redevelopment in Villa 31 was about to begin, since the community had been sitting on highly valuable land alongside the central neighborhood of Retiro for many decades. In 2018, a renowned local news outlet published an article denouncing the city government for attempting to auction the area of Villa 31 along with some of the surrounding areas, adding up to 135 acres (equivalent to 547,372 m2 ), for $132 million to two prominent corporations, Calcaterra and Mindlin (Lijalad 2018). In addition, according to official data from the city government, in 2016 the land price in the nearby neighborhood of Retiro was the highest in the district with an average of $7,033.00 USD per m2 (per 10.74 square foot) compared to the city average of $1,833.00 m2 USD. Even a city government official affirmed Villa 31’s potential profitability: “The project has a tremendous symbolic, geographic, political and real estate value” (in Bertelli 2021, p. 11).

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The area attracted even more interest after the local government announced plans to move to the west a section of one of the city’s central highways, the Arturo Illia Highway, under which houses were stacked so high that their roofs scraped the underside of the road (see Fig. 4.5). But in early 2020, this side project was abandoned, even though 30% of it had been completed.16 The beginning of the installation of public works for this project also caused major social disruption in the Villa 31 community when 1,800 families who lived beneath this main highway, running through Villa 31, had to be relocated to a new section of the villa, later named “YPF” (discussed in the last section of this chapter). For the last phase of the urbanization project, an elevated park-bridge had been planned that would be reminiscent of the High Line in Manhattan. The main idea was to build 2 km of new highway and transform the Arturo Illia Highway into a green space of more than 40 thousand m2 (430,556 square feet) (Spinetta 2017). But in the end, this project proved too onerous and ambitious to move forward and was also abandoned (LPO 2017). Before their abandonment, both side projects drew great interest among constructors and real estate corporations interested in making the area a tourist attraction. The Arturo Illia Highway project especially reflected the neoliberal governance’s redevelopment goals. Moving a section of the Arturo Illia Highway to the west would have meant a “visual cleansing”: Villa 31 is the first urban landscape that commuters usually encounter when they enter or exit the city of Buenos Aires through the Arturo Illia Highway, consequently a successful a esthetic visual transformation would be accomplished by removing a section of Villa 31 from the public eye (see Fig. 4.5). Finally, the urbanization/integration of Villa 31 gained the institutional support it needed with Law 3343, a shared governance document approved in 2017, and Law 6129, which was passed in 2018. Buenos Aires’s urban governance actors made themselves the conductors of the transformation of Villa 31 by defining the legal and policy conditions

16 The main structures of concrete were put in place in 2019; currently, they remain

there alone and forgotten. As some informants mentioned, construction was discontinued because the local government established other priorities even before the COVID-19 pandemic started. The projected budget for this ad hoc project at the time was 1.7 million Argentine pesos (currently $8.94 million USD), to be financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) (Giambartolomei 2020).

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Fig. 4.5 Houses were stacked so high that their roofs scraped the underside of the road (Source Courtesy of the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration SECISyU, City Government of Buenos Aires)

under which investment and restructuring could take place. But that was not enough to move the project along: they also had to convince the general public of the project’s virtues.

The Rhetoric of Transformation Some studies have attributed the viability and progress of the urbanization project of Villa 31 in large part to the project’s insertion within wide networks of international and philanthropic experts, who ultimately offered international recognition and credibility17 (Bertelli 2021; Lederman 2020; Montero 2018). However, the rhetoric and other strategic approaches of Buenos Aires’s urban governance have been equally important, at least in the most important early stages.

17 McCann (2013) and others have highlighted the way cities design and implement policies in order for them to be internationally showcased and recognized as economic, political, or cultural centers. In this context, according to the authors cited above, models from “comparable cities” in Latin America that have been considered successful provided traction and credibility to Buenos Aires’s social and territorial integration project.

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Previous governances lacked the coherent and unified vision that this new governance in Buenos Aires began cultivating in 2011. Past regimes strived to incorporate the frequently incompatible demands of community organizations, developers, investors, practitioners, and higher education institutions in ways that ultimately made for an unstable, vacillating vision of development. But this new governance shored up support for the project in the way it communicated its intentions. It used metaphors, imagined spaces, and identities to advance the cause and to attract public interest in a large-scale urban transformation. Neoliberal governance relied particularly on the language of social inclusion and integration. These concepts rationalized the urbanization project, while helping tamp down the resistance that arose in the gap between local constituents’ needs and the governance’s pro-growth imaginaries and goals. More precisely, the governance celebrated social integration and inclusion, while pursuing its goal of making spaces and infrastructure suitable for cultural and a esthetic consumption and in ways that would attract investment. Once Rodríguez Larreta won the mayoral election in late 2015, he made the social integration and urbanization project of Villa 31 one of the central pillars of his platform. In 2016, he announced the ambitious project at a regional meeting, Habitat III, which gathered key actors of the urban planning arena from across Latin America: “We talk about integration [more than] urbanization, since the last one does not necessarily break the ghetto (…) We need to change this. To integrate” (La Nación 2016a, my translation). Rodríguez Larreta’s pronouncement was later endorsed by Diego Fernández, who at the time was leading the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration: “We need to not only integrate the people of Villa 31 into the city, but we also need to bring in the people from the rest of the city” (La Nación 2016a). Later, in various public appearances, Rodríguez Larreta and his followers continued to extoll the virtues of the project and began to highlight integration with the slogans “De Villa a Barrio” (From Slum to Neighborhood) and “One More Neighborhood in the City” (SECISyU 2016b). This rhetoric publicly defined the area to be re-sculpted and established a new economic growth focus for Buenos Aires. The following pronouncement by a local authority illustrates these aspirations: “Turning Villa 31 into a barrio will bring greater stability and prosperity [to the city]” (in Rollenhagen 2019). In

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other words, to governance actors, Buenos Aires could achieve its potential as an economically and culturally compelling city by transforming a former “ghetto.” Normalizing Villa 31 as “a Livable, Formalized, and Robust Space” These various pronouncements began to ground redevelopment discussions and offered a way to normalize the area’s physical transformation. Remember that historically Villa 31 had been rendered a “povertystricken,” “highly dangerous,” and “crime-ridden” community, which had suffered four decades of neglect and prejudice. Just as public works were about to begin, a short column describing Villa 31’s early stages of redevelopment reduced the area to “the misery that is impossible to hide in the center of Buenos Aires” (Cué 2016). Villa 31 had also often been described as “impenetrable,” due to its dense regulation by networks of non-state organizations who function as area gatekeepers (Rollenhagen 2019), or as a “ghetto space” in Mayor Rodríguez Larreta’s words. But this once fractured place and “impenetrable” redevelopment area began attracting attention from governance actors for its potential real estate profitability and site of cultural and a esthetic consumption. This “ghetto space” needed urgently to be recast to make way for redevelopment and a new growth focus for Buenos Aires. It thus became the aperture through which governance actors offered prominent new imagined spaces for everyone. To governance actors a “livable, formalized, and robust space” did a good job of communicating what Villa 31 could be after a successful process of urbanization and integration. Such idealized spatial images are commonly offered in redevelopment narratives (Lincoln 1989). They communicate a sense of potential and establish what kind of community development must be cultivated. As soon as plans for Villa 31’s redevelopment were approved, governance actors began to circulate a re-fashioned idea of Villa 31. This newly envisioned space suggested everything that the project of urbanization and integration was aiming for: “quality housing and safety for all residents, good service provision and infrastructure, social and urban integration, and formalization of properties” (SECISyU 2016b). Ideally, this last item meant that the city government would give out property deeds for the thousands of unregistered homes and parcels of land, which residents could use to apply for infrastructure services, and which would give them a legally binding right to their

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property. This also meant that residents could buy their properties, with the option to pay for them in installments. Once the urbanization project started, the intention to formalize properties and parcels of land was reinforced by then secretary of SECISyU, Diego Fernández: “The payment for the formalization of properties and for public services, as well as caring for spaces that belong to everyone, are key aspects of this project” (in Tomorrow City 2020). But renditions of a “livable, formalized, and robust space,” with solid infrastructure, enhanced security, good provision of services, and quality housing, obliterated the humanity and activism of the area as well as the economic activities and lives of thousands of villeros/as . In particular, villa residents’ sense of place and community, embedded in the 40 years they had been building a complex urban space, were absent in these narratives. In a similar vein, the promotion of this area as a “livable, formalized, and robust space” became a priority over any reference to the prominent role that villeros/as have played in the city’s economy, for as long as Villa 31 has existed. Despite Villa 31’s historical construction as “matter out of place” (Douglas 2003 [1966]) and its social isolation from the rest of the city, many villeros/as have been subsidizing the aspirations of their vecinos (neighbors). More precisely, a large proportion of villa residents have worked as domestic employees and as construction workers according to a local census conducted in 2011 (Knoerr 2019). An interview with a former administration official, at the time working at a branch of the Ministry of Justice located in the villa, illustrates this point: “Here we find people who work in the houses and offices of the rich people of the center [Retiro neighborhood]. [The villeros/as are] people who clean them [houses and/or offices], build them, who take care of [rich people’s] children and their elderly. (…) The majority are foreign workers who can’t afford any other type of housing. Here they rent cheap, or not that cheap—$1,500 Argentine pesos (u$110) for a room without a bathroom—but they do not pay taxes, neither electricity nor water, and nobody asks for any warrant or paperwork (…) Everything in “la 31” is illegal” (Gabriel, in Cué 2016, my translation). In short, there has been little acknowledgment of how the political economy of Villa 31 has, for decades, been integrated with the rest of the city.18 18 The problem here lies, paraphrasing Anya Roy’s words, in the misunderstanding that informality is a separate sector (2005). She argues that it is not separate: a series of transactions connect different economies and spaces to one another. Along the same

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And while a new imagined space, a “livable, formalized, and robust space,” was actively reinforcing a collective identity of people who would, according to governance actors, benefit from the redevelopment, these same governance actors deployed monumental infrastructure and a bureaucratic machine to construe every action involved in this urban transformation as a process of integration. To this end, in parallel with the improvement of housing infrastructure and public services that was underway, the governance built new schools and a medical center and located branches of the Ministry of Education and other governmental agencies (e.g., the Ministry of Justice) in the area to oversee and coordinate various stages of the project. During a public interview, Rodríguez Larreta proudly explained: “The transference of the Ministry [of Education] [to Villa 31] responds to the vision of integration that we are seeking” (La Nación 2020). Additionally, as construction work moved forward, media reporters began documenting the physical transformation taking place across some sections of Villa 31: “Housing blocks painted in blue and green sport solar panels on their roofs, some streets were already being pulled open to install piping underneath, there are some clean and airy plazas, complete with minimalist playgrounds and cement planters” (Rollenhagen 2019) (Figs. 4.6 and 4.7). Sanitizing Identities in Villa 31 For decades Villa 31 residents have been stigmatized as “criminals,” “drug addicts,” and “illegal” immigrants who have taken the easy way out by “usurping” public land and not paying taxes. Currently, approximately 50% of the population living in Villa 31 are immigrants from neighboring countries, including Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru (Knoerr 2019). To clarify, the figure of the “villero/a”19 in the Argentinian culture dates back to the early 1940s and has generally been used to refer to lowincome workers, who initially were people migrating seasonally between

lines, James Scott (1998) points out that large-scale state interventions very often fail to consider that the success of designs for social organization depend on the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge. 19 To note, earlier descriptors of “villeros ” had been “cabecitas negras .” But once Villa 31 increased in population, residents of the middle-upper class in Buenos Aires replaced the descriptor of cabecitas negras with “villeros ,” referring to a resident of a villa, in this case, Villa 31.

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Fig. 4.6 Barrio 31 emerging: New housing built (Source Courtesy of the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration SECISyU, City Government of Buenos Aires)

rural and urban areas. Later, the term was used more for immigrants from neighboring countries, who flocked to Buenos Aires to work in factories, construction, and in the service sector. Recent studies have pointed out that the term “villeros ” is a racially coded term (Adamovsky 2017), rooted in the white supremacist ideology that developed in Argentina in the late nineteenth century. During that period, as part of a process of nationbuilding and state consolidation, the Argentine elite actively promoted the social construction of Argentina as a Westernized nation, essentially white and liberal in politics, economic system, and culture. This ideology and a series of associated policies20 became so profoundly embedded in 20 As part of a cosmovision to achieve an “improved” and more homogeneous national

population, Argentine elites implemented policies that ranged from “courting European immigrants as a way of ‘improving’ the local population and bringing the country nearer to European ideals of progress and modernity (…), to passing disciplinary labor legislation (…), enacting free, obligatory and secular schooling for every child (…), and enforcing obligatory military service” (Geler 2016, p. 215).

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Fig. 4.7 Barrio 31 emerging: Housing improved, new streets built, and sanitation installed (Source Courtesy of the Secretary for Social and Urban Integration SECISyU, City Government of Buenos Aires)

Argentine culture that Argentineans to the present day tend to consider themselves first and foremost “white” and “European” (Geler 2016). As for the villeros/as, over time these identities became fundamentally reduced to everyone that white elites and white ideology in Argentina had refused to embrace. Since the 1980s, with national economic swings, rising inequality, and new immigration patterns, the villeros/as increasingly became cast as “urban pariahs” (Wacquant 2001), embodying all the stigma noted above. But the identity of the villeros/as also represents a form of residency, a style of neighborhood, and a set of activity spaces. All these were about to be made peripheral. Once the physical transformation of Villa 31 was underway, governance actors worked selectively and actively to cultivate new and “positive” identities for the people living in Villa 31, obliterating any mention of formerly stigmatized identities. In the process, governance actors erased any sense of belonging or any identity based on race or class that the villeros/as acquired in becoming part of Villa 31. Governance

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actors also erased decades of activism and collective organization intended to improve living conditions. Creating new identities also helped governance actors extol the virtues of the project, discourage resistance, and advance their redevelopment agenda. Soon the media, the mayor, representatives of multilateral banks including the Interamerican Development Bank, business people, and the staff of government agencies worked in unison to culturally and racially reposition the villeros/as as “vecinos/as ” (neighbors). In Argentinean culture, “vecino” suggests a bourgeois sensibility that belonging in a city comes from being a property owner and taxpayer. Thus, at its core, replacing “villero” with the sanitized “vecino” identity celebrated white Argentinean ideology and communicated both a logic for Buenos Aires’s racial and class divide and a sense that public spaces are made for certain kinds of people and not others. As the first stage of public works (sewage, roads, and the arrival of branches of government agencies) were about to conclude in 2017, governance actors embarked on a more concerted effort to stimulate cultural consumption initiatives and to craft Barrio 31—as the area had become known—as the new “go-to” food market and “gastronomic enclave.” In comments to the press, Diego Fernández emphasized cultural and culinary consumption: “Now we have another goal which is transforming [this neighborhood] into a destination point” (La Nación 2020). “For me, our work will finally be done when a person tells their friend, ‘Hey, let’s have dinner tonight at that lovely restaurant in Barrio 31,’ or ‘Hey, do you want to get a beer at that awesome bar in that neighborhood?’ Once that happens, and it’s a normal thing, then we’ve won” (Rollenhagen 2019). Along with Fernández’s pronouncements, on various occasions Rodríguez Larreta also expressed his vision for Barrio 31 as a “gastronomic enclave” and food market by referencing well-known international food markets and chains such as London’s Borough Market, La Boquería in Barcelona, and even a fast-food restaurant such as McDonald’s (Scarpinelli 2017). Later, in an interview with an international media outlet, Fernández said: “Barrio 31 has a great deal to show and offer the city given its diversity, gastronomy, and culture. We want to preserve and boost the identity of Barrio 31 in the city, not impose a new one” (Fernández 2020, in Tomorrow City 2020).21 21 Of particular note was Buenos Aires’s governance aim to also formalize the informal economy operating in Villa 31 by opening banks and fast food restaurants, including McDonald’s (Tomorrow City 2020).

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At this point it became apparent that the neoliberal urban governance planned to achieve social and urban integration by commodifying the area, transforming a former “ghetto space” into a touristic and “multi-cultural gastronomic enclave.” In general, race and class shape the production of core processes, practices, and spaces involved in redevelopment (Wilson 2018) and, in this case, race and class served Buenos Aires’s governance as opportunities to frame Villa 31 communities as exciting new spaces to experience authentic “villeros/as ” culture, and using Fernández’s words, “diversity” and “gastronomy.” All in all, a “multi-cultural gastronomic enclave,” as governance actors envisioned, offered an official “vecino” identity; a new “multi-cultural gastronomic space,” effectively produced and packaged for the public, consumed by residents and visitors; Barrio 31 would be a new value-added community with economic effects that would spill over into adjacent communities. Although social integration rhetoric provided a convenient way for governance actors to build up support and discourage naysayers, it did not prevent concerns from developing among residents.

Barrio 31 Residents’ Concerns and the Project’s Flaws Our aim is to make Barrio 31 another neighborhood in the city and for its residents to be able to access the same rights and have the same responsibilities as any other inhabitant of Buenos Aires. —Interview with Diego Fernández 2020, Secretary of SECISyU (in Tomorrow City 2020)

From the outset of the urban transformation, most of the public works did not face active resistance, such as protests in the streets or denouncements in the public media. After decades of physical disinvestment, the initiative to revitalize Barrio 31 was welcomed by many residents. As one Barrio 31 resident commented to a reporter: “They are investing a lot of money into this. And no one’s going to complain if they bring electricity and running water and gas. And I think it’s right to pay taxes for those things” (in Rollenhagen 2019). For many, the plan for urban transformation also meant that the city government was finally taking concrete steps to improve Barrio 31 and the life of its residents. The new rhetoric of social integration gained particular traction among some

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Barrio 31 dwellers, in particular when new housing construction was about to begin. As one vecino (former villero) told me in 2019: “This new housing project, in addition to specifically addressing the housing issues of part of Barrio 31, will support the goals of the integration project of the entire Barrio 31 and its neighbors, (…) in general terms, it will connect Barrio 31 with the city” (my translation). But as the urbanization project unfolded, many reporters, activists, and Barrio 31 residents began to mistrust governance efforts. They feared the ultimate goal of the socio-urban integration project was not better access to public resources such as housing. Instead, it meant a converging of real estate and land prices between the northern part of the city and the south, which would displace the very residents that were supposed to benefit (interview with Pablo Vitale 2021, co-director of Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia [AGIJ]). In addition, many in the neighborhood could not shake a deep mistrust toward the government after decades of neglect, discrimination, and a series of attempts to eradicate Barrio 31 and displace its residents. During my interviews with Barrio 31 residents, Saul Sanchez said that many locals still face huge disadvantages when applying for jobs or loans, because of the stigma carried by their address. He added that many also fear being scammed, displaced, or “bulldozed” by the city government’s bureaucratic machine (Interviews with Barrio 31 residents, 2019). Norma Rodríguez argued that the urbanization of Barrio 31 is a strategy intended to drive residents away: “The truth is that 95% of the people here won’t be able to pay housing, and expenses, and utilities [once they receive their property titles],” she said. “No one here has a fixed income, everyone’s living day to day, and social services keep getting cut. So, what will happen? Those who can’t pay will have to go” (in Rollenhagen 2019). All in all, this project represented a menace for many, as one community advocate noted: “If one sees the four informal settlements that were selected to commence interventions... [they] are [all] linked to real estate business opportunities” (in Bertelli 2021, p. 11). Limited Input and Participation Many scholars and urban planning practitioners had questioned this large plan from day one, concerned about the focus on real estate and profitability for realtors and developers, especially considering the many public costs that had already been covered by the local government:

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land, external loans, and infrastructure. According to reporters and social workers who conducted interviews in the area at the time public works started, a group of residents felt that the Buenos Aires governance transformed existing relations and imposed their own decision-making process (Knoerr 2019). In particular, Pablo Vitale, who coordinated informal education workshops in Barrio 31 for 16 years and now co-directs the Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia (Civil Association for Equality and Justice [ACIJ]) reflected on the gap between the governance’s action and community participation. Interviewed in October 2019, he explained to a reporter: “The process of constructing new housing did not specifically involve the population, and because of this, policies were not decided on by residents, but by the government” (in Rollenhagen 2019). As noted earlier, the Consejo de Gestión Participativa (CGP), a multi-sector board composed of local government officials, non-governmental organizations, and residents, was created for the purpose of establishing ground rules and for discussion of each phase of the project of urbanization in accordance with Law 6129. Yet, as many anticipated, attendance on this board was limited once COVID-19 started (approximately 20 Barrio 31 residents counted at the last meeting in early 2020). To renowned urban sociologist Mercedes DiVirgilio, the CGP have had a minimal presence and action since its onset, except when it requested police intervention in a conflict when residents were relocated (discussed below). Given Barrio 31’s existing political structures and norms, DiVirgilio remarked that an urbanization agenda “should [have] adopt(ed) a holistic focus which addresses organizational, social, and community development as much as urban, financial, and legal dimensions” (in Rollenhagen 2019). In other words, Barrio 31’s complex political structures and diverse community organizations’ political agendas (e.g., Frente de Organizaciones de Lucha /Caminos de la villa.org/Federación Nacional Territorial-Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina, A. Ramona Medina—a representative from La Poderosa/Somos Fuego-Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina Capital/Fundación Tejido Urbano) have also shaped the ability of residents to participate in the CGP and engage with governance actors. Evictions In late 2021, I followed up on the progress of the urbanization project with Pablo Vitale, now director of the non-profit organization Civil

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Association for Equality and Justice. He argued that the neoliberal governance’s primary goal has been to gain urban visibility and not to attend to the demands and needs of the Barrio 31 residents. He described the urbanization of one of the first sections of Barrio 31, the Baja Autopista, as a process filled with conflict between the Barrio 31 residents and the local government. Briefly, one of the first public works involved the relocation of approximately 1,600 families who lived beneath the Arturo Illia Highway running through Barrio 31, which was deemed necessary because of the highly unstable structural status of the dwellings. To this end, the local government decided to demolish all the houses below that highway and promised to build new and better housing for all former dwellers within a reasonable time frame. According to Mayor Rodríguez Larreta, this side project was necessary to advance the socio-urban integration process (LPO 2017). In 2017, after facing mounting opposition from the families that would be affected by the demolition and relocation, he strongly argued in favor of moving the section of Barrio 31 that was under the Arturo Illia Highway, otherwise, he cautioned, “there’s no real integration” (LPO 2017). However, other governance actors seemed to be fully aware of the disruptive nature of public works across the area, and thus strived to address the mounting concerns and fears of residents, by acknowledging that they were negatively affected by successive physical transformations. Diego Fernández, leading the SECISyU, expressed this sentiment: “Every change is traumatic, and moving [into a new home] is traumatic for everyone. (…) It is a very profound change, and a very physical one, especially when you see all the construction and the new houses, and the streets being built. But we want to finally integrate this informal city into a formal part of Buenos Aires” (Rollenhagen 2019). In the end, while the Barrio 31 residents living in Baja Autopista resisted their relocation and displacement for a about a year (Koutsovitis and Baldiviezo 2018), half of them were violently evicted by the police and relocated in a newly built housing complex called “YPF” (Interview with Pablo Vitale 2019). As mentioned, the CGP created to represent the Barrio 31 residents throughout the urbanization process was, paradoxically, the governmental unit that requested police intervention to evict residents’ living under the Arturo Illia Highway (Clarín 2017). Furthermore, the local government left 500 families without housing for months. Ultimately, this issue was resolved. But other problems continued.

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Housing Deficiencies As many described in the interviews I conducted in 2019, the new housing provided for those evicted from under the highway had many construction deficiencies and reflected a lack of understanding of people’s needs and the informal layout of Barrio 31. While moving to a new area with new infrastructure and housing was a mayor change for thousands of Barrio 31 reidents who had lived for decades in precarious conditions under a major highway, 80% of the new houses were not of the size and quality the city had originally promised (Interview with Eduardo, representative from El Hormiguero). In 2019, a group of Barrio 31 residents complained that the government failed in its promise to reduce overcrowded conditions: the houses were not large enough for families with more than one child. When interviewed in 2021, Eduardo, who had lived in Barrio 31 with his wife for about six years and is a member of the local grassroots’ organization El Hormiguero, emphasized that “there were houses with many structural problems and even the electric installations were done superficially instead of underground.” In 2018, after Law 6129 was approved, he decided to participate in the CGP, until attendance dropped early in the COVID-19 pandemic. The CGP meetings continued with low attendance, even after a new government official was appointed to be in charge of finalizing the urbanization process (Interview with Pablo Vitale 2021). Housing Titles Eduardo also mentioned that when the local government began to regularize titles, they had not finished counting the population of Barrio 31 in a way that would make it possible to precisely determine residents’ tenure status and housing conditions. According to him, the local government rushed to give out titles to people before their households had even been counted. In addition, the government had promised many public services that were not connected at the time of giving out deeds. The protocol of property regularization was not accepted by the NGO Civil Association for Equality and Justice (ACIJ), individual residents, or many grassroots’ organizations. Adding to the many comments on the negative results and impacts of the urbanization process on the quality of life of the Barrio 31 residents, the NGO ACIJ published a report in late December 2021 reinforcing

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these negative outcomes. The report was based on a survey of 579 residents from all the different sections of Barrio 31 (62% women, 34% men, and 4% identified as gender nonconforming) about their perceptions of the overall quality of already finished public works, the quality of the new housing, the improvements to existing housing, and the installation of basic public services across Barrio 31. Overall, the study indicated substandard results on the part of the local government in advancing this urban project (see ACIJ 2021). While 77% of the population surveyed said that they have been living in the barrio before 2015, a year before the urbanization project started, 49% declared that the urbanization has been “necessary and a priority.” In contrast, 89% said they had not received any benefits with the “new housing or any other housing improvements” (ACIJ 2021). The latter refers to their access to basic public services (water, sewage, electricity). On top of this, ACIJ also revealed that according to governmental reports consulted (“BA Obras”, Unidad de Proyectos Especiales tri-monthly reports and answers to public requests for information), there are no accurate data about the quantity of households impacted directly by public works related to the urbanization projects. The most alarming perception to be expressed by the residents was that the new housing they received from the local government did not result in any major improvements to their quality of life. For example, 55% of residents who had received new housing considered that its quality was similar or even substandard compared to their former— however precarious—houses (ACIJ 2021, my translation). In relation to the population already living in precarious houses and who had accepted material improvements in their existing houses from the local government, 57% said they were satisfied with those improvements and their living conditions had substantially improved. In direct contrast, 43% were unsatisfied and revealed that the quality of their homes had not improved or had deteriorated. On top of the controversies and the disappointments about the already finished public works, at the time of writing, Barrio 31 residents still do not have “the same rights and have the same responsibilities as any other inhabitant of Buenos Aires,” as Diego Fernández had promised in early 2020 (Tomorrow City 2020). However, one thing is clear: Buenos Aires’s neoliberal governance successfully advanced the first phase of a planned urban transformation in one of the most disinvested and stigmatized areas of the city. To governance actors, they were successful at actively building large-scale infrastructure, overseeing and coordinating

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this process with a large bureaucracy, and they had done so primarily by operating with strategies and mobilizing powerful rhetoric. First, to these actors, “social and urban integration” became a perfect vehicle to frame improvements to the existing built environment while dissuading resistance and fear of displacement. Second, powerful rhetoric focused on sanitizing former Villa 31 with new spaces (“livable, formalized, and robust space”) and with new identities (“vecinos ”), while disruptive public works moved ahead and concerns from residents mounted. In addition, Barrio 31 now has the advantage of being a “multi-cultural gastronomic enclave” whereby cultural diversity and gastronomic experiences are put forward for residents’ and visitors’ consumption, producing more revenues for the city and new sources of profit. At the time of writing, Rodríguez Larreta suggested that this monumental development project is to be finished by late 2023 (Archyde 2022). Yet, there is no clear sense among governmental officials, the general public, grassroots organizations, or reporters about where this project is heading (ACIJ 2021) or whether there is any funding left from the International Development Bank and the International Bank for the Reconstruction and Development to support additional public works in one of the most ambitious urban projects in the history of urban planning of Buenos Aires.

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Lederman, J. (2020). Chasing world class urbanism. Global policy versus everyday survival in Buenos Aires. Globalization and community, 3. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Lijalad, A. (2018). Villa 31: El plan de Larreta y Macri para subastarla a beneficio de Calcaterra y Mindlin, December 3. https://www.eldestapeweb. com/nota/villa-31-el-plan-de-larreta-y-macri-para-subastarla-a-beneficio-decalcaterra-y-mindlin-2018-12-3-7-51-0. Accessed June 16, 2022. Lincoln, B. (1989). Discourse and the construction of society. New York: Oxford University Press. Massey, D. (1992). Politics and space/time. New Left Review, 196, 65–84. McCann, E. (2013). Policy boosterism, policy mobilities, and the extrospective city. Urban Geography, 34 (1), 5–29. Montero, S. (2018). Leveraging Bogotá: Sustainable development, global philanthropy and the rise of urban solutionism. Urban Studies, 57 (11), 2263–2281. Musse, V. (2016). Rodríguez Larreta presentará el plan para la Villa 31 en un panel mundial sobre vivienda, La Nación, October 17. www.lanacion.com. ar/1947692-rodriguez-larreta-presentara-el-plan-parala-villa-31-en-un-panelmundial-sobre-vivienda. Accessed November 8, 2021. Ons, M. (2018). La ley de urbanización de la Villa 31-31bis en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. El debate parlamentario y público en torno a su sanción y aplicación (2007–2015). Quid, 16 (9), 184–196. Peck, J. & Tickell A. (2007). Conceptualizing neoliberalism, thinking Thatcherism. In H. Leitner, J. Peck & E. S. Sheppard (eds.), Contesting neoliberalism: Urban frontiers. New York: Guilford. Registro Nacional de Barrio Populares (RENABAP) (2022). Accessed, 4 April 2022. https://www.argentina.gob.ar/noticias/barrios-populares. Rojas, F. (2017). De Villa a Barrio: integración social y urbana en Buenos Aires. Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID). https://blogs.iadb.org/ciudadess ostenibles/2017/05/12/villa-31/. Accessed November 8, 2021. Rollenhagen, L. (2019). Should a notorious Buenos Aires slum become an official neighbourhood? The Guardian, August 7. https://www.theguardian. com/cities/2019/aug/07/should-a-notorious-buenos-aires-slum-becomean-official-neighbourhood. Accessed April 27, 2022. Roy, A. (2005). Urban informality: Toward an epistemology of planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 71 (2), 147–158. https://doi.org/10. 1080/01944360508976689. Sánchez, S. I. & Baldiviezo. J. E. (2020). Legalidades y trampas en los procesos de transformación de las villas de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: los casos de Playón de Chacarita y Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica (ex Villas 31 y 31 bis) en contexto. In S. I. Sánchez, M. Robertazzi & C. F. Guebel (eds.), La desintegración de la Ciudad: políticas urbanas recientes en la Ciudad de Buenos

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Aires (pp. 81–150). Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Publicaciones ISU. Problemáticas Urbanas Contemporáneas. Scarpinelli, L. (2017). Larreta en Londres: Estamos viendo el ejemplo del Borough Market para desarrollar algo similar en la Villa 31, La Nación, November 7. www.lanacion.com.ar/2079959-larreta-en-londresestamosviendo-el-ejemplo-del-borough-market-para-desarrollar-algo-similar-en-la-vil la-31. Accessed November 8, 2021. Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a state. New Haven: Yale University Press. SECISyU (2016a). Plan integral retiro-puerto evaluación de impacto ambiental. www.buenosaires.gob.ar/sites/gcaba/files/terminos_de_referencia_eval uacion_de_impacto_ambiental_eia_0.pdf. Accessed December 21, 2017. SECISyU (2016b). Teaser: Barrio 31, One more neighborhood in the city. www. buenosaires.gob.ar/integración. Accessed April 20, 2017. Secretaría de Hábitat e Inclusión (SECHI) (2015). De Villa a Barrio 2012–2015. Buenos Aires: Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Smith, N. (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the revanchist city. New York, NY: Routledge. Sosa, G., Mársico, N. & González, S. (2018). Exclusivo: la Ciudad recibió casi U$S 200 millones para urbanizar la villa 31 pero no se sabe en qué gastará el dinero. El Destape, August 26. https://www.eldestapeweb.com/nota/exclus ivo-la-ciudad-recibio-casi-u-s200-millones-para-urbanizar-la-villa-31-pero-nose-sabe-en-que-gastara-el-dinero-2018-8-26-6-0-0. Accessed April 4, 2022. Spinetta, F. (2017). Protestas por el proyecto de urbanización de Villa 31. Página12, February 22. www.pagina12.com.ar/5957-protestas-por-el-pro yecto-de-urbanizacion-de-villa-31. Accessed November 8, 2021. Swyngedouw, E. (2000). Authoritarian governance: Power and the politics of rescaling. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18, 63–76. The Economist (2014a). The unplugged. The Americas section, https:// www.economist.com/the-americas/2014a/05/05/the-unplugged. Accessed November 1, 2021. The Economist (2014b). Slums in Buenos Aires. The unplugged. May 3rd edition. https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2014b/05/05/the-unp lugged. Accessed January 10, 2022. Tomino, P. (2007). El otro “mercado inmobiliario” de Retiro, La Nación, September 30. www.lanacion.com.ar/948693-el-otro-mercado-inmobiliariode-retiro. Accessed November 8, 2021. Tomorrow City (2020). Diego Fernández: “Integrating Barrio 31 means its residents have the same rights and obligations,” May 8. https://tomorrow.city/ a/diego-fernandez-barrio-31-buenos-aires. Accessed November 8, 2021. Van Gelder, J. L., Cravino, M. C. & Ostuni F. (2016). Housing informality in Buenos Aires: Past, present and future? Urban Studies, 53 (9), 1958–1975.

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Veras Mota, C. (2019). Cómo la crisis en Argentina cambió la vida en Villa 31, el barrio marginal más antiguo y emblemático de Buenos Aires. BBC News, July 3. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina48847992. Accessed November 2, 2021. Vitale, P. (2018). Políticas de regulación de suelo y sustentabilidad de los procesos de reurbanización. Revista Hábitat Inclusivo, 11, 1–4. Wacquant, L. (2001). Parias urbanos. Marginalidad en la ciudad (Spanish Edition). Buenos Aires: Manatial. Weber, R. (2002). Extracting value from the city: Neoliberalism and urban redevelopment. Antipode, 34 (3), 519–540. Wilson, D., Grammenos, D. & Wouters, J. (2004). Neighborhood restructuring and political conflict: Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Environment and Planning A, 36 (2), 114–131. Wilson, D. & Sternberg, C. (2012). Changing realities: The new racialized redevelopment rhetoric in Chicago. Urban Geography, 33 (7), 979–999. Wilson, D. (2007). Cities and race: America’s new black ghetto. New York, NY: Routledge. Wilson, D. (2018). Chicago’s redevelopment machine and blues clubs. New York, NY: Routledge.

CHAPTER 5

Neoliberal Governance and Chicago’s Southwest Side

In the twenty-first century, Chicago has seen growing disparities between prosperity and poverty, exhibited in large swaths of gentrified housing (e.g., West Loop, Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, Humboldt Park, Bucktown, Logan Square) and upscale downtown zones situated within a broader urban environment of segregation, disinvestment, and struggling communities on the city’s south and west sides. Long-term Chicago renters have been fleeing these conditions to land in less expensive southern suburbs, or they leave the city entirely in search of better opportunities, less racial segregation, and better schools. In fact, at least in large part because of a lack of opportunities, in 2020 Chicago’s population of 2,671,640 represented a decline of -0.96% since 2010, when the population recorded was 2,697,480 (US Census 2020). Despite the ongoing disparities, since the early 1990s, one central goal has permeated neoliberal governance actions in Chicago and has lent support for its city-wide projects: positioning Chicago as a “global and competitive city.” This orientation was clearly communicated in public by Richard M. Daley, during his fifth term as mayor: “We need to remain a competitive global city in the future … new ways to live … and new city planning … are perfect for Chicago” (Daley 2007). Daley’s successor, Rahm Emanuel, made similar pronouncements in 2012 when he spoke of “making Chicago the most competitive, most business-friendly, most economically viable city in the world” (Office of the Mayor 2012). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Sternberg, Neoliberal Urban Governance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21718-0_5

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Since Daley’s early years as Chicago’s mayor, neoliberal governance has pursued this status by attempting to renew the social and economic fabric of each neighborhood and of Chicago as a whole in unprecedented ways. To governance actors, urban redevelopment processes have been successful at yielding greater overall wealth in formerly disinvested or “idle” areas in the form of revenues for the city and profits for business owners, realtors, and developers. In other words, for many decades in Chicago, the path to grow the city’s economy and achieve global status has been through gentrification-led redevelopment, with each neighborhood repositioned and refunctionalized to serve Chicago’s economic growth mandates and its neoliberal global agenda (see Malizia and Feser 1999; Wolman and Spitzley 1996). The Daley and Emanuel administrations have been enthusiastic about this social and physical transformation across Chicago neighborhoods, and also suggested what spaces needed to be obliterated with the following pronouncement: “Our goal is to transform the old, isolated developments into vital communities” (Daley 2009). Many have even suggested that Chicago’s entrenched race-class segregation could be broken down by gentrification-led redevelopment, with an increase in social and racial mixing (see Wilson 2018, p. 23). In 2011, two Latinx communities on the southwest side of Chicago, Pilsen, and Little Village (LV) (see Fig. 5.1), became the latest targets for redevelopment. As in Buenos Aires, physical transformation depended on rhetoric and an emphasis on common understandings and imaginary spaces. Such strategies enabled neoliberal governance actors to manage the frequently competing demands of neighborhood organizations, bluecollar workers, business leaders, and developers. For many decades, the southwest side, especially LV, has been overlooked, and now it was being heralded by city officials, real estate professionals, and business leaders as unique, historic, and on the artistic and cultural cutting-edge. But it could not be left “as is.” Since 2011, neoliberal urban governance has sought to identify a unique Latino/a/x experience in long-time Chicago Latino/a/x neighborhoods, one capable of serving the city’s global competitive project; that is, both Pilsen and LV needed to be re-sculpted and repositioned by disciplining their spatial and cultural forms. Previous attempts to physically and socially transform these communities had been successful, particularly in the east and center of Pilsen (see Bentacur and Kim, 2016; Mumm and Sternberg 2022). Yet, in this new phase of redevelopment, gentrification in Latino/a/x communities advanced in distinctive ways and took place farther west (see Mumm and

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Fig. 5.1 Map of Chicago Latino/a/x neighborhoods: Pilsen and Little Village (Source Elaborated by GIS specialist, Julio Villarino)

Sternberg 2022). But at the core of this new redevelopment frontier, Chicago’s governance has produced two dominant spaces, one “prosperous and orderly multiethnic space,” and the other, a “culturally rich multiethnic space”—terms I find helpful for designating particular kinds of spaces imagined by neoliberal governance. These new spaces have celebrated symbols of middle-class whiteness in Chicago and communicated both a racial and class divide and a sense of these new spaces serving particular groups (Wilson 2018). Whiteness has pervaded the use of expressions such as “prosperous and orderly neighborhoods,” “residents being afraid of change,” and “productive residents.” In this context, identifying these spaces—where racial and class identities and anxieties are constructed and embedded—and the governance’s dominant goals and operations, provides a frame for understanding the involvement of Chicago’s governance in the city’s southwest side. Chicago’s governance accelerated urban transformation in this part of the city by relaxing the regulations that govern Planned Manufacturing

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Districts (PMD) and with the Paseo Trail project, both primarily affecting the community of Pilsen. The PMD deregulations were meant to make it easier for developers to convert industrial properties to more valuable residential or commercial uses. The Paseo Trail, a four-mile multi-use path, was designed to connect Pilsen and LV along the abandoned Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) rail line. But given that the Paseo Trail would finish in LV, that neighborhood was also impacted when the Paseo’s early discussions started. Later, the demolition of Crawford Station, a coal-fired power plant,1 and its replacement with a giant warehouse, along with the still-pending destiny of the Discount Mall—one of the most popular retail stores in LV for more than 36 years—have also primarily affected the LV community in terms of housing affordability and reduction of vacant land. The Discount Mall redevelopment project has been stalled primarily due to economic uncertainties and community activism. Yet, all of them have exercised significant market pressures on pockets of vacant land across both communities and on housing affordability in those communities. These projects have resulted in turning vacant land over to residential and/or commercial uses, and in stoking a fear of displacement and anxiety in both of these working-class communities. This chapter chronicles neoliberal urban governance as it worked across Chicago from 2011 to 2021, through the Emanuel and Lightfoot administrations. The chapter describes the strategies and rhetoric these governance actors created and used to advance their plans in the current southwest side redevelopment incursion. Rahm Emanuel, who was elected in 2011 and reelected in 2015 as mayor of the city of Chicago, followed Daley’s corporate agenda, while Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who in 2019 became the first queer and African American woman elected to lead the city of Chicago, has opened up a different type of rhetoric, aligned with post-political values of “inclusive economic growth,” that have been highly questioned by local scholars and the general public due to the ambivalent interests she seems to represent: fluctuating between corporate and neighbors interests (interview with UIUC Professor, Betancur 2021). As we shall see, neoliberal principles and orientation have not seemed to be discontinued during Lightfoot’s leadership.2 1 Crawford Generating Station was a coal-fired power plant built in 1924; it closed in 2012 after a long battle with the community of Little Village over pollution. 2 An example of this ambivalence; during the pandemic, advocates pushed Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot to bring an end to the ban on rent control; rent has

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Overview of Chicago’s Ascendant Neoliberal Governance Chicago’s era of neoliberal urban governance began in 1989, when Richard M. Daley was elected mayor. From the outset, Daley and his alliance of institutions promoted Chicago as a “global city.” This alliance focused on physically and aesthetically upgrading Chicago’s downtown and its adjoining neighborhoods. To renowned journalist Natalie Moore, this period was marked by “the billion-dollar Millennium Park, a lot of beautifications, lots of flowers” (Moore 2021). Indeed, under Daley, neoliberal governance put all its efforts into beautifying downtown parks, streets, and plazas; promoting gentrification; and building an international, glittery downtown. Throughout Daley’s rule, neoliberal urban governance involved two main institutions: the city government and a public–private civic group with numerous ties to the city’s leading corporations, the Commercial Club of Chicago (CCC).3 This organization was founded in 1877 to “advance the public welfare and the commercial interests of metropolitan Chicago by co-operative effort, social intercourse, and a free interchange of views (…). [The membership] is limited to residents of the Chicago metropolitan area who shall be deemed qualified by reason of their personality, general reputation, position in their business or profession, and service in the public welfare” (Johnson 2001). Both the city government and the CCC have mobilized other institutions—builders, developers, realtors, and auxiliary players (the media,

been declared illegal in iIllinois since 1997. According to a reporter of Block Club Chicago the two “were noncommittal, instead focusing on programs that provided millions in rent relief — but which many tenants weren’t able to use. And those programs haven’t prevented the raising of rent” (Bamberg 2022). 3 The following is a list of the most prominent business and corporate leaders who have been part of this organization over the years: Chicago Urban League, Chicago Community Trust, Energy Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, McCormick Tribune Foundation, Sara Lee Corp., Elizabeth Morse Genius Charitable Trust, LaSalle Bank, McDonald’s, Motorola, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Sears (Johnson 2001). Also included have been these groups: Business and Professional People for the Public Interest; the Center for Neighborhood Technology; Chicago United, Inc.; the Civic Federation; the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities; the Local Initiatives Support Corporation; and the Environmental Law and Policy Center have joined the CCC. Finally, the CCC has benefited from consultation with many universities in the region: DePaul University, Northwestern University, Roosevelt University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago (Johnson 2001).

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utility companies, universities, chambers of commerce)—to deepen and embolden the governance. Additionally, Chicago’s neoliberal governance used a number of tools to facilitate the city’s restructuring. First, tax increment financing (TIFs)—first used by Mayor Jane Byrne in the downtown area in 1981—were actively deployed across the city during the Daley years. TIFs are a geographically targeted economic development tool (also used in the states of Texas, Florida, New Mexico, New Jersey, Georgia, and California), usually deployed in so-called blighted neighborhoods (Weber and O’Neill-Kohl 2013) where otherwise investment would not take place. This tool captures the increase in property taxes resulting from new development and diverts the revenue to subsidize that development. That diversion means local public services do not get the new revenue they would normally get from new development. As an example of how TIFs work, a city like Chicago designates a small geographic area to be redeveloped (a “TIF district”), usually at the request of a corporation or a developer. When that redevelopment happens, property values will go up, and therefore property taxes will increase also. When that happens, the property tax will be broken into two streams; one stream will continue to be invested in schools, roads, parks, fire, sanitation, and police, and the other stream will be diverted to subsidize the TIF district. As common currency in Chicago, TIF funds have been discretionally funneled into residential areas to drive gentrification (see Ben Jovarsky’s regular column in the Chicago Reader on this topic, and Koval et al. 2006). During Daley’s period, TIFs were strategically deployed to help gentrify and upscale strategic Chicago locations, notably South LoopBronzeville, the Central Loop, South Campus-Pilsen, and the East–West Wicker Park gentrification corridor (Bentacur and Kim 2016; Wilson, et al. 2004). Additionally, TIFs helped bring Boeing’s headquarters to the city’s downtown, costing $21 million in taxpayer money (Washburn and Ciokajlo, 2001). By 2009, more than 160 TIFs dotted Chicago, making the city the largest user of this tool in the country. Moreover, Chicago’s governance, mainly through Daley and the Chicago Housing Authority, launched an aggressive overhaul of Chicago’s public housing through the Plan of Transformation in 2000 (Hyra 2008). This plan resulted in 17,000 units of public housing being demolished—with a still-unfinished plan to relocate residents in mixed-income communities— and in freeing up highly devalued land on the south side for potential restructuring (Weber 2015; Johnson 2001). According to a report published online

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in 2017 by WBEZ and graduate students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, only about 8% of the residents of those units or households now live in mixed-income communities (Moore 2017). And besides costing the city about $3 billion (Moore 2017), the Plan for Transformation also projected the closing of public schools, an assignment that was later executed during Emanuel’s rule. All in all, Daley’s rise to power enabled Chicago’s governance to increasingly work through and circulate the ethos and practices of neoliberalism: the need to entrepreneurialize government-actions, create more responsible and business-oriented citizens, build a strong local business climate, and fashion a globally competitive, consumption-oriented city through gentrification-led redevelopment agendas (Hague, et al. 2017). To make this a reality, gentrification-led redevelopment, as mentioned earlier, has emerged as a central and ongoing policy instrument for Chicago’s obsession with economic growth and with being well-positioned across the globe. Richard M. Daley’s 22-year rule of machine politics (1989–2011) is well summarized by Natalie Moore in The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation. Moore describes Daley as an ironfisted mayor who oversaw grand downtown projects and urban renewal, while seizing control of the public schools and public housing and amassing significant funding for projects to update the lakefront (Moore 2016, p. 183). Daley became known as a national leader in applying neoliberal principles and designs (especially the notions of the private market as determinant of social and land-use outcomes and the retrenchment of social welfare) to systematically remake the city of Chicago—for example, by reducing budgetary shortfalls by leasing and selling to private corporations public assets such as parking meters, sections of highways, and advertising space for billboards. He used tax money to lure corporate headquarters, upgrade parks, and build convention centers (see Hague et al. 2017). Ultimately, these practices contributed to the city’s fiscal crisis in 2008, ending his aspirations to a seventh term in 2011. Rahm Emanuel (2011–2015 and 2015–2019) followed Daley’s brusque/non-collaborative mayoral style and was also widely considered to be “beholden to the rich and to corporate interests” (Moore 2016, p. 204). He continued Daley’s efforts, along with leading civic boosters and business leaders, to position Chicago as a “global city,” for example, by hosting prominent summits, including the NATO and G8 summits (Spielman and Sweet, 2011; Lydersen 2013). But regarding the city’s

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potential failure to maintain its status, he tended to evoke more anxiety than enthusiasm among governance actors and Chicagoans in general. Consider this statement: There are about 100 cities in the world that are the economic, cultural and intellectual energy of the world today. Chicago is one of those cities. Look around the world and look at this time. The cities are Paris, Berlin, London, Chicago, Shanghai, Rio, New York. There’s no guarantee that 20 years from now Chicago’s here. Nothing is certain. So what you do today determines whether it’s a viable city. What I do today as mayor—attract talent, build industry, strengthen our schools, support our businesses, expand our broadband and the rail—determines whether the city of Chicago stays on the level of Shanghai and New York and London. (Rahm Emanuel, in Burleigh 2012)

Emanuel’s first term was marked by a controversial decision to shut down 64 public schools (which would be replaced with charter schools), in an effort to continue freeing up devalued land for potential restructuring, thus, giving continuity to the Plan for Transformation initiated by Daley in 1999 (see Lipman 2011; Koval et al. 2006). He also followed Daley’s policy orientation and ethos in other ways: he renewed Daley’s commitment to bringing businesses to downtown, favoring corporate interests, and continued to promote redevelopment through TIF-districting, despite his initial promises of city-wide reform of those practices. He also cut city spending on libraries and shuttered public mental health facilities (Lydersen 2013). In fact, to further advance a real estate and corporate agenda, in 2015 Emanuel hired David Reifman as the commissioner of the city’s Department of Planning and Development. In his resume, Reifman emphasized his “‘experience executing (…) largescale development proposals, resulting in the creation of tens of billions of dollars of private real estate investment’” (in Glowacz 2019). As a Chicago Tribune journalist summarized Emanuel’s approach to governance: “When the mayor plucked Reifman (...) for this key City Hall job, developers clinked their shovels in a toast” (Glowacz 2019). An ironfisted style wielded by mayors who remained in office for multiple terms boosted the continuity of the neoliberal project. By the end of Emanuel’s second term, WBEZ.org organized a public forum about Emanuel’s style of politics and his legacy in Chicago, at which journalists Becky Vevea, Claudia Morell, and Linda Lutton offered their own renditions. First, Claudia pronounced that: “Rahm Emanuel

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has been very vocal about his desire to make Chicago a pro-business, pro-growth city and he thinks that the only way that Chicago is going to move forward is if we have people spend money here. This is about his legacy, (…) it really furthers Mayor Richard M. Daley’s goal of making Chicago Paris on the Prairie” (Vevea et al. 2019). Linda Lutton echoed Claudia’s points by explaining: “[Emanuel represents] Chicago’s political elite, this is the growth machine. It’s so symbiotic, the politicians that support this type of growth and the business community that benefits from it. It’s intertwined” (Vevea et al. 2019). Notably, two years later, in a different public forum organized by WBEZ and the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government, Danny Ecker, commercial real estate reporter for Crain’s Chicago Business echoed these earlier sentiments and stated that “Mayor Rahm Emanuel (…) was really the champion of downtown investment. Rahm Emanuel oversaw the historic rush of companies moving into the [central business district] to places like Fulton Market and reshaped the industrial corridors” (Ecker 2021). In short, Rahm Emanuel dedicated his two mayoral terms to advancing neoliberal urban policies that have exacerbated gentrification and displacement in Chicago, through historic landmark designations, enterprise zones, condo conversions, the closing of 64 public schools, and the use of TIF money. Additionally, he left the city with an affordable housing gap of nearly “120,000 homes, which has put swaths of the city out of reach of low-income and working-class Chicagoans” (Cherone, 2020). Thus, the strong legacy of Daley’s growth machine and neoliberal ethos, later reinforced by Rahm Emanuel’s conservatism, helped paved the way for a successful and new phase of urban transformation. This time it was the turn of Chicago’s former industrial corridors, and the southwest side Latinx working-class communities, to be discussed in the next section. Today, Chicago’s neoliberal governance under Lori Lightfoot’s current rule seems to lack the coherent vision that this governance has cultivated since 1989. Past regimes were able to incorporate frequently incompatible demands of community organizations, developers, investors, practitioners, and higher education institutions. Since the beginning of the Lightfoot administration in 2019, the vision of development put forth has been more wavering, in part due to mounting economic obstacles and challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. When Lightfoot assumed office in May 2019, various journalists agreed that her administration was committed to addressing the disinvestment on the city’s south and west sides, which had been neglected for decades

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(Ecker 2021). Planning practitioners and journalists invited to public forums reported that this governance seemed focused on expanding opportunity and encouraging inclusive economic growth across Chicago’s neighborhoods and communities; they anticipated the administration would make key investments in education, public safety, and financial stability (City of Chicago 2019; Ecker 2021). For example, Crain’s Chicago Business journalist Dennis Rodkin noted: “This at a time when Lightfoot is concertedly trying to shift the focus of investment toward South and West Side neighborhoods from downtown, where her two predecessors, Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel, intensified it. She’s a different model of mayor, more progressive and with a stated agenda of enhancing opportunity for all parts of the city” (Rodkin 2020). Yet, such claims have increasingly been contradicted by prominent scholars with much research experience and involvement in the south and west of Chicago. In early August 2020, John Betancur, a professor at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), offered the following statement to a daily: “While Daley and Emanuel ‘privileged gentrification and opposed bitterly the forces resisting it,’ (…) the Lightfoot administration ‘does not have a clear-cut neighborhood policy that I am aware of’” (in Rodkin 2020). When I spoke with Betancur in early 2021, he strongly asserted that Chicago’s current governance, under Mayor Lori Lightfoot, continues “the Chicago machine politics of Rahm Emanuel [and Daley] in terms of privileging the interests of corporate elites” rather than community interests (interview on March 26, 2021). So, throughout the last 10 years, neoliberal principles and practices have been driving redevelopment in Chicago, which has meant sanitizing historically stigmatized areas of the city for the purposes of future investment and economic growth. Although important, the major’s office is just one part of a larger system of governance. In the Emanuel and Lightfoot administrations, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce has played a key role in refashioning Chicago’s urban and social fabric. The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors is comprised of “more than 125 of the most influential business and civic leaders in the region. Board members meet quarterly to address the most pressing issues facing the Chicagoland business community. The Board of Directors works at a high level to ensure the Chamber effectively serves as the voice for the region’s employers” (Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce webpage, last accessed,

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August 16, 2021, https://www.chicagolandchamber.org/). The list of members of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce is extensive4 and along with Local Initiatives Support Corporations (LISC) which represents 72 organizations, there are nearly 200 prominent influential businesses, civic leaders, and elite institutions that have a long history of influencing and shaping Chicago’s public policies.

Neoliberal Chicago Under Mayors Rahm and Lightfoot (2011 to the Present) Since the mid-1990s, Chicago’s neoliberal urban governance has located its path to the status of a “global and competitive city” through the creation of “competitive neighborhoods” (see Wilson 2007). As journalist Natalie Moore stated in a public forum: “[The Emanuel’s administration] was similar to Daley’s: (…) Putting Chicago on the global map, making Chicago a global city (…) focusing on the front door of the city which 4 Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and Local Initiatives Support Corporations (LISC): Applegate & Thorne-Thomsen, P.C., Associated Bank, Bank of America, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, BMO Harris Bank, Brinshore Development LLC, Capital One Bank, Caterpillar Foundation, Chicagoland Workforce Funders Alliance, CIBC Bank, Citigroup Inc., City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, City of Chicago Department of Family and Support Services, The Coleman Foundation, Comcast, Corporation for National & Community Service, Crown Family Philanthropies, Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, Groupon, Huntington Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Liberty Bank, LISC National, Mars Wrigley Foundation, MB Financial Bank, N.A., Northern Trust, Peoples Gas Light and Coke Co., PepsiCo, Perry Pero, Pierce Family Foundation, PNC Bank, Polk Bros. Foundation, The Pritzker Traubert Foundation, RedStone Equity Partners-LLC, Robert Jank, State Farm, Steans Family Foundation, Steven Liepert, The Baseball Tomorrow Fund, The Chicago Community Trust, The Chicago Cubs Charities, The City of Chicago, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, The Robert R. McCormick Foundation, Union Pacific, United Center Joint Venture, U.S. Bank, US Dept. of Housing & Urban Development, Wells Fargo, Wintrust Financial Corporation, Woods Fund Chicago. In addition, the following organizations are represented in the LISC board of advisers comprised of policy development and strategic planning, budget and finance, credit review and supervision and fundraising leaders: Chicago & Nunes, P.C, Northern Trust, Bank of America, University of Illinois at Chicago, Harris Strategies, The Obama Foundation, State Farm, World Business Chicago, JP Morgan Chase, U.S. Bank Strategies, Community Investment Corporation, Stifel, Nicolaus + Co., Inc., Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership, Rush University Medical Center, BMO Harris Bank, United Centre Joint Venture/Chicago White Sox, Clayco, Hispanic Housing Development Corporation, Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas, City Colleges of Chicago, Brinshore Development, LLC., SB Friedman, Terrace Strategies.

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would be downtown” (Moore 2021). Yet, forging a neoliberal globalized city also means, to many city officials, that Chicago could only achieve this status by aggressively tackling its acute segregation. Here, Moore’s words addressing Chicago’s critical social issues are also worth noting: “segregation is the real greatest threat to Chicago’s global city status” (Moore 2021). Alongside Moore, David Stoval, a professor of African American Studies, criminology, law, and justice at UIC, explained the critical segregation status of Chicago to a Crain’s reporter: “Chicago is in a situation where those who historically have the least are left with even less. (…) By 2016, this gap had grown to almost 22 percent” (Mendell, 2020). Concern that the city will not be economically attractive enough to encourage the movement and investment of big corporations to the city, as well as the expansion of the city’s trade and tourism business, in other words, to maintain the status as a global city, has driven most of the redevelopment policies in Chicago since the mid-1990s (Sternberg 2012; Wilson and Sternberg 2012). Recently though, this concern has been heightened by the governance realizing the acute degree of disinvestment and historical segregation of the south and west Side. But without reflecting on past mistakes, by 2016 governance actors decided to further extoll gentrification as a tool to “fix” disinvested neighborhoods, reshape their cultural forms and identities to fit a new urban reality, and generate revenues for the city and profits for the corporate world. In this context, and through Emanuel’s second term, several redevelopment projects became important priorities of Chicago’s urban governance: First, economic efforts were channeled to the north side and center-west side, by expanding the touristy Riverwalk and reshaping the former industrial corridors of Fulton Market (West Loop) and Lincoln Yards (still pending) with newly upscaled and highly touted offices and condominiums, along with commercial development. Within this upscaling impetus, in 2016 Chicago’s governance decided to relax the rules protecting Chicago’s 15 Planned Manufacturing Districts (PMD) and 26 industrial corridors (Spielman 2016), and sought to revitalize many of the disinvested, yet central, districts of the city by focusing on transforming former manufacturing areas into residential ones. These and other redevelopment policies were soon being framed as opportunities to renew “unused” or “idle” manufacturing areas as residential ones (Scalzitti 2012) and to improve the communities’ aesthetics by expanding green space and investing in infrastructure. In the words of Chicago’s Planning and Development Commissioner David Reifman, “The idea is

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to revisit our industrial landscape as a whole, including areas transitioning away from traditional manufacturing and areas that continue to exhibit strength and growth in manufacturing. That transition includes hightech and office jobs. This is not simply about allowing residential zoning” (Spielman 2016). But, given the explicitly business-oriented focus of this governance, ultimately the promise of residential promotion was what governance actors were pursuing with post-industrial policies. On the one hand, to governance actors, these policies were key to increasing revenues and becoming a “competitive and global city.” On the other, they were designed to address the profound segregation present in the southwest side communities, and gentrification was the key urban tool to overcome this “urban condition.” In this context, the PMDs and the Paseo Trail anchored two of the largest “post-industrial” redevelopment projects on the southwest side, mainly encompassing the Pilsen and LV neighborhoods, although plans for the Paseo Trail stalled after Pilsen’s community vigorously opposed its development. The demolition of the coal-fired Crawford power plant soon followed, allowing commercial redevelopment in LV. Yet, before the post-industrial projects could advance in historically disinvested Pilsen and LV, new discursive spaces needed to be activated. A new rhetoric, used by both public and private actors, suggested that beneath troubled and struggling neighborhoods there were culturally flourishing, “city-contributory communities” that could be refunctionalized and repositioned to support Chicago’s neoliberal global agenda. In the following chapter, I discuss the governance’s production of dominant spaces for Pilsen and LV as governance actors began to discursively unfold its projects in the area from 2016 to 2019. What is important here are the elaborated spatial constructs that have profoundly affected affordable housing stock in Pilsen and LV during the period under study. The publicly entrenched negative stereotypes of Pilsen and LV as historically “not up-and-coming space” and “a ravaged, depressed space,” respectively, became the aperture through which new strategic imaginary spaces needed to be cultivated. In terms of Pilsen, despite gentrification-led redevelopment advancing at a fast pace since the 1990s—with approximately 10,000 residents displaced according to US Census 2010—this community continued to be rendered in terms of a standard Chicago stereotype. In developers’ words, “a not up-and-coming space” (in Gallun 2019) with high crime rates, dilapidated housing and infrastructure, and

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a factory-era aesthetic, makes it a relic in a post-industrial city. Accompanying this rendition, identities in this community have been historically reduced to “low-income, service-dependent locals” and condemned as “underachievers, and unwilling to change.” But these negative portrayals of Pilsen and its residents, automatically communicated a new set of assumptions about what Pilsen needs to become: a “prosperous and orderly ethnic space” with an orderly community, tranquil streets, and a sense of prosperity and cohesiveness. Pilsen has the characteristics that property investors crave. Located in proximity to downtown Chicago and to the UIC campus and possessing a longestablished art scene, Pilsen is said to have become a nest of cutting-edge culture and art that appeals to many young professionals. Thus, to this governance, gentrification would inevitably happen, but “little” would be compromised or sacrificed in this supposedly long-overdue updating of Pilsen. Post-industrial efforts also focused on LV. Notably, LV has only recently begun to face gentrification-led redevelopment, and with a different pace and intensity than its neighbor. Since its beginning, circa the 1970s, its been depicted as a dilapidated neighborhood bearing the marks of decades of deindustrialization and public and private neglect. Chicago’s governance has been blunt in circulating an imaginary of this community as ravaged and depressed, crime-infested, with overcrowded housing. Reinforcing this stigmatization, Latinx residents historically have been cast as a “service-dependent population, with troubled-youth and underachiever residents.” Governance actors in Chicago have never before exerted this kind of pressure to upscale targeted blocks in LV. Yet, a new rhetoric deployed by governance actors suggests that beneath a neglected area, LV is capable of making a contribution to the city. In this rhetoric, such change promises to do what previous governances never thought about: “civilizing” the LV residents, upgrading living conditions, and presenting this area as an opportunity for cultural consumption and economic growth. A “culturally rich and multiethnic space” was discursively mobilized to discipline LV’s urban form. In the process of disciplining spaces, neoliberal governance also worked to commodify local identities in both Pilsen and LV in a way that would fit this new urban reality. Here, governance actors identified Pilsen’s and LV’s residents as “ethnicity-infused beings.” To developers, builders, and the city, Pilsen and LV residents became the bearers of an authentic ethnicity.

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By 2018, among the general public, frustration was mounting after decades of iron-fisted mayors and neglected working-class communities. The election of Mayor Lori Lightfoot in May 2019 became an opportunity for governance institutions to respond to these frustrations and approach new development projects in the south and west of Chicago using distinctive language. Governance efforts became especially focused on fostering “inclusive revitalization/development” (Knabb 2020) and “inclusive or equitable economic growth” in particular communities. News outlets accompanied this rhetoric by trying to persuade residents that redevelopment institutions in Chicago were finally agreeing to focus on developing communities that had long been neglected for investment and that governance was committed to “curbing” gentrification pressures. In a speech in 2021 at the Department of Housing, Mayor Lightfoot expressed her vision of equitable economic growth: “While major cities across our country are experiencing a sharp increase in the number of new developments, whether they be housing or otherwise, it remains imperative that these projects do not lead to the displacement of long-term residents” (DHO Press 2021). Later, she elaborated her idea of inclusive economic growth as a type that “will bring together government, businesses, philanthropic organizations and community groups to make coordinated investments in 10 neighborhoods, giving residents more opportunities and driving inclusive, measurable growth throughout all of Chicago” (DHO Press 2021). At the end of her speech, she emphasized the pressing need to address the needs of struggling communities: “public-private partnerships are crucial to reverse historic levels of disinvestment and decades of neglect in many neighborhoods, and ultimately build safer and more economically-vibrant corridors throughout our city.” In direct contrast with Daley and Emanuel’s urban agenda, at least rhetorically, one of the most transformative urban policies this governance projected has been “the invest south/west initiative.” The language and socially minded values ascribed to this initiative have been strategically used to depoliticize any reference to gentrification and displacement (Swyngedouw 2011). They also became key terms that helped Chicago’s governance rationalize its project while confronting mounting demands situated between local constituents’ needs and the possibilities for socialintegration reinvestment. Despite declarations about a more inclusive city and equitable growth, the entrenched negative race and class identities remain untouched, while every neighborhood is still being expected to contribute to the competitive mandates under neoliberal globalization.

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The vision of equity and inclusive economic growth will be examined more closely in subsequent chapters. As we shall see, this new governance seems to be prioritizing equity and inclusive economic growth in the current phase of redevelopment. In turn, various anti-gentrification movements originating in Pilsen and LV have appropriated this thick rhetoric to protect their own interests and address their claims for more affordable housing.

References Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce webpage, https://www.chicagolandcham ber.org/. Accessed, 16 August 2021. Bamberg, J. (2022) Chicago rent is spiking—So tenants are forming unions and pushing for rent control to stay in their neighborhoods, August 1. https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/08/01/chicago-rent-is-spiking-so-ten ants-are-forming-unions-and-pushing-for-rent-control-to-stay-in-their-neighb orhoods/. Accessed August 1, 2022. Bentacur, J. & Kim, Y. (2016). The trajectory and impact of ongoing gentrification in Pilsen. Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement Report, University of Illinois at Chicago. https:// voorheescenter.uic.edu/reports/. Accessed January 16, 2022. Burleigh, N. (2012). Rahm Emanuel 2.0: less screaming, more smiling. DuJour Magazine, December 2012. https://dujour.com/culture/rahm-emanuel-20less-screaming-more-smiling/. Accessed June 28, 2022. Cherone, H. (2020). Anti-gentrification measure extended for 6 months as officials craft new plan. WTTW News, December 8. https://news.wttw.com/ 2020/12/08/anti-gentrification-measure-extended-6-months-officials-craftnew-plan. Accessed March 10, 2022. City of Chicago (2019). “About Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot.” Office of the Mayor. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/supp_info/about_ the_mayor.html. Accessed February 4, 2022. Daley, R. M. (2007). Plenary presentation. Building the Future City. Third Annual Richard J. Daley Global Cities Forum, University of Illinois at Chicago, April 6. Daley, R. M. (2009). Keynote speech. 16th Annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards (CNDA), Hyatt Regency, Chicago, February 9. Department of Housing (DHO) Press. (2021) City Council Passes antideconversion ordinances for Pilsen and the 606, January 27. https://www. chicago.gov/city/en/depts/doh/provdrs/housing_resources/news/2020/ december/mayor-lightfoot-and-department-of-housing-introduces-ant--dec onv.html. Accessed April 7, 2021.

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Ecker, D. (2021). Interview for “Re-imagine Chicago Forum Ideas Forum: Community Investment,” June 3, organized by WBEZ and University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3XN4YLBhfnU. Accessed January 26, 2022. Gallun, A. (2019). “Pilsen property owners’ pocket big profits: Amid the debate about gentrification in Pilsen and nearby neighborhoods, real estate investors are cashing out of the area for hefty gains.” Crain’s Chicago Business, January 28. https://www.chicagobusiness.com/commercial-real-estate/ pilsen-property-owners-pocket-big-profits. Accessed January 26, 2022. Glowacz, D. (2019). David Reifman has left the building. Chicago Reader, May 17. https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/david-reifman-has-left-the-bui lding/. Accessed April 19, 2022. Hague, E., Lorr, M. J. & Sternberg, C. (2017) Introduction—Chicago: Neoliberal city. In L. Bennett, R. Garner, & E. Hague (eds.), Neoliberal Chicago (pp. 1–13). Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press. Hyra, D. S. (2008). The new urban renewal: The economic transformation of Harlem and Bronzeville. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Knabb, J. (2020). Rethinking gentrification: How to become an agent of positive change in your community. Chicago Agent Magazine, May 5. https:// chicagoagentmagazine.com/2020/05/25/rethinking-gentrification-how-tobecome-an-agent-of-positive-change-in-your-community/. Accessed April 19, 2022. Koval, J. P., Bennet, L., Bennett, M., Demissie, F., Garner, R. & Kim, K. (2006). The new Chicago. A social and cultural analysis. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Johnson, E. W. (2001). Chicago metropolis 2020: The Chicago plan for the twentyfirst century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lipman, P. (2011). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. New York: Routledge. Lydersen, K. (2013). Mayor 1%: Rahm Emanuel and the rise of Chicago’s 99%. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Malizia, E. E. & Feser, J. E. (1999). Understanding local economic development. New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research. Mendell, D. (2020). The damaging divide; Long-standing racial and ethnic disparities in Chicago are growing ever wider, and researchers say the cost will be borne by everybody, regardless of color. Crain’s Chicago Business, Crains’ Forum Coverage, February 28. https://www.chicagobusiness. com/crains-forum-racial-gaps/forum-self-defeating-divide. Accessed January 24, 2022. Mumm, J. & Sternberg, C. (2022). Mapping racial capital: Gentrification, race and value in three Chicago neighborhoods. Urban Affairs Review, 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/10780874221082614.

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Moore, N. (2016). The south side: A portrait of Chicago and American segregation. New York: Picador. Moore, N. (2017). “Why the Chicago housing authority failed to meet its mixedincome ambitions.” WBEZ 91.5, March 23. https://interactive.wbez.org/ cha/. Accessed February 1, 2022. Moore, N. (2021). Interview for “Re-imagine Chicago ideas forum: Community investment,” June 3, organized by WBEZ and University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XN 4YLBhfnU. Accessed January 26, 2022. Office of the Mayor (2012). Rahm Emanuel statement regarding May 2012 employment rates, June 2012. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/ mayor/press_room/press_releases/2012/june_2012/statement_from_mayo rrahmemanuelregardingmay2012employmentratesin.html. Accessed April 7, 2021. Rodkin, D. (2020). “Anti-gentrification forces are winning; A change in the climate has developers pulling back.” Crain’s Chicago Business, August 3. https://advance-lexis-com.ezproxy.depaul.edu/api/document?collection= news&id=urn:contentItem:60HT-XF61-JC0G-4025-00000-00&context=151 6831. Accessed February 4, 2022. Scalzitti, J. (2012). “Asphalt factory site to become park.” Chicago SunTimes, September 23. https://www.pressreader.com/usa/chicago-sun-times/ 20120923/281655367280121. Accessed February 2, 2022. Spielman, F. (2016). “Emanuel opens door to housing in industrial areas.” Chicago Sun-Times, April 4. https://chicago.suntimes.com/2016/4/4/183 26406/emanuel-opens-door-to-housing-in-industrial-areas. Accessed January 26, 2022. Spielman, F. & Sweet, L. (2011). Obama bringing world leaders to Chicago for NATO, G-8 meetings. Chicago Sun Times, June 22. Sternberg, C. (2012). The dynamics of contingency. The neoliberal redevelopment governances in Chicago and Buenos Aires. PhD Dissertation, UrbanaChampaign IL: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. http://hdl.han dle.net/2142/31099. Accessed January 16, 2022. Swyngedouw, E. (2011). Interrogating post-democratization: Reclaiming egalitarian political spaces. Political Geography, 30 (7), 370–380. US Census 2020, City of Chicago https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/chicag ocityillinois. Vevea, B., Morel, C. & Lutton, L. (2019). “The politics of Chicago’s Lincoln Yards.” WBEZ podcast, March 15. https://www.wbez.org/stories/the-pol itics-of-chicagos-lincoln-yards/ee257542-b6a9-499f-9066-9eceb8e856c7. Accessed February 1, 2022. Washburn, G. & Ciokajlo, M. (2001). Chicago snags Boeing—Price was hight, but was it worth it? Chicago Tribune, May 11.

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Weber, R. (2015). From boom to bubble: How finance built the new Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weber, R. & O’Neill-Kohl, S. (2013). The historical roots of tax increment financing, or how real estate consultants kept urban renewal alive. Economic Development Quarterly, 27 (4), 193–207. Wilson, D. (2018). Chicago’s redevelopment machine and blues clubs. New York, NY: Routledge. Wilson, D. & Sternberg, C. (2012). Changing realities: The new racialized redevelopment rhetoric in Chicago. Urban Geography, 33 (7), 979–999. Wilson, D. (2007). Cities and race: America’s new black ghetto. New York, NY: Routledge. Wilson, D., Grammenos, D. & Wouters, J. (2004). Neighborhood restructuring and political conflict: Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Environment and Planning A, 36 (2), 114–131. Wolman, H. & Spitzley, D. (1996). The politics of local economic development. Economic Development Quarterly, 10 (2), 115–150.

CHAPTER 6

Chicago’s Southwest Redevelopment Frontier: Pilsen and Little Village

In 2015, Chicago’s governance began to advance on the southwest side more rapidly with the Planned Manufacturing Districts (PMD) zoning deregulations and the Paseo rails-to-trails project. Like the neoliberal governance of Buenos Aires, it skillfully used rhetoric to refashion struggling neighborhoods in ways that supported the sort of neoliberal agenda that has been shaping urban areas across the world. This has been an experimental ongoing effort. Neoliberal governance has moved into uncharted terrain occupied by impoverished and racially stigmatized nonwhite people and communities. Each of the governance’s initiatives has exercised significant market pressures on the community of Pilsen and its neighbor to the west, LV. Since their inception, Pilsen and LV have been immigrant neighborhoods situated alongside the major industrial corridors of the southwest Side. Today both communities remain over 80% Latino/a/x (predominantly Mexican and of Mexican descent) and working-class (Huggins 2016). For more than 50 years, the two neighborhoods have been primary cultural, business, and employment centers for Chicago’s Mexicans. Officially named the Lower West Side and South Lawndale, respectively, the communities have been better known by their nicknames since the mid-twentieth century, when they were largely Czech, Polish, and Eastern European. Both communities are geographically unique,

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in that they are isolated from their southern neighbors by a half-milewide corridor that includes factories, railroads, the Chicago River South Branch, and the Stevenson Expressway (I-55). To the north, railyards and underpasses separate Pilsen from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the Illinois Medical District. LV is bordered on the west by another industrial corridor, and on the north by a viaduct that borders North Lawndale. A distinctive spatial form in LV is the 96-acre Cook County Jail, south of 26th Street and east of Sacramento, with its high concrete walls and double barbed-wire fences. Pilsen and LV continue to attract second- and third-generation Mexican Americans as well as new immigrants. Hundreds of storefronts along 18th Street in Pilsen and along the 26th Street commercial corridor in LV sell “authentic” Mexican food, music, clothing, and housewares, drawing steady traffic, especially on weekends. The annual Fiesta del Sol in Pilsen and the Mexican Independence Day Parade in LV draw huge crowds. Both communities have flourishing art scenes that include galleries, murals, music venues, a Latino film festival, and diverse programming for youth. Churches, social service agencies, and community development organizations have built extensive support networks since Latino/a/x immigrants first settled in the area. The area is well served with Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) bus service on all the major arteries and with Pink Line rapid transit stations in Pilsen and just north of LV at 21st Street. Amid all this vitality and apparent economic health, residents in both communities struggle with poverty, as factory jobs have been replaced with service jobs and informal labor in a neoliberal economy (Wilson, et al. 2009). In 2010, nearly 30% of residents were living below the poverty level. In 2012, unemployment was 15.8% (The Chicago Community Trust Report 2015, p. 1). Affordable housing is limited, despite a steep decrease in population between 2000 and 2010, with the population estimated to be down by 15%. Both communities have solid blocks of owner-occupied housing, but about 70% of all households are renters, many living in older structures with outdated utilities. About half of the owners and renters (see Table 6.1) bear the burden of spending more than 30% of their income on housing (The Chicago Community Trust Report 2015). By no means should the socioeconomic parameters noted above be considered the communities’ fault. These numbers reflect the slow

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Table 6.1 Pilsen and Little Village socioeconomic conditions over time Pilsen and Little Village over time

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

Population Share of population in poverty Percent owner-occupied/renter occupied

107,293 15.10% 33/67

120,075 23.50% 32/68

126,744 25.40% 32/68

135,102 26.70% 32/68

115,057 29.30% 29/71

(Source Adapted from Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University using US Census data from US2010 Project at Brown University, published in The Chicago (2015))

violence of structural racism, decades of anti-immigrant rhetoric, environmental harm, and overall social, physical, and economic disinvestment (Nixon 2011; Wilson, et al. 2009).

Pilsen, on the Lower West Side Just a mile southwest of the central business district known since the mid-1800s as the Loop, Pilsen has been a low-income working-class neighborhood and a “port of entry”1 for immigrants. The influx started with immigrants from Germany and Ireland, followed by Poles and Czechs. Such was the cultural influence of the last group that the neighborhood was originally named “Plzen” after the second largest city in what is now the Czech Republic. Later Pilsen was home to Italians, Lithuanians, and Yugoslavians (Betancur and Smith 2016, p. 49). Immigrants were attracted to Pilsen by the access it offered to nearby entry-level factory and service jobs. These jobs were found in the downtown area, the South Loop rail yards, and the industrial corridor to the east, bordering the south branch of the Chicago River (Oclander 1998). Surviving the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Pilsen carried on as a working-class neighborhood.

1 I use the term “port of entry” to build awareness that it naturalizes the process whereby recent immigrants settle upon arrival, only to later move on and be replaced by a new demographic (Magallón 2010). The term also glosses over the different structural reasons for demographic transitions and silences the different migrant trajectories of each migrant group.

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Between the mid-1940s to early 1950s, the demographics of core Midwest urban centers underwent a major shift due to mass-labor importation programs, namely, the Bracero Program and Operation Bootstrap, which were intended to ease US labor shortages in the postwar era (see Fernández 2012). Both programs paved the way for an influx of Latino/a/x immigrants (predominantly Mexicans and Puerto Ricans2 ) to work in the booming manufacturing sector in Chicago. Latinos/as/x first settled on the near west side (Fernández 2012) and rented houses left by the white population, which began to leave for the suburbs in the late 1950s. Yet, in the same period, the newcomers were being uprooted from the near west side by federally sponsored urban renewal programs, the construction of federal highways, and the construction of the University of Illinois at Circle Campus (later renamed University of Illinois Chicago). They primarily resettled in Pilsen and Little Village. Mexican families and individuals were attracted to Pilsen because they could live alongside Mexican neighbors, it had inexpensive housing, and it was close to the many factories that employed Pilsen residents. Many people were continuing to arrive to work in the city’s stockyards, railroad, meat-packing plants, lumber and steel mills, and fabricated metal plants (Grammenos 2006; The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago 2005). At its peak in the 1960s, the dominant employer, U.S. Steel’s Southworks Steel Mill, employed 18,000 Chicago residents (Bensman and Lynch 1987). By the early 1970s, Pilsen became an important gateway for Latino/a/x immigrants and a strong cultural hub and, along with Little Village, constituted Chicago’s largest Latino/a/x communities (Ramírez 2011; Fernández 2005). Since that time, following waves of gentrification, the port of entry for Latinos/as/x has moved to suburbs such as Back of the Yards, Berwyn, Cicero, Elgin, and Midway (Betancur and Kim 2016). Pilsen, with a substantially working-class population, has historically relied on local factories such as the ones mentioned above as a source for employment (Baker 2005). But after 1970, deindustrialization hit Pilsen hard, leaving 300 factories and warehouses in various states of disrepair and abandonment (Baker 2005). For the past 24 years, apart from a hiatus in 2008 due to the national economic downturn, Chicago’s neoliberal urban governance has aggressively sought Pilsen’s restructuring. Its proximity to downtown, relatively 2 Puerto Ricans moved further northwest to settle in Humboldt Park in the 1960s– 1970s (see Fernández 2012).

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low land values, and sturdy housing stock have made the area an ideal site for gentrification-led projects (see Fig. 6.1). Since promoting gentrification has been at the core of Chicago’s neoliberal urban governance’s visions and agendas, Pilsen, like every neighborhood in proximity to Chicago’s downtown, has come to be eyed for its possibilities. Such gentrification, the governance suggests, plays a role in helping Chicago polish up its culture, refine its a esthetics, and become, in Richard M. Daley’s words, “a competitive global city” (Daley 2007). Over the years, the community of Pilsen worked to improve the neighborhood’s amenities, safety, and educational and other opportunities.

Fig. 6.1 Pilsen, before and after gentrification (Source Photo taken by the author)

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When their efforts bore fruit, those aspects, in addition to the proximity to the Loop, made Pilsen increasingly attractive not only to a growing Latino/a/x middle-class (see Anderson and Sternberg 2013), but also to non-Latino/a/x populations, developers, and businesspeople. By 1990, Pilsen had become a major target for redevelopment, especially after a city-wide wave of gentrification began to put pressure on areas close to downtown Chicago (Curran 2018; Hague 2015, Betancur et al. 2005, Chicago Fact Book Consortium 1995). But a major impetus for change came in the early 2000s, when an expansion of the University of Illinois Chicago campus led to the campus adjoining Pilsen’s northern side. For many years before this expansion, white newcomers to Pilsen tended to be younger and less affluent renters. The expansion drove prices up in the vicinity of Pilsen, followed by waves of new construction, the demolition of family housing, luxury condo conversions, and renovations designed to accommodate a more affluent population (see Mumm and Sternberg 2022). Pilsen’s housing stock has been transformed as older properties have been demolished—90 buildings since 2006 (Peña 2020)—and replaced with higher-priced multi-unit developments (see Fig. 6.1). New condos are being built along with the conversion of old factory building, although new construction in the rest of the community is rather sparse (see Mumm and Sternberg 2022). Currently, Pilsen has one of the lowest rate of owner-occupancy at 30.8% (CMAP 2021a). This means, close to 70% of the total population was renting their unit in 2016, and thus not building equity. Altogether, since the early 1990s, public and private redevelopment initiatives negatively impacted the availability of affordable housing in Pilsen and resulted in the displacement of 10,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans according to US Census 2010. By 2010, the number of Latinos/as/x had declined by 25%, while the white population grew by 24% (Bentacur and Kim 2016). On the one hand, housing—primarily in the western part of Pilsen—continues to attract newcomers, while also offering longtime residents a choice to stay; it also attracts lowincome households from elsewhere in the city. On the other hand, speculation appears to be driving up housing values throughout the neighborhood, but particularly to the east (Institute for Housing Studies 2020a). Longtime homeowners are also burdened with rising housing costs and many businesses that are Latino/a/x owned are slowly leaving the neighborhood (Peña 2020).

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But the struggle to preserve the neighborhood from gentrifying started in the 1980s and continues into the present. Contrary to popular portrayals, since the 1980s, Mexicans have engaged in community building, repairing their houses and sidewalks, and taking over local institutions such as churches, schools, and hospitals, which were once frequented by earlier groups of immigrants. Inspired by the Chicano movement, many Latinos/as/x became leaders of community-based movements grounded in civil rights (Betancur and Smith 2016, p. 50). Mexican culture has been a centerpiece of resistance and identity in Pilsen, as reflected in the variety of murals depicting Mexican political history, struggles against displacements, and immigration rights. Despite successive waves of gentrification and thousands of displacements, over the last four decades, Mexicans in Pilsen have been working very closely with non-Mexican neighbors to develop anti-gentrification strategies and policies while pushing to expand affordable housing in the neighborhood. As we shall see in the next chapter, local efforts have continued to push for local, Mexican-led control over Pilsen’s future. First, let’s consider Little Village.

Little Village-South Lawndale Since the 1970s, LV, or La Villita, has become home to a growing Latino/a/x population. Many of the newcomers early in this period were Mexicans and Mexican Americans who moved west from Pilsen because of employment opportunities in a variety of nearby industries. Along with Pilsen, LV has one of the most prominent and long-established Latino/a/x neighborhoods in Chicago with an 82% Latinx population3 and numerous storefronts and restaurants along 26th Street and Cermak Road that cater to LV’s unique community as well as to Mexican and Latino families from across the city and region. People often describe the area using such epithets as “the mecca of the Mexican entrepreneurs of Chicago and the Midwest” (Gamboa and Armas 2017). The commercial corridor along 26th Street and Cermak is considered the second largest in Chicago, after the exclusive Magnificent Mile on Michigan 3 By 1990, Latinxs represented 85% of LV’s 81,000 residents. The population peaked in 2000 at 91,000 but saw a loss of nearly 12,000 people by 2010 at 79,000 (2000 and 2010 US Census) with an estimated population of 75,000 today (The Community Chicago Trust Report 2015).

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Avenue. According to Crain’s Chicago Business , huge volumes of cash, more precisely $900 million, are spent annually at roughly 500 businesses along a two-mile stretch of 26th Street (Sweeney 2015). This corridor is dotted with family-owned restaurants, bakeries, barbershops, groceries, music stores, and bridal and quinceañera shops. The mix of multiple generations of Mexican Americans living, working, and shopping together creates a unique culture in LV that blends traditions brought from Mexico with new traditions unique to Chicago. In LV, 47% of residents are foreign born, 53% native born, and 31% are not citizens. These characteristics certainly shape the culture, institutions, political representation, and the economy4 of the community (The Chicago Community Trust Report 2013, pp. 3–7). Despite its thriving commercial district, like Pilsen, this community has endured decades of anti-immigrant rhetoric, disinvestment, physical neglect, environmental harm, and police surveillance. As a result, LV has been struggling to improve its socioeconomic parameters. In 2013, 33% residents were registered as living under poverty levels and 12% were unemployed.5 Recently, the percentage of people living under poverty level has decreased to 28% (Institute of Housing Studies 2020). In addition, low rates of educational attainment (44.7% in 2019 according to CMAP 2021), gang violence, and low levels of household income (the average income is $33,668, about 60% lower compared to the state average) indicate that many in the community do not benefit from the prosperity of 26th Street. Homeownership rates are also low: 36.1%,6 and 29.5% of LV households with incomes between $20,000 to $49,999 spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs (CMAP 2021b).

4 More than 1,800 employers support about 30,000 jobs in the neighborhood trade area. Many of these employ community residents. The healthcare sector employs 11,046 people. Other service jobs employ 7,061. Retail, manufacturing, and wholesale trade sectors total 8,612 employees combined. The high concentration of local employers also brings residents of other neighborhoods into LV, providing potential customers for local businesses (The Chicago Community Trust Report 2013, pp. 3–7). 5 Undocumented community members do not have access to many types of employment and are vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and low wages. Additionally, many residents work as day laborers with little to no protections. Many are paid below the minimum wage. 6 The homeownership rate is lower than the city-wide average of 45%, but higher than other low-income communities (The Community Chicago Trust Report 2015).

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Population loss is also a major concern for developers and local leaders. After the number of residents peaked in 2000 at 91,071, by 2010 the community saw a loss of nearly 12,000 people when it hit 79,288 (2000 and 2010 US Census, Williams 2011). According to 2011–2015 American Community Survey five-year estimates, the area has roughly lost an additional 5,500 people: in 2017 it had a population of 73,826 (Acosta-Córdova 2017). The loss of so many people in a 15-year span is significant. Nevertheless, similar trends of population loss during this period have affected the vast majority of neighborhoods in Chicago.7 In particular, experts point out that the city’s population loss on the south and west sides is steady, and they attribute this phenomenon to the following: “gun violence, underfunded and shuttered schools and health facilities, rising property taxes, lack of jobs and resources, predatory lending, entrenched segregation—or, most likely, a combination of these factors” (Mendell 2020). Mike Rodriguez, 22nd Ward alderman and former executive director of Enlace, a neighborhood development and community group, has attributed the decline to younger residents moving away from LV (Riley 2013) and to a shift in the traditional port of entry for Latinx/o/a immigrants—specifically from Pilsen and LV to the suburbs (Back of the Yards, Berwyn, Cicero, Elgin, and Midway, according to Betancur and Kim 2016). Despite this population decline, LV continues to be densely populated. Nearly 80,000 people live in 21,100 housing units, mostly single-family homes and small apartment buildings. This creates the potential for overcrowded houses and schools. In addition, the density also puts limits on new construction and the addition or improvement of green space, parking spaces, and outdoor seating. Although relatively well kept, homes tend to be old, with most homes built before 1939 (Community Chicago Trust Report 2015). Although LV is close to downtown Chicago, it did not face gentrification pressures until after the neighborhood was impacted by the 7 According to the Department of Planning and Development’s Community Area 2000 and 2010 Census Population Comparisons, the city of Chicago lost more than 200,000 people between 2000 and 2010, with 60 out of the 67 community areas declining in population. Eight out of the 17 that did not lose population were majority Latino/a/x; however, LV lost the third highest number of residents in the city, exactly 11,783 people, just after Austin (19,013) and South Shore (11,789). (https://www. chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/zlup/Zoning_Main_Page/Publications/Census_ 2010_Community_Area_Profiles/Census_2010_and_2000_CA_Populations.pdf).

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foreclosure crisis (2008–2010), which led to banks seizing many properties (Black 2020). We will see how plans to build a park at the site of a 24-acre lot that had been used by the Celotex asphalt factory also attracted the attention of developers, who started taking advantage of the many foreclosures in the neighborhood. The biggest push for advancing gentrification was the Paseo Trail. These projects were followed by the demolition of the Crawford plant and its replacement with one of the biggest warehouses, target, to be discussed in the next chapter. The built environment in LV shows ample evidence of disinvestment in its infrastructure and it contains air pollution (Kern and Kovesi 2018). The neighborhood also houses the massive 96-acre Cook County Jail. Until recently, there were no parks in the neighborhood. Green space remains limited, and activists are still advocating for better transit routes to service the area.

Pushing Redevelopment Ahead on Chicago’s Southwest Side From 2015 to 2019, neoliberal governance in Chicago, during Rahm Emanuel’s second term as Chicago’s mayor, began to push redevelopment on the southwest side. A particular target was one of the poorest, long stigmatized, and neglected blocks of Pilsen and LV. As mentioned, one of this governance’s core projects involved updating the rules governing the Planned Manufacturing Districts (PMD). A PMD is an area of land where the zoning laws prohibit residential development and as well as some other uses. In Chicago, PMDs have been traditionally used to “foster the city’s industrial base” and “maintain the city’s diversified economy.” The first PMD was proposed in 1985 to prevent industrial firms from being pushed out of the city and to combat declining employment (Picco, Chicago Architecture Center website). Prior to this, developers seeking land sites targeted industrial properties that could be converted to more valuable residential or commercial use. The consequential loss of manufacturing firms drastically reduced the number of jobs in the downtown area. Some pockets lost nearly 50% of their blue-collar jobs (Picco, Chicago Architecture Center website). Today, Chicago is home to 15 PMDs and 26 industrial corridors, but governance actors have been deregulating PMD zoning rules to transform industrial areas into commercial and residential ones, efforts known as “post-industrial” policies.

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Notably, pressures for relaxing PMD restrictions have existed since Richard M. Daley’s era when, during a mayoral presentation, he announced that manufacturing was simply not going to return to the city: “The city is changing. You’re not going to see factories back… I think you have to look at the financial markets—banking, service industry, the development of O’Hare field, tourism, trade” (Daley 1998). Given the high degree of segregation and constant fear of not maintaining the city’s global status, Chicago’s neoliberal governance, through Emanuel’s era, felt it could not afford stagnant revenues because of “idle” or “disinvested” communities. Following some previous attempts to relax PMD zoning regulations, in 2016 Chicago’s governance, updated PMD zoning regulations with a foreseeable twist. While the updated 2016 PMD proposal announced a continued effort to aid the existing manufacturing sector (by supporting site development improvements), it proposed relaxing rules governing 15 PMDs and 26 industrial corridors, which included Pilsen and Little Village, with the potential to convert these sites into residential and retail developments (see map of PMD distribution in Picco, Chicago Architecture Center website, https://www.chicagobusin ess.com/Assets/legacy/images/random2/20141124-pmdMap.jpg). At the time, a local daily announced the policy with this explicit headline: “Emanuel opens door to housing in industrial areas” (Spielman 2016), drawing from an official press release that announced the creation of “modern zoning policies to support the redevelopment of underutilized industrial land that has a blighting effect” (Office of the Mayor 2016a, b). In fact, the policy was first announced by Emanuel’s Chicago Planning and Development Commissioner, David Reifman, during a press conference: “‘The idea is to revisit our industrial landscape as a whole, including areas transitioning away from traditional manufacturing and areas that continue to exhibit strength and growth in manufacturing. That transition includes high-tech and office jobs. This is not simply about allowing residential zoning’” (in Spielman 2016). Even if not explicitly addressed in the press release, both the Pilsen and LV communities were already anxious about these policies, anticipating that the new PMDs would be another opportunity to put pressure on the housing market by renewing former “underutilized” manufacturing areas and converting them into residential or commercial ones. The policy fits Chicago’s neoliberal project perfectly: new upzoned areas—areas that are assessed at a higher property valuation for tax purposes—will generate more revenue for the city and create profitable opportunities for

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developers, while generating economic competitiveness for local neighborhoods facing increasing “blight.” In short, the promise of residential, business, or commercial promotion was ultimately what the PMD policies were aiming to produce. In this context, starting in 2016, governance actors explicitly framed this type of policy as an effort to make “underutilized” areas more “active” on the historically disinvested southwest side, mainly Pilsen and LV. In particular, to many governance actors, lands that used to be “inaccessible,” “unattractive,” and “dangerous” could become “salvageable,” “accessible,” and “active”—even former manufacturing areas that continue to be “dormant.” During a press conference four years before the new PMD zoning rules went into effect, Mayor Rahm Emanuel had introduced the idea that he would work to “return these areas to active, productive use for the residents of the Pilsen and LV neighborhoods” (Scalzitti 2012).8 In 2016, these same words were echoed in statements made by Alderman Danny Solis, who was at the time representing the 25th Ward.9 Solis, when interviewed by the Chicago Sun-Times , responded enthusiastically about this policy: “I have a PMD that’s one of the larger ones in the city: the Pilsen Industrial Corridor. We have a lot of light industry and jobs. But the east end hasn’t been as successful. You can see that portion of the PMD being a candidate for this new PMD ordinance. You could do commercial and residential.” Later in the interview, after discrediting any possibility of turning former industrial land into much needed affordable housing for both neighborhoods, he explicitly mentioned the great potential for city revenue and what this transformation would mean for adjoining areas: “‘It’s east of Pilsen and

8 Previous attempts to reactivate this area, particular in Pilsen, started with the industrial

TIF, created in 1998. This constituted one of the prominent incentives for advancing redevelopment in Pilsen (see Sternberg 2012). 9 Danny Solis served as an alderman on the Chicago City Council from 1996 to 2019. He represented Chicago’s 25th Ward which includes Pilsen or the Lower West Side. Throughout his career as alderman, Solis had been an ally of Mayor Daley and in 2001 was appointed President Pro Tempore of the city council, allowing him to oversee council proceedings in the mayor’s absence. In 2018, he withdrew from the political sphere after corruption allegations turned him into a central witness in the federal probe of City Hall. Solis cooperated for two years in a federal corruption probe after the FBI developed evidence that he solicited campaign contributions and prostitutes in exchange for political favors.

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just west of Chinatown. … That area has a number of old historical buildings that have not been able to attract industry. That area could be a candidate for this new idea. It would bring some needed tax revenue to the city. It would bring service to an area that doesn’t have any tenants and continue to enhance development near the Loop and Chinatown’” (in Spielman 2016). But, before this transformation could occur, the widespread and entrenched image of the historically deprived and deteriorated southwest side needed to be changed. For the most part, these neighborhoods still bear the marks of Chicago’s profound deindustrialization from the late 1970s and the physical decay due to local government’s systematic neglect, racial stigmatization, and anti-immigrant rhetoric. In particular, over the last four decades, both working-class Latino/a/x communities have been considered by the general public as “impoverished inner-city neighborhoods plagued by vacant storefronts [and land] and dormant commercial strips” (Spielman 2016). Gentrification has been rapidly advancing since the early 1990s in Pilsen, first throughout the eastern flank and later encroaching on the central area of the neighborhood, but in a choppy fashion (see Mumm and Sternberg 2022), and Pilsen continues to be considered what I term as a “decrepit and unlivable space.” Even today, when Pilsen’s signs of gentrification are abundant (e.g., upscale retailers, trendy coffee shops, affordable and aged housing decreasing at a fast pace,10 and 10,000 Latinos/as/x displaced since 2000 [US Census 2010]), local reporters and landlords continue denigrating Pilsen’s urban landscape and residents. In particular, landlords seduced by possibilities for lucrative redevelopment commented: “that they do the dirty work of bringing dilapidated, dangerous historic buildings with multiple code violations back to life. Some bought properties that languished in foreclosure after the bust. “(…) some of these buildings haven’t been updated in 35, 40 years (…) The buildings are just going to become unlivable”” (in Gallun 2019). The above pronouncements use an array of terms and metaphors that obliterate any sense of complexity about Pilsen’s physical setting and identities. Describing Pilsen as ridden with “languishing properties” and

10 In a recent article in Block Club Chicago, Pilsen’s Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez commented on the urge to increase affordable housing: “We have a huge shortage of affordable housing, especially when it comes to family-sized units” (Savedra 2022a).

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“dangerous and unlivable buildings” implies a chaotic, even pathological, terrain. Along these lines, about two years after the PMD policies were announced, a Chicago Tribune editorial expressed the great failure of Pilsen residents for not allowing “change” to come to Pilsen. Here, Pilsen residents were cast as “underachievers,” or as unwilling to bring “change” to the neighborhood, that is, by stalling gentrification in their community. As a result, the editorial alerted, Pilsen residents would certainly face negative consequences if they refused to follow “change”: “Gentrification inherently brings change (…) A neighborhood that refuses to grow invites disinvestment. (…) Pilsen can be the latest on a long list of neighborhoods to successfully leverage its past into a lively future. (…) Building a figurative wall around Pilsen is a sure way to expedite the neighborhood’s demise” (Chicago Tribune Editorial 2018). Again, these renditions overlooked any sense of a complex and contradictory reality. To this editorial column, Pilsen does not contain any serious degree of social, cultural, or demographic heterogeneity. Rather, it is an easily understood, monolithic place whose physical and social content cries out for a needed transformation. Additionally, all these renditions suggest an urgency to remake Pilsen into something it supposedly is not, a prosperous and orderly multiethnic space. Note also that when the Chicago Tribune editorial described Pilsen residents as “refusing to follow change” or “being afraid of change,” it was communicating entrenched, racially coded narratives about Latino/a/x identities that have been circulating for decades. At its core, these renditions celebrate symbols of whiteness and white supremacist culture in the sense that the only population who can bring about make meaningful and positive change is the white population. To be more precise, contrary to these entrenched portrayals of Latino/a/x and Latino/a/x culture, Mexicans and Mexican Americans who have settled in Pilsen and LV since the postwar era have invested more than 50 years repairing their sidewalks and building homes, schools, and hospitals and, therefore, are precisely the ones who have been making positive change throughout these years to improve their living conditions. Yet, sadly, they are often completely disregarded. LV has faced at least as much stigmatization as Pilsen. Teresa Gonzales, a sociologist who is very familiar with both communities and has also conducted extensive fieldwork in both of them, explained that historically LV has been described as a decrepit, crowded, and a crime-infested

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Mexican barrio (Interview with Teresa Gonzales 06/22/2021). In addition, Mexicans and Mexican Americans, with a long history of being distinctively racialized in Chicago (see Fernández 2012), have been reduced to damaging coded images. A local planner’s words reflected these themes: “[LV] lacks stability… it’s now less a place for decent people and decent families. The young kids are destructive … it is a neighborhood that needs to be changed” (Interview with local planner 09/07/2020). In such descriptions, pathologies purportedly stretched across the entirety of the space. Here, as plain as day, LV was lacking and dysfunctional, and the reason the PMD designation was necessary. When I spoke to Teresa Gonzalez, she said that the above descriptors are the result of entrenched and racially coded narratives that have been circulating over the years about the neighborhood’s physical features and social fabric (Interview with Teresa Gonzales 06/22/2021). She explained that the stereotypes are associated with ongoing violence, the presence of a large prison (96-acre Cook County Jail with its high concrete walls and double barbed-wire fences and an average daily population of 9,000 residents [Chicago Community Trust 2015]), the small percentage (8%) of vacant land (Chicago Central Area Committee and World Business Chicago 2020), and the high population density; nearly 80,000 people live in 21,100 housing units, mostly multi-unit structures. Given the entrenched stereotypes, local aldermen, developers, and investors have been striving to discipline and rework LV’s image, through efforts that include long-term planning programs and aggressive marketing campaigns.11 The above factors partly explain why, compared to Pilsen, LV did not face gentrification pressures until around 2013. The push came after the foreclosure crisis, when banks and developers initiated an accumulationby-dispossession process (see Black 2020). Beginning in 2013, governance actors, especially Little Village’s aldermen, started to put this 11 In 2013, Enlace, a group of civic and community leaders working in LV, executed a neighborhood-planning process to define transformative strategies for the next 5 to 10 years, culminating in 2013 with the “LV Quality of Life Plan.” The neighborhood’s first comprehensive plan, released in 2005 as part of LISC Chicago’s New Communities Program Chicago (2005), served as the model. The 2013 process engaged more than 650 people and over 80 agencies and institutions through a series of public forums, focus groups, and one-on-one meetings led by a diverse steering committee consisting of nearly 40 community leaders, representing 22 organizations (Community Chicago Trust Report 2013).

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community and nearby blocks on the public radar as a site to build more residential and commercial units that would serve both youth and adults among the local and regional Latino working and middle classes. Then, once the PMD deregulations were put in place, other projects to convert former manufacturing areas to commercial use and/or recreational use aligned with this one. The Celotex factory—a former asphalt factory on a 24-acre lot—was converted into La Villita plaza, and the Crawford coalfired plant was demolished and replaced with a target warehouse, one of the biggest warehouses in the area. These will be discussed in the next section, along with the biggest push for physical transformation: the Paseo Trail project. In 2016, gentrification in LV began being fueled by the PMD deregulation and the Paseo Trail project was announced the same year. To governance actors, in the last eight years, many sections of these communities have lost “their roughness” and since their intervention, these neighborhoods radiate the best of authentic Mexican barrios: a flourishing art scene, culture, commercial strips, dance, and the kind of food that people post about online and that appears in “city best” lists. Newly imagined “rich and multiethnic” spaces began to resonate in the media as emblematic of the physical transformation of Pilsen: “Featuring streets lined with hip galleries and walls decorated with colorful murals dating from the 1970s, the Pilsen neighborhood on Chicago’s Lower West Side is a nest of cutting-edge culture and art. It’s been fostered by successive waves of Eastern European and Mexican immigrants, in addition to local artists and students, who have molded this fascinating area over the past century and a half. (…) And there are a growing number of performance venues, art studios and trendy bars like the popular Punch House” (Olsen 2018). The same article mentions that Pilsen has been dubbed “one of the 12 coolest neighborhoods in the world” (Olsen 2018), and as such has been attracting the “’young and hip’ with resale shops, bars, and trendy restaurants” (Chicago Community Trust 2015). In November 2018, Rahm Emanuel also spoke positively about Pilsen and Little Village: “Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods are the backbone of our great city, collectively highlighting our rich culture, renowned restaurants and amazing residents” (Peña 2018). In a similar vein, LV has been put in the service of something deemed crucial: commodifying and entrepreneurializing Chicago. As a result, discussions of gentrification have appeared more frequently in the media (Huggins 2016; Nitkin 2016; Serrato 2016). Investors have

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widely heralded LVs’ upcoming transformation as progressive, orderly, and city-serving, because it now offers a “culturally rich, family-oriented community, with great food and shopping options” (Chicago Community Trust 2013, p. 48). Local reporters have also praised LV for cultivating “a strong spirit of entrepreneurship” with more than 600 small businesses catering to LV residents, Mexican Americans from throughout the Midwest, and visitors from other neighborhoods (Sweeney 2015). Proof of that, according to one reporter, is the $900 million spent annually along LV’s bustling commercial district. Like Pilsen, this community has been imagined as an ideal culturally rich and multiethnic space, where “Mexicans live, work and shop together,” thus creating “a distinct neighborhood feel and charm” (Chicago Community Trust 2013, p. 48). These new renditions of LV feature a stable and orderly community with healthy and fun street life, progressive families, and motivated kids. Again, this idealized “culturally rich and multiethnic space” was made the yardstick against which the community was to be understood. In the process of disciplining spaces, governance has been adroit at disciplining and commodifying Pilsen’s and LV’s a esthetics, people, identity, and culture. To developers, builders, and the city, Pilsen and LV residents became bearers of an authentic ethnicity or “ethnicityinfused beings”, incorporating a distinctive ethnic world. Moreover, they became caricatured as “authentic”, “rooted”, and “proud Mexican Americans,” determined to preserve their ethnicity. These identities were to be captured in a stylized, symbolic imposition: in new ethnic restaurants, in authentic art galleries and museums, in shops and commercial districts, and in ritualized street fairs. Making ethnicity visible and open to widespread consumption was key and the executive director of LV Chamber of Commerce captured this aspect when referring to LV’s commercial district: “‘There is no other community in the country like Little Village, because of both the population and the density of Hispanics (…) It’s created a nostalgia market, where people can find that little product that reminds them of Grandma, of home” (in Sweeney 2015). In addition, a statement made three years before the start of this study in 2011 reflects how intensely identities in Pilsen and LV are being stereotyped: “I moved here 25 years ago; my wife, a Latina from Texas, came 12 years ago. So, it’s natural we would be drawn to areas like Pilsen, where Spanish and English mix against a backdrop of brilliant mosaics and murals of Mexican heroes, and LV nearby, where mariachi bands carrying their instruments into restaurants could easily be south of the border. But

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it’s more than just familiarity and the fact that eating and entertainment on the Latin side of Chicago is generally cheaper. It’s where the energy is” (Bailey 2008). Chicago’s governance has worked to successfully “sell” a way to get to know a “normal” and “culturally rich and multiethnic” Pilsen and Little Village, with their “ethnicity-infused” population. Note that, although the area where the PMDs were deregulated did not translate immediately into higher property values and rents, the shift still shaped opportunities for nearby investment and redevelopment in Pilsen and Little Village. This was especially true after Rahm Emanuel announced plans for the Paseo Trail.

The Paseo Trail The Paseo Trail (original named “El Paseo”) anchored another large urban project in the area. As Emanuel announced in March 2016, this redevelopment project on the southwest side would consist of a four-mile multi-use path designed to connect two historically Mexican American working-class neighborhoods, Pilsen and LV, along the abandoned Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) rail line. The trail would start at 16th Street and Sangamon Avenue in Pilsen and finish on 32nd Street and Central Park Avenue in LV. Project developers painted an alluring picture of separate walking and biking paths, lush greenery, public art installations, and community gardens. Though plans for the Paseo have stalled, it continued the circuit of redevelopment by fueling the interest of developers and investors in the southwest side, where they have been eager to maximize the value of the existing property around the projected trail. Not surprisingly, Emanuel’s announcement of the project immediately sparked concerns among community residents that real estate prices would soar along the trail, just as they had after construction began in 2013 on the 606 Bloomingdale Trail12 on Chicago’s northwest side. While the media praised the rails-to-trails project, the initiative emphasized commodification in a way that signaled to residents and other observers that the Paseo could serve as a direct route to gentrification. For the most part, Pilsen and LV residents wanted to ensure that would not be the result. 12 The Bloomingdale Trail is a 2.7-mile elevated rail trail running east west on the northwest side of Chicago.

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Among Mexican communities in Chicago, fears of displacement are intimately related to Mexicans’ sense of place, which is connected to their histories of forced displacement (Fernández 2012), mass-labor importation programs (Fernández 2012, De Genova 2005), and structural and everyday racism and xenophobia. Even when they were encouraged to immigrate to fill American labor shortages, they were criticized as outsiders and many have felt they could never feel secure, whether documented or not. Mexican immigrants to Chicago have always struggled to maintain a place for themselves (De Genova 2005). In fact, the forced displacement of Mexicans from the Near West Side due to urban renewal is still vivid in the memories of those who settled in the 1960s in Pilsen and LV. In this context, fears of the area being gentrified by the Paso project made sense, especially when it was revealed that many Latino/a/x residents living in the proximity of the 606 Bloomingdale Trail, especially near Humboldt Park and Logan Square, were being priced out of their neighborhoods. In March of 2016, “the median home sale price was $260,700” [and when plans were announced], “town houses one block south of the trail were priced at $929,000 each” (Wan 2016). While the areas around the Paseo were valued much lower than those near the Bloomington Trail, residents of both communities feared that the project could accelerate the proliferation of high-end housing and retail in Pilsen and launch gentrification in Little Village. In 2016, 40 people attended an open discussion of “Development Without Displacement,” at which longtime activists and business owners and a lifelong Pilsen resident vehemently expressed objections to the project, arguing that the Paseo would “raise the rents, raise property values, and displace a lot of people” (in Cooper 2016). Supporting these claims, Byron Sigcho-Lopez, at the time the director of Pilsen Alliance13 and currently holding the position of alderman of the 25th Ward,14 also opposed the project, alerting the public that: “‘The city hasn’t properly informed Pilsen residents how the Paseo will impact affordable housing in the neighborhood. They are talking about allocating public money … I’m sure a lot of people will say, ‘Oh, bike path!’ But the devil is in the details’” (in Cooper 2016). 13 A social justice organization committed to building grassroots leadership and fighting displacement in Pilsen. 14 Chicago’s 25th Ward includes Pilsen, West Loop, Tri-Taylor, McKinley Park, and Chinatown.

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Concerns about the gentrification of the community were by no means unfounded or speculative. A community organizer of Únete La Villita, a grassroots group focused on affordability and accountable development in La Villita, told the Chicago Reporter that rents started rising in LV after the project was announced (Black 2020). She added that rent prices also soared due to the area being “hard hit in the foreclosure crisis [when] banks acquired many properties, and developers are knocking on doors and calling inspectors on uncooperative homeowners” (in Black 2020).15 A study released in 2016 by researchers of the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University concluded that the 606 Trail significantly increased property values within a mile of the trail, particularly in lowerincome neighborhoods. For example, on the western side of the trail, which passes through predominantly Latino/a/x and low-income neighborhoods, the study noted that after construction on the trail began in 2013 housing prices increased 48% (Smith et al. 2016). But not every resident and community activist of Pilsen and LV was against the Paseo. Back in 2006, residents and Pilsen-based organizations—including the Resurrection Project, Pilsen Neighbors Community Council (PNCC), Eighteenth Street Development Corporation, and Alivio Medical Center—originally proposed the Paseo as part of the Pilsen Planning Committee for the Chicago-Quality-of-Life-Plan (Cooper 2016). At this time, the committee hoped that the Paseo would encourage “a larger presence of people using the streets for positive activities” and help “reduce crime and the perception of danger” (in Cooper 2016). These earlier pronouncements have been echoed by more recent statements by Teresa Fraga, a longtime Pilsen resident and a longtime member of PNCC,16 an organization that seeks to build community leaders. Fraga championed the Paseo initiative as a “long-fought-for improvement for the historical disinvested Latino/ax neighborhood because she wanted to transform a longtime eyesore into something beautiful for the community” (Cooper 2016). For Fraga, 15 The cumulative foreclosure filings activity in 2020 for all residential properties in Chicago was 21.4%. If we compare this aggregate number with both communities of study, Pilsen registered 16.9% of this activity, and for the same year, LV registered a significant foreclosure activity with 25.6%, almost 9% higher than Pilsen (Institute of Housing Studies 2020a, b). 16 This resident has lived in Pilsen for more than 50 years. She also sits on the board of Alivio Medical Center and co-founded the Eighteenth Street Development Corporation (ESDC), an organization that supports local businesses in Pilsen.

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securing city investment to improve Pilsen has been her life’s work. She has insisted on portraying certain areas of Pilsen as derelict and chaotic territory, noting the absence of a sidewalk along Cullerton at the intersection of Sangamon, and the area around the future Paseo. According to her, the area where the Paseo was projected was “just an ugly area our children had to walk through on their way to school” (in Cooper 2016). As far as LV is concerned, a study on LV’s commercial corridor conducted by two Chicago agencies (the Chicago Central Area Committee and World Business Chicago) also contrasted with LV more critical residents’ claims: “Over the long-term, LV may benefit from the forces that are driving change elsewhere in the city” (Chicago Central Area Committee and World Business Chicago 2020). Other statements about the benefits of the project helped governance actors17 counter residents’ criticisms and concerns with an uncompromising emphasis on the Paseo’s extensive benefits in community meetings, city pronouncements, and planning meetings. They presented the Paseo as an incredible opportunity to create new patterns of recreation through more bike space and to enhance accessibility to the area in a way that would spur new patterns of consumption and production and “enhance the quality of life for residents.” In the process of seeking approval and legitimacy, governance renditions of an imagined “safe, accessible, and orderly multiethnic space” grounded redevelopment discussions and constituted a rationale to normalize the transformation of both neighborhoods. This imagined Pilsen and LV became a specific construct set up as the direct antithesis of the “eyesore space” that for a long time had obliterated awareness of the historical, social, and racial complexities of both communities. In parallel, a “safe, accessible and orderly multiethnic space” communicated an array of things that current Pilsen and LV supposedly lacked: orderly community and streets, visible infrastructure (e.g., bike paths, fixed sidewalks, good street lighting), and a sense of stability, safety, and cohesiveness. These themes were apparent in statements made by Alderman Solis in 2016. While he praised the Paseo’s potential to connect the Pilsen and LV communities and to bring “new opportunities for recreation, culture and beautification,” he also specified that “‘the Paseo 17 Including builders, developers, aldermen of Pilsen and LV, the Chicago Department of Transportation, the Chicago Department of Planning and Development (DPD), and the mayor.

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(…) will be a gathering place for families, creating safe and sacred spaces where people can come together (…). [It will] bring biking convenience and accessibility to the outdoors to this area, the trail will blend our local Pilsen identity for the benefit of all Pilsen [and LV] residents’” (in Cooper 2016). Additionally, Mayor Rahm Emanuel drew on an array of metaphors to emphasize the benefits of this project when he publicly announced the project in March 2016: “Paseo is a community vision years in the making that is finally being realized. This is a strategic opportunity to adapt outmoded infrastructure into an important amenity that will enhance the quality of life for residents (…) It will move forward as a vibrant reflection of the unique cultural assets that characterize Pilsen and Little Village” (Office of the Mayor 2016a). Here, again, the promise of benevolent change was wrapped in rhetoric that served up, at its center, an “eyesore” Pilsen and LV, to be transformed into a “safe, accessible and orderly multiethnic space” that would enhance the quality of life for residents of both communities. Chicago Department of Transportation commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld expressed similar statements in an interview: “By developing underutilized spaces, we’re working to improve quality of life for everyone who lives in the area” (Office of the Mayor 2016b). Alderman Cardenas of the 12th Ward also spoke of the cultural and economic benefits the trail would bring to LV: “Local businesses will flourish with new customers and add value to the existing homes and centers of Little Village, bringing LV to the center of Chicago’s booming neighborhood improvements” (Nitkin 2016). Finally, Pilsen’s and LV’s potential positive transformation through the Paseo continued to be widely heralded in media outlets as progressive and city-serving. In short, neoliberal governance, through the Paseo, offered an ideal “safe, accessible, and orderly multiethnic Latinx space” designed to discipline how the public imagined what “the proper Pilsen and LV community” should be like. This idealized multiethnic space was made the yardstick against which both communities were to be understood. Once again, neoliberal governance’s rhetoric was effective enough to silence residents’ concerns about rising rent and property prices and displacement. Through these discursive spaces, governance actors continued disciplining and commodifying Pilsen’s and Little Village’s a esthetics, people, and culture. But a new “culturally rich and multiethnic space” communicated not only privilege and fashionable a esthetics, but

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also exclusion—that is, who is unwanted in these communities. Ultimately, these renditions fit the neoliberal project perfectly: times had supposedly changed, and Pilsen and LV needed to achieve prosperity and long-term, self-sufficient growth to serve Chicago’s neoliberal global agenda, much like previously “dilapidated” but gentrified neighborhoods Wicker Park, Bucktown, and Lincoln Park.

Physical and Socioeconomic Impacts in Pilsen and Little Village During the eight years of Rahm Emanuel’s administration (2011–2019) various initiatives like the ones discussed (changing zoning codes to promote commercial and residential use over industrial ones and an elevated trail project) have exercised significant market pressures and speculation and have helped mobilize redevelopment. The Cook County House Price Index from the Institute for Housing Studies (IHS) highlights changing prices for single-family homes in 16 City of Chicago submarkets and 17 submarkets primarily in suburban Cook County, from early 2000 through the second quarter of 2021.18 A quick look at the index (see Table 6.2) reveals that from January 2000 through June 2021, the submarkets of West Town/Near West Side (including Pilsen) and Humboldt Park/Garfield Park (including LV) illustrate a price change since 2000 of 197.4% for the former and 189.7% for the latter (IHS 2021). In terms of the change in the type of housing in Pilsen, Table 6.3 suggests that when comparing the periods 2006–2010 to 2015–2019, small-unit building stock, usually family housing, has been converted into multi-unit buildings. The table illustrates that between these periods, the number of small-unit buildings, with an average of 2 units, has decreased by 4.3%, while the number of multi-unit buildings, with an average of 5 units, has increased by 2.5%. It is also worth noting that for the period 2015–2019, the difference between 3/4 unit-building stock and 2 unitbuilding is 10.1%, illustrating a significant reduction of small-unit building stock. In terms of LV, Table 6.4 illustrates that while small-unit building stock with an average of 2 units has decreased by 2%, multi-housing

18 The index includes the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Table 6.2 Cook County house price index (January 2000 through June 2021) Submarket1 Chicago—Humboldt Park/Garfield Park Chicago—West Town/Near West Side

Change since 2000

Median sales price January 2020 to June 2021

189.7%

$ 216,000

197.4%

$ 700,000

Source Adapted from Institute for Housing Studies Data, DePaul University, 2021. Submarket definitions1 : Humboldt Park/Garfield Park: South Lawndale (or LV), Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, East Garfield Park West Garfield Park West Town/Near West Side: West Town, Near West Side, Lower West Side (or Pilsen)

Table 6.3 Small-unit building stock vs. multi-unit building stock over time in Pilsen

Housing type over time

2006–2010 (%)

Single Family 2 Units 3 or 4 Units 5 or More Units

11.1 28.2 34.9 24.3

2015–2019 (%) 12.7 23.9 34 26.8

(Source Adapted from Chicago Metropolitan Agency of Planning (CMAP), Lower West Side (Pilsen) Community Data Snapshot 2021, based on the American Community Survey (five-year estimates) 2006–2010 and 2015–2019)

unit stock, with an average of 5 units, has remained relatively low and steady with 11.5% of housing stock. However, according to the Institute for Housing Studies-IHS (2021) at DePaul University, the most striking data revealed for LV refers to the number of foreclosure auctions completed. Considering all residential properties, the number of foreclosures completed reached a peak of 125 in 2013 and declined to 83 in 2014, yet showing significant impact. Yet, the evolution of housing sales and business sale activity for the periods selected illustrates further noticeable impacts on these communities. In the case of Pilsen, according to data released by the IHS (2021), heightened levels of family homes purchased by business buyers reached 25.50% in 2013 and increased to 38.1% in 2015. This is often indicative of a distressed and low-priced inventory of homes, and low demand for

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Table 6.4 Small-unit building stock vs. multi-unit building stock over time in Little Village

Housing type over time

2006–2010 (%)

Single Family 2 Units 3 or 4 Units 5 or More Units

17 38.2 32.1 11.5

149

2015–2019 (%) 18.9 36.2 31.8 11.5

(Source Adapted from Chicago Metropolitan Agency of Planning (CMAP), South Lawndale (Little Village) Community Data Snapshot 2021, based on the American Community Survey (five-year estimates) 2006–2010 and 2015–2019)

owner-occupied housing in a neighborhood. As for LV, in 2013, commercial buyers purchased 16.1% family homes and this increased to 19% in 2016. The data presented above demonstrate significant impacts on the housing market in both communities, in particular, in the ongoing loss of affordable housing. The above policies have also supported nearby investment and redevelopment in Pilsen and Little Village. After Rahm Emanuel announced the Paseo project, private developers added office space in the area. For example, design studio JGMA, in partnership with Condor Partners and Chicago Development Partners, created an office campus called “Mural Park” (JGMA Studio 2017). A June 2017 JGMA press release stated that Mural Park is inspired by the transformation of nearby public spaces and “will complement the new Paseo” (in JGMA Studio 2017). LV also experienced speculation and market pressures after the announcement of the Paseo, as new businesses and redevelopment projects arrived in its wake (Rodriguez Presa 2020). One example is the Discount Mall “(…) home to over 100 small businesses like Zarate’s, selling everything from rosaries to Quinceañera dresses to musical instruments to Mexican snacks” (Rezal 2021). After 36 years in operation, development company Novak Construction bought the mall in February 2020, sparking rumors that a big box retailer could displace the mall and its small businesses. A brief article in the Chicago Sun-Times revealed that John Novak, president and founder of Novak Construction, bought the plaza for $17.5 million. How this project evolved, and the resistance to it that LV’s residents have maintained over the last two years, will be discussed in the next chapter. In the same period, several buildings have been rehabbed throughout the neighborhood, including near Lagunitas Brewery and close to the

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Pink Line train stations. Alderman George Cardenas, 12th Ward, guessed that those buildings have been repopulated with young Latinos who had left the neighborhood to pursue education or a job elsewhere: “‘They want to be close to their roots, but they don’t have the houses or the amenities that they want or are looking for’” (in Rodriguez Presa 2020). The alderman also referred to the redevelopment of La Villita plaza, a $10.1 million project that finalized in 2018 (Cheever 2019). This 21-acre site, west of Sacramento Avenue and north of 31st Street, was degraded by industrial pollution and asphalt dumping related to the Celotex factory,19 but was landscaped and, in 2018, it opened as La Villita Park. Its amenities—two artificial-turf playing fields, two naturalturf fields, a skate park, playground, and picnic spaces—were depicted by Cardenas as features that would “‘attract more Latinos to return, but also to help the longtime LV residents’” (in Rodriguez Presa 2020). One of the most salient industrial-commercial conversion projects of this period has been the Crawford coal-fired power plant. Although the specifics will be discussed in the next chapter, there are some important chronological events to note here. The Crawford Generating Station, one of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants, closed in 2012 after a 12-year discussion process with the LV community concerning environmental racism. Faced with expensive requirements to upgrade its pollution controls and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Midwest Generation announced it would shut down the Crawford plant as well as the Fisk plant, another highly toxic power plant, also owned by Midwest Generation, although located in Pilsen. The Crawford site was left dormant after Midwest Generation filed for bankruptcy in December 2012. In 2014, NRG Energy bought the Crawford and Fisk sites and later they were demolished, creating about 115 vacant acres along the river and canal. On December 29, 2017, Hilco Redevelopment Partners closed on the purchase of the Crawford Generating Station’s 70 acres. On July 27, 2021, Target Corporation and Hilco Redevelopment Partners hosted a private ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of Exchange 55,

19 This project was funded by the city and the Park District. But the fight against

environmental racism was led by the strong activism of LVEJO (La Villita Environmental Justice Organization) who pushed the city to file a lawsuit against Celotex factory due to industrial pollution. “The city and the Park Districts each [had] pledged $4 million for the project and the state $8 million” with the aid of the LV community and the strong activism of LVEJO (Cheever 2019).

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a highly controversial 1.3 million-square-foot distribution center in LV, prompting roughly thirty residents and environmental activists to protest and to voice their concerns about the development. Finally, another significant redevelopment in the area has impacted the former Chicago Sun-Times printing plant in Pilsen: it has been transformed into a tech data center to serve the growing demand by downtown businesses and clients. The 30-acre site was sold in 2016 to QTS Realty Trust, at $18 million (Mortenson 2016). Mortenson Construction then redeveloped the 317,000-square-foot building as a mega data center for about $80 million (Kalinoski 2016). While neoliberal governance worked to convert former industrial sites into commercial, residential, and recreational sites, both in Pilsen and LV, contestation continued unabated in both neighborhoods and some demands were met to ease affordable housing pressures in both communities. In 2016, a former furniture factory on Kostner Avenue at 26th Street in LV was converted into 148 units of affordable housing by the nonprofit Mercy Housing Lakefront. About 40% of the rentals built were three- and four-bedroom apartments to respond to the increasing demand for affordable housing and for multi-family rentals (Riley 2013). As for Pilsen, in early December 2021, the city of Chicago decided to buy a 6-acre plot of land that had been owned by New York-based Property Market Group for $12 million. Now the city plans to build at least 280 units of affordable housing with the Pilsen community oversight. Briefly, Property Market Group, had previously announced a mixed-used project in the area, but it never happened. Later, in 2019, when Property Market Group tried to resurrect the project, it was opposed by Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez of the 25th Ward, who wanted the land used for affordable housing (Savedra 2022b). As we shall see, the fight for affordable housing has continued in both communities.

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Rezal, A. (2021). Future of little village’s discount mall still uncertain, one year after sale. Borderless. https://borderlessmag.org/2021/09/14/whats-happen ing-with-chicago-little-village-discount-mall/. Accessed August 3, 2022. Rodriguez Presa, L. (2020). Little village discount mall gentrification fears other signs of redevelopment in the neighborhood. Chicago Tribune, September https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-little-village-gentrification21, 20200921-qnpj3hdmnfdrpjqwmdr2ehezwu-story.html. Accessed March 2, 2022. Savedra, M. (2022a). City could soon finalize purchase of pilsen’s largest vacant lot in plan to build hundreds of affordable apartments, February 16. https:// blockclubchicago.org/2022a/02/16/city-could-soon-finalize-purchase-of-pil sens-largest-vacant-lot-in-plan-to-build-hundreds-of-affordable-apartments/. Accessed August 3, 2022a. Savedra, M. (2022b). City acquired pilsen’s largest vacant site through settlement with developer, Alderman Says. Block Club Chicago, January 7. https:// blockclubchicago.org/2022b/01/07/city-acquired-pilsens-largest-vacantsite-through-settlement-with-developer-alderman-says/. Accessed March 8, 2022b. Scalzitti, J. (2012). Asphalt factory site to become park. Chicago SunTimes, September 23. https://www.pressreader.com/usa/chicago-sun-times/ 20120923/281655367280121. Accessed February 2, 2022. Serrato, J. (2016). Little village tenants protest evictions: ‘We will not be gentrified!’ DNAInfo. https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160817/lit tle-village/little-village-tenants-protest-evictionswe-will-not-be-gentrified. Accessed October 18, 2016. Smith, G, Duda, S., Man Lee, J. & Thompson, M. (2016). Measuring the impact of the 606. Understanding how a large public investment impacted the surrounding housing market. Institute of Housing Studies Report. DePaul University: Chicago. https://www.housingstudies.org/media/filer_ public/2016/10/31/ihs_measuring_the_impact_of_the_606.pdf. Accessed, 22 February 2022. Spielman, F. (2016). Emanuel opens door to housing in industrial areas. Chicago Sun-Times, April 4. https://chicago.suntimes.com/2016/4/4/183 26406/emanuel-opens-door-to-housing-in-industrial-areas. Accessed January 26, 2022. Sternberg, C. (2012). The dynamics of neoliberal contingency: Neoliberal redevelopment governances in Chicago and Buenos Aires. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Department of Geography, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/ 2142/31099/Sternberg_Carolina.pdf?sequence=1.

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Sweeney, B. (2015). Little village discount mall. Crain’s Chicago Business, September 25. www.chicagobusiness.com/section/little-village. Accessed January 24, 2022. The Chicago Community Trust. (2013). Little village quality of life plan. Family, culture and community. Report. http://www.cct.org/wpcontent/upl oads/2015/05/LittleVillageQualityofLifePlan2013.pdf. Accessed January 22, 2022. The Chicago Community Trust. (2015). Chicago neighborhoods 2015: Assets, plans and trends, pilsen and little village. http://cn2015.net/wpcontent/upl oads/2015/07/CN2015AssetsPilsenLittleVillage.pdf. Accessed February 16, 2022 The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago. (2005). Chicago historical http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/2477.html. society. Accessed July 6, 2022. Wan, D. (2016). A tale of two trails. What do bicycle and nature trails have to do with gentrification? May 25. https://southsideweekly.com/a-tale-of-twotrails/. Accessed January 24, 2022. Williams, A. (2011). Latino population shrinks in some Chicago neighborhoods, grows in others. Medill Reports Chicago. https://newsarchive.medill.northw estern.edu/chicago/news-193791.html. Accessed February 8, 2022. Wilson, D., Beck, D. & Bailey, A. (2009). Neoliberal-parasitic economies and space building: Chicago’s Southwest side. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 99 (3), 604–626.

CHAPTER 7

An Inclusive and Equitable New Chicago?

With the arrival of Lori Lightfoot as city mayor in May 2019, the rhetoric of Chicago’s urban governance took on a new tone. Under the administrations of Daley and Emanuel, the rhetoric that framed a neoliberal agenda had remained remarkably consistent. Notably absent since Lightfoot’s election has been the longstanding insistence that Chicago must become or continue to be a global city. Instead, “building an inclusive and equitable Chicago” has emerged as a key theme of a new phase of neoliberal urban redevelopment. In the words of Geoff Smith, Director of the Institute for Housing at DePaul University, “‘there is also an increasing emphasis on equity in society generally, which in housing terms translates into the notion that ‘the city can improve for everyone, not only for people who have wealth’” (in Rodkin 2020). To be clear, neoliberal governance’s principles, priorities, and agendas have remained steady since Daley’s times. But neoliberal governances are ever-evolving formations and they adjust in turbulent times, pressing socio-political moments and new demands at the same time as they maintain continuity with established practice. This particular rhetorical shift in Chicago can be explained as a response to Chicago’s current socioeconomic and political conditions, including pressure exerted by anti-racist movements across the USA. Lori Lightfoot was elected mayor in a moment of intense political mobilization at the local and national level against anti-blackness and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Sternberg, Neoliberal Urban Governance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21718-0_7

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institutional racism. The time was appropriate to call for a new way to approach urban policies and programs and to be more sensitive to the US political climate. In particular, along the southwest side redevelopment frontier, a new and more socially minded governance narrative focused on “building an inclusive and equitable Chicago” emerged in response to escalating political discontent among working-class communities of color, who have endured decades of elitist and non-collaborative mayoral rule. At the beginning of her second year in office, Mayor Lightfoot expressed things that many Chicagoans, especially those belonging to communities of color, have long wanted to hear from Chicago’s leadership. At a press conference held at the Club of Chicago in 2020, Lightfoot announced that equitable growth was the key to reversing Chicago’s population decline and displacement: “‘The truth is that we have been experiencing population loss in Black Chicago for many years (…) And now we’re seeing Latino families being pushed out by displacement pressures, while we’re seeing a growth in white college educated residents’” (in Cherone 2020). Lightfoot added that “‘housing discrimination and the absence of affordable choices have been central to creating poverty in Chicago.” At the same event, she encouraged civic groups and businesses to join her efforts to “transform the economic map of our city” (in Cherone 2020). Meanwhile, residents’ frustrations over neglect and disinvestment have triggered a new way to push back against governance policies. According to Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward1 ) and UIC professor of urban planning John Betancur, residents’ opposition seems to be stronger and more vocal than it has been at other times (see Rodkin 2020). Interviewed by a local daily, Betancur said people have been feeling more empowered than they might have felt a generation ago: “‘They [people] don’t feel they have to accept what comes from the top down’” (in Rodkin 2020). This shifting rhetoric from the Chicago mayor’s office can also be examined as a new post-political mode of governance (Swyngedouw 2000) that has coincided with the 2019 change in leadership. As introduced in the first chapter, according to a post-political framework, urban governances across the world are using rhetoric that is “post-political” in that it includes normative and socially minded values that are difficult to challenge; they provide an appearance of ideological neutrality. 1 The 25 ward encompasses parts of the Lower West Side, Pilsen, Greek Town, China Town, and University Village/Little Italy.

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To Swyngedouw (2000), the elevation of these values suggests a consensual mode of urban governance deprived of political contention or forms of domination. In this context, I would argue that much of Chicago’s current policies and rhetoric are shaped by a post-political approach to urban governance that has been circulating across the globe. This approach suppresses political and ideological framings in favor of broad-consensus values that are difficult to challenge, such as sustainability, creativity, participation, inclusion, and livability. In the context of Chicago’s governance, the language and socially minded values ascribed to each redevelopment initiative have been locally grounded and strategically used to deflect any discussion of gentrification and displacement (Swyngedouw 2000). This post-political language has helped Chicago’s governance rationalize its projects while attenuating the tension between pursuing urban equity and responding to new economic challenges in ways that do not worsen equity. Thus, on the one hand, I argue that packaging urban policies with a post-political language has enabled urban governance to direct investment to the southwest side with potential profits for those in the real estate industry. On the other, relying on planning terms and best practices that stress livability and inclusion has helped cultivate a positive image of Chicago, making it better positioned to bridge local reinvestment goals and neoliberal globalized mandates and priorities. In journalist Ecker’s words, Lightfoot’s entrance into Chicago politics “was all about the word ‘equity’ or ‘equitable economic growth’ in Chicago” (in Ecker 2021). In this sense, a new “post-political” urban agenda began to frame two core urban projects and initiatives in Pilsen and Little Village in early 2019, including an anti-conversion ordinance and a new redevelopment initiative targeting the southwest side of the city; the INVEST South/West Initiative. In late January 2021, Lori Lightfoot spoke openly about the “anticonversion ordinance” designed to reduce displacement of low- to moderate-income residents and to maintain the existing character and housing stock (Peña 2021). In a bold and progressive announcement at the Department of Housing (DOH) press conference, she said: “‘Here in Chicago, development does not mean displacement. That’s why this ordinance is designed to preserve not only affordable housing in Pilsen and

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the ‘606’ [Bloomingdale Trail2 ], but also [to] solidify our commitment to protecting the residents and their families who have called these neighborhoods home for decades’” (in DOH Press Release 2021). To clarify, under previous zoning regulations, new construction projects were not required to be of comparable density as the building(s) being replaced. This led to a reduction in the number of units and to replacement housing that is substantially more expensive. According to the DOH (2021) press release, around the 606, two- and three-flat buildings were demolished or reconverted to fewer units at significantly higher prices. In Pilsen, it was reported that three- to eight-unit buildings were replaced by buildings with fewer units. Emphasizing Lightfoot’s principle of “equitable growth,” current DOH commissioner Marisa Novara stated at the press conference: “‘As we continue our work toward inclusive development that protects existing residents from displacement, especially in gentrifying areas, these ordinances represent a significant step in ensuring that residents are able to participate in the opportunities spurred by significant development, while remaining in their homes’” (in DOH Press Release 2021). Novara also specified that “‘the anti-conversion ordinance in the 606 area [and in Pilsen] will permit either two-flats or singlefamily homes, depending on the makeup of existing buildings on the block’” (in DOH Press Release 2021). In conclusion, the DOH press release stated: “The Pilsen and 606 anti-conversion ordinances are part of Mayor Lightfoot’s commitment to equitable economic growth that ensures every resident is able to remain in their homes and share in transformative improvements occurring in their communities” (DOH Press Release 2021). Not surprisingly, the official announcement of the anti-conversion ordinance sparked some tension among developers. While the local media, local residents, and Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward) felt strongly that anti-gentrification voices, including his, were finally being heard in these new policies, some developers warned the public that an anti-gentrification package could threaten their agenda. An article in Crain Chicago’s Business summed this theme up with the title: “Antigentrification forces are winning. A change in the climate has developers pulling back” (Rodkin 2020). In the summer of 2020, developer Brian Duggan, representing his company Guardian Properties, offered his 2 Described in the previous chapter, the Bloomingdale Trail is a 2.7-mile elevated rail trail running east–west on the northwest side of Chicago.

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explanation to a Crain’s reporter: “‘Guardian has shifted out of the Chicago area, (…) because of the years-long uncertainty about property taxes and the financial health of both Chicago and Illinois. But the icing on the cake was the’strong push for anti-gentrification measures in Chicago’” (in Rodkin 2020). Duggan was questioning the package of policies intended to support affordability and stability in housing and protection from rampant push-outs by costly new developments in several of the city’s new gentrified areas, including Pilsen. In line with the new “inclusive” redevelopment rhetoric, renditions of the social fabric of Pilsen and Little Village have also shifted. As explained in Chapter 6, the Latinx population in both communities continues to be racially coded as “underachievers,” “culturally afflicted,” and “not willing to change.” Yet, this racialization has begun to change, slowly and subtly, partly in response to hints of a grim future for the city in new economic realities, population decline (at a rate of -0.28% annually and it has decreased by -0.89% since the US Census 2010, according to the World Population Review 2022), increased impoverishment,3 lack of affordable housing, increased numbers of evictions, and a city hungry to maintain its revenues. These realities have shifted governance actors’ perceptions of the populations of Pilsen and Little Village, which are now more often described as afflicted populations enduring hard times. For example, one developer noted to me: “Pilsen has struggled with gang violence, over-policing, and aldermanic corruption … but working-class communities, like Pilsen, are here to create a vibrant city like Chicago” (Interview September 16, 2020). In a similar vein, a realtor shared with me his perceptions of new demographics in Little Village: “Little Village is tough, it’s still populated by the misguided poor …but many are in tough times…they’re making things better though …you see more families settled and young professionals” (Interview September 16, 2020). A local resident also shared her impressions of Little Village with me: “Little Village is known for its high rates of violence, you know… but after working and living here for some time, I see that residents have overcome many challenges… like closed schools, lack of public service, and overall disinvestment” (Interview August 2021).

3 Approximately, 22% of Chicagoans fell below the Federal Poverty Level in 2020, which means an annual income of $26,200 for a family of four (Sabino 2020).

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Even before the anti-conversion efforts were announced in October 2019, Mayor Lightfoot revealed a new urban program to support revitalization on the city’s south and west sides with the INVEST South/West initiative.4 Lightfoot said this initiative “‘will bring together government, businesses, philanthropic organizations and community groups to make coordinated investments in 10 neighborhoods, giving residents more opportunities and driving inclusive, measurable growth throughout all of Chicago (…) These public–private partnerships are crucial to reverse historic levels of disinvestment and decades of neglect in many neighborhoods, and ultimately build safer and more economically-vibrant corridors throughout our city’” (in Office of the Mayor 2019). The INVEST South/West initiative has also received one of its largest donations from BMO Harris Bank, as part of its partnership with United Way Neighborhood Network. Reinforcing Mayor Lightfoot’s words, BMO Harris Bank CEO David Casper added that: “‘Economic inclusion and strong neighborhoods go hand in hand (…) As an institution with deep Chicago roots, we consider it our responsibility to boldly grow the good across the city, and that includes building strong, resilient neighborhoods. BMO is proud to take a leadership role in encouraging other Chicago corporations and business leaders to also make meaningful commitments to strengthen these communities. We look forward to working with the entire City of Chicago to remove barriers to economic inclusion Chicagoans’” (in Office of the Mayor 2019). Similarly, Department of Planning and Development Commissioner Maurice Cox emphasized the opportunities and benefits of this large-scale initiative in the following pronouncement: “‘If downtown is the heart of the city, neighborhoods are the soul, (…) Under the leadership of Mayor Lightfoot, this unprecedented level of coordination between City departments will reinforce neighborhood

4 In a public conference, the initiative INVEST South/West was announced as a longterm program to “leverage $250 million in existing City business development and infrastructure grant funding by way of DPD’s Tax Increment Financing, Small Business Improvement Fund, and Neighborhood Opportunity Fund programs to support neighborhood-based improvement projects to align with local priorities. These investments will build on more than $500 million in planned infrastructure improvements that will provide transportation, housing and quality of life enhancements that will bolster the vitality of the corridors and surrounding community. This includes area infrastructure projects already allocated, including FastTracks improvements to the CTA Green Line, the Auburn Park Metra Station, and a new track and field facility in Gately Park” (Office of the Mayor 2019).

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centers as destination points for local residents and visitors, especially in terms of economic vitality, jobs, and community cohesion’” (in Office of the Mayor 2019). In short, during the first two years of Lori Lightfoot’s administration, this new governance has been invested in replacing the historically imagined “abandoned South and West spaces” where struggling Black and Latino/a/x populations have lived for decades, in order to nurture more “inclusive imagined spaces” where “previously stigmatized identities” could live. So, neoliberal urban governance, this time through Lightfoot’s administration, has launched an array of policies wrapped in post-political language. For example, “inclusive growth,” “inclusive development,” and “economic inclusion” have been widely used since the beginning of Lightfoot’s second year in office. Such terms communicate a sense of “progressive” city restructuring, and progressive times to come, that will benefit working-class communities and communities of color, including Little Village and Pilsen. Despite these encouraging announcements and policies, other situations seem to point in other directions. Since mid-2019, Chicago’s governance has been faced with a number of anti-gentrification/displacement expressions initiated in Pilsen and Little Village. These efforts have used governance’s new rhetoric of “building an inclusive and equitable Chicago” as an opportunity to protect and create more affordable housing. Groups have opposed the creation of a Pilsen Historic Landmark District and the Crawford plant redevelopment, while launching an anti-eviction campaign and a Save Discount Mall campaign. Despite the positive reception of the anti-conversion initiative in Pilsen, Mayor Lightfoot and Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward) argued over a proposal to landmark hundreds of buildings in an effort to prevent demolitions (see Serrato 2019 for a detailed description), called “Pilsen Historic Landmark District,” a plan that Lightfoot inherited from Emanuel’s administration. The original historic landmark plan aimed to preserve 900 buildings constructed between 1875 and 1910 along a 1.5mile stretch through 18th Street and Blue Island Avenue, as well as unique murals that embody the history of Czech and Mexican immigrants, two groups particularly important to the social fabric of Chicago and Pilsen (Serrato 2019). When Lightfoot’s administration announced this proposal in July 2019, the community of Pilsen began to organize to fight it. Longtime homeowners and Alderman Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward) argued that the

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designation would burden working-class homeowners with added costs, restrict what owners would be able to sell their properties for, and lead to more gentrification (Peña 2020a). Vicky Romero, who has lived in Pilsen her entire life and owns a home within the proposed district boundaries, shared her fears with the Chicago Reporter in July 2019: “‘Unfortunately, long-term residents just don’t fare well in those types of districts. We get a sense that the city cares more about buildings than the people that live in them” (in Serrato 2019). Sigcho-Lopez argued that while the plan was intended to slow gentrification by preventing demolition of the neighborhood’s vintage buildings, it could have the opposite effect, that is, accelerating gentrification. He told a local reporter: “‘We have longtime homeowners already struggling to pay their property taxes, and in this pandemic, they’re struggling even more to pay the mortgage (…). You want to add to that the cost of a lawyer and going before the landmark commission to get them to approve improvements these people want to make? You’re putting extra hurdles in front of homeowners, people who have invested in this community for a long time’” (in Rodkin 2020). Additionally, Professor John Betancur who has studied Pilsen for decades, supported Romero’s and Sigcho-Lopez’s concerns with a warning to the community: “‘All landmark designations that I have learned about have increased property values and have pushed gentrification forward’” (in Rodkin 2020). Eventually, the plan to create a historic landmark district in Pilsen was thwarted not just by public protests, but with a vote against it by the City Council’s Committee on Zoning, which took place in late November 2020 after the City Council spent months discussing and debating the plan. Ahead of the vote, the commissioner of Department of Planning and Development said, “‘We heard from a very robust portion of the community that the district designation was not perceived to be in their best interest’” (in Peña 2020b). Renters and proponents of affordable housing in Pilsen have also been alarmed by the numerous evictions executed before the COVID19 pandemic and after the more acute phase had passed. About a month before the start of the pandemic, an article in a local daily alerted the Pilsen community that entire families were suffering evictions with little notice or recourse in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, including Pilsen (Bloom and Peña 2020). To clarify, under current regulations, Illinois and Chicago law allows a landlord to terminate the landlord-tenant relationship for any reason or no reason at all, as long as proper notice is given

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before an eviction case is filed in court (Just Cause Chicago.org 2020). Clearly, this policy runs contrary to current governance efforts to “build a more inclusive city.” It also demonstrates that the interests of Chicago’s corporate actors and developers continue to dominate the redevelopment scene in Chicago and underscores the steep rise of speculation and deregulation in the real estate market. In 2020, for example, the non-for-profit organization JustCauseChicago.org reported that every year there are an average of 23,466 eviction filings in Chicago and 6,000 of them are legal and executed without any reason or no reason at all, called “no-fault or no-cause evictions.” Ruth Hernandez, a longtime resident of Pilsen, was impacted by this type of eviction in early February 2020. When interviewed by Block Club Chicago, she expressed her deep frustration at her landlord’s actions: “Being a loyal tenant for 34 years, he [her landlord] should have given us some kind of heads up. That’s what really upset me. Not the fact that he sold. It’s his property. He can do whatever he wants’” (in Bloom and Peña 2020). Advocates of affordable housing have said that no-cause evictions have rushed the pace of gentrification and priced out longtime renters, leading to further neighborhood destabilization and more demand for an insufficient supply of affordable housing. These claims were supported by Alderman Sigcho-Lopez, who expressed the frustration among his constituents: “Right now, we have rampant speculation. We see families and longtime homeowners, low-income homeowners barely keeping up with payments. We see developers buying every day (…) This speculation and inequality is impacting our families. … We need to pass that [ordinance] to protect our homeowners” (in Bloom and Peña 2020). On February 17, 2020, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, in a speech at the City Club of Chicago, announced her support for a just-cause ordinance preventing landlords from evicting tenants without justification with only 30 days’ notice (Dukmasova 2020). A few months later, she introduced a “Fair Notice” ordinance, “a new citywide requirement that landlords give renters up to four months’ notice for nonrenewal of a lease, designed in large part to provide stability for tenants in fast-gentrifying neighborhoods” (in Rodkin 2020). Many reporters and members of grassroots organizations have argued that this ordinance is not comprehensive enough, since it only increases the amount of time that a landlord has to give a tenant before terminating a lease or raising a rent. And more importantly, it does not ban no-fault evictions (Asiegbu 2021). As a result, the

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community of Pilsen and Little Village learned the hard way that a patchwork of state, local, and federal COVID-19 rental assistance programs did not offer protection from this kind of eviction or provide relocation assistance for those pushed out of their apartments. After the Fair Notice ordinance passed, as many predicted, evictions continued unabated for a year, even at the onset of the pandemic. A community organizer at the Metropolitan Tenants Organization explained to InjusticeWatch.org that during the pandemic, the combination of “‘a booming housing market and a population facing more adversity than ever has meant that no-fault evictions act as a deadly force’” (in Asiegbu 2021). In this context, on April 26, 2021, Alderman Sigcho-Lopez, JustCause.org and a number of advocate organizations campaigned for the immediate passing of comprehensive legislation with the “just cause for eviction ordinance or fair notice ordinance.” The ordinance’s main goal is to prevent more displacement of both small homeowners and tenants by protecting renters from no-cause evictions and requiring landlords to provide relocation assistance when they move to evict renters who are not at fault. The Chicago City Council’s housing and real estate committee held a hearing on the bill in September 2021, but progress has since stalled. In October 2021, a spokesperson for Lightfoot was reserved about whether the mayor would back the bill in its current version due to “concerns related to the relocation payments, as well as questions about how a rental registry would be funded and staffed” (in Asiegbu 2021). At the time of writing, the fair notice ordinance has yet to be discussed at the City Council. Since 2017 other significant mobilizations to protect affordable housing and local employment have been unfolding in Little Village. One of the most salient industrial-commercial conversion projects in this neighborhood happened when the Crawford coal-fired power plant was demolished. The Crawford Generating Station, one of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants closed in 2012 after community organizers and LV residents fought for 12 years against the environmental racism5 that allowed the plant to keep operating. Faced with multiple complaints and demands to upgrade the plant’s pollution controls and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Little Village 5 According to Bullard (1999), “environmental racism” refers to “any environmental policy, practice or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended) individuals, groups or communities based on race or color” (5–6).

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active community and grassroots organizations, including Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), the owner—Midwest Generation—announced the closure of the Crawford and Fisk plants in December 2012. Fisk was another highly toxic power plant, also owned by Midwest Generation, although located in Pilsen. The Crawford site has been dormant since Midwest Generation filed for bankruptcy in 2012, but in 2014, NRG Energy bought the Crawford and Fisk sites and the plants were demolished on April 11, 2020. Unfortunately, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, developers mismanaged the demolition of a 378-foot smokestack at the old Crawford coal plant. That sent plumes of dust into adjacent communities leading to loss of lives. While details of this toxic event have been well-chronicled elsewhere6 (LVEJO website, www.lvejo.org), the closure of the Crawford plant marked one of the first significant and highly public environmental improvements in a racially stigmatized community such as Little Village. When I was conducting interviews in the area in 2019, local developers and residents told me that gentrification was not a relevant concern for Little Village. To them, even with the new parks and gardens (e.g., La Villita Park), the possibility of gentrification in Little Village seemed limited by the area’s association with urban decay, over-policing, rampant gang violence, and aldermanic neglect (Kern and Kovesi 2018). Racist stigma also remains prevalent in the community. The people I spoke with were not necessarily aware that environmental gentrification7 could drive up rents, property taxes, and real estate prices, leading to the displacement of working-class and minority residents (Curran and Hamilton 2012; Dale and Newman 2009; Essoka 2010). Remember that Little Village endured speculation and market pressures right after the Paseo trail was announced (Rodriguez Presa 2020). To some scholars who specialize in environmental gentrification processes, the demolition of the 6 Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced a $370,000 settlement between the city and Hilco and its contractors in November of 2020. The city also imposed $68,000 in fines against the developer. Later, in February 2022, a report released from the city’s watchdog informed that no employees of the Chicago Department of Public Health or the Department of Buildings would be fired or suspended for their roles in the botched demolition of the smokestack at the former Crawford coal-fired power plant (Cherone 2022). 7 Environmental gentrification “is the process whereby the seemingly progressive discourse of urban sustainability is used to drive up property values and displace low-income residents” (Greenberg and Smith 2022).

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Fig. 7.1 View of the Crawford Power Plant (before being demolished) Courtesy of Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO)

Crawford plant (Dale and Newman 2019; Kern and Kovesi 2018) could be a manifestation of such a process. Once the plant was demolished, it fueled the impetus to “upgrade” this area and convert it to commercial use. On December 29, 2017, Hilco Redevelopment Partners closed on the purchase of the Crawford Generating Station of 70 acres (see Fig. 7.1). Despite fervent opposition from residents, community organizers, and long-term grassroots organizations (see Cherone 2022; LVEJO website), the redevelopment phase of the area was finalized on July 27, 2021. That day, Target Corporation and Hilco Redevelopment Partners hosted a private ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of Exchange 55, a 1.3 million-square-foot distribution center in Little Village. About two months before the demolition of the Crawford plant, it was announced that a developer had agreed to purchase Discount Mall, which included one of the most popular retail stores in the neighborhood. More than 200 vendors were threatened with loss of their jobs. For 36 years, Discount Mall has served as a business incubator for first-time entrepreneurs, especially Mexican immigrants (Ballesteros and Roeder 2020). But when developer Novak Construction bought the mall in early

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February 2020, the purchase sparked rumors that a big-box retailer could replace the mall and its small businesses. According to the company’s website, Novak Construction is based in the Chicago neighborhood of Avondale and has a long client list of big-box retailers like Aldi, Costco, Kohl’s, REI, and Walmart. A short article in the Chicago Sun Times revealed that John Novak, president and founder of Novak Construction, bought Little Village Plaza, where Discount Mall is located, for $17.5 million. For almost two years since the purchase, Little Village residents and some of Discount Mall’s vendors have actively organized to keep the Discount Mall and their livelihoods (Juntos por la Villita 2021). Juntos por la Villita, a local grassroots organization that advocates for social justice in LV, invited people to join the cause: We are small business owners united with our neighbors and residents of La Villita. We are determined to fight in defense of our livelihood and for our community. We stand up against the displacement of our neighbors and businesses. Novak Construction purchased the Little Village Plaza property with the intention of demolishing the Discount Mall and the other businesses located on that property and replacing them with national retailers. Property owners like Novak want to speed up the gentrification of Little Village. To that end, they plan to exploit the economic strength, created by immigrant entrepreneurs and the working families that make up their clientele, to continue enriching themselves at the expense of our community. These new projects only serve the interests of the rich. For us, they just mean rent and property tax increases. Stand against the erasure of our culture. Let’s not let them run us out of our neighborhood. Stop displacement! Stop gentrification! If you would like to join us in this fight, send us a private message. (Juntos por la Villita, September 10, 2020)

Some of the vendors I interviewed in mid-2020 felt frustrated about the situation and worried about losing their livelihoods. As one vendor said: “I have lived my life here and I’m almost finishing it. We’ve lived off this [Discount Mall], my kids and I (…) Here, there’s life. If they bring a big new store, the 26th Street businesses will be gone” (Vendor from Discount Mall, August 29, 2020, my translation). Another vendor said:

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“At this point, the mall is part of the neighborhood, our culture (…)” “If this place (DM] disappears, where do we go?” (in Ballesteros and Roeder 2020). When the president of Novak Construction, John Novak, was interviewed by the Chicago Sun Times in February 2020, he said “he doesn’t want to ‘[change] the demographics’ of the plaza’s customers or come in and ‘knock it all down’ anytime soon, but he does want to bring in ‘more recognized national tenants’ like Target or grocery stores that cater to Latinos. (…) ‘We build a lot, and we own some retail space. We thought it might be time to add value to the mall there. I don’t know that it’s the best use of the property’” (in Ballesteros and Roeder 2020). Since the late 1960s, the Discount Mall has been managed by Shai Lothan, a realtor, who sold Little Village Plaza to Novak. According to him, the “Discount Mall still draws large crowds from across the region, ‘but its heyday is in the past.’ ‘The type of shopping that sustained it for the last 30 years doesn’t really exist moving forward’” (in Ballesteros and Roeder 2020), (see Fig. 7.2). The racial codes applied to these narratives exclude populations and particular kinds of land use. Both Discount Mall’s owner, John Novak, and former owner, Shai Lothan, drew on an array of entrenched racially coded narratives about Latino/a/x spaces and identities in statements such as these: “We thought it might be time to add value to the mall there”; “I don’t know that it’s best use of the property”; “more recognized national tenants”; “the type of shopping that sustained it for the last 30 years doesn’t really exist moving forward.” They communicated a normative narrative drawing on covert comprehensions of racial identities and a sense of what these spaces and identities are not: e.g., progressoriented, cleansed spaces and proper non-Latino/a/x customers. In other words, to the above governance actors, these new sanitized spaces are to become more “nationally recognized” and “best used.” These narratives also suggest that non-Latino/a/x customers are to behave properly and do “the right type of shopping.” In short, these renditions celebrate symbols of whiteness and white supremacist culture in the sense that the only population who “adds value” to the mall are the white customers, who make possible the “best use of the property,” “sustain businesses with the type of shopping they do,” and overall, “civilize” the LV community by upgrading local living for them. As a reminder though, this area has been one of the most economically active in the neighborhood. Contrary to these entrenched racist portrayals of Latino/a/x

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Fig. 7.2 Flyer distributed on September 16, 2020, against the closing of the discount mall in Little village (Source Photo taken by the author)

and Latino/a/x culture, the area continues to draw large crowds of commuters and Midwest visitors, and greatly contributes to the economy of the neighborhood, with $900 million annually earned by the 500 businesses along a 2-mile stretch of 26th Street (Sweeney 2015). Recent news have announced that vendors have been given an extension on their leases until January 2023. After that, according to a Novak spokesperson, a month-to-month agreement is expected (Hernandez 2022). Since Lightfoot took office, this governance has been seemingly working to build an inclusive Chicago and to protect displacement (see Vevea 2022). On the other hand, amid assertions of progressive city restructuring, much remains the same; in Wilson’s words “the city is to remain a race-class balkanized and race-class-fortressed landscape”

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(Wilson 2018, p. 43). In Chicago, race and class stake out and continue to shape governance actors’ realities and projects. This new redevelopment frontier along the southwest side of Chicago reflects deep and powerful new racial and class constructs embedded in governance rhetoric, policies, and actions. As has been the case in Chicago for decades, entrenched race and class identities and anxieties remain untouched, while every neighborhood is still expected to contribute to the competitive mandates of globalization. Is the current governance fully committed to developing an inclusive and equitable new Chicago? As I am finishing the writing of this book, there has been little indication that this new governance truly plans to pursue an inclusive and equitable Chicago. Chicago’s current governance’s vision of redevelopment vacillates as it attempts to negotiate conflicting agendas and interests. While it relies on depoliticized terms and expressions such as “enhancing development without displacement” and “inclusive economic growth,” principles and practices common to neoliberal urban governance on a wide scale remain unchanged. There have been indications that this particular governance continues to look out for developers’ and realtors’ interests, like the policies discussed above, including the plan to create a Pilsen Historic Landmark District and, for the most part, the lack of protections to maintain affordable housing and commercial areas for small vendors in Pilsen and LV, along with a lack of comprehensive protections against the common practice of evictions. As seen before, if developers’ and realtors’ interests have not been championed more decisively, the reason lies in the resistance offered by various organizations and group of residents from Pilsen and Little Village, who jointly or separately, have strongly opposed the creation of a Pilsen Historic Landmark District and the Crawford plant redevelopment, while powered an anti-eviction campaign and a Save Discount Mall campaign. As Lori Lightfoot prepares her campaign for reelection as mayor in the February 2023 election, advocates of affordable housing in both neighborhoods are worried that no-cause evictions continue to further neighborhood destabilization and create even greater demand for an insufficient supply of affordable housing.

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References Asiegbu, G. (2021). Tenants and advocates call for Just cause Ordinance to end no-fault evictions. Injustice Watch, October 29, 2021. https://www.injust icewatch.org/news/housing/2021/just-cause-ordinance/. Accessed, 4 May 2021. Ballesteros, C., & Roeder, D. (2020). Big changes coming to Little Village Plaza, new owner says. Chicago Sun Times, March 3. https://chicago.sun times.com/2020/3/3/21158421/little-village-plaza-discount-mall-26th-str eet-novak-construction Accessed, 17 May 2022. Bullard, R. D. (1999). Confronting environmental racism: Voices from the grassroots. Boston, MA: South End Press. Bloom, M., & Peña, M. (2020). Invisible evictions: As developers flock to Logan Square and Pilsen, renters quietly forced out. They didn’t miss a rent payment or break the rules, but families in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods are getting the boot as landlords look to cash in—With little notice or recourse. Block Club Chicago, February 5. Cherone, H. (2020). ‘Poverty is killing us—All of us’: Lightfoot pledges to end generational poverty. Block Club Chicago. https://blockclubchicago.org/ 2020/02/17/poverty-is-killing-us-all-of-us-lightfoot-pledges-to-end-genera tional-poverty/ Accessed May 5, 2022. Cherone, H. (2022). No city officials fired or suspended after smokestack implosion: Watchdog https://blockclubchicago.org/2020/02/05/invisibleevictions-as-developers-flock-to-logan-square-and-pilsen-renters-quietly-for ced-out/. Accessed May 5, 2022. Curran, W. & Hamilton, T. (2012). Just green enough: Contesting environmental gentrification in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Local Environment, 17 (9), 1027–1042. City Club of Chicago: https://www.cityclub-chicago.org/about Dale, A. & Newman, L. (2009). Sustainable Development for Some: Green Urban Development and Affordability. Local Environment, 14 (7): 669–681. Department of Housing (DOH). (2021). City Council Passes Anti-Conversion Ordinances for Pilsen and the 606. Press Release, January 27. https://www. chicago.gov/city/en/depts/doh/provdrs/housing_resources/news/2020/ december/mayor-lightfoot-and-department-of-housing-introduces-ant--dec onv.html. Accessed April 7, 2021. Dukmasova, M. (2020). Lightfoot’s surprise tenant protection measure ruffles feathers. Chicago Reader, May 27 https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/ lightfoots-surprise-tenant-protection-measure-ruffles-feathers/. Accessed May 5, 2022. Ecker, D. (2021). Interview for re-imagine Chicago forum ideas forum: Community investment, June 3, organized by WBEZ and University of Chicago’s

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Center for Effective Government. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XN 4YLBhfnU Accessed January 26, 2022. Essoka, J. D. 2010. The gentrifying effects of brownfields redevelopment. Western Journal of Black Studies, 34 (3), 299–315. Greenberg, M. & Smith, S. (2022). Definition Environmental Gentrification. Critical Sustainabilities. Competing Discourses of Urban Development in California.https://critical-sustainabilities.ucsc.edu/environmental-gentrific ation/. Accessed August 9, 2022. Hernandez, J. (2022) Vendors at little village discount mall told leases will be extended until January 2023. WTTW News. August 29. https://news.wttw. com/2022/08/29/vendors-little-village-discount-mall-told-leases-will-be-ext ended-until-january-2023. Accessed August 29, 2022. Just Cause Chicago. (2022) https://www.justcausechicago.org/chicagos-ong oing-crisis.html Juntos por la Villita. (2021). Various flyers, communications and online reports. Kern, L. & Kovesi, C. (2018). Environmental justice meets the right to stay put: Mobilising against environmental racism, gentrification, and xenophobia in Chicago’s Little Village, Local Environment, 23 (9), 952-966. https://doi. org/10.1080/13549839.2018.1508204 Office of the Mayor. (2019). Mayor Lightfoot announces new strategy to support revitalization on City’s South and West Sides. Mayor’s Press Office, October 21. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/ press_releases/2019/october/RevitalizationSouthWest.html. Accessed March 13, 2022. Peña, M. (2020a). Pilsen alderman blasts city for pushing landmark district residents don’t want as officials float a smaller plan. Block Club Chicago, October. https://blockclubchicago.org/2020a/10/06/pilsen-alderman-bla sts-city-for-pushing-landmark-district-residents-dont-want-as-officials-float-asmaller-plan/. Accessed, 5 May 5 2022. Peña, M. (2020b). Pilsen historic landmark district plan killed by key city committee after public outcry. Block Club Chicago, December 1. https://blockclubchicago.org/2020b/12/01/pilsen-historic-landmark-dis trict-plan-killed-by-key-city-committee-after-public-outcry/. Accessed May 5, 2022. Peña, M. (2021). Pilsen nonprofit breaks ground on long-awaited affordable housing project: ‘We believe in development without displacement.’ Block Club Chicago, September 16. https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/09/16/ pilsen-nonprofit-breaks-ground-on-long-awaited-affordable-housing-projectwe-believe-in-development-without-displacement/. Accessed February 19, 2022). Rodkin, Dennis. (2020). Anti-gentrification forces are winning. A change in the climate has developers pulling back. Crain’s Chicago Business,

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July 31. https://www.housingstudies.org/media/filer_public/1f/70/1f7 0c060-4994-4354-91b8-43465be54cd9/anti-gentrification_forces_are_win ning_in_chicago.htm#off-canvas. Accessed March 10, 2022. Rodriguez Presa, L. (2020). Little Village Discount Mall gentrification fears follow other signs of redevelopment in neighborhood. Chicago Tribune, September 21. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-little-village-gen trification-20200921-qnpj3hdmnfdrpjqwmdr2ehezwu-story.html. Accessed September 21, 2020. Sabino, P. (2020). Lightfoot To launch plan to erase Chicago poverty in a generation at thursday summit. Block Club Chicago, February 18. https://blo ckclubchicago.org/2020/02/18/lightfoot-to-launch-plan-to-erase-chicagopoverty-in-a-generation-at-thursday-summit/. Accessed May 18, 2022. Serrato, J. (2019). What you need to know about Pilsen’s proposed historic landmark district. Chicago Reporter, July 18. https://www.chicagoreporter. com/what-you-need-to-know-about-pilsens-proposed-historic-landmark-dis trict/. Accessed May 17, 2022. Sweeney, B. (2015). Little village, big business. Crain Chicago Business, September 25. https://www.chicagobusiness.com/static/section/littlevillage.html. Accessed May 18, 2022. Swyngedouw, Erik, (2000). Authoritarian governance: Power and the politics of rescaling. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 18, 63–76. Vevea, B. (2022). Has Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot kept her campaign promises? WBEZ Chicago, May 17. https://www.wbez.org/stories/has-chi cago-mayor-lori-lightfoot-kept-campaign-promises/c10b53b9-ee10-4955a516-c7c780fd496b?utm_source=email&utm_medium=referral&utm_cam paign=Web-Share. Accessed May 18, 2022. Wilson, D. (2018). Chicago’s redevelopment machine and blues clubs. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. World Population Review. (2022). https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cit ies/chicago-il-population. Accessed May 10, 2022. WTTW News. (2022). January 14. https://news.wttw.com/2022/01/14/ no-city-officials-fired-or-suspended-after-smokestack-implosion-watchdog. Accessed May 18, 2022.

CHAPTER 8

Conclusion: Comparing the Urban Governances of Chicago and Buenos Aires

I have focused my analysis on how each neoliberal governance pursues redevelopment and growth in locally specific ways. At the structural level, the urban governances of Chicago and Buenos Aires seem to be following similar neoliberal principles and practices. However, these are locally constituted formations or “actually-existing neoliberal governances” (see Theodore et al. 2018) in which socio-political institutions, institutional practices, cultures, and economic realities shape the specific forms that neoliberal governance takes on the ground (Wilson 2018; Springer 2016; Peck et al. 2012; Leitner et al. 2007; Peck and Tickell 2007; Wilson 2007). Yet, the answers to the following questions are still pending: How are these formations similar and different in their operations (policies and programs), strategies, and the rhetoric mobilized? How differently and similarly do neoliberal urban governances in Chicago and Buenos Aires unfold their urban plans for transformation while responding to changing political realities, contestation, growing inequalities, and obstacles to development and redevelopment? I have described governance actors separately in Buenos Aires and Chicago, but how different and similar are these actors and who advances most prominent redevelopment initiatives in Chicago and Buenos Aires? One of the key differences between Chicago and Buenos Aires is that Chicago’s urban governance, whether led by Emanuel or Lightfoot, has relied heavily on public–private partnerships. This reliance has © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Sternberg, Neoliberal Urban Governance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21718-0_8

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stemmed primarily from an ongoing shortage of federal funds, which were first cut in the 1990s, making it possible for significant influence to be wielded by groups dominated by local and international business interests through groups such as the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and the Local Initiatives Support Corporations. Currently, these public– private institutions together unite nearly 200 of the most influential businesses, corporations, foundations, civic leaders, and financial institutions that have invested heavily in refashioning Chicago’s urban and social fabric. Along the southwest frontier, various agencies of the local government involved in planning and development have worked in synergy with public–private institutions to establish the conditions that have made it possible to convert former industries and workshops into residential or commercial buildings through the Primary Manufacturing District revised policies, plan the Paseo Trail (even though this project has not been finalized), and demolish the Crawford coal-fired power plant. In coordination with the local government, these public–private consortia have executed urban redevelopment projects and supported them financially, logistically, and administratively. Consequently, governance has moved further away from a government-led redevelopment style in which the local government would be centralizing and supervising the entirety of these projects. During the same period as the Emanuel and Lightfoot administrations, Buenos Aires governance, through the leadership of Macri and Rodríguez Larreta, focused on promoting a business-friendly climate, deregulating the economy, and freeing up public land to make it available for real estate capital investment. Dovetailing these efforts, governance fully embraced the principle of social integration through policies and programs, such as the creation of various “creative districts,” including the Arts District (containing the neighborhoods of San Telmo and La Boca), which ultimately promoted real estate and commercial opportunities on the south side of the city. The urban social transformation of Villa 31, one of the city’s largest slums, was planned with the aim of urbanizing the villa’s 108 acres of “informal and unproductive lands” and turning them into “formal and urbanized areas” with the potential to generate abundant revenues for the city and profits for the real estate market. Yet, different from Chicago, in Buenos Aires private–public partnerships were not directly involved in executing and financing redevelopment plans. Unlike in the USA where, since the 1990s, the federal budget has not included funds to help finance large redevelopment programs in major

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US cities, the Argentinian federal urban planning agencies continue to support long-standing redevelopment programs, either directly or indirectly, by financing key infrastructure and transferring public land from the federal jurisdiction to the local one. In addition, redevelopment initiatives in Buenos Aires have been closely supervised by the city government. The case of Villa 31 differs slightly, with more investment coming from the private sector. For this monumental project, Buenos Aires’s governance actors received financial assistance from multilateral credit institutions. In 2016, Mayor Rodríguez Larreta signed a u$420 million loan to help finance 55% of the project, with funds coming from the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) and the International Bank for the Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) (ACIJ 2021). Buenos Aires’s governance has mobilized substantial public resources (physical infrastructure, public land, and revenues) to advance both the creative districts and Villa 31’s urbanization. The central role of the local government in planning, financing, executing, and promoting these urban initiatives represents a distinctive characteristic of Buenos Aires’s governance throughout these 14 years. Each governance, with its own level of public and private sector involvement, has shaped the scope and intensity of each redevelopment project. It is likely that the creative districts and the urbanization of Villa 31 would not have been successfully advanced (although the plans for Villa 31 have not yet been finalized) without the centralization of the initiatives’ planning, execution, and promotion. Yet, a down-side of such government centralization is that in Buenos Aires urban policies can be easily discontinued due to the whims of local politics, lack of institutional coordination among the different governmental units involved in a given project, budget cuts, and economic hardships. In fact, housing improvements planned for Villa 31 (e.g., electrical and plumbing) remain incomplete at the time of writing due to a lack of coordination among the different units involved (see ACIJ 2021). Gentrification has also proceeded differently in each city and in each redevelopment frontier. As noted in Chapter 1, there are ongoing debates among scholars about gentrification (Lacarrieu 2018; Lees et al. 2016) with much theoretical and methodological complexity in part because of the multitextured nature of urban contexts (Lees et al. 2016). But it is nonetheless a central urban policy that has been extolled by neoliberal governances for decades in cities around the globe (Hackworth 2007; Wilson 2007; Smith 1996). In neoliberal Chicago, gentrification has

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helped governance actors remake city space, increase city revenues, and meet the demands of competitive global times. Pilsen and Little Village, which are both working-class communities of color, have been intensively (Pilsen) and gradually (Little Village) transformed into new spaces for aesthetic and cultural conspicuous consumption. In Buenos Aires, gentrification has taken place differently. According to Diaz-Parra (2015, 2021), displacement, as one of the most evident outcomes of gentrification, depends on local politics, urban regulations, and largely, on the tenure statuses of the residents. The latter is especially important in the context of Buenos Aires’s south side frontier where gentrification is often impeded by complex hybrid land and property markets. Because of high levels of informality, fragmented property ownership, limited market capacity, insufficient loan and mortgage markets (see Betancur 2014), and local social and economic structures, it is difficult to compare residential transformations on the south side of Buenos Aires with other contexts. Yet, commercial change has emerged as the most noticeable form of displacement in Buenos Aires (see Lederman 2020) in the period under study. Buenos Aires has experienced significant commercial gentrification on the south side of the city, including hotel and retail construction in San Telmo, and retail and art galleries in La Boca. Since 2012, the Arts District was fundamental in spurring land use conversions in both neighborhoods; in particular, commercial land use has risen, including hotels, art galleries, coffee shops, and restaurants. These physical transformations have ultimately served more affluent residents and visitors, both local and international (see Arqueros & Redondo 2017; Goicoechea 2017) and created conditions that have resulted in the displacement of renters and the urban poor (see Goicoechea 2017; Thomasz 2016), especially in La Boca but also, to a lesser extent, in San Telmo. Condominium and high-end construction have been limited in San Telmo. In fact, few condominiums can be built in historically protected neighborhoods like San Telmo, with the exception of the neighborhood’s edge, in an area near Constitución, a more impoverished district west of San Telmo (see Lederman 2020). At the same time, in both San Telmo and La Boca, the most vulnerable residents have been forcibly evicted and dispossessed of their homes. This happened as a result of the Arts District policy and the demand for tourist accommodation. Both San Telmo and La Boca historically have had high

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rates of the most precarious tenancy statuses and fragmented ownership situations, such as in conventillos or hoteles familiares (in the 1940s they became similar types of buildings with short-term subdivided rental rooms where individuals or families pay rent and share bathrooms and kitchens). With an increase in domestic and international tourism since the Arts District was inaugurated, owners began to upgrade these buildings to hostels or hotels for tourists, especially in San Telmo. According to Lederman (2020), “of the twelve participating hoteles familiares in San Telmo, more than one third were international youth hostels by 2013” (p. 98). Given the overcrowded conditions in many of these structures, “such redevelopment projects resulted in the eviction of hundreds of the neighborhood’s lowest-income residents” (Lederman 2020: 98). I have focused on just two aspects of how locally specific these redevelopment processes can be: the strong presence of public–private partnerships vs. local government centralization in guiding and financing redevelopment projects and the way gentrification has taken place in each city. There are many other differences, but one central feature of the governances of Chicago and Buenos Aires is the ability to mobilize different rhetoric to reconfigure and reimagine areas targeted for redevelopment. In the south and center of Buenos Aires and on the southwest side of Chicago, neoliberal governance has not simply produced and rationalized policies and procedures. They have worked through an assemblage of actors, including city officials, local boards, developers, architects, and real estate agents, to promote a particular vision of their city and to make it a reality. After decades of physical deterioration and stigmatization, supposedly dominant in the areas targeted for redevelopment in both cities, these areas have become potentially profitable real estate and commodifiable for cultural and aesthetic consumption. Each governance’s successful endeavors have been made possible by locally situated discourses (in particular discursive spaces and identities) and locally situated ways of presenting actors and their plans. Tables 8.1 and 8.2 offer a comparative analytical outline of each governance’s dynamics (policies and programs, redevelopment agendas, and rhetoric): Chicago’s governance agenda continues to be focused on economic growth (rooted in neoliberal principles and practices), while competing with other cities on a global scale.

Chicago City Mayor

Rahm Emanuel

Rahm Emanuel

2011–2015

2015–2019

1. Ongoing downtown development and adjoining areas, 2. Closing of 64 CPS public schools Relaxing the rules governing Chicago’s 15 PMDs and 26 industrial corridors for residential and retail development, the Paseo Trail, and the demolition of Crawford plant

Main neoliberal governance policies and programs

Global and vibrant city and neighborhoods as contributors to Chicago’s neoliberal globalization efforts

Global and competitive city and neighborhoods are contributors to Chicago’s neoliberal globalization efforts

Redevelopment agenda

Identities, obliterated vs. cultivated

Pilsen and Little Village as “decrepit, unlivable and ravaged spaces” vs. “prosperous and orderly ethnic spaces” and “culturally rich multiethnic spaces”

Pilsen’s and Little Village’s residents “as underachievers and unwilling to bring change”, and “low-income, service dependent population” vs. “ethnicity-infused beings”

“Old, isolated and inactive areas” “Unproductive vs. “global imagined spaces/white citizens” vs. bourgeois-cleansed spaces” “productive citizens, and neighborhood civility”

Discursive spaces, obliterated vs. cultivated

City of Chicago. Neoliberal governance policies and programs, redevelopment agenda, and rhetoric

Period

Table 8.1

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Lori Lightfoot

2019–2023

Invest South-West Initiative: Focus on investment in the south and west side communities

Main neoliberal governance policies and programs Inclusive development/equitable economic growth

Redevelopment agenda

Source Developed by the author based on archival work and qualitative data analysis

Chicago City Mayor

Period

“Abandoned south and west spaces” vs. “Inclusive/equitable imagined spaces”

Discursive spaces, obliterated vs. cultivated

“Struggling Black and Latino/a/x” vs “previously stigmatized identities”

Identities, obliterated vs. cultivated

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Rodriguez Larreta

Rodriguez Larreta

2015–2019

2019–2023

Source Developed by the author based on archival work and qualitative data analysis

Urbanization/integration of Enhance Villa 31 (later Barrio 31): socio-territorial inclusion and integration Urbanization/Integration Enhance of Barrio 31 continues socio-territorial inclusion and integration

Mauricio Macri Creative Districts: Arts Creativity, District in La Boca and San socio-territorial Telmo inclusion

Redevelopment agenda

2011–2015

Main neoliberal governance policies and programs

Buenos Aires city mayor

“Eyesore” vs. “multicultural and gastronomic spaces”

“Infrastructural deprived spaces” vs. “cultural, touristic and versatile artistic spaces” “Eyesore” vs. “livable, formalized, and robust spaces”

Discursive spaces, obliterated vs. cultivated

“Villeros” vs. “vecinos”: understood as property owners and city contributors “Villeros” vs. “vecinos”: understood as property owners and city contributors

“Proletariat” vs. “culturally infused citizens”

Identities, obliterated vs. cultivated

City of Buenos Aires. Neoliberal governance policies and programs, redevelopment agenda, and rhetoric

Period

Table 8.2

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Through Emanuel’s leadership, Chicago’s governance rode the crest of neoliberal times initiated by the Daley administration, to advance redevelopment processes. Rahm Emanuel’s goal of “making Chicago the most competitive, most business-friendly, most economically viable city in the world” (Office of the Mayor 2012) has pinned Chicago’s survival on strengthening the city as an extended entrepreneurial space while disciplining spaces and identities that governance actors interpret as thwarting urban redevelopment (Wilson 2007). This hyper-competitive and entrepreneurial rhetoric has served as an effective rhetorical tool for neoliberal governance throughout the period of study, with the exception of Lightfoot’s term. It has carried an implicit warning of Chicago’s economic fragility if it did not pursue neoliberal and globalization competitive mandates. In addition, this governance has considered gentrification a vital piece of current public policy and a way to refashion the city (Wilson 2007, 2018). Gentrification has been seen as a way to “fix” disinvested neighborhoods, reshape their cultural forms and identities to fit a new urban reality, and generate revenues for the city and profits for the corporate world. Especially during Daley’s and Emmanuel’s times, governance actors have suggested that acute segregation could be fixed organically through gentrification-led redevelopment. “Responsibly” attending to the exigencies of neoliberal and globalization times, Chicago’s urban governance has sought to restructure the entirety of Chicago. In the process, governance actors have consistently cultivated certain imagined spaces and identities by putting special emphasis on white and cleansed spaces (e.g., luxurious condominiums, aesthetically pleasing downtowns, sanitized parks and squares, upscale and luminous restaurants, boutiques, and coffee shops). During his inauguration speech, Mayor Rahm Emanuel praised these types of spaces using Millennium Park—an aesthetically pleasing and artistically lively gathering spot in downtown Chicago—as an example of the type of spaces and identities Chicago’s governance and citizens should be celebrating: “Back then, this [referring to the public Millennium Park] was an abandoned rail yard. A generation later, what was once a nagging urban eyesore [my emphasis] is now a world-class urban park. Through Mayor Daley’s vision, determination, and leadership, this place, like our city, was reborn” (Chicago City Council 2011). At the same time, Emanuel also suggested what spaces and identities needed to be discarded—for example, “old, isolated, and inactive areas,” including former industrial areas and unproductive citizens.

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Pursuing this redevelopment agenda, Chicago’s governance targeted neighborhoods to become key contributors. First, Chicago’s governance directed most resources to selected white-cleansed spaces: touristy River Walk, Fulton Market, Lincoln Yards’—still pending—newly upscale and highly publicized offices and condominiums. These initiatives were followed by “post-industrial” policies to transform former manufacturing areas into residential or commercial ones. In this context, the southwest side frontier, including Pilsen and Little Village, became a leading edge of redevelopment, where governance actors pushed their efforts to reshape each neighborhood to meet Chicago’s neoliberal competitive agenda. In other words, redevelopment plans to remake the social fabric of Pilsen and Little Village were made to fit the logic of governance actors seeking to restructure the entirety of Chicago. The Primary Manufacturing District (PMD) de-regulations, the Paseo Trail urban plans, and the demolition of the Crawford plant were all part of a governance policy of repositioning Pilsen and Little Village as economic contributors—of course, they had always been contributors, just not in the way Chicago’s neoliberal governance wanted. These so-called post-industrial policies sought to revitalize many of the disinvested, yet central, districts of the city by focusing on transforming former manufacturing areas into residential and commercial ones. In the process, governance actors sought to reform the entrenched negative image of the historically deprived and deteriorated southwest frontier by rationalizing and amplifying the benefits of the above policies, while disciplining spatial and cultural forms with new imagined spaces and new identities. Thus, once depicted as “decrepit, unlivable, and ravaged spaces,” Chicago’s Latino/a/x communities Pilsen and Little Village became new “prosperous and orderly ethnic spaces” and “culturally rich and multiethnic spaces,” respectively. Governance actors have been skillful at disciplining residents’ identities and cultural forms. The residents of Pilsen and Little Village, formerly cast as “underachievers, afraid of change”—symbolically captured in historic buildings, working-class cottage houses, former factory workshops—became “ethnicity-infused beings.” These new identities—symbolically represented in the variety of ethnic restaurants, pushcart vendors, authentic art galleries, museums, ethnic shops, and ritualized street fairs—have produced a specific blend of edginess, exoticism, and stable Latino/a/x ways. In short, to Chicago’s governance, disciplining and commodifying Pilsen’s and Little Village’s aesthetics, people, identity, and culture served multiple goals: creating

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spaces for conspicuous consumption, increasing tax revenues for the city, and better positioning Chicago on a global scale. Since their interventions, governance actors have communicated to the public that residents in both communities now have an impetus to change and that these neighborhoods now radiate the best of authentic Mexican barrios, with flourishing art scenes, culture, commercial strips, food, and dance. The city government continues to engage in an intense promotion of Pilsen’s and Little Village’s unique Mexican culture, and new retail businesses are accommodating more affluent customers. Neoliberal governance in Buenos Aires communicates a different agenda, one of social and economic integration as the only possible way the center and south areas of the city could be “resuscitated” along with their residents. Fear and anxiety about not maintaining Buenos Aires’s global economic status and continuing its competitive growth have not been a major force guiding redevelopment initiatives. Instead, this governance has oriented its efforts to developing a “socially integrated city” and closing the historic gap between the city’s wealthy north and disinvested south, while perfectly aligning urban goals and economic aspirations for Buenos Aires governance. Buenos Aires’s neoliberal urban governance pushes to build a city that celebrates social integration while it deepens and expands spaces and infrastructure for cultural and aesthetic consumption as means to attract investment. In other words, Buenos Aires’s governance uses social integration as the perfect vehicle to advance improvements to the built environment, foster tourist activities, and clear “unproductive lands” for the speculative private market in historically disinvested and impoverished areas. In pursuing its social integration goals, urban governance in Buenos Aires has mobilized different understandings, imaginary spaces, and identities than the urban governance in Chicago. In Buenos Aires, attention has been steered to renewing the physical infrastructure and historicalcultural areas of long-time disinvested neighborhoods of the city’s south side, including La Boca and San Telmo, but without promoting anxiety about the need to maintain the city’s competitive growth. Urban governance sought to first reinvest in disinvested, yet touristic districts of the city by incentivizing industries such as the arts, as well as by offering “post-industrial” services, including restaurants and tourism, leading to new commercial and—to a lesser extent—residential development for higher-income residents and visitors. New patterns of cultural and aesthetic consumption were seen by governance actors as a way to renew

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La Boca and San Telmo and socially integrate them with the rest of the city. In the course of offering a rationale for redevelopment, governance tended not to depict La Boca and San Telmo as “decrepit, unlivable, and ravaged spaces” as happened with Chicago’s Pilsen and Little Village. Common local stereotypes in these neighborhoods mobilized governance actors to upgrade “infrastructurally deprived spaces” and make them “cultural, touristic, and versatile artistic spaces.” Residents of these communities quickly became characterized as “culturally infused citizens,” represented in art galleries, museums, and artistic rendezvous. The physical and cultural renovation of La Boca and San Telmo later contributed to the success of the city’s Arts District policy and further captured these new “culturally infused” identities. But the Arts District did not create jobs or opportunities that could close the socio-economic gap between the relegated south and wealthy north of the city. Instead, this policy established the conditions that would result in the evictions and displacement of low-income and long-time residents (see Goicoechea 2017; Thomasz 2016), by bringing higher-income commercial retailers and artists, hotel investors, visitors, and upscale businesses to the area (both La Boca and San Telmo). To governance actors, another route to achieving social integration was to transform informal spaces into formal ones and make them valuable and profitable in the long term. Here, urban governance fully embraced “social integration” as a core principle that would make Villa 31 more connected to the rest of the city. In the process, governance actors strategically transformed lands they had considered inaccessible, unattractive, and dangerous into “salvageable” and “accessible” to the city fabric. Barrio 31, once Villa 31, is a perfect example of this transformation. This once “impenetrable” redevelopment area, historically associated with redevelopment as a containment district for the villeros, was eyed by governance actors for its potential real estate profitability, and as a potential site for cultural—especially gastronomic—tourism. To achieve their goals, governance actors mobilized strategic rhetoric, focusing on cultivating socially integrated spaces, addressing residents’ affliction and distress, and sanitizing this area with new spaces and new identities while public works took place. They proclaimed the location the site of something compelling: “livable, formalized, and robust spaces” and “multicultural and gastronomic spaces.”

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These new spaces were key as governance celebrated symbols of middle-class whiteness in Buenos Aires (orderly and clean neighborhoods, sanitized and fenced parks and squares, newly upscale restaurants and coffee shops, art galleries, etc.) that communicated racial and class identities. Mobilizing key rhetoric (identities and spaces) was an important part of the work performed by neoliberal governance as it sought to transform a widely stigmatized area of the city into a “livable, formalized, and robust space” that could also become a “multicultural and gastronomic space,” with economic spillover effects in adjacent communities. Governance actors also quickly acted to normalize the identities of Barrio/Villa 31 residents, promoting a shift from “villeros ” to “vecinos ,” who could potentially become property owners and, by extent, city contributors. To governance actors, the racialized identity of “villeros ” implied a form of residency, a style of neighborhood, and a set of activity spaces that urgently needed to be obliterated. At the same time, racialized identities and spaces also served the city and developers as opportunities to rhetorically frame the communities of the villeros/as as exciting new spaces to experience authentic cultural diversity and the gastronomic culture of multiple neighboring countries (Paraguay, Peru, and Bolivia). Soon Barrio 31 was identified as authentic, multicultural, and potentially redeemable as a city resource, ripe for inclusion in Buenos Aires’s social integration efforts. This “rediscovery” began to feed the appetite of the public, including local and international tourists, and it has enabled the area to continue driving south side restructuring and rejuvenation. Exemplary of this rediscovery has been the recent creation of guided tours. In early 2022, a local organization began to offer international tourists and locals the opportunity to “discover” this area as a new “multicultural and gastronomic space” (Almirón 2022). The examined cases in Buenos Aires and Chicago illustrate the adaptability of urban governance in the face of social and political change, resistance, and new opportunities for redevelopment. Neoliberal urban governances must adapt to varying local conditions to be able to unfold redevelopment projects successfully. In this sense, governance actors do not act with rigid loyalty to neoliberal demands. Rather, changing realities for Chicago’s and Buenos Aires’s redevelopment areas have shown that governance actors are responding to various circumstances to advance redevelopment.

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In the most recent period this study covers, Chicago’s governance has shifted its rhetoric to imply a more inclusive approach to redevelopment and growth. Lori Lightfoot’s anti-conversion policies, designed to reduce displacement of low- to moderate-income residents and maintain the existing character and housing stock, signaled a promising change compared to previous governances’ focus on gentrification-led redevelopment (DHO Press 2021). Soon, new spaces and identities were activated to give way to a supposedly more sensitive vision of development (Ecker 2021). During the first two years of Lori Lightfoot’s administration, this new governance has invested in re-sculpting the historically imagined “abandoned south and west spaces,” where struggling Black and Latino/a/x populations have lived for decades, to nurture more “inclusive imagined spaces” where “previously stigmatized identities” could live. Yet, despite the progressive character of these new policies, urban specialists have asserted that Chicago’s new governance agenda has not had a significant impact on the broader south and west side areas, especially the historically abandoned communities of color that this study examines (see Betancur and Gonzalez, Chapter 5). Chicago’s current governance seems to vacillate between the legacies of iron-fisted corporate governances (as led by the Daley and Emmanuel administrations) and a more inclusive approach capable of addressing neighborhoods’ needs. Let us not forget that neoliberal governances often use postpolitical language, which has “allowed city officials to resolve a tension between pursuing urban equity on the one hand and building a globally competitive city on the other” (Lederman 2020, p. 25). The aggressive and competitive rhetoric that once prevailed in Chicago governance is now mixed with post-political language (Swyngedouw 2011), aiming at dissuading contestation and asserting the progressiveness of the current redevelopment vision. Yet, while this vacillation continues, entire communities of color continue to pay the price for the focus on competitive growth. In a similar vein, in response to local political mobilization against the potential eradication of Villa 31 (González Redondo 2020), which Mayor Macri had publicly called for, governance actors quickly adjusted their rhetoric and began pushing a “socially minded” vision of urbanization. At this time governance focused on integrating Villa 31 with the rest of the city, as part of a social integration plan intended to close the gap between the city’s north and south sides. To governance actors,

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conservative approaches to inequality through “inclusive” or “integration” policy idioms become normative visions of a progressive Buenos Aires. Later, once public works for urbanization started, governance actors also embarked on a series of actions to ameliorate contestation among Villa 31’s residents and reestablish the coherence and legitimacy of this monumental urban project (e.g., through large public spending deployed for this purpose and new rhetoric). Similar to Chicago’s governance, the use of post-political language in Buenos Aires has become key in efforts to build consensus and dissuade tension between different visions of development rather than focusing only on commodification of city’s spaces and identities in line with neoliberal priorities. In sum, to remake city space and help forge “a new Chicago” and “a new Buenos Aires,” in both cities neoliberal governance actors have been mobilizing different forms of rhetoric to apply to once nonattractive redevelopment areas (perceived as containment districts, in their respective contexts, for the Latino/a/x racialized poor and for the villeros ). These areas have ultimately received attention for their potentially profitable real estate and commodifiable urban areas along with the corresponding ability to serve each cities’ future investment needs and economic growth. Reimagining and remaking city space becomes a delicate, ongoing human endeavor that involves adroit discursive and material management. To recap, these areas have been imagined and discussed by city officials, real estate, and business leaders as “prosperous and orderly ethnic spaces” (Pilsen) and “culturally rich multiethnic spaces” (Little Village) and as contributors to Chicago’s neoliberal globalization efforts. Similarly, the center (Villa 31) and south sides (La Boca and San Telmo) of Buenos Aires have been rediscovered as “cultural, touristic and versatile artistic spaces” (La Boca and San Telmo); “livable, formalized, and robust spaces” and “multicultural and gastronomic spaces” (Villa 31); and as contributors to Buenos Aires’s socio-inclusive efforts. Finally, let us not forget that these governances, in general, are outgrowths of new economic times and circumstances. Always carrying the imprint of societal and global structures, they forever alter these structures through the sensibilities of place-rooted cultures, political conditions, political cultures, and place-based meanings.

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Public Policy Implications The cases examined reveal critical points for public intervention in efforts to build a more just and caring city. First, more just redevelopment can be pursued in these cities based on the knowledge that redevelopment is fundamentally locally driven, humanly crafted, and capable of responding to mounting complaints and political and economic shifts. Second, local culture and local space represent areas dimensions for the construction, refinement, and reproduction of current redevelopment. It follows that programs, policies, and institutions created to modify and refine redevelopment’s form and impacts can fruitfully work through these domains for desired results. Third, meaningful social change and the transforming of redevelopment governances often begin with something that might seem minor: rhetorical modifications of human identities and communities, in particular, a substantial de-construction of the racialized identities, communities, and spaces embedded in white supremacist ideology. For example, for the general public in Chicago to consider the struggle of the Latino/a/x racialized working-class in more nuanced, structural ways, opens possibilities for critiquing ongoing redevelopment, stepping up mainstream criticism, and opening up movements of solidarity, relationality, and coalition building. If residents of Buenos Aires can imagine the villeros in more humane and complex ways, that could trigger movements of solidarity and relationality. In fact, the advancement of social movements focused on the fundamental role of care relations in the functioning of our social and daily life in urban spaces is currently being energized and has become international in scope (Farias and Sternberg forthcoming). Ordinary residents in urban locations around the world have already strategically mobilized alternative versions of the neoliberal and “uncaring” city to demand more just and caring urban futures, and democratic access to public resources. This involves, as Tronto (1993) would say, understanding that caring practices include “everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life sustaining web” (p. 113).

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References Almirón, G. (2022). Hacen tours en la Villa 31 para romper con la mirada estigmatizadora, MDZ Argentina, February 17, https://www.mdzol.com/ sociedad/2022/2/17/hacen-tours-en-la-villa-31-para-romper-con-la-miradaestigmatizadora-222339.html. Arqueros, S. & Gonzalez Redondo, C. (2017). La política de distritos del sur de Buenos Aires: Una mirada en perspectiva. Quid, 16 (6), 7–30. Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia (ACIJ) (2021). Cuánto avanzo la reurbanización en el Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica (Ex villa 31 y 31 bis) en el período 2016–2021? Publicaciones Derecho a la Ciudad. https://acij.org.ar/ informe-cuanto-avanzo-la-reurbanizacion-en-el-barrio-mugica/. Accessed July 26, 2022. Betancur, J. (2014). Gentrification in Latin America: Overview and critical analysis. Urban Studies Research, 1–14. Chicago City Council (2011). Mayor Rahm Emanuel inaugural address 2011. Journal of the Proceedings, May 16, pp. 11–17. Diaz-Parra, I. (2015). A back to the city movement by local government action: Gentrification in Spain and Latin America. International Journal of Urban Science, 19 (3), 343–363. Diaz-Parra, I. (2021). Generating a critical dialogue on gentrification in Latin America. Progress in Human Geography, 45 (3), 472–488. Department of Housing (DHO) Press (2021) City Council Passes AntiDeconversion Ordinances for Pilsen and the 606, January 27. https://www. chicago.gov/city/en/depts/doh/provdrs/housing_resources/news/2020/ december/mayor-lightfoot-and-department-of-housing-introduces-ant--dec onv.html Accessed April 7, 2021. Ecker, D. (2021). Interview for “Re-imagine Chicago Forum Ideas Forum: Community Investment”, June 3rd, organized by WBEZ and University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3XN4YLBhfnU Accessed January 26, 2022. Farias, M., & Sternberg, C. (forthcoming). Mobilizing care and housing access. Demanding responses to the local state in Buenos Aires in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Partecipazione e Conflitto Journal. Goicoechea, M. E. (2017). Renovación urbana en el sur porteño y el ‘éxito’ del distrito tecnológico: Algunas claves para comprender el dinamismo inmobiliario. Quid 16: Revista de Estudios Urbanos, (7), 30–61. Gonzalez Redondo, C. (2020). Gobernanza urbana: Reflexiones a partir de los distritos económicos de la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Revista INVI, 35 (100), 91–114. Hackworth, J. (2007). The neoliberal city: Governance, ideology, and development in American urbanism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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Lacarrieu, M. (2018). Gentrificación y/o recualificación en las ciudades de América Latina. Tensiones y disputas por el giro descolonial de los espacios patrimoniales. In M. Lacarrieu (ed.), Ciudades en dialogo entre lo local y lo transnacional/global. Intersecciones entre el patrimonio, el turismo, las alteridades migrantes y el hábitat popular. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Imago Mundi, 19–48. Lederman, J. (2020). Chasing world class urbanism: Global policy versus everyday survival in Buenos Aires. In Globalization and Community (Vol. 30). Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Lees, L., Shin, H. B. & Lopez-Morales, E. (2016). Planetary gentrification. Cambridge: Polity Press. Leitner, H., Peck, J. & Sheppard, E. (Eds.) (2007). Contesting neoliberalism. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Office of the Mayor (2012). Rahm Emanuel statement regarding May 2012 employment rates, June 2012. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/ mayor/press_room/press_releases/2012/june_2012/statement_from_mayo rrahmemanuelregardingmay2012employmentratesin.html. Accessed April 7, 2021. Peck, J. & Tickell, A. (2007). Conceptualizing neoliberalism, thinking Thatcherism. In H. Leitner, J. Peck, & E. S. Sheppard (eds.), Contesting neoliberalism: Urban frontiers. New York: Guilford. Peck, J., Theodore, N. & Brenner, N. (2012). Neoliberalism resurgent? Market rule after the great recession. South Atlantic Quarterly, 111 (2), 265–288. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00382876-1548212. Smith, N. (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the revanchist city. New York, NY: Routledge. Springer, S. (2016). The discourse of neoliberalism: An anatomy of a powerful idea. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Swyngedouw, E. (2011). Interrogating post-democratization: Reclaiming egalitarian political spaces. Political Geography, 30 (7), 370–380. Theodore, N., Peck, J. & Brenner, N. (2018). Actually existing neoliberalism. In D. Cahill, M. Cooper, M. Konings & D. Primrose (eds.), The SAGE handbook of neoliberalism. London: Sage. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/978 1526416001. Tronto, J. C. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. NY, London: Routledge. Thomasz, A. G. (2016). Los nuevos distritos creativos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires: la conversión del barrio de La Boca en el “distrito de las artes”. Eure, 42 (126), 145–167.

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Wilson, D. (2007). Cities and race: America’s new black ghetto. New York, NY: Routledge. Wilson, D. (2018). Chicago’s redevelopment machine and blues clubs. New York, NY: Routledge.

Index

0–9 12th Ward, 146, 150 16th Street, 142 18th Street, 126, 165 22@Barcelona innovation district, 47 26th Street, 126, 131, 132, 151, 171, 173 26th Street commercial corridor, 126 32nd Street, 142 606 Bloomingdale Trail, 142, 143, 162 64 public schools, 112, 113 2001 national economic crisis, 30

A accumulation-by-dispossession, 13, 139 a city of businesses, 35 actually-existing neoliberal governances, 10, 179 administrative eviction, 78 Afirmación para una República Igualitaria (ARI), 31

Agency of State Property Management (AABE), 33, 35–37, 76, 80, 82 Agreement for the Urbanization of the Villas, 81 Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 137, 151, 160, 162, 165 Alderman Danny Solis, 136 Alderman George Cardenas, 146, 150 Alivio Medical Center, 144 American Community Survey, 133, 148, 149 anti-blackness, 159 anti-conversion ordinance, 161, 162 anti-eviction campaign, 165, 174 anti-homeless, 34 anti-immigrant, 34, 127, 132, 137 anti-social mixing, 34 Anya Roy, 87 a ravaged, depressed space, 117 Argentina, 12, 28, 29, 31, 35, 36, 54, 58, 69, 71, 72, 75, 79, 89, 90, 94 Arqueros, S., 45, 47, 53, 62, 182

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Sternberg, Neoliberal Urban Governance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21718-0

199

200

INDEX

Arts District, 33, 38, 39, 45–48, 50–52, 58–64, 180, 182, 183, 186, 190 Arturo Illia Highway, 69, 72, 80, 83, 95 Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia (AGIJ), 93, 94 assemblage of institutions, 5, 9, 33 a strong spirit of entrepreneurship, 141 B Back of the Yards, 128, 133 Baja Autopista, 95 Barracas, 47, 48 Barrio 31, 18, 19, 69, 70, 72, 73, 81, 89–98, 186, 190, 191 Barrio Chino, 56 Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica, 70, 81 Barrio Padre Mugica, 19 barrios populares , 40, 69, 72, 73, 75 beautification, 7, 32, 109, 145 Bentacur, John, 12, 14, 110, 130 Berwyn, 128, 133 best use of the property, 172 Black Chicago, 160 blighted, 8, 110 blighting effect, 135 Block Club Chicago, 18, 109, 137, 167 blue-collar jobs, 134 Blue Island Avenue, 165 BMO Harris Bank, 115, 164 Boeing, 110 Bracero Program, 128 Bronzeville, 110 Bucktown, 105, 147 building an inclusive and equitable Chicago, 20, 159, 160, 165 bureaucratic machine, 4, 81, 88, 93 Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BSNF), 108, 142

Byrne, Jane, 110 C cabecitas negras , 88 Cabrera, Francisco, 58, 64 Calle Necochea, 56 Cambiemos, 31, 82 Caminito, 54, 57, 58 Casa Rosada, 53 Casgrain, A., 11 Celotex asphalt factory, 134 Census 2010, 30, 117, 130, 137, 163 Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), 78 central business district, 58, 113, 127 Central Loop, 110 Central Park Avenue, 142 CEO David Casper, 164 Chamber of Commerce for the Technology District, 48 Chicago City Council, 136, 168, 187 Chicago Development Partners, 149 Chicago Housing Authority, 110 Chicago River, 126, 127 Chicago’s 25th Ward, 136, 143 Chicago Sun-Times , 18, 136, 149, 151, 171, 172 Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), 126, 164 Chicano movement, 131 Chinatown, 137, 143 Cicero, 128, 133 City Club of Chicago, 167 city-contributory communities, 117 class, 4, 5, 11, 12, 14, 28, 30–32, 41, 88, 90–92, 106, 107, 119, 130, 173, 174, 191 class making, 4, 41 clusters of economic activity, 45 commercial change, 182 Commercial Club of Chicago (CCC), 109

INDEX

commercial district, 132, 141 commercial gentrification, 12, 182 commodification, 3, 4, 8, 10, 27, 30, 35–38, 142, 193 commodify the physical urban landscape, 60 competitive neighborhoods, 115 condo conversions, 113, 130 Condor Partners, 149 Consejo de Gestión Participativa (CGP), 81, 94–96 consensual values, 50, 63, 64 consensus politics, 15 conventillos , 30, 53–56, 61, 62, 183 Cook County House Price Index, 147, 148 Cook County Jail, 126, 134, 139 Corporation Buenos Aires Sur, 33 Crain’s Chicago Business , 18, 113, 114, 132 Crawford Generating Station, 108, 150, 168, 170 Crawford Station, 108 create more responsible and business-oriented citizens, 6, 8, 111 creative districts, 15, 18, 19, 27, 33, 38, 45, 48–50, 52, 63–65, 70, 180, 181, 186 creativity, 15, 16, 31, 49, 63, 161, 186 Cristina de Kirchner, 35 Cullerton, 145 cultural diversity, 98, 191 cultural economy, 6, 7 cultural heritage, 58 culturally and artistically desirous beings, 59 culturally infused citizens, 186, 190 culturally rich, family-oriented community, with great food and shopping options, 141

201

culturally rich multiethnic space, 3, 107, 184, 193 cultural, touristic, and versatile artistic pole, 50 Czech, 125, 127, 165 D Daley, Richard M., 105, 106, 108–115, 119, 129, 135, 136, 159, 187, 192 decrepit, unlivable, and ravaged spaces, 188, 190 deindustrialization, 118, 128, 137 de-industrialized neighborhoods, 38 Department of Housing (DOH), 119, 161 Department of Planning and Development (DPD), 112, 133, 145, 164, 166 DePaul University, 109, 127, 144, 148, 159 Design District, 48 design studio JGMA, 149 Development Without Displacement, 143, 174 De Villa a Barrio, 85 Diaz-Parra, I., 11, 13, 182 Discount Mall, 108, 149, 165, 170–173 discursive spaces, 28, 37, 39, 71, 117, 146, 183–186 disinvested, 2, 4, 12, 15, 30, 32, 38, 39, 51, 56, 64, 97, 106, 116, 117, 136, 144, 187, 189 displacement, 10–13, 18, 29, 61, 63, 78, 95, 98, 108, 113, 119, 130, 131, 143, 146, 160–162, 165, 168, 169, 171, 173, 182, 190, 192 DiVirgilio, Mercedes, 94 dormant, 136, 137, 150, 169 Duggan, Brian, 162, 163

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E Eastern European, 125, 140 Ecker, Danny, 113, 114, 161, 192 Eighteenth Street Development Corporation (ESDC), 144 Elgin, 128, 133 El Hormiguero, 96 Emanuel, Rahm, 1, 2, 19, 105, 106, 108, 111–116, 119, 134–136, 140, 142, 146, 147, 149, 159, 165, 179, 180, 184, 187 Enlace, 133, 139 enterprise zones, 113 entrepreneurialize government actions, 6, 111 entrepreneurial rhetoric, 187 entrepreneurial space, 187 environmental harm, 127, 132 equitable economic growth, 119, 161, 162, 185 eradication, 75, 78, 192 ethnicity-infused beings, 4, 118, 141, 184, 188 ethnic minorities, 14 evictions, 34, 62, 74, 75, 78, 163, 166–168, 174, 183, 190 F Fair Notice ordinance, 168 fashion a globally competitive, consumption-oriented city, 6, 111 Federal Poverty Level, 163 Fernández, Diego, 85, 87, 91, 92, 95, 97 Fiesta del Sol, 126 financialization of public land, 37 FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate), 37 Fisk plant, 150, 169 forced eviction, 13 foreclosure crisis, 134, 139, 144

formal and urbanized areas, 180 formalization of housing tenure, 17 foster the city’s industrial base, 134 fragmented property ownership, 14, 182 Frente para la Victoria, 31 Fullilove, M.T., 10 Fulton Market, 113, 116, 188

G gang violence, 132, 163, 169 gastronomic enclave, 91, 92, 98 G8 summits, 111 gentrification, 2, 10–14, 18, 35, 106, 109, 110, 113, 114, 116–120, 128–131, 133, 134, 137–140, 142–144, 161, 166, 167, 169, 171, 181–183, 187 gentrification-led redevelopment, 10, 14, 106, 111, 117, 118, 187, 192 gentry, 11, 12 Ghertner, A., 11, 13 ghetto space, 71, 86, 92 global and competitive city, 105, 115, 184 Global North, 6, 10, 11, 13 Global South, 6, 10, 11, 13 Gonzales, Teresa, 138, 139 Gonzalez Redondo, C., 45, 47, 50, 52, 53, 56, 62, 182, 192 Great Chicago Fire of 1871, 127 Grupo de La Boca, 58 Grupo de Vivienda y Habitat de La Boca, 61 Guardian Properties, 162

H Habitat III, 1, 85 high-income households, 14

INDEX

Hilco Redevelopment Partners, 150, 170 historic landmark designations, 113 hoteles familiares , 53, 54, 183 housing affordability, 30, 62, 78, 108 Humboldt Park, 105, 128, 143, 147, 148 I Illinois Medical District, 126 imagined spaces, 3, 5, 8, 9, 19, 39, 56, 77, 85, 86, 184, 187, 188 impenetrable, 86, 190 impoverished and informal, 39, 45, 53, 64 impoverished and proletarian others, 59 inclusion, 15, 16, 18, 33, 35, 48–50, 63, 64, 85, 161, 164, 165, 186, 191 inclusive economic growth, 108, 114, 119, 120, 174 inclusive imagined spaces, 165, 192 inclusive revitalization, 119 inclusivity, 16 indigenous ancestors, 28 industrial clusters, 38, 45, 47 informal and unproductive lands, 180 informal housing, 12, 55 informality, 14, 87, 182 informal settlement, 1, 17, 40, 69, 76, 78, 93 infrastructurally deprived spaces, 190 InjusticeWatch.org, 168 Institute for Housing Studies (IHS), 127, 130, 144, 147, 148 institutional racism, 28, 160 Instituto de Vivienda de la Ciudad, 30 Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), 33, 39, 76, 77, 82, 181 International Bank for the Reconstruction and Development

203

(IBRD), 33, 39, 76, 77, 82, 98, 181 INVEST South/West Initiative, 119, 161, 164, 185 iron-fisted, 111, 112, 119, 192

J Jaramillo, S., 11–13 Juntos por la Villita, 171 JustCauseChicago.org, 167

K Kirchner, Nestor, 35 Kostner Avenue, 151 Kreanta’s Creative Cities conference, 50

L La Boca, 2, 3, 16–19, 38, 39, 45–48, 50, 51, 53–64, 180, 182, 186, 189, 190, 193 La Boca Propone, 62 La Boquería in Barcelona, 91 Lagunitas Brewery, 149 languishing properties, 137 Larner, W., 16 Larreta, Rodriguez, 1, 18, 19, 28–33, 36, 37, 40, 48, 69, 79, 80, 85, 86, 88, 91, 95, 98, 181, 186 Latin America, 10–14, 29, 84, 85 Latinos/as/x, 4, 128, 130, 131, 137 La Villita, 131, 144, 171 La Villita plaza, 140, 150 Law 3343, 83 Law # 4353/12, 50 Law 6129, 81, 83, 94, 96 Lederman, Jacob, 12, 13, 40, 49, 50, 61–63, 71, 84, 182, 183, 192 Lees, L., 10, 11, 14, 181 Lefebvre, 8

204

INDEX

Lightfoot, Lori, 19, 108, 113–115, 119, 159–162, 164, 165, 167, 168, 173, 174, 179, 180, 185, 187, 192 Lincoln Park, 105, 147 Lincoln Yards, 116, 188 Lithuanians, 127 Little Village (LV), 2, 3, 16–18, 20, 106–108, 117, 118, 120, 125, 126, 128, 131–136, 138–151, 161, 163, 165, 168–172, 174, 182, 184, 188–190, 193 Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), 150, 169, 170 Little Village Plaza, 171, 172 livability, 15, 49, 63, 161 livable, formalized, and robust space, 4, 40, 71, 86–88, 98, 186, 190, 191 Local Initiatives Support Corporations (LISC), 115, 139, 180 Logan Square, 105, 143 London’s Borough Market, 91 London School of Economics, 69 Lower West Side, 125, 127, 136, 140, 148, 160 Lutton, Linda, 112, 113 LV Quality of Life Plan, 139

M machine politics, 111, 114 Magnificent Mile, 131 material space, 7 Maurice Cox, 164 Mauricio Macri, 18, 28, 31, 32, 49, 77, 186 McCann, E., 16, 84 meat-packing plants, 54, 62, 128 Mercy Housing Lakefront, 151 mestizaje, 28

Metropolitan Tenants Organization, 168 Mexican, 125, 128, 131, 138–141, 143, 149, 165, 170, 189 Mexican Americans, 126, 130–132, 138, 139, 141, 142 Mexican descent, 125 Michigan Avenue, 132 middle-class, 11–14, 32, 34, 35, 53, 64, 107, 140, 191 Midway, 128, 133 Midwest Generation, 150, 169 Millennium Park, 109, 187 modernity, 89 Morell, Claudia, 112 Morressi, S.D. and Vommaro, G.A., 31 Mortenson Construction, 151 multi-colored homes, 54 multicultural and gastronomic space, 40, 186, 190, 191, 193 multi-unit buildings, 147 Mural Park, 149 murals, 126, 131, 140, 141, 165 N Near West Side, 128, 143, 147, 148 neoliberal, 2–11, 13, 14, 16–20, 27, 28, 30–35, 40, 41, 48, 49, 53, 54, 56, 63–65, 70, 77, 80, 83, 85, 95, 97, 105–108, 111–114, 116–119, 125, 126, 134, 135, 146, 147, 151, 159, 161, 179, 181, 183, 184, 187–189, 191–194 neoliberal globalization efforts, 3, 20, 184, 193 neoliberal urban governances, 2–6, 8, 9, 14–16, 18–20, 27–29, 31, 37–39, 45, 49, 63, 92, 106, 108, 109, 115, 128, 129, 165, 174, 179, 189, 191

INDEX

new privileged white, 64 no-cause evictions, 167, 168, 174 non-European immigrants, 32, 35 North Lawndale, 126, 148 Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, 111 not up-and-coming space, 117 Novak Construction, 149, 170–172 Novara, Marisa, 162 NRG Energy, 150, 169 O Observatorio del Derecho de la Ciudad, 62 old, isolated, and inactive areas, 184, 187 Operation Bootstrap, 128 overcrowded conditions, 96, 183 P Parque Indoamericano, 34, 78 Parque Patricios, 47, 52 participation, 15, 49, 74, 94, 161 Paseo Trail, 108, 117, 140, 180 Pilsen, 2, 3, 16–18, 20, 106–108, 110, 117, 118, 120, 125–151, 160–163, 165–169, 174, 182, 184, 188–190, 193 Pilsen Alliance, 143 Pilsen Historic Landmark District, 165, 174 Pilsen Neighbors Community Council (PNCC), 144 Pilsen Planning Committee for the Chicago-Quality-of-Life-Plan, 144 Planned Manufacturing Districts (PMD), 8, 19, 108, 116, 125, 134–136, 138–140 Plan of Transformation, 110 Plaza Solís, 56

205

policy mobility, 15, 16 Polish, 125 port of entry, 127, 128, 133 post-democracy/post-democratization, 15 post-industrial, 39, 64, 72, 117, 118, 134, 188, 189 post-political, 15, 16, 108, 160, 161, 165, 192, 193 post-political mode of governance, 160 private-public partnerships, 180 Property Market Group, 151 Propuesta Republicana (PRO), 31, 32, 34, 36, 75, 82 prosperous and orderly multiethnic space, 107, 138 public housing, 8, 30, 75, 110, 111 Puerto Madero, 29, 72 Puerto Madero Waterfront, 29 Q Quinquela Martín, 55, 59 R race, 4, 5, 7, 32, 36, 41, 90, 92, 106, 119, 168, 173, 174 racialization, 4, 14, 163 racially coded narratives, 138, 139, 172 railroad, 126, 128 real estate kingdom, 35 Registro Nacional de Barrios Populares (RENABAP), 40, 69 regularize titles, 96 Reifman, David, 112, 116, 135 relational comparative approach, 10 relationality approach, 17 relegated, 30, 190 rent control, 108 Resiste16, 62

206

INDEX

Resurrection Project, 144 Retiro, 36, 72, 74, 82, 87 revanchism, 32, 34 revanchist, 32–35 Rio de la Plata, 29 River Walk, 188 Rodkin, Dennis, 114, 159, 160, 162, 163, 166, 167 Rodriguez, M.C. and Di Virgilio, M.M., 11, 12 Rossi, Danilo, 77

S Sacramento, 126, 150 safe, accessible, and orderly multiethnic Latinx space, 145, 146 salvageable, 39, 136, 190 Sangamon Avenue, 142 San Telmo, 2, 4, 12, 13, 16–19, 38, 39, 45–48, 51, 53, 54, 56–64, 180, 182, 183, 186, 189, 190, 193 Save Discount Mall campaign, 174 Scheinfeld, Rebekah, 146 Scioli, Daniel, 31 Secretaría de Hábitat e Inclusión (SECHI), 71, 80 Secretary for Social and Urban Integration, 70, 77, 79, 80, 84, 85, 89, 90 segregation, 12, 105, 106, 116, 117, 133, 135, 187 Shai Lothan, 172 Silicon Valley, 47, 53 Slater, Tom, 10, 14, 47 small-unit buildings, 147 Smith, Geoff, 159

Snitcofsky, Valeria, 71 social inclusion and territorial integration, 38, 48, 71, 85 social integration, 1, 17, 18, 27, 30, 33, 38–40, 49, 50, 85, 92, 180, 189–192 socially integrated city, 38, 189 social mixing, 12, 35 socioeconomic segregation, 14 socio-territorial integration, 18, 38, 49, 70 socio-urban integration, 76, 79, 80, 93, 95 South Lawndale, 125, 131, 148, 149 South Loop, 110 South Loop rail yards, 127 southwest side frontier, 188 space, 3–5, 7, 8, 11, 14, 17–19, 31, 32, 34, 35, 39, 41, 48, 50–53, 57, 58, 62–64, 71, 73, 76, 80, 83, 85–88, 90–92, 98, 106, 107, 111, 116–118, 133, 134, 137, 139–141, 145, 146, 149, 150, 165, 172, 182, 184–187, 189–194 state-led evictions, 13 steel mills, 128 Stevenson Expressway (I-55), 126 stigmatized identities, 90, 165, 185, 192 stockyards, 128 structural adjustment policies, 12, 28 struggling communities, 105, 119 sustainability, 15, 161, 169 Swyngedouw, E., 7, 15, 119, 160, 161, 192

INDEX

T tango, 58, 61 target, 106, 130, 134, 140, 172 tax increment financing (TIFs), 8, 9, 110, 164 Technology District, 47, 52 Telerman, Jorge, 29, 30 tenement houses, 13, 30 the Paseo, 19, 108, 117, 125, 134, 140, 142–146, 149, 169, 184, 188 U underachievers, 138, 163, 188 underutilized, 1, 135, 136 Únete La Villita, 144 Unidad de Proyectos Especiales Urbanización Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica (UPE), 79 Unidad por el Control del Espacio Público, 33 Union Cívica Radical (UCR), 31 University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government, 113 University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), 109, 114–116, 118, 126, 160 University of Illinois at Circle Campus, 128 upzoned areas, 135 urban eyesore, 187 urban governance, 6, 9, 15, 16, 29, 49, 83, 84, 116, 159–161, 179, 187, 189–191 urbanization, 1, 6, 17–19, 27, 33, 36, 39, 40, 71, 74–77, 79–81, 83–87, 93–97, 181, 186, 192, 193 urban pariahs, 90 urban renewal project, 29 urban revitalization, 12, 13, 18 urban slums, 27

207

urban transformation of Villa 31, 33, 48 Usina de las Artes, 50 U.S. Steel’s Southworks Steel Mill, 128 usurping, 78, 88

V vecinos , 4, 41, 87, 95, 98, 186, 191 Vevea, Becky, 112, 113, 173 Vicky Romero, 166 Villa 31, 1–4, 16–19, 27, 33, 36, 39, 40, 65, 69–76, 78–83, 85–88, 90–92, 98, 180, 181, 186, 190–193 villas , 8, 40, 69, 71, 75, 79, 80 villas miseria, 69, 71 villeros/as , 4, 8, 40, 41, 71, 72, 74–77, 81, 87–92, 186, 191, 193, 194 vision of development, 85, 113, 192 visual cleansing, 83 Vitale, Pablo, 73–75, 80, 93–96 Vuelta de Rocha, 54, 57, 58

W WBEZ, 111, 113 West Loop, 105, 116, 143 white, 28, 32, 89–91, 128, 130, 160, 184 white and cleansed spaces, 187, 188 whiteness, 107, 138, 172, 191 white supremacist culture, 138, 172 white supremacist ideology, 89, 194 Wicker Park, 105, 110, 147 working-class, 12, 32, 34, 35, 53, 54, 60, 108, 113, 119, 125, 127, 128, 137, 142, 160, 163, 165, 166, 169, 182, 188, 194

208

INDEX

X xenophobic speech, 34 Y Yugoslavians, 127

Z zoning deregulations, 19, 125