Category: WK7: Gentrification (Reclaiming the City)

This week the reading we primarily engaged with is by Laura R. Barraclough, titled “South Central Farmers and Shadow Hills Homeowners: Land Use Policy and Relational Racialization in Los Angeles.” As the title states, this article focuses on the social movements of the South Central Farmers, who fought to defend the fourteen-acre community garden, in conversation with a social movement much more north in Los Angeles, particularly in the San Fernando Valley, which is the Shadow Hills homeowners. The two social movements as articulated by Barraclough give us an understanding of urban planning and how land use policies reify the “reproduction of racial categories” (167). The article also discusses not only how land use policies shaped the realities of these communities, but also how the media reinforced some of these narratives as a majority of the coverage was given to the South Central Farmers.  A quote that I think really summarizes the relational racialization and its impacts on the communities as a more broader process is the following; “The protection of privilege in one community, Shadow Hills, demands the concentration of poverty and pollution in another, South Central” (167) This quote helps us understand the relational racialization in this case as a process which understands the uplift of a community and the detrimental stakes in others. Furthermore, I think in reading this article what really stood out to me was the actual geography and location of the South Central Farm on 41st and Alameda Streets. When reading the street names in the article, I thought about it and had noticed that I most likely had been in that area at some point. To my surprise the location was blocks away from where my grandma and uncle currently live. I find it especially ironic, how the area has developed and its connection to land usage, as food production and distribution has made itself an industry in and surrounding that area, with a larger focus on mass distribution for places such as restaurants. I think the move away from community-sustaining uses of land is a clear picture of understanding the reproduction of racial and economic inequalities when it comes to projects on land development, sustainability, and usage, and broadly gentrification, as a larger racial project that prioritizes white and affluent communities. 

In the article, “South Central Farmers and Shadow Hills Homeowners: Land Use Policy and Relational Racialization in Los Angeles,” Laura Barraclough compares two distinct cases of flighting for your community in Los Angeles: the South Central Farmers who are fighting to be able to continue their community garden that allows low income families to sustain themselves and the Shadow Hills Homeowners who are fighting to pass a notion to increase the lot size of their homes to preserve their rural aesthetic. She argues that although the cases may look different on the outside, that the internal factors such as race, property, and economics unify them and show the difference that your demographic can make when advocating for yourself. 

These pieces relate to last week’s readings regarding the gentrification of South Francisco because they both highlight the unequal representation and distribution of white individuals in higher paying positions and in better living situations than POC. This relationship contributes to the disparities in housing and access to property highlighted by both articles. Although the articles do not deal with housing directly, they show how the government’s interventions are pushing people out of their community spaces that they have inhabited and maintained for years.

Something that caught my attention in this article was the issue with the youth basebath academy that they proposed to build in the Shadow Hills community. Specifically, their conscious strategy to use their community and homeownership as a way to mask their real issues concerning how the presence of minorities would bring their property value down. It is concerning that they felty free to openly discuss these ideas and put them on a handout where anyone could have seen it. Not only did they affect the youth’s ability to participate in recreational activities which is bad on its own but they also stopped people from accessing the affordable housing that would have been built.

Something else that caught my attention was how the Shadow Hills Homeowners used heritage as a way to defend their movement while using words that were in Spanish such as “ranchos” and “caballeros” that did not belong to their culture but to the people they did not want to move into or near their community

The reading, South Central Farmers and Shadow Hills Homeowners: Land Use Policy and Relational Racialization in Los Angeles explains the dichotomy in land usage and advocacy within two different identity groups. The central argument within the piece uncovers how current policies that affect how land is utilized and navigated is dependent on historical context. In the past, land distribution and accessibility were catered to White people and ensured that the land accessible to people of color, primarily Latinx communities in Los Angeles was embedded with uncertainty. An important concept includes: “The racialization of space achieves its own momentum, setting the geographic framework within which activists struggle to maintain or improve their social status and  quality of life” (171). This emphasizes that mobilization becomes difficult when systematically intentional barriers are placed to cause challenges when attempting to amend policies that disregard the communities established in land spaces. The comparison in socio-economic status between South Central Farmers and Shadow Hill is important to understand as it relates to the segregation Los Angeles has between the communities established there. This connects to the intentions to ensure that community groups are not integrated but separated by space. These discriminatory actions are focused on creating towns, cities, and areas of living/working beneficial for White middle-upper class people and disregarding the experiences of Asian, Brown, and Black people who live in Los Angeles. It was evident that areas with a large population of people of color were correlated to underfunded areas, lacked essential resources, and were isolated from successful areas. To ignore the dichotomies and refuse to question the establishment of land is a failure to understand how the United States attempts to maintain a separation of people in inexplicit ways. This connects to the dangers of gentrification as this initiative that is portrayed to focus on technology advancement, remodeling, and creation of a better place of living in actuality invests in a cheap area, displaces community members, and creates spaces for those that are wealthier. The context of advancements hides the harsh histories and present-day situations of housing displacement, barriers to community spaces/mobilization, and stories of those directly affected by unjust policies.

The article “South Central Farmers and Shadow Hills Homeowners: Land Use Policy and Relational Racialization in Los Angeles” by Laura R. Barraclough talks about how land policies and racial dynamics are shaping suburban spaces in Los Angeles. This is done through two case studies: one in the South Central Farm, a community-run agricultural space that is used primarily by Latino farmers, and Shadow Hills, a predominantly white semi-rural neighborhood. Barraclough introduced the topic of relational racialization in this article to explain how hierarchies are formed with regards to land policies and economic structures. South Central Farmers were in danger of displacement as the city was prioritizing commercial development over agriculture and the Shadow Hills homeowners were using zoning laws that privilege white to upper middle class individuals to maintain their simple urban lifestyle. Zoning regulations in The Shadow Hills community didn’t allow lower-income populations to move into the area. Barraclough’s analysis of the two communities shows how race and hierarchies are rooted in urban planning. Although the two communities were very different, they were linked through white homeowners, which marginalized low-income immigrants of color. One thing that stood out to me in these essays was the fact that Shadow Hills residents were able to use legal frameworks to help secure whatever was in the community and their own best interest, while the South Central farmers were struggling to get that same recognition even though their land had environmental and community benefits. This article also connects and contributes to previous readings of displacement across the US Communities of color are always facing land insecurity issues as a result of economic and political issues that are out of their control.This challenges the idea that the struggles about land were just relating to economics; they were deeply rooted in politics, whiteness as a property, and history. Despite the fact that the people were eventually evicted, this situation brought national attention to how land policies were racialized and started many conversations about how cities are going to give out the right to land and resources in a changing landscape that has become increasingly privatized.

The article “South Central Farmers and Shadow Hills Homeowners: Land Use Policy and Relational Racialization in Los Angeles” by Laura R. Barraclough explores the figurative conflict between farmers in South Central Los Angeles and the residents of the Shadow Hills neighborhood in Los Angeles. She talks about this conflict’s roots in the way that laws and regulations surrounding the development and use of land have been shaped, and how the city’s history of systemic racism and racial segregation has been intertwined with their land-use regulations.

The author gives context to the racial connotations behind the history of land-use laws in Los Angeles and how the racialization of land-use policy is still shown and present in modern-day Los Angeles. Historically, Black and Latinx communities have suffered from different laws, policies, and regulations in Los Angeles in regard to the way the city’s land is distributed, used, and developed. Things such as housing policies and zoning laws have more often than not had racist motivations or undertones that put minority citizens at a further disadvantage. 

The South Central farmers were a predominantly Latinx and Black community of urban farmers that operated within a specific designated space in South Central Los Angeles. In the mid-2000s, these farmers were forcibly removed from operating in this space, as the property was sold to a private real estate developer. The farmers were evicted from their homes, and the space was now catered towards the rich and wealthy. Meanwhile, in Shadow Hills, the homeowners of the upper-class neighborhood made lengthy efforts to maintain their neighborhoods stability and to preserve their zoning and land regulations. The conflict lies in the fact that the neighborhood in the middle of South Central was developed with the intentions of building something similar to that of Shadow Hills, displaying the clear financial and economic motivations behind the evictions of the farmers and the new development of the neighborhood.

The article’s specific exploration of the farmers’ fight and struggle is a symbol of the larger battle of overcoming the deeply rooted struggles of racism, displacement, social justice, racial and class discrimination, and gentrification. Farmers were pushed out of their home communities to make room for white, wealthier newcomers. This example is one of the many examples throughout the America’s recent history of the harshness and unfairness of gentrification. The farmers, who were lower-income residents and almost entirely Latinx and Black, were essentially pitted against upper-class white residents who had advantages in not only resources, but also in the government’s decision-making and catering.

I found this article interesting, specifically this example of the conflict between the South Central farmers and the suburban, upper-class Shadow Hills residents. It is interesting to read about different major examples of gentrification that are most often not talked about in the American nation-wide media or in school-courses of recent history and social studies. Overall, I hope that these types of key examples are taught more, as gentrification is an ongoing process and a goal of many governments around the United States that continues to cause the suffering of the lower class and the minority population in America.