Building in Stories: How Narratives Drive Development in a Small City in Central New York State

Abstract

In this article, we study the creation of two distinct but related developmental processes: a Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) and Police Review Board (PRB) in the small city of Geneva, New York, to understand the sociopolitical and applied processes by which different core narratives shape development initiatives and outcomes. Beginning with the premise that “communities are intrinsically storied” (Maines and Bridger 1992:363), these two examples demonstrate the range of how stories about a community’s past, present, and future compete with each other to empower some community-based conceptions of development to coalesce while blocking others. We find that both act as place-makers—one through tangible construction and the other by the establishment of a law. In focusing on the power of narratives, these examples show how narratives drive contested interests and shape constructed resources through access to political, social, and cultural power in a small city in Central New York State.