HOPE VI, New Urbanism, and the Utility of Frames: A Reply to Melendez and Coats

Abstract

Based on our analysis of New Urbanist frames, we suggest that HOPE VI provides both structural and interpretive political opportunities to actors competing to frame the transformation of public housing. As a structural opportunity, HOPE VI alters public-housing debates by enhancing the possibilities for political action by economic elites in competition with other actors. As an interpretive opportunity, HOPE VI’s explicit embrace of New Urbanism supplies a novel and strategic vocabulary that actors can attempt to use to influence policy, alter political alignments, and raise the public profile and salience of particular issues. Although each of the participants we discuss wielded the linguistic tools of New Urbanism, the developer (HRI) was able to selectively deploy such themes most effectively to create and magnify critical local issues. Principals in the Urban Conservancy suggest that these claims and subsequent related analyses require more nuanced consideration along a number of important lines. Here, we take the opportunity to detail and respond to four questions we see as raised by Melendez and Coats. First, was the developer’s success in attaining approval for inclusion of a Wal-Mart superstore (under construction and projected to open in the fall of 2004) in the redevelopment of the St. Thomas site due to use of a New Urbanist frame or due to possession of superior resources/power? Principals in the Urban Conservancy contend that HRI’s deployment of selected, and arguably unorthodox, New Urbanist themes is far less relevant than the unrivaled political, financial, and organizational resources at its disposal. In other words, it doesn’t really matter what Goliath says, so much as what he can do relative to weaker opponents. Although we agree with this basic assessment, we also contend that how Goliath uses his superior resources matters for understanding contemporary urban renewal and how it differs in process, if not outcome, from earlier eras of urban renewal. From this perspective, the validity and consistency of the developer’s New Urbanist claims is less important than HRI’s capacity to anticipate, co-opt, and obfuscate related claims by opposition groups. In this sense, the developer didn’t really need to mobilize support with