Black Neighborhoods Research Articles

Evictions, large owners, and serial filings: findings from Atlanta

Evictions cause substantial harm to lower-income families and neighborhoods. We find that eviction filings include many ‘serial filings’, in which landlords file repeatedly on the same tenant. We analyze serial and nonserial filing rates at the property level, and the share of a property’s filings that are serial filings. Regressions on building, location, and neighborhood characteristics reveal factors associated with higher serial and nonserial filing rates and serial share. We find that the largest owners and larger buildings tend to have high serial shares. When looking at nonserial filings, which are more likely to result in tenant displacement, neighborhood race is a strong independent predictor; properties in Black neighborhoods have substantially higher nonserial filing rates, other things equal. Another key result is that sales in the prior three years have a significant, nontrivial positive effect on the nonserial filing rate, so that property turnover is a significant predictor of rising evictions. We discuss implications for policy and further research.

Changes in physical activity after building a greenway in a disadvantaged urban community: A natural experiment

Few studies have evaluated physical activity changes in response to active transportation investments in low-income disadvantaged communities. This quasi-experimental pre-post paired location design assessed physical activity responses to a 1.5-mile urban greenway constructed in 2013 along arterial streets in a poor, high-crime, predominantly African-American neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pre-construction (2011) and post-construction (fall 2014), systematic observations (N = 8783) and environmental audit data were collected at the greenway and a comparison area. Post-construction intercept surveys were collected at the greenway (N = 175). Secondary data sources included census 2010–2014 and crime rates. Post-construction, there were notable improvements in street and sidewalk design, however, conditions remained sub-optimal and crime remained high. Most greenway users resided in the neighborhood and were daily users. Systematic observations at the greenway found slight increases in non-walking MVPA after construction (running or bicycling rose from 4% to 9%) and MVPA that included walking-fast (rose from 16% to 18%). However, the magnitude of the increase was similar to the increase in MVPA observed at the comparison site, which suggested that intensity of physical activity did not change as a result of the greenway (p-value > 0.15 for adjusted interaction between pre-post and location). Greenways, absent comprehensive improvements to the built and social environment, may be insufficient to promote MVPA in very disadvantaged high-crime urban communities.

Resident Assistance, Police Chief Learning, and the Persistence of Aggressive Policing Tactics in Black Neighborhoods

While scholars have identified ways that racial conservatives exerted outsized influence on criminal justice policies, little attention has been paid to whether police departments have incentives to learn about and adopt reforms that reduce racial disparity. I present a game of imperfect information between residents and a municipal police chief to show that a chief’s inability to prevent officer behavior that residents perceive to be abusive, coupled with resident unwillingness to assist police in the aftermath of this behavior, creates an incentive for the chief to choose and learn about new policing strategies that rely less on resident assistance. This induces a bias in favor of aggressive over collaborative tactics in the police chief’s policy selection and learning decisions. Segregation and discrimination ensured that many black Americans lived in conditions that produced this result in the later twentieth century; thus, the model shows structural racism in local police policy making.

“Asking them and Protesting”: Black and Puerto Rican Civic Leadership in Philadelphia Neighborhoods, 1960s–1970s

ABSTRACT This article profiles three black and Puerto Rican neighborhood leaders of Philadelphia. Their civic efforts reveal a certain style of leadership that they used to navigate their communities through the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. They charted a middle path between identifying with the established power structure and pursuing purely oppositional politics. In addition to expanding our perception of civic leadership, these figures defy binary typologies of leadership style while demonstrating continuity at the local level. With diverse backgrounds and personalities, they created and maintained interethnic and cross-class alliances. Their accomplishments reveal how migrants could quickly become representative figures in their new communities. These leaders effectively mobilized a sense of shared group identity to build legitimacy among neighborhood residents.

Remixing as Praxis

Problem, research strategy, and findings: When Arnstein created the ladder of participation, local governments engaged predominately urban African-American neighborhoods through federally funded programs. Fifty years later, preservationists and heritage conservationists pursuing participatory engagement models in these communities find sustaining interest difficult. Absent from planning literature is guidance on how to ensure grassroots preservationists of color retain control during engagement. In this study we ask practitioners and scholars to consider the optimum approach to researching or preservation planning in this context. Through participatory action and ethnographic research, one of us (Roberts) helped design a hybrid forum-style symposium dedicated to preserving historic Black settlement heritage. As a researcher and symposium co-planner, I documented local preservation knowledge using questionnaires and performative storytelling while helping descendants of historic African-American settlements identify shared priorities and challenges. Findings suggest action researchers and preservationists must “remix” roles and the rungs of Arnstein’s ladder of participation to sustain and center stakeholder involvement when planning with marginalized communities. Remixing consists of strategically sampling, looping, and layering promising local knowledge with that of experts to support citizen-centered preservation planning. By centering culturally informed planning approaches and negotiating with stakeholders, professionals can create the conditions for participation that support sustained involvement. Symposium co-organizing and data collection catalyzed the ethical coproduction of knowledge and fostered ongoing research and collaborative projects after study completion.Takeaway for practice: Remixing as praxis offers a framework for engaged preservation and heritage conservation that reinforces citizen empowerment through identification and application of innovative practices rooted in local knowledge. Identifying local practices that foster attachment and break down the hierarchy between expert and grassroots practitioners is essential to achieving praxis.

How can the Million Man March be Living Green?

This article aims to connect the Million Man March of 1995 with Gloria Bond Clunie’s play Living Green through the death of Buddy. Clunie suggests that the dream of living green in her play Living Green can be achieved only through the sacrificial death of Buddy. Likewise, it is proposed that the goals of the Million Man March can be achieved at a community level through a ritualized sacrifice, which René Girard conceptualized in his discussion of mimetic desire. Despite the violent events and victimized deaths in the African American community in West Side, the Freeman family, inspired and encouraged by the March, decides to move to the black neighborhood. Their determined action is to make Buddy’s death meaningful and revitalize the black community in a peaceful way.

Over the edge: Trajectories of African-American middle neighborhoods in St. Louis since 2000

ABSTRACT The phenomenon of the middle neighborhood, those urban working-class neighborhoods that are, in Paul Brophy’s words, “not in deep distress but not thriving either,” has not been widely studied, particularly African-American middle neighborhoods. This article calls attention to the large number of such neighborhoods that emerged in the 1970s in the wake of White flight and examines the trajectory of those neighborhoods in St. Louis since 2000, showing how the great majority of these neighborhoods, after decades of relative stability, have seen devastating social, economic, and housing market decline since 2000. The article examines the roles of subprime lending and the foreclosure crisis, as well as accelerated suburbanization of Black middle-class families since 2000, as central factors in the decline; explores the effect of the decline on Black homeowners’ equity as well as the larger social and political configuration of the city; and suggests policy directions to address the decline of these neighborhoods.

Underwater: Resilience, racialized housing, and the national flood insurance program in Canarsie, Brooklyn

Resilience is a pervasive discourse for adapting to environmental risks, and one which the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) uses frequently, yet limited attention has been paid to the operationalization of resilience through environmental governance. This study uses the case of the NFIP's impacts on Canarsie, Brooklyn to ground resilience in the policy mechanisms and programs through which different visions of a resilient coast are enacted, the histories of uneven racial development in which these programs operate, and the impacts these programs have on coastal residents. Proposed expansions of New York City's flood risk maps combined with cuts to NFIP subsidies mean thousands of Canarsie residents who have never previously been required to purchase flood insurance will soon face mandatory premiums of $3000–$6000 per year. The 85% black neighborhood of Canarsie was targeted by more subprime loans in the 2000s than any other neighborhood in New York City, robbing many residents of housing wealth they might have otherwise used to shoulder flood insurance costs. Drawing on ethnographic research, I show that Canarsie residents have subsidized their plundered housing wealth with social reproduction strategies such as renting out their basements, setting up a contradictory situation in which Canarsians' financial resilience relies on spaces the NFIP deems a threat to physical and environmental resilience. The Canarsie case study ultimately demonstrates that the NFIP, by governing through the mechanism of household finances, stands to reproduce and accelerate existing racial inequalities in the housing market.

A preliminary study of a composite sleep health score: associations with psychological distress, body mass index, and physical functioning in a low-income African American community

ObjectivesAlthough multiple individual sleep measures (eg, sleep duration, satisfaction) have been linked to a wide range of physical and mental health conditions, scant research has examined how individual sleep dimensions may act independently or additively to influence health. The current study investigates associations of 5 sleep dimensions (duration, satisfaction, efficiency, timing, and regularity), analyzed separately and simultaneously, with psychological distress, body mass index, and physical functioning among a low-income, predominantly African American population. DesignWe constructed a composite sleep health (SH) score from the sum of scores, representing “good’ and “poor” ranges of 5 sleep measures (range 0-5). SettingTwo low-income, predominantly African American neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. ParticipantsParticipants included 738 community-dwelling adults (78% female and 98% black). MeasurementsActigraphy-based measures of sleep duration, regularity, timing, and efficiency, and self-reported sleep satisfaction. Outcomes included self-reported psychological distress, physical functioning, and measured body mass index (BMI). ResultsEach 1-unit higher SH score was associated with 0.55-unit lower psychological distress score (range 0-24) and 2.23-unit higher physical functioning score. Participants with at least 2, 3, or 4 sleep dimensions in the “healthy” range, vs fewer, had lower psychological distress scores. Greater sleep satisfaction was associated with higher physical functioning, and longer sleep duration was associated with lower physical functioning. Neither the composite SH score nor any of the individual sleep dimensions were associated with BMI. ConclusionsAssessing multiple sleep dimensions may provide a more comprehensive understanding of associations of sleep with psychological distress than assessing any single sleep dimension. Although no sleep measures were related to BMI in the current sample, analyses should be replicated in other samples to determine generalizability.

Transitional Moments, Mediators, and Alternative Modernities

Transitional Moments, Mediators, and Alternative Modernities

Spatial accessibility to pediatric primary care in Philadelphia: an area-level cross sectional analysis

BackgroundPediatric primary care visits are a foundational element in the health maintenance of children. Differential access may be a driver of racial inequities in health. We hypothesized that pediatric primary care accessibility would be lowest in neighborhoods with higher proportion of non-Hispanic Black residents.MethodsAnnual ratios (2008–2016) of providers to pediatric population were calculated by census tract in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Marginal logistic regression was used to estimate the independent association between neighborhood racial composition and access to pediatric primary care controlling for confounders.ResultsIn general, low access to care was associated with greater neighborhood disadvantage (e.g., SES, % poverty, % public insurance). After controlling for neighborhood indicators of disadvantage, risk of being in the lowest quintile of access significantly increased as the percent of non-Hispanic Black residents increased.ConclusionA new measure of pediatric primary care accessibility demonstrates a persistent disparity in primary care access for predominantly non-Hispanic Black neighborhoods.

Gardens and Green Spaces: placemaking and Black entrepreneurialism in Cleveland, Ohio

This paper presents a case study of Gardens and Green Spaces (GGS), a resident-driven, grant-funded project in Cleveland, Ohio working toward community change. Through both placemaking and entrepreneurial strategies, the main grant objectives are to effect change at the intersection of food (and agriculture), arts, and culture in Kinsman, a 96% Black Neighborhood on Cleveland’s east side. While community development (CD) projects are often designed by outside ‘experts’ who inform the scope and focus of grant-funded projects, this project is rooted in the hypothesis that a resident-driven approach to CD will lead to increased community buy-in and participation, resulting in more lasting and substantive community change. GGS works across sectors, integrating arts, culture, and food to promote placemaking and community-based entrepreneurial engagement as a path towards greater health, equity, and economic resilience. This paper argues that community-based and resident-driven development—although not without its own challenges—can result in more holistic community transformation across sectors, with the potential for greater resident participation, sustainability, and equity. The case study presented in this paper, including in-depth interviews and neighborhood surveys, is an examination of the pilot phase of GGS, and argues that both placemaking and entrepreneurialism represent a negotiation between market driven community development and a solely philanthropic model. It provides insight into more equitable and sustainable change that has the potential to shift the traditional paradigm of expert driven, or “outside-in” community development.

Mapping Memories of Freetown: The Meanings of a Native American House in a Black Neighborhood

ABSTRACTThe recent recognition of a twentieth-century Montaukett home in what has been considered a “Black neighborhood” brings into question the historical construction of race categories and boundaries, as well as the construction and production of history, giving us new perspectives on the histories of Long Island. Along with memories and other input from descendants and other community members, the authors use the methodologies of archaeology and cultural anthropology to understand relationships of kin, kind, and power in the Freetown neighborhood. In so doing, they interrogate and deconstruct the colonialist interpretations of the people and the way they lived their day to day lives. In this article, the authors unpack racialized histories as a method for framing their Mapping Memories of Freetown project, and shed light on the discursive relationship between constructed histories and lived experiences.

Retailers' Perceptions of FDA Tobacco Regulation Authority.

Research is limited on tobacco retailers' perceptions of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) tobacco regulatory authority overall, and less exists related to retailers in predominantly African-American or other racial/ethnic neighborhoods. We assessed differences in perceptions of the FDA's tobacco regulatory authority and barriers to compliance among retailers in African-American and non-African-American neighborhoods in Los Angeles, California. Overall, 700 tobacco retailer interviews assessed demographic characteristics and perceptions of the FDA. Retailers in African-American neighborhoods self-identified as Hispanic/Latino (43.9% vs 39.6% non-African-American), African-American (21.2% vs 2.6% non-African-American) or Asian (19.7% vs 19.5% non-African-American). Retailers in African-American neighborhoods were significantly less likely to perceive the FDA as a trustworthy source (p = .03; vs non-African-American), but more likely to report that they do not know the federal rules (p = .002), do not understand the federal rules (p = .004), and that tobacco companies encourage them not to follow the federal rules (p = .04). Tobacco control agencies can use this information about retailer perceptions to design education/training materials in order to increase trust, mitigate barriers, and enhance compliance.

The Tenuous Attachments of Working-Class Men

In this essay, we explore how working-class men describe their attachments to work, family, and religion. We draw upon in-depth, life history interviews conducted in four metropolitan areas with racially and ethnically diverse groups of working-class men with a high school diploma but no four-year college degree. Between 2000 and 2013, we deployed heterogeneous sampling techniques in the black and white working-class neighborhoods of Boston, Massachusetts; Charleston, South Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; and the Philadelphia/Camden area of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We screened to ensure that each respondent had at least one minor child, making sure to include a subset potentially subject to a child support order (because they were not married to, or living with, their child's mother). We interviewed roughly even numbers of black and white men in each site for a total of 107 respondents. Our approach allows us to explore complex questions in a rich and granular way that allows unanticipated results to emerge. These working-class men showed both a detachment from institutions and an engagement with more autonomous forms of work, childrearing, and spirituality, often with an emphasis on generativity, by which we mean a desire to guide and nurture the next generation. We also discuss the extent to which this autonomous and generative self is also a haphazard self, which may be aligned with counterproductive behaviors. And we look at racial and ethnic difference in perceptions of social standing.

Land of Opportunity: Anti-Black and Settler Logics in the Gentrification of Detroit

It is an increasingly common trope in anti-gentrification activism to claim that gentrification of Black neighborhoods is a form of settler colonialism. Although Native critics have pushed back against these metaphors as abstractions of, and false equivalencies to, the concrete conditions of settler colonialism, gentrifying discourse frequently draws on the language and logic of settler colonialism in narratives about the city of Detroit. In this article, I ask what it means that terms and logic that are being applied to a predominantly Black city were, and are, also used to rationalize and structure theft of land from Native Americans. Proposing that shifting white interests in Black land have led to “borrowing” of longstanding logics used to dispossess Native peoples, I argue that the reiteration of settler-colonial logics in Detroit to explain and justify gentrification manifestly both validates land grabs in the city and further erases the claims of both Black and Indigenous peoples to Detroit.

Equity Analysis of Proactively- vs. Reactively-Identified Traffic Safety Issues

Traffic safety issues often impede bicyclist and pedestrian trips, preventing potential users from realizing the benefits of active transport. Traditional active transportation safety analyses, however, take a reactive approach to traffic safety, only accounting for people currently walking or bicycling by analyzing crashes, injuries, and fatalities. This begs the question: which populations are most affected by traffic safety issues neglected by traditional crash analyses? To answer this, we developed a tool to proactively measure perceived traffic safety issues. We focused on child pedestrian and bicycle trips to and from schools in Denver, Colorado by measuring the number of children that would encounter roads perceived as unsafe. We converted these perceptions into barriers in a geographic information system network analysis to estimate trip suppression and used that as a proactive indicator of traffic safety. We finally examined—reactively and proactively—the socio-demographics of those affected via linear regression models and bivariate choropleth mapping. Results of both analyses suggest that negative impacts are borne disproportionately by low-income, low-education, Hispanic, and black neighborhoods. Proactive analyses results identified perceived safety issues in north and northeast Denver neighborhoods neglected by reactive analyses results. Findings suggest the inequitable distribution of traffic safety issues identified in past crash-based literature is graver than conventional reactive analysis would lead one to believe. By incorporating the proactive tool into traditional traffic safety analyses, we hope to better define the places and people that could most benefit from traffic safety improvements, thereby more effectively facilitating the benefits of walking and biking.

Maximizing order or harm? Arrests among a social network of people who inject drugs in a large urban city

Encountering the criminal justice system at the first point of entry---an arrest---is associated with heightened HIV and Hepatitis risk behavior among people who inject drugs (PWIDS). Intervening structurally through the criminal justice system impacts public health; therefore, determining arrest patterns is an important tool for risk reduction. Among a sample of 740 PWIDs, and their social network members recruited from predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Baltimore City, a third were recently arrested in the previous six months, and of those, the arrests were disproportionately African-American persons and characterized as nonviolent, i.e., drug possession/attempt to purchase (38%) and loitering (29%). Poisson regression models were built adjusted for age, sex, race, education level, homelessness, and monthly income after exploring bivariable characteristics of arrests using chi-squared tests. Active drug use was associated with a recent arrest (adjusted prevalence ratio: aPR 2.38 95% CI 1.6, 3.6), in addition to participants who recently reported attending a syringe exchange program (aPR 1.45 95% CI 1.1, 2.0). Our findings are suggestive of recent media coverage and burgeoning research revealing the prioritization of policing resources toward both communities of color and neighborhoods of intensified drug trafficking. Further research is warranted to contextualize the operationalization of criminal justice resources and the impact on community health.

Refusing to Be Governed: Urban Policing, Gang Violence, and the Politics of Evilness in an Afro‐Colombian Shantytown

AbstractWhat is the role of policing within urban contexts marked by economic dispossession, crime, and gang violence? This article grapples with this question by examining both policing practices and the strategies of resistance embraced by residents of El Guayacán, a predominantly black neighborhood in the outskirts of Cali, Colombia. I argue that policing is not only about repression but also about enforcing spatial‐racial boundaries and administering social death. On the one hand, targeting black bodies and black places as the problem of urban security provides police a spatial fix (to borrow from critical geographers) for broad anxieties around crime. On the other hand, the discursive and material production of unruly bodies and ungovernable spaces justifies state disinvestment, social abandonment, and police aggression against racialized others.

Forging a Consistent Vision: The People Who Shaped Manchester's Renewal, 1964–2014

ABSTRACT This article examines how Pittsburgh's Manchester neighborhood, a historic African American community located on the city's North Side, fought against macroeconomic forces and internal challenges to stabilize its population, improve its physical environment, and stimulate private investment over the course of fifty years, from 1964 through 2014. Manchester's transformation was the product of three key factors: (1) capacity in the form of strong, sustained leadership; (2) fealty to a long-term vision of the neighborhood as a stable and upwardly mobile African American community; and (3) control over land and resources, especially the involvement of the private sector, to bring the vision to life. These elements—leadership, vision, and resources—separated Manchester from other black neighborhoods as it became a national model for community revitalization over the course of fifty years.