Editor’s note: This post is an excerpt from “A Good Reputation: How Residents Fight for an American Barrio,” by Elizabeth Korver-Glenn and Sarah Mayorga.
The authors will be in conversation with Kinder Institute Director Ruth N. López Turley at the Kinder Institute Forum on March 5. Register here.
Noting it was “home to one of Houston’s strongest and deepest barrio cultures,” the article highlighted the neighborhood’s then-newly arrived light-rail system and “outstanding taquerias” as draws for these so-called pioneers. Although the article was careful to state that Northside “still has its issues, from crime to a shortage of retail,” it nevertheless claimed that “residents can take advantage of the revival in progress ... to the valiant go the spoils: two- and three-bedroom houses minutes from the heart of Houston for under $200,000.”
Northside: a (re)developing barrio
For at least ten years, a variety of stakeholders have been forecasting Northside’s redevelopment, gentrification, and “transition.” This includes some Latinx Northsiders who have actively worked to support redevelopment. But the events forecast in these accounts have largely not happened to date. Some new housing stock has appeared and older restaurants have shuttered, but new restaurants have also come and gone and old restaurants have remained. Most importantly, these forecasts of transition (which we ask, transition to what, exactly?) leave out Northsiders who are happy with their neighborhood, treasure its history, and want to cultivate what is already there. If there is development, these residents also want to make sure that the benefits accrue to the people who already live there.
Urban barrio renewal or redevelopment — one of the modalities of racial capitalism — has a long history in the United States. As part of the broader history of racialized urban space, barrios, like Black neighborhoods and so-called ghettos, have long been segregated, constructed as poor and disadvantaged, and marginalized. Previous research shows how barrios have fared in the broader context of racialized urban (re)development processes. The vibrant social and economic lives of barrios have been “destroyed, partially dismantled, and/or excluded entirely from the benefits of redevelopment programs.” Because of their subordination in US racial-economic hierarchies, barrios are precariously positioned — they experience extractive development and their residents experience displacement. Indeed, Latinx neighborhoods, alongside Black communities, have historically “absorbed the worst abuses associated with urban reconstruction.”
Urban planners, banks, real estate professionals, and others have used neighborhood reputation and racial-economic meaning making to enact urban redevelopment, renewal, and reconstruction. Research has repeatedly demonstrated that redevelopment benefits the financiers, developers, and other agents of racial capitalism who facilitate development. Long-standing debates in urban studies show that both consumer demands and profitability for developers shape the urban landscape and promote gentrification. Some of this work suggests that neighborhood reputation shapes development decisions — developers decide where to build, at least in part, on the basis of neighborhoods’ perceived desirability to prospective White consumers. Agents of racial capitalism have constructed barrio reputations as stigmatized, unattractive, or dangerous to justify Latinx residents’ displacement and dispossession. But at times, these agents of racial capitalism have also imagined these neighborhoods as desirable to future White residents, often given the area’s proximity to other White neighborhoods or central business districts. At these points, they have used a stigmatized neighborhood reputation to justify working toward a new, desirable neighborhood reputation.
Yet as we show throughout our book, in neighborhoods like Northside, agents of racial capitalism do not only take the form of outsider White stakeholders. Nor are agents of racial capitalism the only ones who wield neighborhood reputation to influence neighborhood processes. How, then, does urban redevelopment unfold in neighborhoods where neighborhood reputation is a site of conflicting orientations?
We find that residents with a “racial capitalist” orientation welcomed development intended to totally reshape Northside, as they yearned for a future that looked very different from Northside’s present. Given their ambivalence about Northside’s present, they did not see any problem with the short-term pains of development, such as business closures. In contrast, those with a “bienvenida” orientation imagined a future Northside that sustained aspects of its past and present, building on its existing strengths and charm. They were as concerned with the harm neighborhood development produced in the present, such as displacement, as they were excited by the promises of new amenities.
The racial capitalist habitus associates proximity to Whiteness and distance from Blackness with progress. This alignment of progress with development obscures how barrio development is often extractive and exploitative, leaving poor and working-class residents of color behind. There are indeed beneficiaries to this kind of development, but they are rarely community members, as previous research has also shown. The second orientation, the bienvenida habitus, challenges the first. It centers care and preservation of the neighborhood’s existing identity and institutions to support its often-marginalized residents and rejects development’s harms as necessary for barrio growth.
In Northside, the Houston METRO light-rail extension of the Red Line and a smattering of nonprofit and for-profit housing developments were the key sites around which residents framed their attitudes toward redevelopment. By speaking with Northside residents, we learned how these competing ideas took shape in more detail.
Deliberating development
Perhaps surprisingly given residents’ disagreements over Northside’s past and present, development appealed to almost everyone in Northside. Curbs, grocery stores, affordable housing, coffee shops—residents from both neighborhood reputation orientations discussed all types of development they wanted to see in the neighborhood. They differed, however, on the specifics of what they wanted built and the price they were willing to pay for it.
Antony, a thirtysomething Latino professional, viewed the rail as a tool for development, which he believed would be only beneficial for Northside:
I think from a community development point of view, [the rail]’s a huge opportunity for the area. And I’m hoping that the community recognizes that and takes advantage of it. I think it’ll be interesting to see how it’s gonna turn out. ... So, I think that if somebody were to come in ... with the goal of ... developing the community, ... they’re gonna find that the rail is gonna make things easier and ... create better opportunities.
Rather than bring outsiders to existing businesses, Antony viewed the presence of the rail in the barrio as a potential catalyst for new commercial and residential development to the neighborhood. More business and housing development, in his view, was crucial for a better barrio. Antony, in contrast to most respondents, had only recently moved to Northside.
Alma, a Latina homeowner, perceived potential changes to the barrio due to the light rail as a positive:
I think that it [the light rail] brought down a lot of businesses, just the businesses around there. So what it’s done so far? I think it’s been a negative impact on the, the surrounding businesses. But I guess what it did, it cleaned house.
Alma believed that the light rail had “cleaned” up the barrio by forcing some “bad” local businesses to close. Although she perceived that some “good” businesses had also been affected, many “bad” businesses, including bars, had been closed, purged from the barrio’s fabric. In this way, we see the logic of progress justifying the closing of some “good” businesses as a type of capitalist collateral damage.
Others, including Jaime, believed the rail and other forms of redevelopment would buttress Houston’s reputation as well as Northside’s:
I can’t wait for that thing to come zooming down …. you seem so backass-wards compared to all the other major cities out there and I’m getting tired of hearing it …. "Why doesn’t Houston have a rail?” ’Cause people love their cars. “Well, stop loving your cars ...” You know … I want Houston to be measured the way it should be measured, with all … the top cities in the world. And having a mass transit, and we don’t have it, because of our damn cars and our addiction … to driving.
In addition to perceiving the rail as necessary for Houston’s progress, Jaime understood it as a tool in barrio development. Jaime said he thought outsiders see Northside as a “ghetto” and he agreed with them. He was excited to see development unfold once the rail began to service the neighborhood.
Norma was pleased with the development in Northside, although she really wanted the neighborhood to keep its charm:
I don’t think as many people want to [leave Northside] now, because now it’s sort of trendy now, and everybody wants to come and live here. But the housing market’s getting so expensive! ... and I think my biggest quest is how do we keep some of this flavor without losing all of it and it becoming not Northside. ... I mean it’s ... the real quirky ... sort of things. How can we keep all that while still building it up — I don’t want it to be Midtown, I don’t think anybody does.
Norma worried about the already-rising prices in the neighborhood and the potential loss of barrio “quirkiness,” outcomes she believed would follow redevelopment. Yet she acknowledged those potential casualties as necessary steps on the route to neighborhood progress.
In contrast, Northsiders who anchored their perceptions of and engagement with neighborhood redevelopment in the bienvenida habitus, framed the barrio as a lovely, welcoming place and home. They viewed the under-construction light rail and barrio (re)development more broadly as a potential threat for the neighborhood and its residents.
Elena, who constructed the barrio as “nice,” “pleasant,” and “safe,” among multiple other positive descriptors, was actively attached to several of the barrio’s located institutions, including some that were stigmatized by other Latinx Northsiders. When asked about development in the barrio during her interview, Elena said that she believed that property values would inevitably displace lower-income residents, even as it brought amenities for people like her. She explained:
I kind of like seeing new things coming up in our neighborhood, although ... I can envision that a lot of people — once a place becomes popular, like say the Heights. … [T]hat’s the hard part about development, taxes go up, property values go up — which is a good thing, but at the same time people that may be our renters, or people that they won’t be able to afford to live there … they’ll be moving out. So that’s kind of a hard thing to see.
For Elena, development would have a particularly negative cost for neighborhood renters, who would be unable to afford the rising rents and would have to move out. This was a form of future neighborhood change that she deeply regretted, speaking collectively and possessively of barrio renters as “our renters.” In contrast to Norma, for instance, who spoke about the possibility of losing “quirkiness” in the Northside but otherwise worked to redevelop the barrio, Elena worried about the people she knew who might be displaced and expressed sadness at seeing some current residents leave.
Mexican American renter Gabriela similarly was excited about development but saddened by the rising costs she anticipated would come with it. She explained that she hoped to buy in the area one day:
So the redevelopment all started, and I think it’s a great thing, but I don’t like — I think it’s a great thing ’cause a higher-level income is, are moving in. The bad thing is that other people are moving out. Like people that grew up here, their parents live here, they’re moving out. And so I think that’s kind of sad. And I’m hoping when I clear all my credit up that I can still buy a piece and live here ’cause I love it here, I really do. I love being in the Loop, I love being close to downtown, I love being able to get on the buses to downtown. My kids and I, we would make field trips and go downtown and just go to the skyscrapers and we would go downtown to the tunnel system and so I’m kind of glad about the development, but I’m kinda sad that so many people are being pushed out.
Eric, a Mexican American retiree in his sixties, was similarly concerned with displacement. He blamed the light rail, although he also praised Avenue CDC for its creation of affordable housing:
I don’t particularly care for the light rail. I don’t think it’s gonna help the community. It’s gonna change it, it’s gonna, I guess to a certain extent it’s gonna improve it, because you’ll have more resources in the community. It’ll have more resources. Probably have more stores, probably eventually get a better library, maybe even better schools. But it’s gonna displace some of these folks. As far as the development, one of the things that it has done though, like with Avenue, and some of these other nonprofits, they’re buildin’ affordable, quality homes. They’re not buildin’ any shacks. So a lot more folks can afford to buy a home for the first time.
The perspectives of Eric, Gabriela, and Elena show that development was very popular in Northside. However, not everyone was as equally concerned about the consequences of development. Those who embodied the racial capitalist habitus saw the changes to Northside as a good and even necessary thing. Those who embodied a bienvenida habitus expressed simultaneous excitement and concern, particularly about the displacement of longtime residents. These perceptions also shaped the way that residents interacted with development efforts in the neighborhood.
Excerpted from “A Good Reputation: How Residents Fight for an American Barrio” by Elizabeth Korver-Glenn and Sarah Mayorga, published by the University of Chicago Press. © 2024 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
The views, information or opinions expressed in Urban Edge posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research.
