1. Agenda Announcements (lots!) Poetry/Discussion
Key points from Campanella and discussion
Debates/Dialectical Reasoning:
Public Housing
Historic Preservation

2. Schedule for Weeks 6 and 7 For Thursday: No Class/No Office Hours
Screen Land of the Dead before Tuesday (on reserve at the library)
For Tuesday:
OPTIONAL Reading: Excerpt from Zone One (on the blog)
For Thursday, 11/13:
Listen to the NPR story (and read the page).
Read the “Executive Summary” of Portland’s Gentrification Study (and look at the maps and data)
Blog post due

3. Next Thursday Blog Post
Step 1: Find a news article related to your research paper and post it to the course blog
Step 2: Write a 2-3 sentence summary of the article
Step 3: Then, in a new paragraph, write a critical analysis of the story:
Who’s the audience?
What assumptions does the writer make?
What does the writer seem to think about gentrification?
Post should be words

4. End-of-Term Assignment Schedule
Revised Deadlines:
No need to post revised anything to the course blog
Annotated Bibliography: Due Friday, 11/21 (Week 8)
Final Paper: Due Wednesday, 12/10 (Finals Week)
Last three quizzes:
Blog post 3, due Thursday, 11/13 (Week 7)
In-Class Quiz: Tuesday, 11/25
Blog post 4, due Thursday, 12/4

5. Mid-Term (?) Survey Three questions: Things to think about:
What’s going well?
What could be improved?
Any other comments?
Things to think about:
How class time is apportioned, or subjects you’d like to spend more or less time on
How class discussion works
Pacing of the class
My feedback on your writing assignments
Format of the assignments and quizzes
Do it by Sunday, 11/9, get .5 points extra credit

6. Campanella’s Taxonomy of Gentrifiers
(1) “gutter punks”
From the comments: “gutterpunks don't play a role. They will squat anywhere there is a vacant building near an active part of town”
(2) hipsters
“openly regret their role in paving the way for phases 3 and 4, and see themselves as sharing the victimhood of their mostly black working-class renter neighbors”
(3) “bourgeois bohemians”
“Free-spirited but well-educated and willing to strike a bargain with middle-class normalcy”
(4) the bona fide gentry
“look askance at the hipsters and the gutter punks, but otherwise wax ambivalent about gentrification and its effect on deep-rooted mostly African-American natives.”

7. No Children?
“Lack of age diversity and a paucity of “kiddie capital”—good local schools, playmates next door, child-friendly services—are the hobgoblins of gentrification in a historically familial city like New Orleans. Yet their impacts seem to be lost on many gentrifiers. Some earthy contingents even expresses mock disgust at the sight of baby carriages—the height of uncool—not realizing that the infant inside might represent the neighborhood’s best hope of remaining down-to-earth.”

8. Cultural Impact of Gentrification
“Transplants are definitely changing New Orleans culture. They are much more secular, less fertile, more liberal, and less parochial than native-born New Orleanians. They see local conservatism as a problem calling for enlightenment rather than an opinion to be respected . . .
. . . Unless gentrified neighborhoods make themselves into affordable and agreeable places to raise and educate the next generation, they will morph into dour historical theme parks with price tags only aging one-percenters can afford.”

9. From the Comments . . .
“I have a problem describing as "gentrification" middle-class white people moving back to neighborhoods that were initially settled by middle-class white and black people, but that became slums after white flight in the 1970s. To me, that is recovery, plain and simple I don't care HOW LONG these properties were serving poor populations as inadequate housing, they are being returned to their intended purpose.”
“I think it can not be more overstated that the reality of the situation is that for over 300 years New Orleans has occupied by non-natives This country is only a country because of 'gentrification.’”

10. As the manufacture moves away, the factories that don't crumble, become lofts, the Managers die off or move or fade and the large properties get chopped into apartments with 6 or 7 electric meters. So who moves into the poorer neighborhoods? Gay men and women. (by large, gay men). There is nothing negative in this to me. Gay men see the value of the neighborhood and defend their own value against blanket judgements of character based on social stupidity. They befriend and respect my gay black students who deal with all of the homophobic bullshit in their own social community . . .
. . . Who do you think is the greater threat? naive kids who generally want to love this place and contribute something or some real estate developer asshole born and raised here, willing to sell their born and raised neighbor out for a quick buck?”

11. Impact of Katrina Recovery workers as first-wave gentrifiers
The “casual racism of charity work” (Gluck “Race, Class, and Disaster Gentrification”)
Who decides what will be rebuilt?
Challenges of doing a public participation project after a disaster
Where do resources for rebuilding go?
Often to homeowners, new businesses Supportive of gentrification already in progress

12. Lafitte Housing Project (1941 – 2008)

13. Lafitte Housing Project Demolition (2008)

14. Lafitte Today: The face of HOPE VI/New Urbanist design

15. Public Housing Discussion
Why is public housing important to discussions of gentrification?
What are the pros and cons of the old model of public housing? The pros and cons of the new (HOPE VI) model?
What would an ideal affordable housing plan look like to you?
On the Lafitte Housing Project Redevelopment:
Mayor Mitch Landrieu: "We're building it back better than it ever was before and the way it always should have been.”
Displaced resident: "I'd like to stay, but I've got to move."

16. Public Housing Debate
Did the City of New Orleans do the right thing by remaking the Lafitte Housing projects?

17. Historic Preservation
“To the preservationist and gentrifier, individual historic structures and neighborhoods of such structures are valuable assets on the urban landscape . . .
. . . Longer-term residents and community activists, by contrast see themselves and their culture as the precious resource, believing that preservation must include efforts to improve residents’ quality of life, create economic opportunities, and protect and foster local cultural traditions” (126).
“Preserving distinguished architecture and well-constructed neighborhoods can be one of the best ways for real estate to hold its value. Places that look like they were once prosperous send a message that they could be again.”
Lydia DePillis:

18. Historic Preservation Debate
Should cities encourage historic preservation, even if it contributes to rising housing costs and gentrification?

19. Reminder: Schedule for Weeks 6 and 7
For Thursday: No Class/No Office Hours
Screen Land of the Dead before Tuesday (on reserve at library)
For Tuesday:
OPTIONAL Reading: Excerpt from Zone One (on the blog)
For Thursday, 11/13:
Listen to the NPR story (and read the page).
Read the “Executive Summary” of Portland’s Gentrification Study (and look at the maps and data)
Blog post due