Kevin Fox Gotham
Biographic Data
| ID | 238519 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kevin Fox Gotham |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kevin Fox |
| FAMILY NAME | Gotham |
| SIGNATURE | GOTHAM K F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tulane University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2571-0300 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 70 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 984 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 69 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Subjectivities of broken windows: Assessing the relationship among crime perceptions, sociodemographic factors, and built environment on neighborhood vacancy perceptions in New Orleans
Preponderant Relationships: Violent Crime, Premises Security Litigation, and Low-Income Housing
Assessing Resident Perceptions of Physical Disorder on Perceptions of Crime
This paper investigates whether perceptions of neighborhood physical disorder—measured by vacant lots, vacant buildings, and overgrown vegetation—influence perceptions of crime and perceptions of the frequency or magnitude of crime events. We use ordinal logistic regression to analyze individual-level and contextual-level variables derived from a survey of 401 randomly selected residents in seven New Orleans neighborhoods. Findings show that as p…
Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture, and Race in the Big Easy
Honorable Mention for the 2008 Robert Park Outstanding Book Award given by the ASA’s Community and Urban Sociology Section Mardi Gras, jazz, voodoo, gumbo, Bourbon Street, the French Quarter—all evoke that place that is unlike any other: New Orleans. In Authentic New Orleans , Kevin Fox Gotham explains how New Orleans became a tourist town, a spectacular locale known as much for its excesses as for its quirky Southern charm. Gotham begins in the …
Place or Character” of a Business: Environmental Criminology and Negligent Security Litigation
This paper describes the use and application of environmental criminology and social science methods in court cases involving allegations of negligent security. Negligent security is an area of premises liability that involves claims against business owners for damages or injuries on their property due to a lack of security precautions against reasonably foreseeable criminal actions. For decades, courts have embraced the view that the “place or c…
From the general to the specific: The influence of confidence and trust on flood risk perception
This study advances scholarly debate on the impact of confidence and trust on flood risk perceptions using data from a random sample of 403 residents in New Orleans, a U.S. coastal city with hundreds of miles of levees to protect the city from flooding. The research focuses on several predictors including specific trust measures of local, state, and federal authorities, sociodemographic characteristics, and experience with flood damage. Using ord…
Spectacle
Spectacle is a major concept scholars use to theorize and analyze emergent forms of urban redevelopment, entertainment, and tourism events and activities. This essay reviews current scholarship on the different conceptualizations of spectacle and highlights the burgeoning scholarship on the sociospatial impacts and consequences of the proliferation of entertainment venues and tourism‐oriented spectacles. Against monolithic conceptions of spectacl…
Assessing and Advancing Research on Tourism Gentrification
This article provides an overview and assessment of my concept of tourism gentrification. I describe my motivation for developing the concept and elaborate on the sources of inspiration for my theorizing of tourism as a major driver and outcome of gentrification trends. I next discuss the various scholarly reactions to my concept and delineate the ways in which researchers around the world have engaged my research to fashion new theories and unde…
Tourism and culture
This chapter examines the interconnections among tourism and culture by engaging several areas of scholarship, including the relationship between tourism and ethnicity/race, the rise of niche tourism, and constructions of authenticity in tourism. Culture and tourism increasing share similar themes, symbols, discourses, and interpretive systems. The chapter highlights the different processes by which tourism affects culture and how local culture c…
World's Fairs as Mega‐Events
World's fairs or international expositions are short term attractions officially organized by a nation‐state, with exhibits, pavilions, tourist venues, and other spectacular displays of socioeconomic progress, technological development, and cultural advancement. World's Fairs are exemplary mega‐events that have a spectacular character, mass popular appeal, and global significance. Unlike local festivals or small‐scale tourist attractions, mega‐ev…
Dark Tourism and Disaster Tourism
Dark tourism is the circulation of people to places characterized by distress, atrocity, or sadness and pain. As a more specific component of dark tourism, “disaster tourism” denotes situations where the tourism product is generated within, and from, the aftermath of a major disaster or traumatic event. Examples of dark tourism include guided tours to Chernobyl's Exclusion Zone in the Ukraine, to holocaust concentration camps in Europe, to war zo…
Megalopolis
Megalopolis refers to a cluster of densely populated cities stretching over a large region. Megalopolis (“the great city”) was the name given in classical antiquity to a strategic urban development that the Theban general Epaminon‐das “planned” and founded in rural Arcadia in 371 bce . The new city became the center of the Acadian (subsequently Achaean) League and led several battles against the Spartans, who burnt it down in 223 bce ; but it was…
Risk and Recovery: Understanding Flood Risk Perceptions in a Postdisaster City—The Case of New Orleans
Flood hazards are a serious and growing threat to the health and welfare of residents in cities and rural areas around the world. This cross-sectional study uses a sample of 383 residents living in seven New Orleans, Louisiana, neighborhoods to examine the effect of experiential, sociodemographic, and socioeconomic factors on flood risk perceptions. Findings suggest that respondents judge the level of flood risk to be lower than other types of ri…
Touristic disaster: Spectacle and recovery in Post-Katrina New Orleans
The Elusive Recovery: Post-Hurricane Katrina Rebuilding During the First Decade, 2005–2015
Antinomies of risk reduction: Climate change and the contradictions of coastal restoration
This paper engages sociological research on the political economy of the environment to decipher the contradictions and crisis tendencies associated with coastal restoration, using a case study of southern Louisiana. The paper explores the antinomies or contradictions of risk reduction measures (e.g., coastal restoration) in an extractive economy dominated by oil and gas production. Drawing on long-term ethnographic field observations and content…
Coastal Restoration as Contested Terrain: Climate Change and the Political Economy of Risk Reduction in Louisiana
Although many studies have examined the effects of structural factors and institutional interests on risk estimation practices, little is known about the political dynamics surrounding divergent responses to risk reduction measures. This article examines the political economy of risk reduction, using a case study of Louisiana's coastal restoration planning and decision‐making process. Specifically, the article draws on documentary evidence, long‐…
Dan Immergluck 2015: Preventing the Next Mortgage Crisis: The Meltdown, the Federal Response, and the Future of Housing in America . New York and London: Rowman and Littlefield
Re-anchoring capital in disaster-devastated spaces: Financialisation and the Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone programme
This paper contributes to scholarship on the relationship between financialisation and the production of urban space by examining the implementation of the Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone Act of 2005 (Pub. L. No. 109–135). From 2005 to December 2011, the GO Zone provided over $23 billion in tax-free, low-interest bonds and other tax incentives to individuals and businesses in the Gulf Coast area affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Drawing on gove…
Urban Revolution
The phrase “urban revolution” refers to the emergence of urban life and the concomitant transformation of human settlements from simple, agrarian‐based systems to complex and hierarchical systems of manufacturing and trade. The concept also refers to the present era of metropolitan or megalopolitan growth, the development of exurbs, and the explosion of primate cities or megacities. Archeologist V. Gordan Childe (1892–1957) coined the phrase “urb…
Kansas City and How It Grew, 1822–2011
James R
Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery
Limitations, Legacies, and Lessons: Post-Katrina Rebuilding in Retrospect and Prospect
Over the past two decades, federal block grants and spatially targeted tax subsidies have become popular forms of federal assistance to disaster-affected areas. This article provides an overview and critical evaluation of the impact of the Gulf Opportunity Zone and the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery program in the years after Hurricane Katrina. I focus particular attention on the limitations, problems, and inequality reinforc…
Crisis Cities: Disaster and Redevelopment in New York and New Orleans
This volume blends critical theoretical insight with a historically grounded comparative study to examine the form, trajectory, and contradictions of redevelopment efforts following the 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina disasters. Based on years of research in the two cities, Gotham and Greenberg contend that New York and New Orleans have emerged as paradigmatic crisis cities, representing a free-market approach to post-disaster redevelopment that is in…
Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development, Second Edition: The Kansas City Experience, 1900-2010
Tourism Gentrification: The Case of New Orleans' Vieux Carre (French Quarter)
This paper examines the process of 'tourism gentrification' using a case study of the socio-spatial transformation of New Orleans' Vieux Carre (French Quarter) over the past half-century. Tourism gentrification refers to the transformation of a middle-class neighbourhood into a relatively affluent and exclusive enclave marked by a proliferation of corporate entertainment and tourism venues. Historically, the Vieux Carre has been the home of diver…
Creating Liquidity out of Spatial Fixity: The Secondary Circuit of Capital and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Since the classic work of Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey, the 'secondary circuit of capital' has been a focal point for debate among critical urban scholars. Against the background of contemporary debates on financialization, this article investigates the institutional and political roots of the subprime mortgage crisis. Empirically, the article situates the current turmoil of the US mortgage sector with reference to a series of ad hoc legal and…
The Secondary Circuit of Capital Reconsidered: Globalization and the U.S. Real Estate Sector
The author examines the U.S. real estate sector to show how the state shapes global real estate flows and networks of activity through the creation and control of liquid resources. The analysis focuses on the role of state laws and regulations in the expansion of the mort-gage-backed securities markets and the development of real estate investment trusts (REITs). These institutional developments rep-resent a series of ad hoc state efforts to “del…
Marketing Mardi Gras: Commodification, Spectacle and the Political Economy of Tourism in New Orleans
Recent urban scholarship on the rise of the tourism industry, place marketing and the transformation of cities into entertainment destinations has been dominated by four major themes: the primacy of `consumption' over 'production'; the eclipse of exchange-value by sign-value; the idea of autoreferential culture; and, the ascendancy of textual deconstruction and discursive analyses over political economy critiques of capitalism. This paper critica…
(Re)Branding the Big Easy: Tourism Rebuilding in Post-Katrina New Orleans
This article draws on primary and secondary data to provide insight into the processes and conflicts over efforts to brand New Orleans as an entertainment destination from the 1990s to the present. The author identifies the key actors and organized interests involved in branding New Orleans, the rationale and logic of branding, and marketing strategies used to enhance place distinctiveness. The second half of the article describes the impact of H…
Urban Space, Restrictive Covenants and the Origins of Racial Residential Segregation in a US City, 1900-50
Many studies have examined the role of racial prejudice and discrimination in the creation of racial residential segregation in US cities. Yet few researchers have situated early twentieth-century meanings of race and racism within broader processes of urban development and the emergence of the modern real estate industry. Using a case study of Kansas City, Missouri, this article examines the organized efforts of community builders and homeowner …
Theorizing urban spectacles
In this paper Kevin Fox Gotham critically explores a number of urban festivals in the US city of New Orleans, namely Mardi Gras, the Jazz and Heritage Festival, and the Essence Festival (previous articles in City have looked at similar topics—see for example Tony Harcup (Vol. 4, No. 2) in relation to Leeds, and Kim Dovey and Leonie Sandercock (Vol. 6, No. 1) in relation to Melbourne. Gotham’s central concern is to develop a critical theory of urb…
Using Space: Agency and Identity in a Public–Housing Development
Recent critiques of conventional poverty research have highlighted the need to move beyond the conceptual limitations of “neighborhood effects” models and the use of the tropes of “adaptation” or “resistance” to explain the behaviors and actions of the urban poor. We use ethnographic field observations and interviews with public–housing residents to address these limitations in the poverty literature, assess competing explanations of poor people’…
Political Opportunity, Community Identity, and the Emergence of a Local Anti-Expressway Movement
This study builds on the “community studies” tradition in urban sociology by examining the interconnections among political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and strategic framing in the emergence and outcome of a locally-based movement. Traditional urban analyses contend that there must be an intimate bond of community identity among individuals for them to engage in neighborhood collective action and political mobilization. This article cha…
Narrative Analysis and the New Historical Sociology
While many scholars assert the importance of the narrative mode in historical inquiry, none have demonstrated how it is used specifically to analyze historical events and social action in processual, action-oriented ways. In this essay, we examine recent research on capital-state relations and urban development to demonstrate how political sociologists and urban sociologists are using narrative mode to examine the interconnectedness of human agen…
From 9/11 to 8/29: Post-Disaster Recovery and Rebuilding in New York and New Orleans
This article examines the process of post-disaster recovery and rebuilding in New York City since 9/11 and in New Orleans since the Hurricane Katrina disaster (8/29). As destabilizing events, 9/11 and 8/29 forced a rethinking of the major categories, concepts and theories that long dominated disaster research. We analyze the form, trajectory and problems of reconstruction in the two cities with special emphasis on the implementation of the Commun…
Toward an understanding of the spatiality of urban poverty: The Urban Poor as Spatial Actors
The last two decades have witnessed an explosion of empirical research on the role of space in group life at the same time scholars have lamented the under-theorization of space in sociology. In particular, mainstream poverty researchers have conceptualized space as a neutral backdrop against which action unfolds and viewed poor people's agency as passive and unreflexive. This article attempts to move beyond this space-as-container ontology and p…
Beyond Invasion and Succession: School Segregation, Real Estate Blockbusting, and the Political Economy of Neighborhood Racial Transition
Recent urban scholarship has questioned the validity, methodology, and assumptions of the invasion‐succession model of neighborhood racial transition but has yet to elaborate a framework that extends beyond a critique of ecological theory. In this article, I use the theoretical insights of the sociospatial approach and draw on census data, government documents and reports, in‐depth interviews, and oral histories to examine the racial transition o…
A City without Slums: Urban Renewal, Public Housing, and Downtown Revitalization in Kansas City, Missouri
Most scholarly efforts to understand the political economy of postwar urban redevelopment have typically viewed urban renewal and public housing as "housing" programs that originated with the "federal" government. Yet this view is problematic for two reasons. First, it fails to specify the key actors and organized interests, especially real estate officials and downtown business elites, in the programmatic design and implementation of urban renew…
Disaster, Inc: Privatization and Post-Katrina Rebuilding in New Orleans
This paper examines the problems and limitations of the privatization of federal and local disaster recovery policies and services following the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The paper discusses the significance of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 in accelerating efforts to devolve and privatize emergency management functions; the reorganization of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as a service purchaser and arranger; and the efforts …
Re-anchoring capital in disaster-devastated spaces: Financialisation and the Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone programme
This paper contributes to scholarship on the relationship between financialisation and the production of urban space by examining the implementation of the Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone Act of 2005 (Pub. L. No. 109–135). From 2005 to December 2011, the GO Zone provided over $23 billion in tax-free, low-interest bonds and other tax incentives to individuals and businesses in the Gulf Coast area affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Drawing on gove…
Coastal Restoration as Contested Terrain: Climate Change and the Political Economy of Risk Reduction in Louisiana
Although many studies have examined the effects of structural factors and institutional interests on risk estimation practices, little is known about the political dynamics surrounding divergent responses to risk reduction measures. This article examines the political economy of risk reduction, using a case study of Louisiana's coastal restoration planning and decision‐making process. Specifically, the article draws on documentary evidence, long‐…
Tourism from Above and Below: Globalization, Localization and New Orleans's Mardi Gras
Scholars currently debate whether tourism is a force of standardization that eradicates local cultures and traditions or whether tourism is a force of heterogeneity that enhances place distinctiveness. This article uses a case study of the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans to explain the connections between global forces and local actions in the development of urban tourism. I argue that the globalization and localization of Mardi Gras are oc…
Racialization and the State: The Housing Act of 1934 and the Creation of the Federal Housing Administration
Research examining the impact of corporate interests, state structures, and class contradictions on the state policy formation process has been dominated by three major theoretical perspectives: business dominance theory, state-centered theory, and Marxian structuralism. I argue that these existing perspectives pay insufficient attention to race and racial discrimination as a central component in the formulation and implementation of state policy…
Critical theory and Katrina: Disaster, spectacle and immanent critique
This paper uses the theoretical and analytical resources of critical theory to explore the processes and conflicts over efforts to present tragic events as spectacles, focusing on a case study of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent government response have intensified uncertainty and unpredictability, disclose a new insecurity in US cities, and showed how a predicted disaster could wreck havoc withi…
Framing the Urban: Struggles Over Hope VI and New Urbanism in a Historic City
Recent debate over the federal HOPE VI program has focused primarily on whether local applications have met administrative pledges to provide adequate affordable housing to displaced residents of newly demolished public‐housing developments. In this research we take a different direction, examining local processes of political mobilization and strategic framing around a specific type of HOPE VI redevelopment—one that includes construction of a bi…
Blind Faith in the Free Market: Urban Poverty, Residential Segregation, and Federal Housing Retrenchment, 1970-1995
In recent years, research on poverty and segregation has been organized within a dominant discourse that centers on the relative salience of racial discrimination or macroeconomic change as a determinant of concentrated minority poverty. In contrast, little sociological research has focused on federal housing policies and programs as important factors shaping racial patterns of poverty and residential segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas. Drawi…
Touristic disaster: Spectacle and recovery in Post-Katrina New Orleans
Mechanisms of mutation: Policy mobilities and the Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone
In this article I trace the mutation of the enterprise zone model into a post-disaster recovery tool, using a case of the implementation of the Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone in Louisiana. From 2006 to 2011, the GO Zone program provided tax incentives to individuals and businesses in the United States Gulf Coast area affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Drawing on government reports and analyses, I show that the implementation of GO Zone tax ince…
Dilemmas of Disaster Zones: Tax Incentives and Business Reinvestment in the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
Over the last decade, the U.S. federal government has increasingly turned to spatially targeted tax incentives to promote postdisaster revitalization. The logic behind this policy orientation is that targeting public subsidies to particular disaster zones will speed community recovery and encourage business reinvestment. To evaluate this claim, this paper uses the case of the Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone of 2005 that provided tax incentives to busi…
A Study in American Agitation: J. Edgar Hoover's Symbolic Construction of the Communist Menace
This study is a content analysis of J. Edgar Hoover's Masters of Deceit, a major non-fiction bestseller published in 1958. By using the theoretical insights of the Frankfurt School, Hoover's anti-communist treatise can be thematically analyzedas a specific type of propaganda dissemination: agitation. This study will isolate and explain five agiuuional themes employed to symbolically construct the Communist Menace: 1. The False Religion; 2. The Ap…
Narrative Analysis and the New Historical Sociology
While many scholars assert the importance of the narrative mode in historical inquiry, none have demonstrated how it is used specifically to analyze historical events and social action in processual, action-oriented ways. In this essay, we examine recent research on capital-state relations and urban development to demonstrate how political sociologists and urban sociologists are using narrative mode to examine the interconnectedness of human agen…
Race, Mortgage Lending and Loan Rejections in a U.S. City
The negative effect of neighborhood racial composition on mortgage lending has been documented in recent years in several cities, even after controlling for income, condition of housing and related neighborhood and housing characteristics. Lending industry officials maintain that the racial distribution of mortgage lending is the unintended consequence of profit-based lending activities. In contrast, community activists and civil rights groups cl…
Blind Faith in the Free Market: Urban Poverty, Residential Segregation, and Federal Housing Retrenchment, 1970-1995
In recent years, research on poverty and segregation has been organized within a dominant discourse that centers on the relative salience of racial discrimination or macroeconomic change as a determinant of concentrated minority poverty. In contrast, little sociological research has focused on federal housing policies and programs as important factors shaping racial patterns of poverty and residential segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas. Drawi…
Suburbia under siege: Low-income housing and racial conflict in metropolitan Kansas City, 1970-1990
This article examines racial conflicts over efforts to build low‐income government‐subsidized housing in Kansas City suburbs from 1970 to 1990. Drawing on public documents, housing reports and analyses, and local newspaper accounts, I examine how suburban residents have reacted to and organized against government attempts to construct housing for low‐income people outside the inner city. I argue that the mobilization of suburban Whites against lo…
Empowerment in Chicago: Grassroots Participation in Economic Development and Poverty Alleviation
Empowerment in Chicago asks and answers the hard questions about Chicago's early experience with the EZ process. It provides an overview and history of the Empowerment Zone initiative as an economic development strategy. It provides a wealth of information about economic growth, job development, quality of life, and citizen participation in Chicago's Empowerment Zone, Enterprise Communities, and other communities in the Chicago metropolitan area.…
Political Opportunity, Community Identity, and the Emergence of a Local Anti-Expressway Movement
This study builds on the “community studies” tradition in urban sociology by examining the interconnections among political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and strategic framing in the emergence and outcome of a locally-based movement. Traditional urban analyses contend that there must be an intimate bond of community identity among individuals for them to engage in neighborhood collective action and political mobilization. This article cha…
Growth Machine Up-Links: Urban Renewal and the Rise and Fall of a Pro-Growth Coalition in a U.S. City
Recent research examining post-Second World War urban renewal and redevelopment programs acknowledges the pervasive influence of progrowth coalitions and the ideology of “growth” in local politics and decision-making. Yet few researchers have examined the role of state structures, political interests of urban planners and city officials, and the feedback effects of past growth initiatives and conflicts in shaping subsequent growth strategies and …
Urban Space, Restrictive Covenants and the Origins of Racial Residential Segregation in a US City, 1900-50
Many studies have examined the role of racial prejudice and discrimination in the creation of racial residential segregation in US cities. Yet few researchers have situated early twentieth-century meanings of race and racism within broader processes of urban development and the emergence of the modern real estate industry. Using a case study of Kansas City, Missouri, this article examines the organized efforts of community builders and homeowner …
Racialization and the State: The Housing Act of 1934 and the Creation of the Federal Housing Administration
Research examining the impact of corporate interests, state structures, and class contradictions on the state policy formation process has been dominated by three major theoretical perspectives: business dominance theory, state-centered theory, and Marxian structuralism. I argue that these existing perspectives pay insufficient attention to race and racial discrimination as a central component in the formulation and implementation of state policy…
Critical Perspectives on Urban Redevelopment
This is the fifth volume in a series which studies research in urban sociology, this work is an analysis of race and ethnicity in urban areas
Come Lovely and Soothing Death: The Right to Die Movement in the United States
A City without Slums: Urban Renewal, Public Housing, and Downtown Revitalization in Kansas City, Missouri
Most scholarly efforts to understand the political economy of postwar urban redevelopment have typically viewed urban renewal and public housing as "housing" programs that originated with the "federal" government. Yet this view is problematic for two reasons. First, it fails to specify the key actors and organized interests, especially real estate officials and downtown business elites, in the programmatic design and implementation of urban renew…
Using Space: Agency and Identity in a Public–Housing Development
Recent critiques of conventional poverty research have highlighted the need to move beyond the conceptual limitations of “neighborhood effects” models and the use of the tropes of “adaptation” or “resistance” to explain the behaviors and actions of the urban poor. We use ethnographic field observations and interviews with public–housing residents to address these limitations in the poverty literature, assess competing explanations of poor people’…
Beyond Invasion and Succession: School Segregation, Real Estate Blockbusting, and the Political Economy of Neighborhood Racial Transition
Recent urban scholarship has questioned the validity, methodology, and assumptions of the invasion‐succession model of neighborhood racial transition but has yet to elaborate a framework that extends beyond a critique of ecological theory. In this article, I use the theoretical insights of the sociospatial approach and draw on census data, government documents and reports, in‐depth interviews, and oral histories to examine the racial transition o…
Marketing Mardi Gras: Commodification, Spectacle and the Political Economy of Tourism in New Orleans
Recent urban scholarship on the rise of the tourism industry, place marketing and the transformation of cities into entertainment destinations has been dominated by four major themes: the primacy of `consumption' over 'production'; the eclipse of exchange-value by sign-value; the idea of autoreferential culture; and, the ascendancy of textual deconstruction and discursive analyses over political economy critiques of capitalism. This paper critica…
Toward an understanding of the spatiality of urban poverty: The Urban Poor as Spatial Actors
The last two decades have witnessed an explosion of empirical research on the role of space in group life at the same time scholars have lamented the under-theorization of space in sociology. In particular, mainstream poverty researchers have conceptualized space as a neutral backdrop against which action unfolds and viewed poor people's agency as passive and unreflexive. This article attempts to move beyond this space-as-container ontology and p…
Hope VI, New Urbanism, and the Utility of Frames: A Reply to Melendez and Coats
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 …
Framing the Urban: Struggles Over Hope VI and New Urbanism in a Historic City
Recent debate over the federal HOPE VI program has focused primarily on whether local applications have met administrative pledges to provide adequate affordable housing to displaced residents of newly demolished public‐housing developments. In this research we take a different direction, examining local processes of political mobilization and strategic framing around a specific type of HOPE VI redevelopment—one that includes construction of a bi…
Theorizing urban spectacles
In this paper Kevin Fox Gotham critically explores a number of urban festivals in the US city of New Orleans, namely Mardi Gras, the Jazz and Heritage Festival, and the Essence Festival (previous articles in City have looked at similar topics—see for example Tony Harcup (Vol. 4, No. 2) in relation to Leeds, and Kim Dovey and Leonie Sandercock (Vol. 6, No. 1) in relation to Melbourne. Gotham’s central concern is to develop a critical theory of urb…
Hope VI, Section 8, and the Contradictions of Low-Income Housing Policy
We examine the HOPE VI and Section 8 housing programs in New Orleans, LA, to address whether they can be effective anti-poverty strategies. We conceptualize the housing system as a system of social stratification, arguing that recent policy shifts reinforce market dynamics and do not increase access to affordable housing. Our analysis suggests market-centered programs, together with sizeable cuts in federal assistance, are shifting many low-incom…
Tourism Gentrification: The Case of New Orleans' Vieux Carre (French Quarter)
This paper examines the process of 'tourism gentrification' using a case study of the socio-spatial transformation of New Orleans' Vieux Carre (French Quarter) over the past half-century. Tourism gentrification refers to the transformation of a middle-class neighbourhood into a relatively affluent and exclusive enclave marked by a proliferation of corporate entertainment and tourism venues. Historically, the Vieux Carre has been the home of diver…
Tourism from Above and Below: Globalization, Localization and New Orleans's Mardi Gras
Scholars currently debate whether tourism is a force of standardization that eradicates local cultures and traditions or whether tourism is a force of heterogeneity that enhances place distinctiveness. This article uses a case study of the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans to explain the connections between global forces and local actions in the development of urban tourism. I argue that the globalization and localization of Mardi Gras are oc…
The Secondary Circuit of Capital Reconsidered: Globalization and the U.S. Real Estate Sector
The author examines the U.S. real estate sector to show how the state shapes global real estate flows and networks of activity through the creation and control of liquid resources. The analysis focuses on the role of state laws and regulations in the expansion of the mort-gage-backed securities markets and the development of real estate investment trusts (REITs). These institutional developments rep-resent a series of ad hoc state efforts to “del…
Urban Revolution
The urban revolution refers to the emergence of urban life and the concomitant transformation of human settlements from simple agrarian‐based systems to complex and hierarchical systems of manufacturing and trade. The term also refers to the present era of metropolitan or megalopolis growth, the development of exurbs, and the explosion of primate or mega‐cities. Archeologist V. Gordan Childe coined the term urban revolution to explain the series …
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