The sedimentation of whiteness as landscape

Bibliographic Data

ID4475366
AuthorsA L Brand (0000-0002-1004-6892, University of California, Berkeley, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume40
Issue2
Pages276-291
Publication date2022-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/02637758211031565
OpenAlexW3184293602
LanguageEN
Citations received22
References cited55

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, one of the axioms of a "just recovery" was to redevelop the city's historic high ground. While the call to limit the city's footprint problematized low-lying geographies, the majority of which were Black, it ignored Lakeview, a low-lying, predominantly white neighborhood devastated by Katrina. Despite its vulnerability to flooding, Lakeview has thrived in the years following Katrina. Property values are rising and public and private investments are rolling in. Lakeview's unquestioned future and its (re)valorization in the wake of the storm speak to how racial regimes of property have informed the reconstruction of the city and to the role that urban planning plays in constructing and valorizing landscapes of whiteness. This paper interrogates the ongoing lives of whiteness, asking how whiteness operates as an invisible substrate within planning and property regimes. Utilizing the concept of sedimentation, it explores how planning takes part in concretizing racial formation processes and suggests that the project of sustaining white geographies lays bare deeper questions about the ways that planning enacts multi-scaled, racialized regimes of property. This article excavates the emergence of Lakeview from the backswamps of a delta city to examine the unquestioned valorizations of whiteness as a landscape

Civil engineering · Environmental ethics · Property (philosophy · Sociology · Urban planning · White (mutation · Engineering · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities · Homelessness and Social Issues · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies

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