Remember, this is Brightmoor

Historical Violence, Neighborhood Experiences, and the Hysteresis of Street Life

Bibliographic Data

ID6404130
AuthorsSharon Cornelissen (0000-0003-4140-7459, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume58
Issue3
Pages832-860
Publication date2022-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueUrban Affairs Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1078-0874 • E-ISSN: 1552-8332
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/10780874211016925
OpenAlexW3171005247
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited54

Drawing on three years of fieldwork, this article explains the emergence and persistence of two conflicting styles of street life in Brightmoor, a depopulated, majority Black, poor Detroit neighborhood facing early gentrification. As most longtimers were inured to historical neighborhood violence, they tended to act vigilantly in public, even after recent crime declines. By contrast, White newcomers, most of whom had moved from middle-class neighborhoods, often defied vigilance such as by organizing a farmers' market across from an open-air drug market. They mobilized aspirational public life as a means for changing the neighborhood and end in itself. To explain these conflicting styles, this article theorizes the cultural mechanism of “ the hysteresis of street life.” Styles of street life, shaped by residents' unequal historical neighborhood experiences, tend to linger under conditions of gradual neighborhood change. It also shows how the hysteresis of street life may contribute to the reproduction of inequalities

Criminology · Economic growth · Economics · Gentrification · Inequality · Sociology · Gender Studies · Homelessness and Social Issues · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies

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