COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...
COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...
COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...
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space becomes symbolic in that it attracts people of a certain lifestyle to have a cultural,<br />
intellectual, or ethnic experience.<br />
The middle-class, or the producers of this space, have opportunities for<br />
determining which social classes will be able to participate in emerging strategies of<br />
urban rebirth (Zukin 1982:423). The producers of this space, such as urban planners,<br />
government representatives, business owners, and middle-class residents are able to make<br />
decisions in the neighborhood that are in their interest and in the interest of other “like-<br />
minded” residents. The middle-class often moves into working-class neighborhoods to<br />
enjoy the ethnic diversity and business owners, in return, also welcome and cater to them.<br />
Although these ideas associated with new urbanism, or smart growth, represent<br />
innovative approaches to urban planning in cities—smart growth and new urbanism<br />
produce social hierarchies at the local level.<br />
Ongoing debates over gentrification and the ‘reconquest’ of blighted<br />
neighborhoods are widely inflected by race and ethnicity, as well as class (Regis<br />
2001:754). It is largely argued that gentrification is promoted by educated, Caucasian,<br />
middle-class residents and usually has negative effects on already marginalized ethnic<br />
minority groups. The connection and relationship between ethnicity and tourism is not a<br />
new observation. Currently, postmodern analyses of ethnic places argue that ethnic<br />
places are ‘manufactured,’ or produced, as much as they are ‘preserved,’ and conserved<br />
(Lin 1995:643). Ethnic “places” are areas where the production and consumption of the<br />
“ethnic experience” occurs and are conserved for their value as a commodity.<br />
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