COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...

In academic literature, gentrification is described as the process through which
“poor and working-class neighborhoods in the inner city are refurbished via an influx of
private capital and middle-class homebuyers and renters” (Smith 1996:32). After more
than fifty years of neglect and disinvestment, economically distressed urban
neighborhoods in the U.S. are becoming targets for reinvestment (Newman 2004:34).
Historically, during the 1970s, rapid increases in house values, upgrading of housing
stock, and in-migration of white collar and professional households occurred and
ultimately led to upper-income, in-migrant households coexisting with lower-income,
longer term residents in gentrifying locales (Taylor and Covington 1993:379). In these
changing urban areas, “the social consequences of the renewal of centers have been
discussed in terms of gentrification and anesthetization of the city and urban life”
(Nylund 2001:225). Since the close of the 1980s new urban conditions have transformed
the politics of gentrification and have led to burgeoning reconfigured neighborhood
alliances within and across lines of race and class (Schneider and Susser 2003:149). In
consequence, “urban revitalization is seen as relying on the reconstitution of a sufficient
stock of safety and, if possible, civility” (Smart and Smart 2003:273).
As urban development takes place, social and symbolic boundaries between
residents become more concrete and the everyday spaces of the street become sites where
micro-politics of contemporary urban life unfolds. Individuals exercise herein their
spatial rights while negotiating the spatial claims of others (Tonkiss 2005:59). While
integrating into urban life, residents and visitors are cautious about where they spend time
and with whom they associate. While they objectify and even fear those who are
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