COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...

city powers, such as condemnation, financial incentives, and municipal borrowing,
mobilized to promote urban redevelopment,” claims Frug (1996:1081). Urban
redevelopment initiatives in cities have been lauded as beneficial economic development
in inner-cities by the general public and media.
Many neighborhood residents encourage urban redevelopment initiatives, hoping
that dilapidated buildings will be rehabilitated and new businesses will open up, drawing
a new influx of consumers and capital into the city. Deutsche (1986:71) explains that
“the use of the city neighborhood as a commodity to be exploited for profit represents
only one of its purposes in the capitalist economy—traditionally it has also provided the
conditions necessary for reproducing necessary labor power.” But Amin and Graham
(1997:421) explains that just concentrating on the cultural experience of new consumer
spaces can often ignore the larger social contexts in which they are produced and the
socio-spatial segregation, social control, and surveillance with which they are often
associated. More specifically, city control over land use in cities lays the foundation for
new consumer spaces to develop in neighborhoods.
“For the moment, the modern city remains structured by the historical forces that
have created it, the most recent of which has been twentieth century modern planning and
urban development” (Cooke 1990:339). Increased surveillance has accompanied modern
planning and urban development. Forms of state surveillance, in the modern city, and
control of populations, as well as of capitalist organization and work discipline have
depended on the homogenizing, rationalizing, and partitioning of space (Alonso
1994:382). The modern city is thus a center point for commercial industry and is a
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