Neoliberal urban redevelopment is often represented as consensual, socially‐neutral ‘local economic development’ with a positive effect on both a city's overall economy and its level of racial and ethnic diversity. The purpose of this article is to focus specifically on the key ideological premises of color‐blind racial discourses that help facilitate and provide necessary legitimacy (and ideological cover) for neoliberal urban redevelopment in a mid‐sized US city. Color‐blind racial discourses facilitate the agenda and mandates behind tax abatements, enterprise zones, public–private partnerships and new forms of urban consumption. Despite efforts to the contrary, neoliberal urbanism does not retreat from race — rather, racial dynamics are reconstituted to accommodate processes of capital accumulation and uneven urban development in poor and minority cities. Drawing on the case of Chester, Pennsylvania, this article focuses on how color‐blind racial discourses influence exclusionary urban redevelopment policies and practices, facilitate their implementation and legitimize their outcomes. Résumé On présente souvent le réaménagement urbain néolibéral comme un ‘développement économique local’ consensuel et socialement neutre, dont bénéficient à la fois l'économie générale et le degré de diversité raciale et ethnique de la ville. Cet article s'intéresse en particulier aux grands principes idéologiques des discours racialisés de type color‐blind (littéralement, aveugle aux couleurs) qui contribuent au réaménagement urbain néolibéral d'une ville américaine moyenne et fournissent la légitimité (et la caution idéologique) au projet. Ces discours facilitent les objectifs et missions que soutiennent crédits d'impôt, aides à l'installation dans certaines zones d'activité, partenariats public‐privé et nouvelles formes de consommation urbaine. En dépit d'efforts contraires, l'urbanisme néolibéral ne renonce pas à la dimension raciale. Plus précisément, les dynamiques raciales sont reconstituées pour s'adapter aux processus d'accumulation du capital et d'aménagement urbain inégal des villes aux populations pauvres ou minoritaires. À partir du cas de Chester (Pennsylvanie), ce travail montre comment les discours raciaux color‐blind influencent des politiques et pratiques d'exclusion au sein du réaménagement urbain, facilitant leur mise en place et légitimant leurs résultats.

The renewed popularity of urban markets has generated substantial attention among policymakers, planners and urban scholars. In addition to their potential local economic impact, markets provide spaces for a variety of social exchanges and interactions that may strengthen communal ties, reproduce existing social tensions or simply reflect everyday diversity; consequently, the social functions of urban markets differ depending on the specific social, political and economic context in which individual markets operate. Based on data from interviews, questionnaires and participant observation, this article examines social exchanges and interactions within wet markets (meat, fish, fruits and vegetable markets) in Singapore. The types of social interactions found in wet markets are wide-ranging and informal, and occur across different ethnicities, generations, social statuses and classes; they can range from casual exchanges to planned gatherings to sustained relations based on mutual reciprocity and trust. Wet markets are significant to Singaporeans because they are spaces of unmediated social interactions and, within the context of state governance and ongoing modernisation, increasingly exceptional. The attachment to wet markets is a collective, social response to an ongoing process in which existing and meaningful social spaces (e.g. neighbourhoods and markets) are being erased by a redeveloped urban landscape, a concomitant disappearance of unregulated community space, and the pervasiveness of normative consumerism.

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