New Urbanism and the Barrio

Abstract

IntroductionA growing number of low-income urban neighborhoods in the United States are being redeveloped along the lines of New Urbanism (NU). NU advocates the end of segregation between the rich and poor and among races by``bring[ing] people of diverse ages, races, and incomes into daily interaction'' (Congress for the New Urbanism and US Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2000, page 4). NU supports this agenda mainly by encouraging mixed income residential communities and architectural design that respects local history, culture, and regional character (Day, 2003;Fainstein, 2000). Explicit to this agenda is recreating`traditional' American neighborhoods (Saab, 2007).NU gained popularity in the early 1990s for mitigating suburban sprawl in predominately white and high-income neighborhoods. Today, there are over 200 self-classified NU urban projects in the United States, including those in inner-city neighborhoods (Langdon, 2007). A growing body of research discusses the challenges and successes of inner-city NU housing projects (Talen, 2008). Little is written, however, about the implications of NU projects in Mexican immigrant barrios in the urban center. Our research objective is to critically examine NU in the light of efforts to revitalize two barrios and the contiguous downtown district. We use a case study of the draft Renaissance Specific Plan (RP) in Santa Ana, California (see figure 1).Our research employed a discourse analysis vis-a© -vis Wacquant's ( 2008) spatial alienation and the dissolution of`place ' and Foucauldian (1977) and Villa's barriological (2000) perspectives. We found that policy actors created a planning discourse for the (re)development of urban place which paradoxically erases, celebrates as both a problem and asset, and neutralizes distinctive cultural and working-class qualities of the Mexican immigrant barrios and constituency in the downtown district. The RP,

Immigrant Neighborhood Concentration, Acculturation and Obesity among Young Adults

“…However, New Urbanist development has the potential to erase some of the culture and social cohesion of an already existing community within the revitalized urban enclave. In a case study of Santa Ana, California, González and Lejano () suggest that the barrios, which are place‐based expressions of Latino culture and heritage, were going through this New Urbanist rejuvenation. However, in the process, the Renaissance Specific Plan for redeveloping Santa Ana devotes two of 150 pages on each barrio, and references the primary residential group ( Latino , Hispanic or immigrant ) only one time.…”

Sorting through Differences

“…This helps us understand the extent to which the RP, and the SD following it, engages in reimagination of the city. 5 As discussed in more detail elsewhere (González and Lejano 2009), the redevelopment plan engages in social rendering in a number of ways, including • • in its images and text, showing and mentioning almost nothing of the decidedly Latino demographic of Santa Ana (particularly, downtown); • • highlighting prewar structures (such as the Otis Building, its façade dating back to 1925) from an era prior to the transformation of Santa Ana into a majority Latino community; • • specifying architectural templates and urban forms alien to those presently found; • • assuming specifications to which the present community does not conform (e.g., the existing density, in persons per household, being significantly larger than that assumed in the plan); • • highlighting the desire to connect Santa Ana to the larger Orange County region and, by implication, bring in visitors from outside the city.…”

“…In Downtown Santa Ana." Perhaps in part due to the vocal opposition to the RP, the City decided to repackage a portion of the RP into a proposed Station District (SD), centered around a new Transit Zoning Code (González and Lejano 2009 The SD retains 94 of the original 421-acre scope of the original Renaissance Plan. In addition to the RP's five main areas for redevelopment and its connection to major freeways, the SD includes the French Park neighborhood, a middle-class neighborhood known for its Victorian homes, the Artists' Village, Santiago Lofts, County property, the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center, and forty-eight parcels the Agency and City own along a major corridor.…”

Islands of Difference: Design, Urbanism, and Sustainable Tourism in the Anthropocene Caribbean

“…As a framework for tourism development, New Urbanism is often utilized as an ownership model, where tourist visitation is promoted through second‐home buying in New Urbanist villages as opposed to hotel stays, although boutique hotels are often incorporated in these developments. In short, New Urbanism has been selected by destination designers as one optimal “science of form” for mediating the production of tourist space and place in the Anthropocene (Gonzalez and Lejano ). The Caribbean is not generally considered a center for New Urbanist design, but there are a number of relatively new developments in the region that reflect these principles.…”