Planning, Public Participation, and Money Politics in Santa Ana (CA)

Defend, disrupt, and build: Guerrilla urbanist interventions and fighting gentrification in the barrio

“…What follows is a discussion of GUIs as both a disruption tactic and a strategy to defend existing community systems of support. In contrast to other strategies, like CBAs or affordable housing development, that attempt to assuage some of the harms brought on by neoliberal development (Beard & Sarmiento, 2014;Sarmiento & Sims, 2015), GUIs completely reject gentrification and attempt to delegitimize processes of community engagement in planning and development. Rather than work through established policy channels, GUIs use conflict and confrontation as a way to not only interrupt these development processes, but also publicly present nonnegotiable demands.…”

“…Some strategies for more equitable development like CBAs and inclusionary zoning assume that development is inevitable and therefore work to increase participation and the community benefits for low-income communities. These strategies often require not only a negotiation among different CBOs with different interests, but also a negotiation with the city and the developer to obtain benefits from the development process (Beard & Sarmiento, 2014;Belongie & Silverman, 2018). The aim of these strategies is often distributive in nature, where the goal is to have a more equitable form of development and shared benefits.…”

Façades of Equitable Development

“…“Our model, after all,” states Krumholz in his review of equity planning, “asks city planners to be what few public administrators are: activists, risk-taking in style, and redistributive in objective” (1982, 172). However, organized community participation does not automatically stipulate equitable development (Beard and Sarmiento 2014). An equitable approach requires building increased access to political decision making for low-income communities and developing policies that hold the city and developers legally responsible for certain community benefits.…”

Sorting through Differences

“…Much of the formal opposition to the SD was led by SACReD. González et al (2012) outline how the group engaged within and outside of the formal neighborhood planning process and crafted twenty-eight policy recommendations based on community organizing, action research, and collaborative planning processes data (see also Beard and Sarmiento 2014). SACReD worked to halt the SD because of its similarities with the RP and fears that the redevelopment would displace the majority ethnic demographic in the area.…”