Contestation and the local trajectories of neoliberal urban governance in Chicago’s Bronzeville and Pilsen

Abstract

Neoliberal urban governances are now widely recognised as contingently manifest and constantly evolving social and institutional formations. Yet, there remains comparatively little empirical work on the place-specific complexities of urban neoliberalisation, and as variegated formations within the same city. Drawing on Chicago’s Bronzeville and Pilsen neighbourhoods, we reveal the intra-urban contingency character of neoliberal urban governance. Both ‘neighbourhood governances’ in Bronzeville and Pilsen, we suggest, are constituted by similar yet different ensembles of developers, local officials and politically oriented community organisations, and redevelopment strategies. Second, we illuminate one dimension of this intra-urban contingency: the mutually constitutive and differentially unfolding relation between contestation and neoliberal governance. Finally, four inter-related variables are revealed as mediating factors within this relationship that account for why Bronzeville and Pilsen’s governances have evolved in different ways: historical legacy, the dynamics between activist groups and pro-growth agents, economic circumstances and political orientation of contestation.

Keywords

Chicago contestation intra-urban contingency neighbourhood neoliberal governance

Introduction

Neoliberal urban governances are now widely recognised as contingently manifest and constantly evolving social and institutional formations (Hackworth, 2007; Kunkel and Mayer, 2012; Leitner et al., 2007; Peck et al., 2012, 2013; Wilson, 2007). In this study, these formations are identified as the assemblages of actors and institutions (i.e. builders, developers, financial institutions, community organisations and the local state) invested in urban governance. They are recognised as ‘neoliberal’ insofar as they collectively construct planning and redevelopment agendas that are mobilised through policies and practices guided by neoliberal principles, i.e. municipal resource attraction, tax base replenishment and the centrality of the private market (Anderson, 2012; Wilson, 2007).¹

In this context, neoliberal urban governance refers to both a process and the distinct assemblages of agents that drive it forward. Constituted in the richness of distinct localities, these assemblages are hybrid and shaped by pre-existing and contextually specific political, economic and cultural conditions. Yet they are also embedded within broader-scale processes of neoliberalisation, a mode of regulatory restructuring which is inherently variegated, incomplete and multiscalar (Brenner et al., 2012; Peck, 2010).

Existing research on the contingency of neoliberal urban governance is typically situated at the inter-urban scale: the variation between different cities (Leitner et al., 2007; Sternberg, 2012; Wilson, 2007). Comparatively less research has engaged with the variation of these formations within the same city (see Anderson and Sternberg, 2013). Following Phelps and Wood (2011: 2593), this has led to a tendency toward examining ‘the city “proper” or the “urban” as an undifferentiated and unchanging unit of analysis’. We argue that this tendency presents a conceptual limitation to examining the ‘intra-urban’ contingency of these formations and deepening our knowledge of the local complexities of this mode of governance.

In this context, we suggest that neoliberal urban governance – as both a process and assemblage of agents – is heterogeneously constituted through the locally specific ways in which ‘governing actors’ assemble and interact in their drive to facilitate redevelopment.² While some actors and practices repeatedly appear across a given urban terrain (i.e. mayors, prominent city officials, developers and rhetorical devices), they invariably conjoin with the locally specific ensembles of developers, public officials, financial institutions, community organisations and identity configurations (i.e. race, class and gender) that distinguish each neighbourhood. In the process, governing actors are differentially responsive to the locally specific dilemmas they invariably confront. To sum, neoliberal urban governance, conceived at the city-scale, is here understood as constituted by an ensemble of distinct yet inter-related microscale governances that form within and across urban landscapes.³

Moreover, as existing research tends to focus on the inter-urban dimension of this contingency (see Keil, 2002; MacLeod, 2002; Wilson, 2004, 2007), there remains comparatively little research that empirically examines its temporal unevenness and variation (although this is now increasingly acknowledged, see Brenner et al., 2012; Peck et al., 2012, 2013). While urban neoliberalisation is now widespread, it unfolds through different temporal trajectories across socio-spatial contexts (Anderson, 2012).

This study chronicles both intra-urban and temporal dimensions of this contingency through a comparative analysis of neoliberal governance in two Chicago neighbourhoods: Bronzeville and Pilsen. In the process, we empirically examine the dynamic and mutually constitutive relationship between neoliberal governance and contestation. Both neighbourhoods have been profoundly transformed, socially and spatially, over the past two decades. Yet both are marked by similar but distinctly different local ‘governance trajectories’. Varying forms of contestation have persistently challenged, shaped and generated new and evolved forms of local neoliberal governance in both settings.

Contestation, we argue, acts to ‘destabilise’ conditions of neoliberal normativity, i.e. principles, practices and regulations (Leitner et al., 2007), thereby forcing governing assemblages into chronic bouts of policy adjustment and mutation. But contestation not only mediates the temporal unfolding of neoliberal governance. Rather, they are both in motion and coevolve together in dialectic tension (Brenner et al., 2012). In what follows, we reveal this relation as influenced by four key local conditions: (1) historical and cultural legacies, (2) impacts of broader political-economic forces, (3) dynamics between activist groups and pro-growth actors, and (4) the orientation (race, class, etc.) of the contesting forces.

Neoliberal urban governance and contestation

The neoliberalisation of urban governance has profoundly and contingently unfolded across the globe (Brenner et al., 2012; Keil, 2009; Wilson, 2007). As a response to the recession of the 1970s, this process – in its various guises – has dramatically shaped many forms of urban governance. In particular, in urban America, a host of ‘market-oriented’ policies – tax-increment financing (TIFs), historical preservation, public-space cleansing initiatives, the HOPE-VI programme for public housing reform – have been mobilised to advance a core objective: gentrification as the path to city salvation (Smith, 1996; Wilson, 2007).

Following the literature on neoliberal urban governance, which is too extensive to be sufficiently reviewed here, we understand neoliberalism as a humanly crafted and choreographed set of ideas that actors strategically deploy to legitimise policies and practices designed to resuscitate capital accumulation and restore fiscal health to urban governments. But it is also a multifaceted ideological system that impacts actors in myriad ways (Pickvance, 2012), and is translated into policy differently across socio-spatial contexts (Wilson, 2004). And such policies are often contested by local forces, i.e. activist groups and community organisations.

These contesting forces are also diverse and complex. And while they typically contest unpopular changes to their neighbourhoods, they do not always explicitly identify or overtly challenge neoliberalism as an object of resistance. Contestation is dynamic and multifaceted, as the objects of resistance and sets of demands (i.e. class, race, housing, education, etc.) are often multiple, competing and evolving. As such, while neoliberal governance represents a hybrid, variegated process, so do the forms of contestation it generates and confronts. Very often contesting movements evolve through complex balances of resistance and integration within governing assemblages (Leitner et al., 2007). For instance, as we reveal in this study, while resistance groups may challenge one (or more) aspect of neoliberal governance, they may be amenable to accepting another (see Patillo, 2007). As such, resistance groups are often appeased or incorporated into the previously opposed governing assemblage through a variety of trade-offs or (coercive or enabling) mechanisms (see DeFilippis, 2003).

Here, the notion of ‘strategic essentialism’ becomes critical in describing how governing alliances form among diverse actors. To Jessop and Sum (2012; also see Spivak, 1987), alliances are the outcome of discursive constructions articulated by heterogeneous groups that elaborately draw upon strategically selected ideas that ‘unify’ their otherwise divergent interests (economic, political or identity-based). In this context, ideological systems – such as neoliberalism – provide governing actors with a reservoir of potentially unifying ideas as the basis for multiple interest-serving alliances in particular conjunctures. As such, following Leitner et al. (2007), we ‘decentre’ neoliberalism as an analytic object as both neoliberalism and contestation are interpreted as constitutive and inter-related aspects of local governance transformation.

The literature on urban movements and contestation to neoliberal policies is also extensive (see Pickvance, 2012). The contours of this resistance is complex, with contesting organisations, to Kunkel and Mayer (2012), typically falling within one of four general ‘frontiers’, i.e. those that (1) resist corporate urban development (i.e. gentrification), (2) combat social exclusion (i.e. advocate for affordable housing, living wages), (3) promote social justice, and (4) contest globalisation. Each of these resistance types, while diverse, takes the message of justice and equity to the local scale – from Global Occupy, to the Indignados, to the ATTAC, and to the Arab Spring – with many examples registering varying degrees of ‘success’ (Harvey, 2012; Keil, 2009). The limitations of neoliberal adaptability, however, have proven elusive, with many pointing to its perpetual continuity through further adjustment and absorption of its mounting political, economic and social obstacles (Brenner et al., 2012).

In this study, we do not intend to further develop this typology or assess the efficacy of particular modes of contestation in their capacity to transcend neoliberalism as a hegemonic project. This would entail the question of connecting diverse modes of contestation across trans-local scales, which goes beyond the scope of this study. Rather, we examine contestation as a destabilising force to local manifestations of neoliberal governance: it destabilises in that it necessitates a process of adjustment and, ultimately, the creation of something new (Li, 2007). The resulting formation, however, is not necessarily any more or less neoliberal, often remaining just as hybrid and incomplete and exhibiting a reconfigured assemblage of conflicting and/or aligning governing actors. Here, the opportunities for alliance formation are contingent on the extent to which a pool of ‘unifying’ ideas (neoliberal and/or otherwise) exists among competing governing actors.

In this context, we still know little about the conditions that mediate the evolving relation between contestation and neoliberal governance. Deepening our knowledge on this front could lead to a more nuanced understanding of the conditions capable of cultivating the possibility of new modes of urban governance and socially just outcomes. In what follows, we address this question by comparatively examining the constitutive role of contestation in propelling two similar yet distinctly different governance trajectories in Chicago’s Bronzeville and Pilsen.

Background and methods

Chicago’s neoliberal transition is typically attributed to the election of Mayor Richard M Daley in 1989 (Wilson and Sternberg, 2012). Guided by the neoliberal ethos, Daley and the city’s elite civic groups launched an aggressive campaign to attract high-profile businesses and upper-income ‘professionals’ to Chicago as means of achieving ‘global city’ status through tax-base replenishment (Wilson, 2007). Gentrification was aggressively promoted as a central urban policy initiative and steam-rolled across many low-income, inner-city neighbourhoods through the 1990s and 2000s, including Bronzeville and Pilsen. Ultimately, deepening poverty, homelessness and segregation – a consequence of this unleashed policy – acquired normalcy and acceptance for the sake of the city’s economic survival.

Both neighbourhoods share long histories of disinvestment, similar proportion of low-income, minority populations and racial stigmatisation (Anderson and Sternberg, 2013). And combined with close proximity to downtown, amenities and abundance of affordable and historic housing stock, both have been targeted for redevelopment by city officials, developers and prominent builders since the early 1990s. Yet they are also marked by different ensembles of local officials, developers, redevelopment strategies and contesting activist groups and community organisations.

This work is based on wider case studies of Bronzeville and Pilsen (see Sternberg, 2012 and Anderson, 2012) consisting of content analyses of 500 newspaper articles and policy documents dating from 1989 to the present (primarily from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times). Articles using the terms growth, redevelopment, gentrification, Bronzeville and Pilsen were systematically identified for analysis. In what follows, we chronicle the governance trajectories in both neighbourhoods by drawing on a selection of this broader material. We also conducted 40 semi-structured interviews with community organisers, city officials, planners, business owners, developers and residents about the city’s social and political climate and ongoing redevelopment projects in both neighbourhoods.

Local governance trajectories

In the following narratives we integrate four inter-related conditions that mediate the contestation/neoliberalisation relationship and actively shape the evolving trajectories of the governing assemblages in each neighbourhood. They are described as follows: (1) historical and cultural legacy points to the historical and cultural roots of each neighbourhood (i.e. ethnic origins and political climates), including the history and trajectory of local activism; (2) predominant political-economic forces represents the evolving economic climates and multiscalar networks within which local governing assemblages are embedded and shaped; (3) the dynamics between local activist groups and pro-growth actors highlight the institutional and financial relationships through which these two groups interact in their (aligning and/or competing) goals to influence governing actions and agendas. Their differential access to power and resources greatly shapes the relationship between these two entities. Finally, given the ethnic and class-based struggles that both neighbourhoods have historically experienced, (4) the ethnic and class-based orientation of contestation becomes a critical aspect to understanding what specifically is being contested, and the significance of neoliberalism within this orientation.

Bronzeville’s ‘nostalgic revival’: 1990–present

Bronzeville’s history as an African-American neighbourhood on Chicago’s south side is now richly chronicled – from the ‘Black Metropolis’ of the early 20th century, once ‘thriving’ neighbourhood of African-American culture and home to many artists, musicians and historical figures (i.e. Richard Wright, Louis Armstrong and Gwendolyn Brooks) (Boyd, 2008a; Drake and Cayton, [1945] 1993; Hyra, 2008), to the socio-economic decimation brought on by deindustrialisation during the mid-20th century (Wacquant, 2008; W Wilson, 1996), followed by the post-1990 ‘nostalgic revival’ of the Black Metropolis. Notwithstanding, until the early 2000s, it had also been the most heavily concentrated site of public housing in the city for decades (Hirsch, 1998).

This historical and cultural legacy, after decades of systematic neglect, racial discrimination and symbolic stigmatisation, has motivated local community organisations in their quest to change this fate and attract new resources to the neighbourhood under the banner of reviving the Black Metropolis. As early as the 1980s, a growing base of black middle-class homeowners began to ‘rediscover’ Bronzeville’s rich history (Boyd, 2008a; Hyra, 2008). A coalition of local homeowners, activists and block clubs formed to ‘clean-up the neighbourhood’, and promptly began renovating and seeking landmark status for many of the historical 19th century ‘graystones’ that remained standing (Hoffman, 2003). This grassroots movement was led by the Mid-South Planning & Development Corporation (MSPDC). A coalition of existing neighbourhood organisations, the MSPDC was formed in 1990 off the heels of a US$300,000 endowment channelled through the city from an US$8 million donation to the Illinois Institute of Technology by the McCormack-Tribune Foundation (Boyd, 2008a; Hoffman, 2003).

In this context, while the MSPDC represented local residents, a particular relationship developed between the MSPDC, city officials, and civic elites. In particular, the MSPDC was formed by (and ultimately worked closely with) pro-growth actors to secure future investment funds (Boyd, 2008a). Consequently, as Boyd (2008a: 40) notes, the MSPDC effectively pursued ‘their goals through partnerships with the city government and private institutions’, some of whom were ironically ‘the very architects of past neighborhood disinvestment and racial discrimination’. Thus, while the MSPDC formed in opposition to the neighbourhood’s past discriminatory treatment, it was not necessarily opposed to Daley’s neoliberal growth agenda as the goal of revitalisation – mobilised by TIFs, historical preservation and mixed-income development – aligned these two interest groups together.

Many MSPDC constituent organisations formed close ties with the neighbourhood’s two local aldermen, Dorothy Tillman and Toni Preckwinkle. Preckwinkle, in particular, as Patillo (2007) notes, exhibited masterful skills in pulling the strings of community groups in her ward. For instance, the Community Conservation Council (CCC) has consisted of mostly middle-income homeowners handpicked by Preckwinkle, ultimately tying the group to Daley’s neoliberal agenda.⁴ While the CCC likely did not have its strings ‘directly’ pulled, their class-based sensibilities provided assurance that they did not have to be – an example of how incorporating middle-class activism into the structures of governance has become a hallmark of neoliberal governmentality (Ghertner, 2011).

The ominous image and legacy of public housing, however, remained a palpable obstacle to redevelopment during the early 1990s (Hoffman, 2003). But redevelopment slowly gathered steam as a growing black middle-class invested in the neighbourhood, attracted to its rich history, famous 19th century homes, and the MSPDCs ‘nostalgic’ vision of reviving the Black Metropolis. Bolstering the process, HOPE-VI grants –part of a broader federal and neoliberal policy initiative – were awarded to the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) to demolish the city’s most distressed public housing complexes (Bennett et al., 2006), thereby leveling the single most perceived inhibitor to redevelopment (Hoffman, 2003; Hyra, 2008).

As a result, Daley and prominent developers officially turned to Bronzeville as a site suitable for redevelopment in the late 1990s, with the designation of the Black Metropolis Historic District and an array of beautification projects. As Boyd (2008a) chronicles, Daley promptly formed the Blue Ribbon and Bronzeville Resource Committees to work with the MSPDC in the effort. This sudden interest from Daley, however, was met with immediate scepticism by many MSPDC activists, fearful that the city’s involvement would privilege politically connected developers and inevitably lead to the kind of white-led gentrification that was marking other Chicago neighbourhoods at the time (i.e. Wicker Park) (Boyd, 2008a).

But the MSPDC was not an opponent of gentrification per se, as the vision of ‘nostalgic revival’ consists of a redeveloped Bronzeville specifically by and for the black middle-class (Boyd, 2008a).⁵ For many, it was gentrification by whites that was (and still is) opposed, whereas black gentrification was envisioned as the core process of replicating the neighbourhood’s ‘economically mixed’ legacy. As a pragmatic adjustment, Daley and nobility sanctioned the MSPDC vision to maintain the broader governing alliance and avoid alienating the very black middle-class underpinning this redevelopment (see Anderson and Sternberg, 2013). Here, ‘nostalgic revival’ served as the discursive basis of this strategic alliance, drawing on the neighbourhood’s African-American heritage and neoliberal-guided policies of historical preservation and mixed-income development.

In this context, the class-based orientation and dependence on city-sourced funding of the MSPDC ultimately did the bidding for real-estate capital and Daley’s neoliberal agenda (Patillo, 2007). The race-based concerns of MSPDC activism posed little threat to the redevelopment goals of pro-growth actors as the class-based interests of both parties were sharply aligned. For instance, in a Chicago Sun-Times editorial (22 August 2005), Pat Dowell (former chairman of the MSPDC and current alderman) implicates gentrification as a positive force, so long as it honours rather than erases the historical legacy of the neighbourhood:

The opportunity to serve as a model for neighborhood rebirth, by including mixed-income housing along with condominiums, retail space and parking, is what the neighborhood truly needs – not another symbol of gentrification that erases historical relevance rather than honors it.

As such, the MSPDC was incorporated into the neighbourhood’s neoliberal governing assemblage, one that adopted new racial sensibilities through a process of ‘strategic essentialism’. As a result, from 1998 to 2008, Bronzeville experienced a ‘boom of community redevelopment’ (Luman, 2007) and ‘skyrocketing housing prices’ (Davis, 2008) facilitated by this strategic alliance. But this established a precedent for gentrification and sparked fears of impending displacement during the early 2000s among an emergent coalition of both low- and middle-income residents: Housing Bronzeville (HB). There was also fear that gentrification was accelerating beyond the established vision of ‘nostalgic revival’ by threatening the coveted balance of mixed-incomes. To the following HB activist:

There will be a lot of condos and high-priced homes … the middle and low income people will eventually be totally pushed out … (HB activist, quoted by Megan Cottrell, Chi-Town Daily News, 29 October 2008)

HB formed in 2004 as a ‘grassroots’ non-profit mobilised against the City and past organisers (i.e. the MSPDC) perceived as co-opted by City Hall (Housing Bronzeville News, 2011). Contrary to the MSPDC, this grassroots resistance has had minimal funding ties to the City and was, in fact, bolstered by the impacts of the post-2007 global crisis. Initially, the group successfully placed an advisory referendum on a November 2004 ballot calling for the creation of a Bronzeville Affordable Housing Trust Fund to meet growing demand for affordable housing (HB News, 2007). The referendum passed widely, and contributed to a notable change in governance discourse among city officials and invested developers.

Brought on by fear of this growing public discontent and new economic circumstances (i.e. increased foreclosures and joblessness), low-income residents are now increasingly portrayed through the media as good and decent people subject to structural forces beyond their control (a distinct break from the revanchist articulations that seared historically marginalised and racialised populations during the 1980s and 1990s):

What a great community it was … that’s the truth, whether it was fair or not … These people were here, through no fault of their own, we need to embrace them, come back together … (interview with local organiser, 19 August 2010)

This is not a neighborhood of the poorest of the poor … that was a fallacy in the first place. These are good residents of modest means. (Michael Tobin of Northern Realty, in Wheeler, 2006)

Melding here with ‘nostalgic revival’ rhetoric, this response operated to bolster the legitimacy of redevelopment agendas through appeasement amid growing obstacles. But from Daley and Tillman, however, the response to this ‘anti-gentrification’ activism has been avoidance and silence, of which only fuelled the animosity of this emergent resistance.

Fear of displacement was further heightened after the City launched its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics in 2006. Assuming success in the biding process, the media, Daley and pro-growth actors boosted plans for redevelopment in the neighbourhood – a broader global variable which delivered notable political and economic impacts. It was argued that the Olympics would aid in the neighbourhood’s revival by attracting further investment and much needed jobs to the would-be epicentre for many Olympic facilities (see Russell, 2009; Uribarri, 2009). HB, however, vigorously rejected this claim by arguing that the ‘city plan’ for redevelopment meant the inevitable displacement of most existing residents:

Remember those twin boasts by the 2016 Spin Masters [Daley and Olympic organisers]: ‘Chicago taxpayers won’t pay a penny’ and ‘not one person will be displaced.’ If you believe them, then give the Ryan, Healey, Daley triumvirate the Gold Medal for ‘spinning the public.’ Add the Silver and Bronze Medals, too. They will have earned them! (HB News, 2007)

This activism also entailed an intensification of a long-lasting debate over the ‘roughly 2000 vacant lots’ in Bronzeville owned by the City (acquired through public housing demolition and tax delinquency) and controlled by the local aldermen (Russell, 2009): ‘the City is now in the process of selling these lots to the top bidder – pushing housing costs in Bronzeville to astronomical levels … well out of the reach of most local residents or their families’ (HB News, 2007; also see Roeder, 2008). HB has persistently demanded that the lots be used for affordable homeownership to ‘low- and moderate-income’ families (Healey, 2009).

But these demands were systematically ignored, and culminated with HB protesters lined up outside Daley’s home in 2009 (Uribarri, 2009). It also contributed to the rapid erosion of Tillman’s popularity (Anderson, 2007), resulting in her failed re-election in 2007 after 22 years as alderman. In fact, Tillman’s fate, for many, was sealed after a public outburst in front of HB protesters where she reportedly ‘refused to discuss the issues’ and charged the group ‘with infiltration by gang-bangers’ (HB News, 2007).

Tillman’s replacement, Pat Dowell, former activist and director of the MSPDC, represents a power realignment within this evolving governing assemblage. Relations between Dowell and HB, however, were initially strained. Dowell, while agreeing to work with HB, has been reluctant to sanction the group’s affordable housing proposals (B Anderson, 2009). HB, in response, accused Dowell as co-opted by City Hall: ‘Dowell hasn’t kept her promise to help … the alderwoman is in on the city plan to redefine Bronzeville, which in turn would push people out of the community’ (HB activist, in Russell, 2009).

Redevelopment efforts have since slowed because of the loss of the Olympic bid to Rio de Janeiro in October, 2009 (Bergen, 2009; Cromidas, 2010) and the global economic crisis. But despite tumbling housing prices and dried-up financing, HB proposals for affordable housing have gained political traction (since 2011):

… the group [HB] has reached out to twenty developers, interviewed ten of them, and selected one to build a first phase of Bronzeville Affordable Homes on seventy city-owned vacant lots in the Bronzeville Community … (HB, 2011).

Dowell, in fact, eventually supported HBs quest for affordable housing (HB News, 2011), as they represent one of few viable development projects remaining in a now stunted housing market, particularly for affluent development. There has also been a small yet not insignificant emergence of ‘limited equity co-ops’, and local ‘start-up’ banks offering ‘grassroots’ financing to low-income families (Hutson, 2008, 2010), propelling this evolving neighbourhood governance in notably non-neoliberal ways:

You can see them [co-housing] all over the place, not just here … when people fight and work together, then you start to seeing those very people co-invest in these kinds of projects … I think you’ll see a lot more of these kinds of developments especially since normal financing is dried up … (Interview with local resident, 29 May 2011)

Pro-growth actors have struggled to respond to this ‘anti-gentrification’ activism as opportunities for strategic alliance building have been lacking. The lack of funding dependence on the City also places HB further outside the grasp of City control. Daley, for instance, ignored HB demands for nearly five years until his retirement in 2011, while Tillman eventually responded with hostility, resulting in her ouster. And coupled with the materialisation of HB housing policies, this evolved contestation has impacted this governance trajectory in distinct ways, as established neoliberal policies (historical preservation, mixed-income development and TIF designation) are now uneasily juxtaposed against non-neoliberal ideas of low-income housing and communal forms of living.

Pilsen as ‘authentic Mexican ethnoscape’: 1990–present

Pilsen, historically a neighbourhood of European immigrants, transitioned to a working-class Mexican neighbourhood in the 1950s when an influx of Mexican immigrants sought employment and cheap housing in close proximity to downtown steel mills and meat packing plants. The neighbourhood was also hit hard by deindustrialisation in the 1970s (Grammenos, 2006; Wilson et al., 2004). But in the 1980s, Pilsen, like other low-income Latino neighbourhoods in Chicago (i.e. Wicker Park and Bucktown’s Puerto Rican community was forcefully displaced in the 1990s), was targeted for redevelopment because of its depressed land values and proximity to Chicago’s vibrant downtown (Bentacur, 2005; Wilson et al., 2004). In contrast to Bronzeville, Pilsen never suffered the stigma associated with public housing or Chicago’s contentious history of black/white racial tension (Hirsch, 1998). The legacy of this disassociation with public housing rendered Pilsen more attractive to City elites and prominent developers as a site to expand the ‘urban frontier’ (Smith, 1996).

In the 1990s, redevelopment was forcefully promoted by a coalition of City agencies and developer/builders to stimulate the physical and social upgrading of Pilsen (Wilson et al., 2004). Pilsen’s redevelopment, to these actors, was deemed a necessary component of Daley’s neoliberal agenda. Pilsen, initially, was systematically demonised as a decrepit ghetto plagued by culturally stunted residents with limited work ethics and in need of refurbishment and colonisation by ‘urban pioneers’ (Delgado, 1999; Wilson et al., 2004).

In terms of historical and cultural legacy, fear of displacement has been ongoing in Pilsen since the Chicago 21 Plan in 1973. This has since fuelled a long history of potent grassroots local activism in Pilsen (Puente, 1996), and created a precedent for aggressive resistance against the accused perpetuators (i.e. Alderman Danny Solis and prominent developers) of what was perceived as a violent and community eviscerating gentrification post-1990. The Resurrection Project (TRP), Pilsen Neighbors Community Council (PNCC), and Pilsen Alliance (PA) forcefully mobilised against the City and developers to effectively stall much of Pilsen’s early redevelopment. In contrast to the middle-class constituency of Bronzeville’s MSPDC, these organisations consisted of lower-income, working-class residents; were less reliant on city-sourced funds; and were mobilised by concerns of class-based displacement (see Curran, 2006; Curran and Hague, 2008). Here, the opportunities for strategic alliance formation were less forthcoming as divergent pools of ideas fuelled competing agendas.

Resistance from these groups ranged from threats to development obstruction, to intense protests at town hall meetings and to harassment of both gentrifiers and developers. These activists also crafted a successful ‘counter-discourse’ that inverted the central tenets of Daley’s pro-growth agenda (see Wilson et al., 2004). Developers were portrayed as the ‘villains’ rather than the ‘salvationists’ and Pilsen residents as proud, community-minded people rather than crime-ridden. In the process, Pilsen gained a lasting legacy as an ‘ethnic stronghold’ and ‘resistant to change’ (Wilson et al., 2004: 1184), leading to one local developer stating that ‘many private developers [remain] scared away by activism and controversy in the area’ (interview, 18 June 2010). Perceived, perhaps, as a local ‘victory’, this episode constituted one point within a longer battle and temporal unfolding of neoliberal governance in Pilsen.

While pro-growth actors struggled to battle or strategically align with this resistance, an alternative redevelopment strategy emerged from a different ensemble of actors in the early 2000s. These actors advocated for a more positive and ethnically sensitive redevelopment vision that ultimately served to appease the concerns of Pilsen’s previously aggressive class-based contestation. Notably, post-2000, the previously contentious relationship between activist groups and pro-growth actors evolved into a kind of compromise – led by Alderman Solis, TRP, PNCC, and the 18th Street Development Corporation (ESDC) – around a shared vision of Pilsen as an ‘authentic’ Mexican neighbourhood which consisted of the commodification of Mexican culture and branding of the neighbourhood as an ‘ethnic-oriented’ tourist destination (Bentacur, 2005).

Redevelopment projects, extolling rather than vilifying Pilsen’s unique Mexican culture and people, included new upscale ‘ethnic’ restaurants, shopping facilities and condo-conversions that have attracted a mixed population of artists, white professionals and a growing Latino middle-class. This growth strategy proved more successful by appealing to the legacy of the neighbourhood’s identity-based sensibilities and growing middle-class: gentrification slowly gathered steam, displacing many low-income residents westward to increasingly disinvested Little Village and beyond (i.e. Midway, Cicero and Berwyn). In this sense, what began as an effective ‘anti-gentrification’ movement progressively evolved into a defused ensemble of local organisations that now supports the very redevelopment that was once fervently opposed.

This alliance, however, faced PA’s virulent opposition. PA argued that this ‘ethnic redevelopment’ would ultimately destroy the basis of an ‘authentic’ Mexican Pilsen and further reduce the neighbourhood’s already evaporating affordable housing stock. But the evolved orientation of TRP and PNCC was now aligned with this revised pro-growth strategy and represented a new network of relations between Pilsen’s activist groups and pro-growth actors. Through this ethnic redevelopment discourse, a product of previous contestation, Pilsen was now more appealing to capital investment, the neighbourhood’s growing middle-class and previously ‘anti-gentrification’ activist groups.

Pilsen has since experienced aggressive redevelopment stimulated by the expansion of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) campus, controversial TIF designation, historical preservation and condominium building (Bentacur, 2005; Curran and Hague, 2008). The median housing price in Pilsen increased from US$145,000 in 2001 to US$295,000 in 2006 (Garvey, 2011). TRP has morphed into an organisation that works together with Solis and redevelopment elites to secure long-term neighbourhood survivability (Wilson et al., 2004), and to develop Pilsen. Underpinning this evolved relationship, TRP is now financially assisted by LISC/Chicago, a prominent foundation supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Lloyd A Fry Foundation, and Annie E Casey Foundation, among others, embedding TRP within a similar network of funding as Bronzeville’s MSPDC during the 1990s. The PNCC has followed a similar path, but is oriented less on housing and more on equity and civil rights concerns for immigrants and strengthening religious faith in the community.⁶

In contrast, PA, often labelled by the media as encompassing a ‘radical’ politics (interview with local official, 10 March 2010; Bentacur, 2005), has strived to access funding through a variety of sources (individual donations, non-governmental organisations and local foundations). Like HB, PA is not dependent on city-sourced funding, placing it beyond the grasp of City influence. As such, Daley and Solis have never actively engaged with PA’s demands.

In 2006, this power realignment was further cemented when local developers, led by Lipe Properties, successfully applied for a zoning variance (Curran and Hague, 2008). These developers lobbied the City to re-zone many properties to allow for higher-density construction. PA activists were among the most virulently opposed to this zoning request. Yet, PA’s active resistance proved more effective particularly after Lipe Properties changed the name of their condominium project from ‘Lerner Box’ to ‘Chantico Lofts’, a reference to the popular Aztec goddess ‘Chantico’ (Avila, 2005). While this could have been interpreted as a strategy to respect the ethnic integrity of Pilsen, it ultimately generated more intense opposition from PA:

… how dare they use the community’s icons to displace us? … You’re going to use the virgin [Chantico] to sell us some expensive condos? (PA activist, in Chicago Tribune, 2005)

Redevelopment proponents, however, countered that ‘housing and commercial development is not a threat to Pilsen … it is a lever to improve the lives of its residents and stabilize the community’, of which triggered the following response from PA: ‘we need to send a message to developers that it’s not going to be a walk in the park to develop Pilsen’ (in Avila, 2005).

Reflecting their alignment with pro-growth actors, the PNCC and TRP avoided PA’s campaign against the zoning changes and the Chantico Lofts development (Avila, 2005). Moreover, amid this heated controversy, pro-growth actors countered this now fractured resistance by adopting, as in Bronzeville, a more sensitive rhetorical strategy. For the Pilsen Planning Committee (PPC), formed by Solis and an alliance between developers, TRP, PNCC and ESDC, the goal is to ‘build and preserve a stronger, safer, healthier, mixed-income Mexican community for families while enhancing the [Mexican] character and history of the neighborhood’ (Pilsen Planning Committee (PPC), 2006).

However, while the onset of the global economic crisis in Bronzeville was initially insulated by the speculative-driven Olympic bid, this economic reality confronted Pilsen’s redevelopment much earlier (2006 versus 2009). Some redevelopment projects, such as Centro 18, were discontinued shortly after their enthusiastic inauguration because of dried-up financing and lack of demand. For one local developer, ‘I am now not so sure about the carrying capacity of the city to absorb new building … I have hopes … but times have changed … it’s unclear what the future will bring’ (interview, 25 May 2006).

The impacts and perceived common threat of the crisis has prompted former activist groups and developers, including Lipe Properties, to further join forces. The consequent erosion of non-City sources of funding bolstered the impetus of Pilsen’s grassroots organisations to compromise further with the City and other pro-growth actors. As one TRP representative expressed: ‘we could either have crossed our arms and do nothing, or at least help residents who are eligible [only 30%] for affordable housing’ (interview 25 May 2006). Another TRP spokesperson later noted that ‘we had to sit and negotiate, instead of opposing the construction of these endeavors like other [organizations] have been doing [referring to PA]’ (interview, 7 August 2009). TRP and PNCC have since begun working with developers in promoting ‘mixed-income’ development – a mutual interest-serving idea – as long as 21% of the units are set aside for lower- and moderate-income families. Lipe Properties, for instance, agreed to this demand merely to avoid the possibility of a resurgence of activism (Chicago Tribune, 2005).

From this perspective, while collectively promoting a positive portrayal of Pilsen, the neighbourhood growth prospects could conceivably counter the effects of the crisis while minimising the displacement of long-time working-class residents. Here, the impacts of the global economic crisis, as opposed to the notable resilience of Bronzeville’s HB, have suggested a deeper interdependence and alignment between Pilsen’s local organisations and pro-growth actors. It has also curtailed the power of PA, the neighbourhoods’ remaining ‘anti-gentrification’ group, by further eroding its grassroots funding sources.

Pilsen’s redevelopment, however, continues to advance despite the impacts of the crisis (see Martinez, 2009). It also confronts the least amount of obstructive, ‘anti-gentrification’ resistance since the neighbourhood has been targeted for redevelopment. PA, amid the debilitating effects of the crisis, has lost considerable political momentum. While its ‘progressive’ class-based orientation remains, securing funding sources has proven increasingly problematic: ‘we’re experiencing funding issues … particularly the lack of financial resources coming from avenues other than the city’ (interview with PA representative, 25 March 2010).

In contrast to the ‘anti-gentrification’ contestation in the 1990s, these groups today are more aligned with Pilsen’s pro-growth actors and, thus, compromised with the City’s established neoliberal agendas, i.e. of attracting investment, replenishing tax revenues and advancing market-oriented policies. Their sympathy with the new vision of Pilsen as ‘ethnically preserved’, reliance on City-sourced funding, and the impacts of the global crisis, severely curtailed the oppositional capacity of these local groups and placed them within a strategic alliance that, in this context, was established on the terms of pro-growth actors. As one local activist noted: ‘this is the time when we need to collaborate and work together with the city … now we can develop our programs through some financial assistance from the city’ (interview, 8 November 2010).

A notably distinct governance trajectory has marked Pilsen’s redevelopment from that of Bronzeville. Varying historical and cultural legacies, evolving relationships between contesting groups and pro-growth actors, impacts of broader political and economic forces, and shifting orientations of contesting groups have constituted the contestation/neoliberal relation in both neighbourhoods in notably different ways. In short, these varying ensembles of conditions have ultimately shaped what are two different trajectories of local governance transformation within the same city.

Conclusion

Urban neoliberalisation has been neither uniform nor unchallenged; rather, contesting social movements have everywhere impacted and shaped this multifaceted process of generating local forms of neoliberal governance. This study reveals two critical points. First, it has empirically deepened our understanding of neoliberal urban governance as contingently manifest and temporally variegated within the same city. Second, in this frame, we have illuminated one dimension of this complexity and intra-urban contingency: the mutually constitutive and differentially mediated relation between contestation and neoliberal governance. In Bronzeville and Pilsen, different historical and cultural legacies and broader political-economic impacts have shaped both the orientation of contesting groups and their relationships with pro-growth (and neoliberal-guided) actors. These conditions have impacted the trajectory of local governance differently between these neighbourhoods, thus illustrating a notable degree of ‘intra-urban’ contingency within Chicago’s broader urban governance.

But at a deeper level, contesting groups, themselves, are also revealed as hybrid and multifaceted, and constituted by actors variously aligned and/or in conflict with the ensemble of pro-growth actors and neoliberal policies mobilised across local settings. In this context, we suggest the role of neoliberalism in local governance transformation is contingent on the ways in which neoliberal ideas (i.e. the private market), policies (i.e. ‘mixed-income’ development), and class-privileging agendas (i.e. gentrification) form the basis for strategic alliance formation among diverse groups of governing actors.

In Bronzeville, the HB coalition has entailed a more explicit class-based politics than the kind of race-based ‘defensive development’ (Boyd, 2008b) advocated by the MSPDC during the 1990s. But HB resistance has not supplanted MSPDC concerns: it retains the race-based politics of the MSPDC vision while infusing a more salient concern with class-based displacement. In this context, a shift in activist orientation to a more salient ‘anti-gentrification’ focus has proven politically fruitful. It is also a resistance that gained political traction in relation to governance responses of avoidance, hostility and feeble attempts to sympathise with the plight of low-income residents. In short, a once consolidated City-MSPDC alliance now struggles to pursue its class-privileging goals amid unfavourable economic conditions and a tentative but pragmatic compromise with HB activists.

While neoliberal actors and policies remain part of Bronzeville’s broader governance (‘mixed-income’ housing, TIFs and historical preservation), this power realignment reflects a notable destabilisation of neoliberal normativity in this setting. It also suggests, at the least, the potential for more fundamental forms of governance transformation in ‘non-neoliberal’ guided directions. The extent to which HB represents a direct challenge to neoliberalism, however, is unclear: the group’s focus on affordable homeownership for ‘moderate-income’ families and the blaming of ‘excessive’ gentrification rather than explicitly targeting neoliberal capitalism may represent limitations to its neoliberal-transcending potential.

In Pilsen, however, local organisations and pro-growth actors have found an, albeit tenuous, balance through collaborative work that seeks to preserve and restore affordable housing. The ‘anti-gentrification’ movement that formerly revolved around displacement now promotes a vision of Pilsen as not necessarily upscale, but culturally and ethnically preserved. This power realignment and reconciliation between formerly anti-gentrification and pro-growth actors reflects less a destabilisation than a reinforcement of neoliberal normativity around market-oriented initiatives, i.e. historical preservation and ‘mixed-income’ development. In a similar fashion, Bronzeville’s racially sensitive growth-discourse and associated policies remain focal points, yet they now compete with emergent and competing ideas (i.e. equity and communal living) for stimulating affordable housing and governing the neighbourhood.

Lastly, insofar as governing assemblages embrace certain neoliberal characteristics, we suggest, the presence of non-City sources of funding, broader economic conditions that constrain gentrifying housing markets, and the privileging of class-based concerns among contesting actors are important conditions to help propel governance trajectories that depart from or destabilise neoliberal-guided principles. As local governing assemblages are embedded within wider governance arrangements, we also suggest that these local mediating conditions have broader-scale implications as well. Further research, however, is critical to better understand the locally rooted conditions and their potential for forging new and more socially just modes of urban governance.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are especially thankful to the editors of this special issue, Ismael Blanco, Steven Griggs, and Helen Sullivan for their critical comments on previous versions of this article. We also thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

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