Seeing Like the Shadow State: Philanthropy, Memory, and Public Housing Redevelopment in Syracuse, NY

Keywords: urban, public housing, shadow state, memory
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 39

Abstract

In this paper, we examine Blueprint 15, a planned neighborhood redevelopment and public housing transformation in Syracuse, NY. We argue that Blueprint 15 provides an ideal project through which we can interrogate the intersection of memory and nostalgia with changing regimes of urban governance. Analyzing Blueprint 15 confirms something that has been noted in many studies—the trend of devolving or offloading urban governance to the non-profit and philanthropic sectors—while also, as we will argue, demonstrating some nuanced ways in which shadow state (Wolch, 1990) institutions go about their work. In particular, we draw on Scott (1998) to argue that shadow state actors mobilize local, albeit selective memories of urban renewal to make both neighborhood space and populations legible in ways that reinforce their particular governing logics. To reinforce the legibility of the neighborhood, planners and non-profit sponsors take advantage of nostalgia for the place’s previous configuration as an African-American and immigrant enclave demolished through urban renewal to gain support for new transformations of urban space.