Making the Cotton District (white): the displacement of blackness from the first new urbanist neighborhood

Keywords: urban renewal, new urbanism, displacement, whiteness, anti-blackness
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 30

Abstract

Often lauded as a gem of progressive ‘new urbanist’ development, Starkville, Mississippi’s Cotton District neighborhood stands out as a lively and walkable neighborhood in the otherwise car-centric landscapes of the rural south. Despite the neighborhood’s many boosters — including those that claim it to be the first ever new urbanist development — the Cotton District’s faux-historic plantation architecture acts as a facade, concealing the actual history behind the neighborhood’s development. This paper reexamines this history, arguing that the neighborhood is founded on the material and symbolic displacement of blackness, and its replacement with symbols of nostalgia for white supremacy. By focusing on the combined role of federal urban renewal and private real estate speculation, our analysis of the Cotton District offers a rethinking of new urbanism’s place in the American city by showing its dependence on urban renewal’s legacy of displacement and their shared grounding in white supremacist planning and design practices.