Book post: Building Downtown Los Angeles: The Politics of Race and Place
June 2022
In Los Angeles, as in major cities across the U.S., city officials are working to transform downtown into a place of entertainment, culture, and commerce for affluent business travelers, tourists, and residents. What happens to those who live in these places and how does race and class matter? Because city planning policies focus on attracting higher-income consumers, academic research and media accounts generally portray the impact of these policies as class-based and race-neutral. Also, because top city officials and corporate elites have enormous political power and resources and support downtown development, there is a long history of policies displacing lower-income residents and destroying their neighborhoods. Research shows that low-income residents usually do not have the political power to stop their displacement.
In my book, Building Downtown Los Angeles: The Politics of Race and Place in Urban America, using data from archival research, fieldwork, interviews, newspapers, and the U.S. Census, I examine how supposedly race-neutral policies have significant racialized effects. For example, downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) has experienced a dramatic rise in the percentage of White residents in the past several decades, even as the percentage of Whites in the city has remained fairly constant. In contrast, the percentage of Latinos in DTLA has decreased while increasing in the city. I argue that public funds used to rebuild DTLA —and the city’s use of eminent domain to remove lower-income racialized minorities for new projects —contribute to racial change and tend to benefit the new residents and consumers, who are primarily White, giving added meaning and importance to race in the contemporary U.S.
Rather than a by-product of class factors, I argue that race plays a critical role in the process of demographic change in DTLA, and other U.S. cities, in part, because of the history of policies and practices that have racialized capital accumulation. Economists often explain differences in wealth among racial groups through personal and cultural factors, such as human capital, class capital, and the ability to save. This explanation, however, leaves out government policies and societal exclusionary practices that have created unequal opportunities for capital accumulation. For example, homeownership is a major way that middle-class Whites have generated wealth. In contrast, the history of exclusion for racialized minorities from this important process —through the practices of government, financial, and real-estate estate institutions —have contributed to the racial wealth gap. In Los Angeles, the median net worth of White households is over eight times the amount of Latino households. Similarly, explanations of gentrification that focus on demographic change due to class and market forces miss the importance of how racialized capital accumulation affects access to housing and entrepreneurship.
The Growth With Equity Coalition
Scholars document that it is primarily organizations that represent the interests of affluent residents that have the resources and political influence to counter corporate growth interests. My research, however, shows how an effective coalition composed of unions and community organizations has formed in Los Angeles – as they have in other urban areas in the US – to represent the interests of lower-income residents. Aided by the growing Latino electorate, they have worked to negotiate major changes in city policies regarding development. A pivotal event that illustrates the rise of this coalition is the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) that was negotiated with the developer of L.A. Live (a large entertainment complex) in 2001. CBAs are contracts that include benefits such as affordable housing, living-wage jobs, local hiring, and subsidies for displaced residents.
Laying the foundation for the CBA, this social justice coalition – with groups such as Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, Esperanza Community Housing, and service worker unions — has successfully worked for the election of officials who are receptive to issues important to low-income and working-class residents. In the years following the establishment of the L.A. Live CBA, the coalition has been working to go beyond negotiating CBAs with individual projects because this is too resource-intensive and is not a sustainable long-term strategy for community organizations.
Instead, the coalition is working to establish a fundamental change in the city’s development policies through the implementation of a “growth with equity” framework —which involves incorporating some of the major aspects of CBAs with city projects involving significant public subsidies and/or large contracts. For example, the Los Angeles community college district, unified school district, and county transportation authority have established living-wage ordinances and agreements that include local hiring provisions, construction apprenticeships, and career programs geared toward increasing the number of women and minoritized people in unions. This is a major change for these unions with their history of exclusionary hiring practices. Second, the city is establishing policies that include a wider population than is possible with individual CBAs. For example, Los Angeles established a substantial increase in its minimum wage. Voters passed Proposition JJJ which includes provisions for affordable housing, wage levels, and hiring for housing projects requesting zoning variances.
These changes demonstrate the transformational shift in the city’s politics over the past several decades due to the rise of a progressive coalition that has the political power and resources to establish policies that take into account the interests of lower-income and minoritized people. This change recognizes that developers receiving city support for projects should provide community benefits and contribute to jobs and housing that improve the lives of local residents rather than perpetuate poverty and unhealthy living conditions.
About the author:
Professor Saito’s research examines how race shapes public policy in areas such as redistricting, economic development, and historic preservation. He also examines politics and race relations in urban areas, including Los Angeles, San Diego, and New York City. He primarily uses qualitative methods, such as interviews, archival research, and field research.
View Professor Saito’s USC Dornsife bio
© 2022. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.