Event recap of ‘Building Downtown Los Angeles: The Politics of Race and Place in Urban America’
On Tuesday, October 25, 2022, USC Equity Research Institute (ERI) hosted a virtual event featuring Professor Leland Saito and his new book, Building Downtown Los Angeles: The Politics of Race and Place in Urban America. He was joined by Cynthia Strathmann, Executive Director of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE), Dr. Manuel Pastor, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and ERI Director, and Dr. Jody Agius Vallejo, Associate Professor of Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity and Associate Director at the ERI, Co-Director of Graduate Studies in Sociology, and moderator of the book talk.
Professor Saito began with the introduction of two issues that helped define downtown Los Angeles: (1) the building of the Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena) and L.A. Live, and (2) the City of Los Angeles providing millions of dollars in subsidies and using eminent domain to acquire the land for the development of those two projects. These two issues attracted billions of dollars of private capital and continued the trend of urban development projects that directly led to the displacement of low-income people of color, replacing the population with affluent residents and consumers.
In examining contemporary research on the changing racial composition of communities, Saito says that historical context of communities is often missing in research that does not consider the long history of exclusionary policies favoring Whites regarding homeownership and residential segregation. Missing such historical context overlooks the fact that homeownership is the primary way for middle class Americans to build wealth. The history of racial displacement and capital accumulation remains significant factors in home buying today.
The formation of and adherence to public policies, such as eminent domain and ownership of land, that encourage urban development do not just simply affect racially-labeled groups. Saito explains that such city policy contributes to the process of racial formation and the meaning and importance of race and place. These “race-neutral” policies produce racialized effects due to their operation within a society in which racial matters are deeply embedded and established, thus “race-neutral” policies have racialized outcomes in society. Indeed, as Saito notes in his book, the impact of city policies to spur development since the 1990s into downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) saw major racial changes: Latinos were the largest racial group in 1990 to the third largest in 2015. Their numbers were steady in the city but dropped in the DTLA area due to racially exclusionary displacement caused by increased housing costs. The number of whites in downtown Los Angeles doubled in this same period and are now the largest racial group in DTLA; opposite to the entire city of Los Angeles, where the number of Whites have declined. The number of Asian Americans in DTLA have more than tripled in this same period, much faster than in the city.
These public policies to garner development and attract affluent residents have seen major gentrification indicators–such as the percentage of those with a Bachelor’s degree, housing values, household income–apparent in DTLA, much more than in the city. With white residents now the largest population in DTLA, they have ultimately become the valued residents and beneficiaries of investments in the DTLA area. As such, Saito proposes the term “racial spatial transformation” to talk about an on-going analysis that includes historical and contemporary processes of racial formation in place and racialization of place to analyze the relationship between race, place, and policy.
Turning to the idea of the “growth with equity” coalition, Saito mentions that because of corporate growth interests and current research contending that only affluent residents have the necessary resources and organizational representation for political influence, the current development predicament might remain unchanged. Saito finds, however, that effective coalitions of unions and community organizations, such as Strategic Actions for a Just Economy and Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, have formed in Los Angeles to represent the interests of lower-income people of color in the city and counter growth interests with the sustained political power and resources, contrary to current research. This unique formation is attributed to the rise of organized labor, community organizations, multiracial alliances, and the growth of the Latino population in downtown Los Angeles over time that have all shaped local neighborhoods and communities through grassroots activism and electoral politics. This has ultimately laid the foundation for the emergence of this progressive coalition that possesses the capacity for sustainable influence in politics.
These progressive “growth with equity” coalitions have democratized this capitalist-dominated urban development process in downtown Los Angeles and grew, in part, due to Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) – a contract of agreements and benefits developers uphold to the community in exchange for the community’s support. However, due to the resource-intensive nature of CBAs in terms of negotiating and monitoring implementation, coalitions are moving toward transforming development policies using the “growth with equity” framework. This framework intertwines major characteristics of CBAs with city projects that involve public subsidies and/or large contracts in order to exact a better hold on developers, counter displacement, and reach a wider population than is possible with individual CBAs.
Bringing in the lens of community work regarding CBAs, Strathmann explains the upsides and downsides to CBAs. They can be co-opted to look as if developers are doing a great deal of importance for and to the community, even though they really aren’t, and newer community groups are more susceptible to accepting relatively small amounts of money. There are issues with getting the funds to organize, negotiate, and enforce CBAs, but, as Strathmann says, “getting developers to fund implementation themselves accuses community groups that they’re just supporting the development for the money.” Strathmann continues that CBAs can be good organizing tools to get people in the community involved and working together, and although it can address the harms that development does, it also serves as a discursive trap that activists get caught in.
Pastor adds to this idea by explaining how Saito’s book pushes back on growth regime theory, as growth was often seen and used to buy off trade unions in partnerships with corporations. CBAs make it clear that allowing these levels of inequality to persist in society will decrease future productivity in the labor force and increase displacement. Pastor adds that continuing to reproduce racial inequality will lead to “shipwrecking prosperity of the region.”
Incorporating aspects of CBAs into City policy will ease the strain of resource exhaustion by having the City involved in getting these benefits, rather than leaving it entirely to community groups. This incorporation has helped establish policies such as Measure JJJ that passed in 2016–which includes provisions for affordable housing, wage requirements, and local hiring for housing projects requesting changes in zoning–thereby helping the community in terms of time, benefits and resources. Because of this transformation in CBAs, the Los Angeles City College District and LA Transportation Authority have also established benefits such as the living wage ordinance and construction apprenticeships. These benefits have helped to increase the number of women and people of color in unions and address the long history of exclusion membership prevalent in union construction while increasing the City’s minimum wage.
Saito ends by asserting that although changes happening in downtown Los Angeles have been transformational, such changes have been happening in environments in which lower-income residents are fighting issues of inequality such as unaffordable housing markets, inaccessibility to transportation, and quality education. The state of community coalitions is such that it is working towards bringing DTLA to a point in which transformational change to address these destructive inequalities faced by lower-income residents is in reach.
About the author:
Paris Viloria (she/her) is a Project Assistant with the USC Equity Research Institute. She is driven toward collaborative work that helps empower marginalized communities to shape the future of their neighborhoods.