City of Segregation and How to Kill a City questions Please complete two reading questions…………after read articles. First, read Chapters 1-3 (pp. 15
City of Segregation and How to Kill a City questions Please complete two reading questions…………after read articles. First, read Chapters 1-3 (pp. 15-68)
of Peter Moskowitz’s How to Kill a City,
paying close attention to how Moskowitz describes the gentrification of New Orleans,
Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. (You’ll also want to consider
the connections between Moskowitz’s argument about New Orleans and Gibbons’s
account of the “Battle on Skid Row” in Ch. 7 of City of Segregation.) Once you’ve
finished the chapters, do your best to answer the questions below in a few sentences.
CHAPTER 1
1) How were the New Orleans government and the New Orleans Redevelopment
Authority (NORA) involved in gentrifying the neighborhood along Oretha Castle
Haley Boulevard?
2) On p. 22, Moskowitz writes, “Gentrification, at its deepest level, is really about
reorienting the purpose of cities away from being spaces that provide for the poor and
middle classes and toward being spaces that generate capital for the rich.” What does
he mean by this, exactly? How does it relate to Chapter 7 of City of Segregation about
LA’s Skid Row?
CHAPTER 2
3) Give a brief account of Neil Smith’s theory of the “rent gap,” as Moskowitz
describes it. (You might then think about the table on p. 130 of City of
Segregation….)
4) According to Moskowitz, federal and city governments play a significant role in
gentrification. How? Why?
CHAPTER 3
5) According to Moskowitz, how did the Hope VI program and the destruction of
much of New Orleans’s public housing stock contribute to the process of
gentrification?
6) How does Louisiana use tax incentives to encourage businesses and industries to
move to or stay in New Orleans? How does this contribute to gentrification and
displacement of the city’s low-income people of color?
First, read Chapter 7 of City of Segregation (pp. 123-155), annotating and taking
notes and paying close attention to how Gibbons’s argument has changed slightly as
she has jumped forward in time. Once you’ve read the chapter, do your best to answer
the questions below in a few short sentences.
1) According to Gibbons, what is the difference between the way that segregation was
produced in the past and the way it’s being produced today in urban spaces like Los
Angeles’s Skid Row?
2) How does Gibbons explain the “mass homelessness” of black men in Los Angeles?
3) What was the “Policy of Containment” regarding Skid Row? When and why did
this policy gradually shift toward a policy of “dispersal” that was pushed by the
business Associations and Business Improvement Districts?
4) Why do you think the 2002 redevelopment plan for LA’s Central Business District
targeted SROs (Single Room Occupancy hotels)? How is this related to the
“gentrification” (i.e., the social cleansing) of Downtown?
5) Do you see a connection between the type of rhetoric that the Central City
Association (CCA) used on pp. 143-145 and the type of rhetoric that, 40 years earlier,
Torrance’s white homeowners used (see pp. 107-108)? Elaborate….
6) How did the business Associations, the BIDs, and the police collaborate in their
efforts to “clean up” Skid Row? How did Jones v. The City of Los Angeles (2006)—as
well as the passage of the Residential Hotel Ordinance—get in the way of these
efforts?
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