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The struggle for the future of public housing in Memphis, Tennessee:
Reflections on HUD's choice neighborhoods planning program
Antonio Raciti
a,
⁎, Katherine A. Lambert-Pennington
b
, Kenneth M. Reardon
c
a
City and Regional Planning Department, The University of Memphis, United States
b
Anthropology Department, The University of Memphis, United States
c
Graduate Program in Urban Planning and Community Development, University of Massachusetts Boston, United States
abstractarticle info
Article history:
Received 19 November 2014
Received in revised form 20 October 2015
Accepted 30 October 2015
Available online 11 December 2015
This paper critically examines the Choice Neighborhoods Planning Initiative that was carried out in the Vance
Avenue Neighborhood in Memphis Tennessee (USA). It tells the story of the involvements of a coalition of 25
neighborhood organizations inpartnership with the City and Regional Planning (CRP) Department atthe Univer-
sity of Memphis –called the Vance Avenue Collaborative (VAC) –in the CN Planning Initiative. Launched in 2011
with significant community support, the CN Planning Initiative ended in 2013 with a resident-led oppositional
planning effort that challenged the institutional plan.
The VAC story explores some of the pitfalls that might arise in institutionally-created spaces for citizen participa-
tion, by revealing the broad range of tactics used by public officials to marginalize democratic citizen participa-
tion. Based on the issues that emerged during the CN Planning Initiative, the VAC created alternative strategies
to respond to those generated through institutional planning. These counter-strategies, framed in Advocacy
Planning and Action Research approaches were able to secure some important achievements along the way
and might be useful for communities within publicly sponsored urban revitalization efforts.
Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords:
Public housing
HOPE VI program
Choice neighborhoods program
Citizen participation
Advocacy planning
Empowerment planning
1. Introduction
Over the last 25 years, many US cities have redeveloped low-
income housing using the framework and funding provided by the
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) HOPE VI,
and, more recently, Choice Neighborhoods Programs. The goals of
these redevelopment programs are to physically and socially transform
public housing into mixed-income residential communities by de-
concentrating poverty (Greenbaum, Hathaway, Rodriguez, Spalding, &
Ward, 2008), expanding housing choices for low-income residents,
and transitioning from centrally controlled public housing to privately
managed mixed-income housing (Goetz, 2012b). The existing literature
on public housing covers a vast array of problematic issues that are as-
sociated with practices of relocation, including gentrification effects
(Goetz, 2012a), racial and social segregation (Teitz & Chapple, 1998),
and the erosion of local networks and existing social capital (Manzo,
Kleit Rl, & Couch, 2008). In an often-cited review article on public hous-
ing reform efforts and relocation practices, Goetz and Chapple (2010)
show that the overwhelming majority of these programs failed to im-
prove the well being of the targeted communities. Moreover, Fraser,
Burns, Bazuin, and Oakley (2013) have argued, this strategy represents
a broad-based, state-led effort to reclaim and “colonize”profitable
areas, often close to downtowns, for market rate housing and commer-
cial development.
Memphis is one of many cities with a majority African-American
population that has secured competitive HOPE VI grants since the
mid-1990s (approximately more than $155 million dollars). It did so,
in part, by establishing a unique public–private partnership, Memphis
HOPE, to promote family stability and financial self-sufficiency among
public housing tenants through an integrated casemanagement system.
By 2009, HOPE VI had dramatically changed the public housing land-
scape in thecity, eliminatingall but two public housing communities lo-
cated in the historic African-American Vance Avenue Neighborhood:
Foote and Cleaborn Homes (4a and 4b on leftmap in Fig. 1). As Memphis
Housing Authority (MHA) prepared to apply for another HOPE VI grant
to implement the Triangle Noir Redevelopment Plan (Self Tucker
Architects Inc., 2008), which proposed to demolition and redevelop-
ment Cleaborn and Foote Homes, local pastors serving the Vance Ave-
nue Neighborhood organized a coalition of twenty-four community-
based organizations to discuss the needs of residents. In particular,
they were concerned about the displacement caused by previous
HOPE VI-funded redevelopment projects and the growing problem of
homelessness in the nearby Central Business District.
The neighborhood coalition, led by St. Patrick's Catholic Church, in-
vited the Universityof Memphis (UoM) Cityand Regional Planning De-
partment to work with local residents and stakeholders to generate
feasible alternatives to the one proposed by the City. Although HUD
awarded the MHA a HOPE VI grant to demolish and redevelop Cleaborn
Cities 57 (2016) 6–13
⁎Corresponding author.
E-mail address: araciti@memphis.edu (A. Raciti).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.10.016
0264-2751/Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Cities
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities
Homes in 2010, the coalition, later called the Vance Avenue Collabora-
tive (VAC), met monthly throughout 2010–2011 to discuss possible
future revitalization opportunities for the neighborhood and for the
city's last remaining public housing complex: Foote Homes. In 2011,
the Division of Housing and Community Development (HCD) and
MHA invited the VAC and their University partners to be part of their
Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant Application with the goal of pre-
paring a comprehensive transformation plan for Foote Homes and the
surrounding Vance Avenue Neighborhood.
This paper critically examines the Vance Avenue Choice Neigh-
borhood Planning Initiative (VACNPI). It tells the story of how the
VAC's involvement in the Choice Neighborhoods planning process
in 2011 and 2012 (Fig. 2) brought relevant and controversial issues
to bear on the discussion of public housing in Memphis. The Vance
story allows us to explore some of the pitfalls that often arise in
institutionally-created spaces for citizen participation and reveals
the broad range of tactics and demagogic discourses (Fainstein,
2010) used by public officials to marginalize democratic citizen par-
ticipation (Arnstein, 1969). VACNPI demonstrates that despite hav-
ing formalized spaces for citizen participation (required by Choice
Neighborhoods guidelines), inclusion in the context of institutionalized
planning does not ensure marginalized groups' genuine influence and
power in decision-making processes (Miraftab, 2009). Based on the
issues that emerged during the VACNPI, the VAC tailored counter-
strategies to respondto those generated through institutional planning.
These counter-strategies, framed in Advocacy Planning and Action
Research approaches (Reardon, 2003), were able to secure some impor-
tant achievements along the way and might be useful for communities
working within publicly sponsored urban revitalization efforts (Bratt &
Reardon, 2013).
Fig. 1. Comparison between a 1939 map of the sites of federally-funded public housing projects and a current aerial view of Memphis with thesame sites redeveloped with HOPE VI
programs. Foot Homes (4a) is the only remaining complex.
Base maps source: Memphis Housing Authority, “More than Housing”1939 (reproduced from Roger 1986 p. 77) (left) and Google Earth (right).
Fig. 2. Timeline representing the overall planning process for the Vance Avenue Neighborhood, from the birth of the VAC until today.
7A. Raciti et al. / Cities 57 (2016) 6–13
2. Methodology section
2.1. Structure of VANPI and fieldwork done by the CRP/VAC team
The overall work of the VACNPI was structured around the three key
policy areas that were outlined in HUD's Choice Neighborhoods Plan-
ning Grant guidelines: Housing, People, and Neighborhood (Fig. 4).
The UoM/VAC team was one of three consulting teams that collected
and analyzed data required to prepare a neighborhood transformation
plan for the Vance Avenue Neighborhood (see Figs. 2 & 3 for a complete
overview of main events of the planning process). A group consisting of
a developer specializing of multi-family housing, two architectural
firms, and a finance group made up the Housing Sub-Committee. A
non-profit consultant, her staff,and a local school districtrepresentative
comprised the People Sub-Committee. The UoM/VAC team made up the
Neighborhood Sub-Committee. Each consultant team developed a re-
search design and a plan for sharing data with each other.
In joining the VACNPI, the UoM/VAC decided to maintain the Action
Researchapproach that characterized their earlier work together,which
involved local residents and institutional leaders as “co-investigators”
with University-trained planners at every step of the researchand plan-
ning process (Whyte, 1991; Greenwood & Levin, 1998). In this kind of
approach, “colleges and universities both seek to understand the func-
tioning of the local economy and enhance its operation by involving
local residents and university-trained researchers in a reciprocal learn-
ing process at each stage in the research and planning process from
problem identification to data analysis to program implementation
and evaluation”(Reardon, 2006, 97). The UoM/VAC partnership carried
out a broad range of neighborhood planningtechniques (for a good re-
view of used neighborhood development techniques see Reardon,
2009) as part of the VACNPI. Over the course of the Choice Neighbor-
hoods project (from August 2011 to May 2012, refer to Fig. 3 for a sum-
mary of activities), 25 University students and 4 faculty members
engaged in a sustained community outreach campaign to support a se-
ries of mixed method data collection activities (Gaber & Gaber, 2007)
that, over time, involved more than 800 local stakeholders and enlarged
the co-investigators group to more than sixty participants. Activities
carried out by the UoM/VAC research team included: an assessment of
the neighborhood's existing physical and social conditions, analysis of
Census data, archival research, field surveys and GIS analysis of the
neighborhood's physical conditions, stakeholder interviews, focus
groups, and participatory research activities, including a community
mapping exercise, a neighborhood photo documentation initiative,
and action team meetings. Additionally, students engaged in bestprac-
tice research, reviewing the community transformation literature in ar-
chitecture, landscape architecture, civil engineering, and city and
regional planning to identify innovative policies, programs and urban
design projects that could be used to stabilize and revitalize the Vance
Avenue Community. Beyond data collection, the UoM/VAC team regu-
larly debriefed on specific research activities, reflecting on the overall
process and on specific conversations, observations, and insights that
individuals on the team had during their participation. Notes on
debriefing sessions were recorded in field notes.
In keeping with Action Research methods, the UoM/VAC team sys-
tematically shared all data with residents, community groups, and
other interested parties through monthly VACNPI community meetings.
These discussions created space for collaborative interpretations of the
data, the emergence of new questions to, and refinement of research
findings. Data and analysis was compiled into a Community Data Book
(Vance Avenue Collaborative, 2012a) and disseminated at the Neigh-
borhood Summit in March 2012 and digitally via the Vance Choice
Neighborhoods website. The Community Data Book alsoincluded a pre-
liminary draft of an overall development goal (vision statement) and a
list of specific revitalization objectives developed by local stakeholders
participating in the planning process. The daylong Neighborhood Sum-
mit generated a final set of development goals and objectives and pro-
duced Action Teams consisting of stakeholders and consultants
responsible for formulating specific programs to achieve the overall de-
velopment goals. Additionally, it produced a series of self-help projects,
includingseveral neighborhood cleanups and the launchof a highly suc-
cessful mobile food market.
2.2. Sharing reflections on the VANPI
As action researchers we were directly involved in the process, we
interrogated this experience reflecting on the most critical incidents
and milestones relevant to the objectives of this article. In presenting
the VACNPI experience, we have analyzed our field notes, correspon-
dence with VACNPI partners, MHA, HCD, and the Mayor's office, as
well as reviewed notes and minutes from specific community events,
reflected on the formal and informal interviews and conversations
that were part of the VACNPI research, and monitored and analyzed
media reports focused on public housing and/or the neighborhood. All
of these materials were collected in the VAC archive kept at the Univer-
sity. In keeping with the conventions on writing about Action Research
Fig. 3. Timeline representing the Vance Avenue Choice Neighborhood Planning Initiative.
8A. Raciti et al. / Cities 57 (2016) 6–13
approaches (Saija, 2014), we conclude this article with our reflections
on VACNPI.
3. The evolution of the planning initiative
3.1. Neighborhood sub-committee key findings
Preliminary historic and existing conditions research provided a
profile of the current conditions within the neighborhood and a starting
point for community asset mapping and photo documentation. During
these activities, small groups of stakeholders exchanged stories about
their experiences, hopes, and fears for the area. The top assets and re-
sources identified included: the neighborhood's central location; rich
social history; multiple public and private school options; affordable
housing, specifically Foote Homes; extensive network of community-
oriented churches; and the presence of numerous human service orga-
nizations. The five biggest challenges negatively affecting the quality of
life of those living and workingin the Vance Avenue community, includ-
ed: the absence of living wage jobs; underperforming local schools;
collapse of neighborhood retail services; lack of primary health care
practitioners/practices; and prevalence of drug-related crime. The sub-
sequent neighborhood photo documentation activity involved more
than 60 stakeholders in generating 1500 images depicting the
neighborhood's most important assets, challenges, and untapped re-
sources. This camera-based exercise provided additional depth regard-
ing various aspects of the community, especially related to the Foote
Homes Complex. Photographs of Foote Homes showed up as strength
for many groups and as a challenge (weakness) for others. Some evalu-
ating the many images taken by Foote Homes stakeholders acknowl-
edged the need to address the complex's ongoing maintenance issues
as well as crime on the perimeter of the complex; others identified
this project as one of the neighborhood's most important assets. It was
affordable and convenientlylocated enabling manyresidents to pursue
job training and educational opportunities in the nearby Downtown or
to access health care at the public and Veterans Administrationhospitals
located in the adjacent Medical District.
One-on-one interviews with local stakeholders, including: pastors,
school principals, social service directors, tenant leaders, small business
operators, residents, and elected officials revealed a number of themes
that resonated with the group-sourced data described above. The inter-
views also highlighted local stakeholders' strong belief in the area's eco-
nomic development potential. Some interviewees, however, also
expressed skepticism about the City's redevelopment agenda. Others
wondered out loud if they would still be in the neighborhood to benefit
from the outcomes of future revitalization efforts. Focus groups with
four key constituencies –neighborhood youth, seniors, pastors, and
small business owners –not only echoed the strengths and challenges
previously mentioned, but also generated discussions about what peo-
ple wanted in the neighborhood. Among theirtop priorities were a con-
veniently located, full-service supermarket to promote family health
and wellness; a safe and affordable recreational/fitness facility; and a
one-stop center to access educational, employment, health, and social
services available to low-income neighborhood residents. Additionally,
some participants expressed anxieties regarding possible future public
school closings and seniors, in particular, were worried about being
able to find affordable housing that could accommodate their disability,
or their other household members, which sometimes included their
children and grandchildren.
The high degree of stakeholder involvement in the participatory
planning activities outlined above revealed their strong investment
and sense of attachment to the neighborhood. Despite some skepticism
regarding the planning process and mistrust of City leaders, stake-
holders largely viewed the neighborhood in positive ways and saw
the advantages of being part of the Vance community. Stakeholder-
identified key challenges –job training and living wage employment,
crime, and limited affordable housing –were offset by their focus on
ways to improve the neighborhood's quality of life –an exercise facility,
grocery store, and healthcare providers. Stakeholders' mix of optimism,
realism, and vision, as well as many participants' expressed desire to
stay in the neighborhood and build a stronger Vance community in-
formed the UoM/VAC team's production of the Community Data Book
(described above) during the Spring of 2012.
3.2. Diverging planning goals and objectives
In February, HCD invited a number of downtown stakeholders,
including members of UoM/VAC team, to discuss the Triangle Noir Re-
development Plan (left on Fig. 5). Coordinated by a public relations
firm, HCD, and an architectural firm, the purpose of the meeting was
to rename the project and to “[find] a more focused direction and meet-
ing a looming deadline for federal grant money”(Moore, 2012). The
goals of this plan were to transform a 20-block area of downtown,
including the Vance Avenue Community, into a “destination tourism
district”focused on its African-American culture and history and to en-
hance the economic vitality of nearby Beale Street. During the meeting,
speakers cited Kansas City's 18th and Vine, Harlem's 125th Street, New
Orleans' French Quarter, and Washington DC's Heritage Trail as exam-
ples of what the area could become. In addition to tourism, the plan
called for a number of physical changes to the area; one of which was
the redevelopment of Foote Homes. While some of VAC members par-
ticipated in the small group activities being facilitated by the architec-
ture firm, others tried to follow up with meeting conveners and City
staff to communicate their dissatisfaction with the City's plan to apply
for a Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant a year ahead of
schedule rather than wait on the work being done as part of the Choice
Neighborhoods Planning Grant process. The fact that the Triangle Noir
Redevelopment Plan, which was renamed the Memphis Heritage Trail
Plan (MHTP), included the redevelopment of Foote Homes had many
participants wondering if and how VACNPI would be incorporated
into the City's future development activities.
As information from the MHTP meeting circulated back to the com-
munity through the news media (Moore, 2012) and resident networks,
VACNPI participants' brought questions to February's regularly sched-
uled Choice Neighborhoods community meeting, which was attended
by the Mayor and the Director of HCD/MHA (right on Fig. 5). One of
the key goals of the meeting was for the UoM/VAC team to present
the alternative planning scenarios for Foote Homes and its surrounding
neighborhood that had emerged from analysis of previous research ac-
tivities. The alternative scenarios were: 1) preservation of Foote Homes;
2) major renovations to Foote Homes; 3) demolish seriously deteriorat-
ed units and upgrade remaining units; and 4) demolish and replace
with mixed-income housing like other nearby HOPEVI projects. Follow-
ing this presentation, an extensive public discussion ensued during
which residents asked the UoM/VAC team a number questions about
the various scenarios as well asasked the HCD/MHA Director a number
of questions about Section 8, the relocation process, and Foote Homes
maintenance issues. Participants then used paper ballots to identify
their most and least preferred scenarios. A UoM/VAC team member
counted the votes and announced that alternatives two and three re-
ceived the most support, while alternative four received the least. The
following week, HCD/MHA called a meeting of the Choice Neighbor-
hoods Management Committee to discuss the feasibility of applying
for a Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant in the 2012 funding
round. Ultimately, HCD/MHAdecided that they were not ready to apply
for an implementation grant in 2012 and planning continued for the
Neighborhood Summit scheduled to take place at the end of March.
The back-to-back MHTP and Choice Neighborhoods Community
meetings revealed a contradiction between the City's downtown tour-
ism development agenda, which seemed to have already determined
the future of Foote Homes, and the VACNPI, which was still in process.
This discrepancy was further highlighted during the March Project Con-
sultants' Meetingwhen MHA staff asked all thoseattending the meeting
9A. Raciti et al. / Cities 57 (2016) 6–13
to affirm their support for the agency's neighborhood redevelopment
strategy. One by one, staff and project consultants around the table
voiced their support until it was the UoM/VAC representatives turn.
They responded by saying that they hoped to be in a position to support
the City's Vance Avenue revitalization strategy in the future, but felt it
would be unethical to do so before all of the VACNPI data had been
analyzed.
Despite the divergent planning goals suggested above, the UoM/VAC
team played the key role in organizing the Choice Neighborhoods
Neighborhood Summit. At this event, representatives of the three
Choice Neighborhoods Consultant Teams discussed their findings with
VACNPI stakeholders, and built consensus around an overall revitaliza-
tion goal and eight specific neighborhood improvement objectives,
and established Action Teams. Based on the Summit, MHA asked the
UoM/VAC team to coordinate a series of three issue-specific planning
meetingsdesigned to involve local residents in the identification of im-
mediate, near-term, and long-term revitalization projects to achieve
these goals and objectives. Following the third of these meetings,
which produced a set of fifty-two redevelopment projects, University
faculty received official notice of their termination “for convenience”
from the VACNPI. UoM/VAC's termination marked a definitive shift in
the way VACNPI would operate during the remainder of the grant peri-
od, particularly with regard to stakeholder participation and informa-
tion dissemination. First, the Management Team was reorganized,
replacing many local residents and institutional leaders with social ser-
vice agency representatives. Second, the decision to terminate Universi-
ty resulted in the exclusion of the VAC from further participationin the
Choice Neighborhoods process. Third, Foote Homes residents and their
Vance Avenue neighbors were sent a letter from HCD/MHA informing
them that the period of active citizen input was over and that profes-
sional planners would be assuming responsibility for preparing the
transformation plan required by the City's Choice Neighborhoods Plan-
ning Grant. Finally, HCD/MHA disabled theVACNPI website, which had
served as animportant source of information dissemination about plan-
ning process.
3.3. From research to advocacy: struggling for a seat at the table
In response to the changes in structure and practice of VACNPI, local
stakeholders asked their University colleagues what could be done to
prevent their neighborhood's interests from being further ignored by
HCD/MHA. After several VAC community meetings focused on this
issue, University faculty offered to work with local residents on a pro
bono basis to produce their own, preservation-based plan using the
data and findings generated from VACNPI. The production of multiple
plans for contested areas of the city would, according to Paul Davidoff
(1965), allow City Planning Commissions and CityCouncils to objective-
ly evaluate the truth claims and planning proposals contained in com-
peting high quality plans selecting the one or a combination of several
that would best serve community interests. With the support of many
of Vance Avenue's churches and community-based organizations, facul-
ty worked with three dozen local leaders during August and September
of 2012 to prepare the Vance Avenue Community Transformation Plan
(VACTP) (Vance Avenue Collaborative, 2012b).
In September 2012, more than one hundred thirty community
stakeholders attended a presentation of the preliminary draft of the
Vance Avenue Community Transformation Plan. It detailed seven devel-
opment objectives and more than four-dozen specific neighborhood
improvement projects. Five of these were highlighted as high priority
“signature projects”, recommended for immediate action. Following
an extended question and answer period, local stakeholders voted by
acclamation to endorse the plan.A cross section of Vance Avenue com-
munity leaders and University faculty then decided to design and imple-
ment a direct organizing campaign (Alinsky, 1971) in the hopes of
negotiating a better solution for the redevelopment of Foote Homes
with HCD/MHA. The campaign sought to create a public discussion
about the importance of maintaining publicly managed housing,
prompt a third-party review of the strengths and weakness of each VA
neighborhood plan by the City Council, and demonstrate that the rec-
ommendation to preserve and improve the complex was based on
solid empirical evidence. To develop this organizing campaign, the
VAC reached out to Wade Rathke, founder and long-time Chief Organiz-
er of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now
(ACORN) (Rathke, 2009). The campaign was designed to involve an
ever-expanding number of poor and working-class Memphians, as
well as the institutions they supported, in a series of public actions in-
cluding the collection of petitions, press conferences, and demonstra-
tions aimed at encouraging HCD/MHA and the Mayor to consider
alternatives to the demolition of Foote Homes. In early October, these
and other activities prompted the Memphis City Council's Planning
and Zoning Subcommittee to draft a resolution requesting that the
City Council holds a hearing on the redevelopment of the Vance Avenue
Neighborhood (Fig. 6). Their resolution was postponed twice (Novem-
ber and December) and ultimately tabled by the City Council on the ad-
vice of the City Attorney who “advised council members they couldn't
take the action at least until the Memphis Housing Authority acts on
an urban renewal plan”(Dries, 2012).
While the community focused its efforts on getting an independent
third party to objectively evaluate the two competing Vance Avenue
plans, HCD/MHA submitted a $165 million dollar Tax Increment
Financing (TIF) Proposal to the Memphis/Shelby County Community
Revitalization Agency. This was done to fund the “local match”needed
to implement the MHTP through a Choice Neighborhoods Implementa-
tion Grant Application, which the City intended to submit to HUD in
2013 (Risher, 2012). UoM/VAC and their supporters mobilized neigh-
borhood associations, localdevelopers, taxpayers groups, and the highly
influential Downtown Memphis Commission to oppose this effort,
which would have left the City with few discretionary resources to ad-
dressfuturemunicipalneeds(Baker, 2012). This hastily assembled coa-
lition succeeded in convincing all of Shelby County and several of the
City of Memphis representatives on this joint board of the questionable
nature of the HCD/MHA TIF proposal. The defeat of this TIF proposal
made it nearly impossible for HCD/MHA to raise the local funds needed
to secure federal Choice Neighborhoods funding to implement the
MHTP.
In spite of the community's victories before the City Council's Plan-
ning and Zoning Committee and the Memphis/Shelby County Commu-
nity Redevelopment Agency, the HCD/MHA Director declined to meet
with those involved in preparing the resident-generated VACTP. While
the Mayor ultimately agreed, with the encouragement of the HUD Sec-
retary, to meet with community leaders he opted not to mediate the
conflict. In September 2013, MHA submitted a Choice Neighborhoods
Implementation Grant Application for $35 million to HUD based on
the MHTP. In March 2014, HUD announced the six cities that would re-
ceive funding; Memphis was not among them (Connolly, 2014; Dries,
2014). Community leaders who had participated in the development
of the alternative plan hoped HUD's decision would prompt the Mayor
and the HCD/MHA Directorto consider mediatingthe Foote Homes con-
flict. In February 2015, HCD/MHA resubmitted the MHTP to HUD for
funding under its Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant Pro-
gram without meeting with VAC representatives. In September 2015
HUD announced that Memphis was a recipient of a Choice Neighbor-
hood Implementation Grant.
4. Conclusions: reflecting on the choice neighborhoods planning
process
Embracing the call made by Goetz and Chapple (2010) to find con-
ducive strategies for involving local stakeholders in contemporary
urban development programs, our experience reveals that meaningful
patterns of development can occur only if taken for granted assump-
tions about how cities are currently implementing federal policies are
10 A. Raciti et al. / Cities 57 (2016) 6–13
questioned through collective processes. While the account shared here
covers only the period in which the VACNPI took place, it is important to
consider that this was part of a longer public housing redevelopment
process (See Timeline Fig. 2). For the remainder of this article, we
offer reflections on the elements of this experience that might be useful
in other contexts, especially for those groups rethinking the design and
implementation ofurban regeneration policies. We focus first on obser-
vations related to the broad set of questions and problematic issues
raised by implementing participation within an institutional planning
frame, like VACNPI. Then we turn to insights related to the creation of
possible planning alternatives that might enhance contemporary
urban revitalization efforts.
4.1. Participation and its pitfalls
The formal organizational structure of the VACNPI (Fig. 4)wascreat-
ed to maintain a constant space for citizens' input throughout the plan-
ning process. Several events throughout the experience suggest that
there was a gap between the formally recognized space for citizen par-
ticipation and what was implemented. The UoM/VAC partnership acti-
vated a process of building knowledge and supported stakeholder
driven priorities, even as they systematically conflicted with HCD/
MHA expectations. Yet, the overall process became a demagogic tool
used by MHA-HCD to legitimize an agenda that advocated for a HOPE
VI-style development. Hidden in this gap are many of the pitfalls of
democratic participation in decision-making processes (Fainstein,
2010).
The conflicts that emerged during the VACNPI story revealthe width
of this gap. The first rift was created when UoM/VAC collected data that
did not match with HCD/MHA expectations. The rupture became visible
when MHA/HCD terminated the University “for convenience.”Finally,
the gap further expanded when HCD/MHA refused to embrace VAC
attempts to engage in some form of negotiation. At the same time,
HCD/MHA maintained a separate planning agenda that required evi-
dence based practice, and thus the collection of data, but relied on inter-
nal experts to interpret and produce a plan. UoM/VAC's insistence on
citizen participation and residents' rights to challenge a predetermined
agenda resulted in their termination.
VACNPI created space for the community to raise issues and alterna-
tive solutions; however they were rejected by institutional subjects
who had already envisioned the “right”urban redevelopment outcome
for the FooteHomes community. The resulting collapseof the collabora-
tion between HCD/MHA and UoM/VAC, which resulted in two irrecon-
cilable positions, reflects the realpolitik planning practice in Memphis.
The official planning process was, in fact, a closed domain in which
the data collection process was used to justify and pursue a pre-
determined internal redevelopment agenda. In contrast, the alternative
plan mobilized a community whose vision was the outcome of a long
research and engagement process and demonstrated that another, less
conventional and costly redevelopment agenda was possible, feasible
and supported by a significant portion of the local population. These
contradictory outcomes raise questions about the benevolence of feder-
ally-funded initiatives in which citizen participation is constrained,
even undermined, in what is u ltimately an elite-dominated institutional
context (Logan & Molotch, 1988).
4.2. Filling the gap
The VAC filled an important gap between existing and implemented
spaces for citizens' involvement. It offered a particular “space of inclu-
sion”and “reframed the roles”of the individuals involved in the UoM/
VAC partnership over time. The Vance community was not new to
HCD/MHA's urban regeneration policies regardingpublic housing com-
plexes. Many of the residents were, in fact, relocated from previously
demolished public housing complexes in other parts of the city. For
this reason, from our first involvement in the planning process (see
timeline in Fig. 2), we perceived a pervasive sense of distrust in public
Fig. 5. Left:during the TriangleNoir redevelopment plan meetingstaff from MHA present the regenerationof Foot Homes as a tourist destination; right:during the ChoiceNeighborhoods
community meeting students walkvisitors through the 4 options toredevelop Foote Homes.
Fig. 4. Vance Avenue Choice Neighborhood PlanningInitiative organizational structure.
11A. Raciti et al. / Cities 57 (2016) 6–13
officials regarding whether or notcommunity ideas and concernswould
be taken seriously. However, this lack of confidence in public officials
was only occasionally expressed during general public meetings. With
the university involvement in the VACNPI, the UoM/VAC was able to
create what Thompson calls “unsteepled places”(Thomson, 1968): so-
cially created spaces free from the domination of powerful interests
where marginalized groups might feel free to share concerns and envi-
sion new possibilities that most of the time are hidden or unsaid be-
cause of fear, mistrust, or anger. Over time, the “safety”of this space
allowed residents not only to share their concerns about public housing
with the broader community, but also, to activate processes of popular
education (Freire, 1970) through the planning process. These processes
helped the Vance community in shaping a different idea of public hous-
ing from the one envisioned by HCD/MHA. Residents developed an
awareness that they could build their own idea of urban regeneration
–a restored public housing owned and managed bythe public authority
for people who need it –using the existing assets in the neighborhood,
and rejecting the HOPE VI-style development.
The community transformation plan and its signature projects rep-
resent not only solutions for problems identified by the residents, but
products of a collective learning processes built on specificproblematic
issues. The most successful part of this story centers on the building of
these learning experiences: within the “VAC unsteepled place”, it was
possible to carry out collective research that helped the Vance commu-
nity to re-formulate the meaning and implications of historic preserva-
tion, environmental protection and cultural heritage in the city. In
particular, in the VACNI, these achievements shaped a new collective
identity of the Vance Community over time and were the main pillars
sustaining the resistance strategies implemented by the VAC, after
HCD/MHA terminated the contract with the University. Community or-
ganizing strategies deployed were built thanks to the co-generated
body of knowledge developed during the planning process. The March
to city hall, the meeting with the mayor, and several attempts made
by the VAC to negotiate the contents of the community transformation
plan were all sustained with arguments generated after collective re-
search with the main aim to re-incorporate a real space for inclusion
in the formal space for citizen participation. Considering the Memphis
context and how public housing has been managed in the last twenty
years, all of these arguments represent discourses that can have a high
dose of innovation and might potentially have a strong impact on new
visions to strengthen and maintain existing relationships between peo-
ple and places.
In conclusion, our process helped the local community to clearly re-
frame what they knew about public housing andwhat theymight want
for the redevelopment of their neighborhood. Moreover, beside the
clear limits in achieving any form of institutional change –especially
in terms of the innovation of an agenda for urban redevelopment of
public housing –the story shows that there is a great deal of potential
in investing resources in long-term capacity building community/uni-
versity partnerships (Reardon, 2006) in contexts where similar issues
may occur.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to thehundreds of people who participated
in the VAC planning experience over the course of the past 6 years,
without them this article would never be written. The authors also
wish to thank Laura Saija for her fundamental contribution as a re-
searcher involved in the Choice Neighborhoods planning process. Par-
ticular thanks go also to Sara Tornabene for her research and design
contributions to the Vance Avenue community and for producing the
graphics that appear in this article.
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