From a Neighborhood of Strangers to a Community of Fate

The following chapter introduces the concept of cultural citizenship to demonstrate how marginalized groups use place to negotiate competing imaginaries of culture and, in the process, create new physical and political spaces that bridge differences among diverse ethnic groups and between these groups and community-serving institutions. Moreover, I argue that place rights ultimately reflect, and are the outcome of, various negotiations—of belonging to a territorial community, in participating in local decisions, and navigating the political landscape at multiple scales. As an illustrative example that draws attention to the link between place and cultural forms of citizenship, I describe the Village at Market Creek, a newly imagined community in San Diego, California. ¹ Using the analytical lens of cultural citizenship, I explain how places provide an important location for cross-cultural exchange and brokering to occur, and where negotiations of belonging, authorship, and, ultimately, power can be fully realized.