ABSTRACT
Houston, Texas, epitomizes the southern U.S. city experiencing gentrification with little history of resistance. Yet, scholarly attention appears to be lacking concerning the means for stymieing gentrification in such places. With few responses from the literature about community resistance to gentrification that threatens lower-income communities of color within market-driven cities located in the U.S. South, this chapter contributes to closing that gap by presenting the revelatory case of Houston's Historic Third Ward.
Based upon participant-observation data analysis, this chapter highlights the importance of resident-led efforts for greater community control over land development and use to stymie gentrification and enhance revitalization and preservation. In addition, it provides readers interested in gentrification studies insight into otherwise less visible community-university efforts in U.S. South urban neighborhoods through a broader lens of achieving social justice by way of land tenure reform.
The analysis shows that resistance to gentrification emerged in the Historic Third Ward (a.k.a. Northern Third Ward), ignited by city supported redevelopment. This resistance, described as community planning in this chapter, and organized by the Emancipation Economic Development Council (EEDC), offered transformational alternatives to private market prescriptions for land use and maximization of capital accumulation, i.e., community land trusts. Community planning encourages community residents to take the lead in goal setting, organizing, and policy formulation that prioritizes revitalizing neighborhoods rather than growth, and improvement in their quality of life. The response to gentrification in Historic Third Ward involved democratic alternatives derived from community mobilization and expanded civic capacity facilitated through alliance with university architecture and urban planning programs. These efforts were, after a change in local city administration, ultimately supported by newly elected city officials seeking to legitimize equitable development and community planning.
