When did the failed city mindset emerge in DC?

Today's Post announced that "Most D.C. residents give public schools low ratings in poll" and published this interesting chart (below). This month, 38% of residents rated DC public schools as excellent or good, while 51% rated them not so good or poor. Since 1996, more residents have generally approved or at least decreased their disapproval of the DC public schools. However, look at May 1990 at the bottom of the chart:

In 1990, 24 years ago, fewer residents (36% then vs. 51% now) were negative about the DC public schools and an equal proportion of residents (38%) found the DC public schools excellent or good as now.

I theorize that sometime between 1990 and 1996 -- long after white flight, long after the 1968 riots, at some point after Marion Barry left office (and before he returned again) -- a new mindset arrived to DC. This narrative argued that the city was a failure, the city was in chaos, the city had been destroyed. This was a new narrative held by DC residents themselves (not by those who had left the city). Maybe it is similar to The Wire's worldview? When did this mindset arrive? Why did it arrive at this time? Why did it sink in? 

1974 AIA Architecture Tour: Potomac Gardens

In 1974, the Washington Metropolitan Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) published its architectural guidebook with "Twenty Walking and Motoring tours of Washington and the Vicinity." Within its Southeast Washington tour, you could start at the Navy Yard and Marine Barracks, go by the Maples (the old Friendship House), St. Mark's Church [as well as other sites], Eastern Market, Philadelphia Row, Potomac Gardens, and finish up at the Congressional Cemetery.

Yes, along with Eastern Market, Philadelphia Row, and the Congressional Cemetery, Potomac Gardens public housing project is worth a visit for the architecturally interested:

The text reads:

Potomac Gardens Apartments
1225 G Street, S.E.,
1967 -- Metcalf and Associates.
There are 352 low-rent apartments in 14 buildings; 144 of the units were designed especially for the elderly. The project includes recreational, administrative and geriatric facilities.

In fact, in 1971, the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the regional business association, gave its Award for Excellence in Architecture to the builder, Edward M. Crough, Inc., and the architectural firm, Metcalf and Associates, of Potomac Gardens. The Edward M. Crough Center for Architectural Studies at Catholic University is named after Potomac Gardens' builder.[1]  

Maybe we can return to the 1974 perspective and take a new look at Potomac Gardens as an architectural asset.

P.S. Thanks to our neighbors Sandy and Barry for finding this book and its reference to Potomac Gardens!


[1] I wrote about this on the Potomac Gardens Wikipedia page. 

Marion Barry -- "the only one who ever looked out for the people"

Last month, Petula Dvorak wrote about DC residents' diverse mayorial preferences in her Post article "Do you occupy Fentyville, the Gray Area, Barrytown or Loathemburg?" Regarding Barrytown, Dvorak reported:

But even if Skyland gets a Walmart, Richard Butler won’t have the mayor he wants most. Butler, 50, learned to cook while he was locked up. He’s now doing well as a line cook in one of the city’s new restaurants. Have any of the recent mayors made his life better? "All I want is Marion Barry," said Butler, who is African American and a permanent resident of Barrytown. "He’s the only one who ever looked out for the people, always said the right things to us."

The internet is full of various condemnations of Barry. I decided to listen to Councilmember Barry speak. I found a couple of recent videos of him speaking. The debate between Barry and this Fox newscaster is really painful to listen to, especially for those who don't often listen to this type of "news," but it is short. Barry does seem to be looking out for low-wage workers, not treating them paternalistically as objects of charity or as in need of more discipline and sacrifice (as in the "politics of respectability"), but as citizens and constituents. I particularly found his discussion at the end quite convincing.

In the short Post video below, Councilmember Barry refers to "the Sage of Anacostia," Frederick Douglass, who said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

At least in the Fox video, Councilmember Barry does make a demand for his constituents in the face of powerful forces, powerful forces who provide only two options: 1) Walmart jobs at wages that require workers to be on some form of state welfare or 2) no Walmarts and no Walmart jobs.

Are there other politicians in office who look out for people like Richard Butler mentioned in Dvorak's article? 

What is Neoliberalism?

Neoliberalism is one of the most popular terms in sociology these days. Most people probably have never heard of it. Others likely have found it a confusing and useless concept. Recently, I wrote a short two-page article on neoliberalism for a popular sociological magazine, explaining the basics about neoliberalism.

I then received an email out of the blue from a sociology grad student in Iran, who told me that he had translated my article into Persian/Farsi and published it in a reformist newspaper called ETEMAD (Trust). He added his own introduction arguing that neoliberal policies were also being implemented in Iran, so, in his letter to me he wrote, "the content [of the article] was very enlightening and I found it very important [regarding the] sociological features in Iran's context." I must say that this publication in a newspaper has probably made my work more well known in Iran than it is in the US, etc. The beginning of the article in Persian/Farsi: 

So, does DC have neoliberal policies? 

Introducing the Blog Index

Thanks to the reader who suggested that I create a Blog Index! The Blog Index lists all (or nearly all) of my posts in relevant categories, so it is now much easier to find posts. You can see the Blog Index tab above. 

Urine and Early Forms of Gentrification

A couple of days ago, I went to the Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. In the 1860s, Marville was hired by the city of Paris to document the massive transformation of Paris implemented at that time by Emperor Napoleon III and his urban planner Baron George-Eugene Haussmann. Haussmann created broad avenues, restored public monuments, and built new uniform, larger buildings, replacing, in the words of the exhibit panels, the "labyrinthine" working-class neighborhoods of old Paris with "a cleaner, straighter, and altogether grander version of itself." In the urban studies literature, the Haussmannization of Paris is considered one of the early forms of gentrification. Why did the National Gallery of Art show this exhibit today in Washington, DC? 

A urinal in the New Paris, 1876. Photo from NPR/NGA

The exhibit makes no reference to DC, but there are interesting similarities with gentrification here today. The exhibit repeats the 1860s view that old Paris was "notoriously filthy and frequently full of raw sewage," using the same legitimating language as today's pro-gentrification commentators. Marville's photos are filled with dry, immaculate streets, at times with a small amount of water flowing by the curb. The only place that urine seems somewhat filthy is in a photo of the new public urinals (photo to the left) installed by Haussmann, suggesting that urine in the streets is not the real issue. As I discussed in "Smells like Gentrification," when one talks about dirt or, in this case, urine and filth, one is actually arguing that the social order has been disrupted and must be reestablished, possibly in some new way. The perception of urine smells reflects a desire to 'purify' the city. The reference to urine and, in more extreme cases, sewage is a long-running strategy to legitimate displacement.

The exhibit makes clear that Haussmann removed the working class from the center of Paris and left them to live in shantytowns in the outskirts of the city -- a perfect case of gentrification. The exhibit does not make clear that this displacement was part of an ongoing war. Haussmann worked for the relatively new Emperor of France, who sought to destroy the social world that supported the 1848 revolution and who implemented a wide range of authoritarian measures to restore order, sweetened with new sewage systems, new buildings, and "modernization" in general. Haussmann said, "We ripped open the belly of old Paris, the neighborhood of revolt and barricades, and cut a large opening through the almost impenetrable maze of alleys, piece by piece..." 

In the urban studies literature, this destructive displacement involves "revanchism." The wonderfully insightful CUNY geographer Neil Smith described the new attitude of cities and professionals moving to cities in the 1990s, a vengeful ("revanchist") attitude against those who were perceived as destroying the city or even destroying "civilization": African Americans, the working class, the poor, recent immigrants, and so on: “The rallying cry of the revanchist city might well be: ‘Who lost the city? And on whom is revenge to be exacted?’” In Paris, the working class had destroyed the city in the eyes of Emperor Napoleon III, Haussmann, and others. In DC, this revanchism continues today, as demonstrated by a Ward 6 neighbor living near Hopkins public housing who commented on my blog:

Those who own homes near these projects have learned that public policy, well-wishes, and policing have utterly failed to solve the noise, drugs, and crime, so the only thing left is removal of the epicenters of them: the projects themselves. Contrary to what nostalgic non-residents seem to think, this has only somewhat to do with a desire to raise property values and a lot to do with decent homeowners who would like to live decently. 

When the culture of a city - not a racial group, a city - changes as DC's has in the past 20 years, then fighting to preserve a clearly outdated way of life is reactionary and anti-progressive; Populism with rose-colored glasses firmly in place. Sorry, but that's a valid way of looking at it. The city is moving in another direction and as painful as that is to see, sometimes, it's not appropriate to try to hold back the tide through flimsy sociological assertions that fly in the face of visible, tangible evidence. 

As in Haussmann's vision of Paris, for my neighbor certain people do not have a place in the "modern," "progressive" city. Colonial officials too saw themselves as modern and bringing progress, in the face of those they declared "primitive" and living either deep in the past or even outside of time itself. Time is political. 

Where once different classes and, in many cities, races, lived in relatively close proximity, the divided city emerges as certain classes and races are displaced to the periphery. Away from the new, modern Paris, the working class lived in the shantytowns that sprung up in the 1860s and 1870s (see photo below).

"Top of the rue Champlain," 1877-1878. Photo from NPR/NGA

On one of the exhibit panels, someone from 1870 remarked that Paris became two cities: "quite different and hostile: the city of luxury, surrounded, besieged by the city of misery." The exhibition panels discuss the isolation and loss felt by those displaced. Furthermore, in this newly non-democratic environment, one contemporary wrote, "Paris no longer had citizens, only inhabitants." 

Considering DC's embrace of historic preservation and new urbanism's embrace of Jane Jacobs, as well as popular calls for deeper democracy, it is strange that the National Gallery's wall panels seem to side with Haussmann, Emperor Napoleon III, and homogenizing planning. In his review of this exhibit in the Post, Philip Kennecott also seeks out some other, more critical politics in Marville's photos: "the viewer will encounter photographs that are simply too fine to be the hackwork of a man making work to order, stuffing the archives with data or dutifully documenting the march of progress." I agree. As I discussed in "Why does Jane Jacobs matter?," the history of DC has demonstrated that homogenizing construction can easily work together with historical preservation in surprising and gentrifying ways. 

Senior Residents speak about life in Potomac Gardens

Today in the Anacostia Community Museum Archives, I found photos of a museum exhibition put together by senior citizens living in Potomac Gardens public housing in 1994. Potomac Gardens is bordered by G and I Streets between 12th and 13th Streets, SE.

The exhibit was based on the fascinating video, "In Search of Common Ground," produced with funds from the DC Humanities Council. (You can see the entire video here. It is just 14 minutes long.) These residents went on to testify before Congress in support of National Endowment for the Humanities funding. Here is part of the text from one of the placards in the exhibit. The quotations from the residents are particularly interesting.

The Potomac Gardens Community

Life in Washington has presented a variety of opportunities and challenges. Changes in marital status, shifts in earning power, and dispersion of family members has led many people to public housing developments. Communities such as Potomac Gardens were conceived as environments that would encourage social networks. In the 1950s these developments were seen as points of transition to improved rental housing and homeownership. In the late 1960s, however, the perception of public housing  and those who lived in developments began to change. Some members of the Senior Resident Council began their relationship with public housing just as it was beginning to face enormous challenges.

Members of the Senior Resident Council are all vibrant, active people who care deeply for the community in which they live. While aware of their own advancing age and the limitations of a fixed income, they are rediscovering the joys of life and community-supported independence. They are concerned about their children and grandchildren. They volunteer. They travel. They speak up about crime and the physical condition of their residence. They are fulfilling lifelong dreams and creating new roles for themselves. They do not live in the past. They allow the objects and photographs from the past to inform and inspire their current activities. Their life's journeys have been filled with faith.


"My whole life has changed since I've been here at Potomac Gardens. I wasn't able to win nothing, but since I've been here everything has opened up for me.

Everything that ever happened to me would always make me stronger...The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. I am one that knows that I don't need, don't want for nothing. He makes a way for me all the time."
--Barbara Davis


"When we first came to live here in 1986, it really wasn't a good place to live. It was crime ridden. Now, since they put up the fence [in 1992], it cut down on the running back and forth. The manager that we had, Mr. Taylor, calmed down a lot of the crime by talking to the kids. Then it got so we felt good to go outside and sit.

If it's a bus, a train, or wheel barrel with a top on it -- I'm gone. I've been to St. Louis, Atlanta, Atlantic City, Canada, Florida. I just enjoy life because I don't have all that worry, and the thing of keeping busy all day long is like adrenaline, flowing through your body.

I was baptized a an early age, but I never stayed in church like I was supposed to. But I knew the rights and wrongs of things...but as far as having a spiritual thing, I didn't. I've grown more spiritual in the past four years that Johnny's been gone...It was like something had been taken from me because I never been taken care of the way he took he took care of me...I had to realized, 'Girl, you're on your own,'...and it was like a breath of fresh air...

After that I've been in more things since he died...Now that he's gone I have my nose in everything just like I did at eight."
--Thelma Russell


"Before I moved to Potomac Gardens I was living in Minnesota for eight or nine months with my son. I lost my youngest brother, and it took a total loss on me...I went out there to get peace of mind for a while, and then my sister got sick, I came back because she had cancer. She died in 1991, so I came  back here.

I always wanted to be involved in community work...Being a worker for Friendship House, I like talking to people...I like counseling and mingling with people. Lots of times you learn a lot from people older than you...I never knew my parents, so I love to listen to what seniors have to say. I just does something for me."
--Wilma Gregory


"I had a dog that would eat you up; her name was Whitey. That was Larry's dog -- Larry got killed. My son Willie got hit by a car. All this horrible stuff that's going on in the city...that's all you hear...nothin' I can do about it but pray about it...I don't watch the news that much because I don't want to hear. I've got children that were killed--can't deal with it. Too much pressure.

I ain't got time."
--Emma Johnson


1. Anacostia Community Museum Archives, ACM Records, Photographic Film Series, C11D3F25.