Two Community Development Corporations (CDCs) in Oakland, California, anchor the following analysis. These legally homogenous organizations have implemented similar “low-income” redevelopment projects widely hailed as representing a single successful blueprint for urban revitalization. Despite their similarities, however, these entities have produced starkly different socio-economic outcomes—a phenomenon traced to the CDCs' divergent internal structures and the contrasting external contexts of their development activities. These variations generated competing “logics” of redevelopment. On one hand, we find a CDC dominated by market-oriented interests and the economic logic of exchange-values, while on the other, we find a CDC dominated by community-oriented interests and the social logic of neighborhood use-values.
William H. Simon, The Community Economic Development Movement: Law, Business, and the New Social Policy (London: Duke University Press, 2001), 2.
2.
Ronald Ferguson and Sara Stoutland, “Reconceiving the Community Development Field,” in Urban Problems and Community Development, ed. Ronald Ferguson and William Dickens (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1999); see also Avis C. Vidal and Dennis W. Keating, “ Community Development: Current Issues and Emerging Challenges,” Journal of Urban Affairs26, no. 2 (2004): 125-37.
3.
Ronald Ferguson and William Dickens , “Introduction,” in Urban Problems and Community Development, ed. Ronald Ferguson and William Dickens (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1999), 1-31.
4.
Simon, Community Economic Development Movement, 51.
5.
Herbert Rubin , “Renewing Hope in the Inner City: Conversations with Community-Based Practitioners,” Administration & Society, 27, no. 2 (1995): 127-60; see also David L. Imbroscio, Reconstructing City Politics: Alternative Economic Development and Urban Regimes (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997); lastly, see David Rusk, Inside Game/Outside Game: Winning Strategies for Saving Urban America (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999).
6.
James C. Fraser et al. “The Construction of the Local and the Limits of Contemporary Community Building in the United States,” Urban Affairs Review38, no. 3 (2003a): 127-42; also see Thad Williamson, David Imbroscio, and Gar Alperovitz, Making a Place for Community (New York: Routledge , 2003).
7.
Randy Stoecker , “The CDC Model of Urban Development: A Critique and an Alternative,” Journal of Urban Affairs , 19 no. 1 ( 1997): 1-22; see also Nicholas Lemann , “The Myth of Community Development,” The New York Times, January 9, 1994.
8.
Fraser et al., “Construction of the Local,” 418; this review of the critical literature certainly does not exhaust the range of dissent on the topic. For instance, there are numerous and ongoing debates surrounding the theoretical dimensions of community development. DeFilippis, for example, argues against the over-reliance on a particular (Putnam-inspired) conceptualization of social capital in community development discourse. Hustedde and Ganowicz, meanwhile, are concerned with the “balkanization” of community development theory and suggest more theoretical precision. Bhattacharyya obliges—arguing for the theoretical primacy of solidarity and agency. See James DeFilippis , “The Myth of Social Capital in Community Development,” Housing Policy Debate ( 2001): 781-806; R.J. Hustudde and J. Ganowicz, “ The Basics: What's Essential about Theory for Community Development Practice ?” Journal of the Community Development Society33, no. 1 (2002): 1-19; and lastly, Jnanabrata Bhattacharyya, “ Solidarity and Agency: Rethinking Community Development,” Human Organization (1995): 60-68.
9.
Sara E. Stoutland, “ Community Development Corporations: Missions, Strategy, and Accomplishments ,” in Urban Problems and Community Development, ed. Ronald Ferguson and William Dickens (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1999), 193-240.
10.
Ferguson and Dickens, Urban Problems and Community Development, 13.
11.
Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 4.
12.
Antonio Bermudez et al., Avenue 26: Re-connecting a Community (University of California, Los Angeles Department of Urban Planning, Spring 2003), 22.
13.
Sandra Witt, Fruitvale Community Information Book 2001 (Oakland, CA : Alameda County Public Health Department Community Assessment, Planning and Education Unit, August 2001). As the authors of this report remind us, as proxies for poverty in the neighborhood, these figures should be considered conservative, as “not everyone who is poor participates.”
14.
Morris Newman , “A Neglected Neighborhood Builds Itself a Village,” The New York Times, August 11, 2004; see also Patricia Anderson Brown, “Realizing the Dream: Fruitvale Welcomes Transit Village as Key to Revitalizing Neighborhoods ,” NeighborWorks23, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 14.
15.
City of Oakland Community Economic Development Agency (CEDA) , “West Oakland 2000: Transportation and Economic Development Study” (Oakland: CEDA Strategic Planning, August 1998), 8-11. The Mandela Village is trumpeted to middle-class homeowners as being located only one BART stop away from both downtown Oakland and downtown San Francisco.
16.
Community Assessment, Planning and Education Unit, West Oakland Community Information Book 2001 (Oakland : Alameda County Public Health Department, 2001); see also Community Assessment, Planning and Education Unit, West Oakland Community Information Book Update (Oakland: Alameda County Public Health Department, October 2005).
17.
Cecily Burt, “ West Oakland Seems Poised to Blossom in the New Year,” TheOakland Tribune, January 2, 2005.
18.
Marsha Ginsburg, “ Affordable Housing Rises at West Oakland BART Station,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 9, 2004.
19.
Ibid.
20.
Pia Sarkar, “ The New Face of Retail: Mimicked Main Streets, Mall Makeovers Seek to Lure Shoppers,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 3, 2005.
21.
Cecily Burt, “ West Oakland Transit Village Takes Shape: Proposed Center to Include Condos, Shopping, Recreation,” TheOakland Tribune, November 16, 2003. According to the executive director of the Alliance, “Our vision has been for eight years to create an African American themed transit village, like Fruitvale.”
22.
California's Transit Village Development Planning Act (1994); California Government Code §§ 65460 et seq.; see also John Ratliff and Matt Lambert, Issue Brief: Growth Tool Kit: Encourage Transit-Oriented Development (National Governors Association, June 1, 2001).
23.
Simon, Community Economic Development Movement, 169, 172. In point of fact, the “nonprofit” label refers not to limitations on making a profit, but rather, to how those profits (once earned) are distributed (e.g., the “Non-distribution Constraint”), 119.
24.
Unity Council Web site, “Fruitvale Village: Neighborhood Overview,” available at: www.unitycouncil.org/index.htm; see also Newman, “Neglected Neighborhood Builds Itself a Village.”
25.
Arabella Martinez , in John W. Ellis, “ The Fruits of Village Unity: Community Builds a Model Transit Complex,” Oakland City Magazine, March/April 2005, 64.
26.
ElizabethBlish Hughes, In Transit (Oakland: Ford Foundation, Spring 2004).
27.
Rick DelVecchio , “Oakland to Use Transit Center as Growth Engine,” Shopping CentersToday, May 2000.
28.
Author's interview with Larry Rice, Oakland, CA, July 7, 2005.
29.
On the lack of “direct” displacement (the Village was developed on “land previously used to provide parking for BART patrons”), see Economic & Planning Systems, Inc., “Final Report: A Review of Best Practices for Mitigations of Gentrification throughout the Country” (June 2004). On the potential for “indirect” displacement, see Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Partnerships, Enhancements, and Public Involvement: Fruitvale Transit Village Project, 11; and “Unity Council,” http://www.unitycouncil.org/index.htm.
30.
Hughes, In Transit; see also FHWA, Partnerships, Enhancements, and Public Involvement, 11.
31.
Much of the land for the Mandela Village project was unoccupied. However, the large amount of public land being utilized “is worrisome because it is land that is not in the hands of West Oakland residents and can be compromised and transferred wholesale to the private market for gentrifiers. For example, the federal government, with its HOPE VI program, is systematically demolishing public housing ... and replacing it with privately run, mixed income developments. Not only are public housing residents being dispersed, but also many of those once living in the public housing units will no longer be able to afford the rents of the replacement development.” Todd Harvey et al., “ Gentrification and West Oakland: Causes, Effects and Best Practices,” City and Regional Planning Graduate Course Project, University of California, Berkeley, 1999.
32.
The area's median income (AMI) was approximately $64,000 in 2000.
33.
Oakland Housing Profile, 2004.
34.
Cecily Burt, “ New City Transit Village Launches,” The Oakland Tribune , April 30, 2003.
35.
Jeremy Hays, Clara Landeiro, and Jane Rongerude, Neighborhood Knowledge for Change: The West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (Oakland: Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment & Science, January 2002); See also the Oakland Redevelopment Agency's “Redevelopment Plan[s].” Even on the rare occasion when housing does target extremely low- and very low-income families, it still does not address those residents earning 0 to 20 percent AMI. Harvey et al., “Gentrification and West Oakland.”
36.
Harvey et al., “Gentrification and West Oakland.”
37.
Burt, “West Oakland Seems Poised to Blossom.”
38.
Tax increments refer to a situation that is triggered when a particular redevelopment plan is approved by the city council. At that point, the total property tax value of the area is appraised, and from that time forward, any increased tax revenues from the area would go to the redevelopment agency to be used at its discretion.
39.
Michael Pyatok , “Tale of Two Cities: Dot.Comers and the Rest of Us. A Case Study: Jerry Brown's Oakland,” Designer/Builder Magazine, January 2001.
Simon, Community Economic Development Movement, 220-21.
43.
Ibid., 119-30.
44.
Ferguson and Stoutland, “Reconceiving the Community Development Field,” 69.
45.
Sherry Arnstein , “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” Journal of the American Planning Association35, no. 4 (1969). According to this typology, the “rungs” of participation can be categorized as manipulation, therapy, informing, consultation, placation, partnership, delegated power, and citizen control. The thrust of the argument is that the lower rungs of the ladder are "shams ... used by those with power to avoid citizenship input.” William Peterman, “Community Empowerment,” in Neighborhood Planning and Community-Based Development ( Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002), 39. For an alternative typology, see Gary Paul Green and Anna Haines, Asset Building and Community Development (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001), 35.
46.
Simon, Community Economic Development Movement, 119.
47.
John W. IV Ellis, “The Fruits of Village Unity: Community Builds a Model Transit Complex,” Oakland City Magazine , March/April 2005, 64.
48.
Hughes, In Transit. The original name of the organization (the Mexican American Unity Council) was changed to the Spanish Speaking Unity Council in order to reflect the pan-ethnic nature of the Latino/a community. The organization is now known simply as the Unity Council to reflect growing numbers of Asians and Europeans in the area.
49.
Laura Ernde, “ Gonzales a Dream for Unity Council,” The Oakland Tribune , February 21, 2005; see also Jesse Varela, “Altared Plans: Fruitvale's Traditional Day of the Dead Has a New Look This Year,” East Bay Express, October 26, 2005; and lastly, “ Up Close—Gilda Gonzales,” East Bay Business Times , February 11, 2005.
50.
Mary C. Comerio, “ Housing Repair and Reconstruction after Loma Prieta,” University of California, BerkeleyInstitute of Urban and Regional Development, Post Disaster Residential Repairing, Working Paper #608, February 1993; Ginsburg, “Affordable Housing Rises at West Oakland BART Station.”
51.
“Alliance,” http://www.awod.org/.
52.
Ibid.
53.
The six Board members thought to represent community-oriented concerns include two community representatives, two representatives of nonprofit community-based organizations, an education/language specialist, and an “equal opportunity” official. Of the five members that represent corporate interests, one represents a large corporate donor, not investor. The two members that could be considered representative of variable interests include a small-business owner and a retired BART executive. “Unity Council.”
54.
Williamson et al., Making a Place for Community, 217.
55.
Newman, “Neglected Neighborhood Builds Itself a Village.”
56.
Hughes, In Transit; see also Brown, “Realizing the Dream.”
57.
FHWA, Partnerships, Enhancements, and Public Involvement, 3.
58.
Simon, Community Economic Development Movement, 125.
59.
Larry Rice, 2005.
60.
Martin Stolz , “Alternative Plan Emerges Downtown,” San DiegoUnion Tribune, September 26, 2005.
61.
A well-known success story from Los Angeles is the “Staples CBA.” In 2001, a disparate group of more than thirty community-based organizations came together in a broad coalition aimed at tempering the adverse effects of a massive downtown redevelopment project. The result was a comprehensive CBA that managed to win significant concessions from developers, including an agreement that 70 percent of jobs created by the project (mostly low-paying service positions) would pay the city's living wage. Julian Gross, Community Benefits Agreements: Making Development Projects Accountable (Washington, DC: Good Jobs First and the California Public Subsidies Project, 2002); see also Laura Joseph, “What Makes a Great Place? Community Benefit Agreements,” Yes! Magazine, Summer 2005.
62.
Martin Stolz , “Alternative Plan Emerges Downtown”; see also Gross, Community Benefits Agreements.
63.
There are a variety of tactics available to CDCs wishing to comply with, or evade, public benefit guidelines. See Funder's Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities, Inc., Signs of Promise: Stories of Philanthropic Leadership in Advancing Regional and Neighborhood Equity (Coral Gables, FL: 2005). The “private foundation” rules of the IRS are an additional legal safeguard against the wholesale appropriation of CDC activities by a small number of private interests. Under these guidelines, CDCs must demonstrate that at least 30 percent of their funding is from “public” sources of support, including “small donations, membership fees, and grants from government agencies and other nonprofit... public charities.” Simon, Community Economic Development Movement, 170.
64.
Stephen E. F. Brown, “In Depth: Real Estate Deals of the Year: Transit Village Makes Tracks in Fruitvale,” San Francisco Business Times, March 28, 2003. Funding secured by the Unity Council for the Fruitvale project includes Citibank, the City of Oakland (CDBG, Measure K, the ORA), Local Initiatives Support Corporation, National Cooperative Bank, BART, Federal Transit Administration, FEMA, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, California Health Facilities Financing Authority, Alameda County Transportation Improvement Agency, the U.S. Dept. of Commerce—Economic Development Administration, U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Evelyn and Walter Haas Foundation, Levi-Strauss Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, James Irvine Foundation, and the PG&E Corporation. See “Unity Council.”
65.
Hughes, In Transit.
66.
Brown, “Realizing the Dream.”
67.
Cashman, in Hughes, In Transit.
68.
Cecily Burt, “ West Oakland Transit Village Takes Shape,” TheOakland Tribune, November 16, 2003.
69.
The CRA was designed to address processes such as “red-lining” and systematic disinvestment that had plagued American inner cities in the mid- to late twentieth century.
70.
This commitment “targets $180 billion for small business lending, $115 billion for affordable housing, $25 billion for economic development and $30 billion for [`lowincome'] consumer lending.” David Coulter, BankAmerica's Merger with NationsBank (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, July 1998); see also Alex Schwartz, “ From Confrontation to Collaboration? Banks, Community Groups, and the Implementation of Community Reinvestment Agreements,” Housing Policy Debate9, no. 3 (1998): 632; see also Simon, Community Economic Development Movement, 30.
71.
By the end of 2002, the securities market was valued at $6 trillion. Of that total, 80 percent was derived from the prime mortgage market (e.g., single-family, market-rate mortgages), approximately 10 percent was derived from credit card and car loans, and 10 percent was derived from other sources, including educational loans and community development loans. Robert Van Order, “ Securitization and Community Lending: A Framework and Some Lessons from the Experience in the U.S. Mortgage Market,” Community Development Investment Review2, no. 1 (2006): 1.
72.
David J. Erickson , “The Struggle to Establish a Vibrant Secondary Market for Community Development Loans,” Community Development Investment Review2, no.1 (2006): 18.
73.
In 2004, California received $64 million in federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits and also provided $70 million in matching State Credits. Lynn Wehrli, “ California's Tax Credit Allocation Committee Programs” ( Sacramento: California State Treasurer's Office, 2005); see also Catherine Such, “Low-income Housing: Tax Credits,” Community Investments (Portland: Columbia Housing, March 2002).
74.
Mark Thomsen, “ Bank of America Invests in Affordable Housing,” Institutional Investor, April 11, 2001.
75.
Neil Brenner , “Beyond State-centrism? Space, Territoriality, and Geographical Scale in Globalization Studies,” Theory and Society28, no. 2 (1999): 39-78.
76.
Rachel Weber, “ Extracting Value from the City: Neoliberalism and Urban Redevelopment,” Antipode34, no. 3 (2002).
77.
Ibid, 529. For an excellent overview of the role of the neo-liberal state in the disembedding of real estate markets, see Kevin Fox Gotham, “The Secondary Circuit of Capital Reconsidered: Globalization and the U.S. Real Estate Sector ,” American Journal of Sociology112, no. 1 (July 2006): 231-75.
78.
Simon, Community Economic Development Movement, 187.
79.
Ibid.
80.
Lehn Benjamin , Julia Sass Rubin, and Sean Zielenbach, “Community Development Financial Institutions: Current Issues and Future Prospects,” Journal of Urban Affairs, 26, no. 2 (2004): 177-95.
81.
Ibid., 181.
82.
On Oakland's shifting urban regimes, see Chris Rhomberg, No There There: Race, Class, and Political Community in Oakland (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2004). On Brown's urban regime, see Adam Rogers, “A New Brand of Tech Cities,” Newsweek, April 30, 2001.
83.
Emory Curtis , “Oakland's on the Go to?” Exodus News, April 7, 2000. The political restructuring allowed the mayor to appoint three of the ten school board members while giving him “virtual control” of the City Council. See also Heather MacDonald, “ Oaklanders Rank Education Their No. 1 Concern,” The Oakland Tribune, April 13, 2005.
84.
For instance, when asked if the “elegant density” plan would endanger the city's cultural heterogeneity, Brown blithely responded, “Is it 10,000 white people, 10,000 Latinos, 10,000 African Americans? No, it's people. And yes, we want people with some capital.” See Dashka Slater, “Jerry Brown Gets Real,” Mother Jones, July/August 1999, available from http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1999/07/brown.html.
85.
Rogers, “New Brand of Tech Cities.” Such “desirable industries” include software, telecommunications, biotech industries, and the like.
86.
Rhomberg, No There There, 190.
87.
Christopher Heredia, “Mayor Votes Down Low-cost Housing Law,” San Francisco Chronicle , November 1, 2006.
88.
By the end of the 1990s, however, the percentage had soared to almost two-thirds of all U.S. mortgage debt. Gotham, “Secondary Circuit of Capital Reconsidered,” 257.
89.
In Fruitvale, this type of collaboration was “institutionalized” in the Fruitvale Policy Committee (FPC). In 1994, the Unity Council, BART, and the city established the FPC—an organization bestowed with the mandate to “guide further planning decisions.” The institutional flexibility embodied in the FPC goes a long way in explaining the continued collaboration between the city and the Unity Council. Healthy Transportation Network , “Success Stories: Fruitvale Transit Village,” December 13, 2005, available from http://www.healthytransportation.net/view_resource.php?res_id=9&cat_type=revital .
90.
Oakland Business Review, June 2005; see also Brown, “Realizing the Dream,” 15.
91.
Weber, “Extracting Value from the City,” 531.
92.
For more on local tax breaks, see Rogers, “New Brand of Tech Cities”; on eminent domain, see Castle Coalition, Eminent Domain Abuse Survival Guide: Strategies for Winning the Fight to Stop Eminent Domain Abuse (Hands OFF My Home Foundation, 2005), 3-8; on the construction of a fiber-optic network, see Philip Matier and Andrew Ross, “Once-moribund West Oakland Up and Dot-coming,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 3, 2000.
93.
Lucia Hwang and Angela Rowen, “ Oakland at the Crossroads: Oakland's City Council Race Has Become a Referendum on Downtown Development and `Jerryfication, ' ” Sfbg.com, February 16, 2000, available at http:www.sfbg.com/News/34/20/oak.html.
94.
Rogers, “A New Brand of Tech Cities”; Hwang and Rowen, “Oakland at the Crossroads”; and Joan Walsh, “Jerry Brown Shakes Up Oakland's Black Political Establishment: The Hard-charging Mayor Challenges an Entrenched Bureaucracy— And a Racial Spoils System,” Salon.com, June 23, 1999, available at http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/06/23/brown/.
95.
Rhomberg, No There There, 121, 185-87. Such “reforms from above” included “invest[ing] in police to assure capitalists of social control of downtown.” See Joseph A. Rodriguez, “Rapid Transit and Community Power: West Oakland Residents Confront BART,” Antipode31, no. 2 (1999): 216.
96.
Rodriguez, “Rapid Transit and Community Power,” 212-28.
97.
Bill Snyder and Craig Staats, “Ethnic Lines Begin to Blur,” TheOakland Tribune, April 26, 1991.
98.
FHWA, Partnerships, Enhancements, and Public Involvement,” 4.
99.
Ferguson and Stoutland, “Reconceiving the Community Development Field,” 46.
100.
Mona Younis, “ San Antonio and Fruitvale,” Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research4 ( 1998): 234, emphasis added.
101.
Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC), Regional Meeting Notes: Special Meeting at Fruitvale Transit Village (Oakland: TALC, May 17, 2006).
102.
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Social Origins of OurTime (Boston: Beacon, 2001), 71-80.
103.
Ibid, 75-76. Following a Polanyian framework, these examples represent struggles over the proper embeddedness of the “fictitious commodities” (land, labor, and capital).
104.
See, for instance , Eliza Strickland , “Ghost Town: What If They Built the Development of the Future and No-one Came?” East Bay Express, January 4, 2006.
105.
Hughes, In Transit, paraphrasing John Landis.
106.
Laura Counts, “ Excitement Reigns at Fruitvale Village,” TheOakland Tribune, April 25, 2004; see also Hughes, In Transit.
107.
Weber, “ Extracting Value from the City,” 523. On the contradictory impulse of the capitalist state (more generally), see James O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin's , 1973).
