City of Segregation: One Hundred Years of Struggle For Housing in Los Angeles

Description

City of Segregation traces one hundred years of the struggle against segregation in Los Angeles: from the struggles that together ended de jure segregation in 1948; to the campaign that resulted in the 1964 prohibition of de facto discrimination; and the 2006 fight to implement strict controls over private security forces and to preserve over ten thousand residential hotel units in the heart of gentrifying downtown. In tracing these fights, Gibbons illustrates the ways in which racism has been central to the way that the city of Los Angeles-like all US cities-has formed and grown. This is a history of state-supported segregation, of the violent local defence of white neighbourhood and racial boundaries, of police oppression and growing political and economic inequalities. It is a history of the drive to neoliberalization and privatisation, and of today's mass displacement of communities of colour in central areas-a process routinely described as incidental. In studying these struggles-and their cycles of victory and retreat-City of Segregation reveals the shape and nature of the racist logics that must be fought if we have any hope of replacing them with a just city.

Andrea Gibbons is a Reseacher the Sustainable Housing and Urban Studies Unit (SHUSU) at the University of Salford. She completed her doctorate in Geography at the London School of Economics, and holds a Masters from UCLA in Urban Planning. She is a writer, editor and educator with ten years' organizing experience in Central and South Central L.A. working on issues of community planning and civic participation, immigration rights, development and regeneration, slum housing and public health. She sits on the editorial board of the academic journal City.

In the nation's capital of homelessness, housing has always been at the center of the fight for social justice. In this landmark study, Gibbons arms today's activists with a rich understanding of past movements for fair and affordable housing. -- Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz Gibbons not only provides a much needed corrective to dominant narratives of segregation by focusing on how racial and economic values intersect in land and housing, but she also offers an alternative geography of Los Angeles racism. -- Laura Pulido, University of Oregon, co-author of A People's Guide to Los Angeles A profoundly important account of the battle for equal housing in LA. Gibbons not only tracks the courageous grassroots struggles that helped topple LA's 'hate walls,' she also captures the changing dynamic of racial segregation-where once people of color fought to enter segregated neighborhoods they must now fight against the neoliberal forces of gentrification to remain. Astute, passionate, radical, and utterly invaluable. -- Junot Diaz A remarkable study of a century of separations and struggles against them in one of the most important US cites. Richly documented and filled with memorable characters, City of Segregation shows how patterns of division are made from above and below and how the production of racialized spaces entangles with a variety of other urban miseries. -- David Roediger, University of Kansas, author of Class, Race, and Marxism In City of Segregation Andrea Gibbons illustrates how powerful real estate and business interests in Los Angeles have long promoted racial segregation. With a fresh historical-geographical analysis, Gibbons describes campaigns waged by the Black freedom struggle to resist these efforts. This is a commendable study about racism, housing, and social power with strategic insights for social movements. -- Jordan T. Camp, author of Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom Struggles and the Rise of the Neoliberal State Location is everything, as any LA realtor will tell you. Real estate, however, is no neutral entity. In City of Segregation, Andrea Gibbons traces the violent relations that produce property values. By linking racism and real estate, Gibbons gives readers a new way to understand the production of space in Los Angeles and a new appreciation for ongoing housing struggles in the city. -- Christina Heatherton, co-editor of Policing the Planet