react/review: a responsive journal for art & architecture

In Milwaukee, residents discuss and formulate care for their neighborhood as a counternarrative to the dominant stereotypes that are sadly perpetuated in ungrounded studies of urban problems that fail to give real people agency. Urban Milwaukeeans’ histories are overshadowed by towering narratives of urban racial segregation, freeways demolition, deindustrialization, and most recently, housing crises and police brutality. Those narratives exist within a network and continuous timeline of neighbors gathering to address these problems by activating spaces in which to share food, supplies, stories, support, and strategies. Care is important as a foil––but it cannot be romanticized. It emerges from local histories, cultural values, and social hierarchies. In order to expand the study of neighborhood care, I call attention to how it is situated in local histories and social values. This article explores this formulation of neighborhood care through a case study from my dissertation fieldwork with attention to historical forces and corresponding oral history excerpts to better analyze how collective care emerges in a specific place through a collective understanding.