UC Irvine

As the housing crisis continues to displace vulnerable people, this dissertation examines the criminalization of what I call in-between spaces that are located on the fringes of urban areas. In-between spaces are defined by two types of migration patterns, from financially vulnerable people who are priced out to others who seek the promise of homeownership. Drawing on Black and critical geographies, criminology and sociology of place, critical carceral studies, and political economy, I constructed countermaps that challenge dominant understandings of systemic inequality by examining intersecting economic, political, and social forces utilizing content analysis, autoethnography, and mobile ethnography. I conducted two case studies on South Stockton and Elliott Avenue in Louisville to dissect the processes undertaken to develop urban revitalization and neighborhood improvement projects, particularly processes of “clearing out the neighborhood” and scales of criminalization and surveillance deployed. While much attention has been paid to gentrifying cities and areas, this dissertation examines those forgotten places that have renewed (public and private) stakeholders’ interest and capital. City officials and private investors articulate urban revitalization projects as improving the existing conditions of lower-income, under-resourced neighborhoods. Yet, the two case studies in this dissertation reveal how the processes of priming the neighborhood to prepare it for those projects often force residents to confront scales of organized state violence and surveillance. This complication of urban renewal has important ramifications for racialized populations who are forced to confront both organized abandonment and organized state violence