Doctoral Dissertation Research: The American Alley: A History of Social Hierarchies in U.S. Urban Landscapes

这个项目将分析城市小巷的历史，作为规划的实用空间和充满文化意义的空间，以了解它们在塑造城市中持续存在的社会等级中的作用。几乎所有美国城市的住宅区和商业区后面都有小巷。这些走廊提供通往车库和建筑物的通道，使交通畅通，促进废物管理，是负担得起的住房的传统场所。它们隐藏在公众视线之外，矛盾的是，它们既是儿童的游乐场，又是犯罪场所。与城市建成环境的大多数特征不同，它们是公共土地，其使用和维护由私人公民非正式控制。这项研究调查了小巷长期以来在公共空间和私人空间之间流动的方式，因此能够容纳边缘化群体，如少数民族和城市贫民，否则他们将无法进入城市空间。在过去的十年中，随着许多城市转向可持续设计，并寻求住宅和商业绅士化的经济利益，市政府和城市土地组织将注意力转向小巷，认为这些无处不在的城市空间可以作为公共空间重新焕发活力。通过关注小巷的半私人和半公共地位在历史上为服务不足的城市居民提供的方式，该项目批判性地评估了今天的城市设计师和批评城市土地新自由主义私有化的学者所描绘的公共空间的看似明显的好处。研究结果将直接传播给规划专业人士和更广泛的公众通过出版物，如专栏和博客文章，也将是本科地理，城市研究和历史课堂的教学材料。该项目还将提供支持，使研究生能够建立一个独立的研究生涯。尽管小巷在美国城市中广泛存在并受到新的欢迎，但小巷在地理学和城市规划史的文献中却明显缺席。本研究结合都市地理、历史地理、文化地理的理论方法，叙述小巷功能与意义变迁的数十年历史。它有助于学术界确定基于种族，性别和阶级的经验嵌入城市景观的方式。最后，它利用小巷的空间来挑战静态的类别和对公共和私人空间的普遍评估。通过档案研究，半结构化访谈和实地考察相结合，研究人员试图了解由于法律，政策和技术创新而变化的小巷建筑环境与种族，阶级和性别的社会等级制度的生产和正常化之间的关系。研究将设在华盛顿，华盛顿特区，这座城市有着公认的胡同住宅历史，以种族和政治经济发展之间的联系而闻名，最近又转向了胡同振兴项目。此外，作为20世纪70年代初唯一由国会管理的美国城市，华盛顿特区是了解国家政策在历史上如何在一个城市展开的最佳场所。

This project will analyze the history of urban alleys, as both planned utilitarian spaces and spaces imbued with cultural meaning, to understand their role in shaping social hierarchies that persist in cities. Nearly all American cities have alleys running behind their residential streets and commercial blocks. These corridors provide access to garages and buildings, circulate traffic, facilitate waste management, and are traditional sites of affordable housing. Hidden from public eyes, they paradoxically serve as both playgrounds for children and as sites of crime. Unlike most features of the urban built environment, they are public land whose access and maintenance is unofficially controlled by private citizens. This research investigates the ways that alleys have long functioned fluidly between the categories of public and private space, and have therefore been able to accommodate marginalized groups, such as racial minorities and the urban poor, who would otherwise not have had access to urban space. In the past decade, as many cities turn to sustainable design and seek the economic benefits of residential and commercial gentrification, city governments and urban land organizations have turned their attention to alleys, arguing that these ubiquitous city spaces can be revitalized as public space. Through attention to the ways alleys' semi-private and semi-public status have historically provided for underserved urban residents, this project critically assesses the seemingly clear benefits of public space painted by today's urban designers and by scholars who critique the neoliberal privatization of urban land. Research findings will be disseminated directly to planning professionals and to a broader public through publications such as op-eds and blog posts and will also be instructional material for undergraduate geography, urban studies, and history classrooms. The project will also provide support to enable a graduate student to establish an independent research career.Despite their widespread presence and new popularity in American cities, alleys are conspicuously absent from literature in geography and urban and planning history. This research combines theoretical approaches from urban, historical, and cultural geography to tell a multi-decade history of alleys' changing functions and meanings. It contributes to scholarship that identifies ways that experiences based on race, gender, and class are embedded in urban landscapes. Finally, it uses the space of the alley to challenge static categories and prevailing assessments of public and private space. Through a combination of archival research, semi-structured interviews, and site visits, the researchers seek to understand the relationship between the changing built environment of alleys due to laws, policies, and technological innovations and the production and normalization of social hierarchies by race, class, and gender. Research will be based in Washington, D.C., a city with a recognized history of alley housing, one known for its ties between race and political-economic developments, and one that has recently turned to alley revitalization projects. In addition, as the only American city run by Congress through the early 1970s, D.C. is the best place to understand how national policies historically unfolded in a single city.