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胡同的历史，作为规划的功利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制度中的作用。几乎所有美国城市的住宅区街道和商业区后面都有小巷。这些走廊提供通往车库和建筑的通道，流通交通，促进废物管理，是传统的经济适用房地点。它们隐藏在公众视线之外，自相矛盾地既是儿童的游乐场，也是犯罪现场。与城市建成环境的大多数特征不同，它们是公共土地，其访问和维护由普通公民非正式控制。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畅发挥作用的方式，因此能够容纳边缘化群体，如少数族裔和城市穷人，否则他们将无法进入城市空间。在过去的十年里，随着许多城市转向可持续设计，寻求住宅和商业中产阶级化的经济效益，城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历来为服务不足的城市居民提供的方式，这个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似乎明显的好处。研究成果将通过专栏和博客文章等出版物直接传播给规划专业人员和更广泛的公众，也将成为本科生地理、城市研究和历史课堂的教学材料。该项目还将为研究生建立独立的研究生涯提供支持。尽管胡同在美国城市中广泛存在并受到新的欢迎，但小巷显然没有出现在地理、城市和规划史的文献中。这项研究结合了城市、历史和文化地理学的理论方法，讲述了胡同几十年来功能和意义的变化历史。它为学术做出贡献，确定基于种族、性别和阶级的经历嵌入城市景观的方式。最后，它利用巷子的空间来挑战静态的分类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，研究人员试图了解因法律、政策和技术创新而改变的胡同建筑环境与种族、阶级和性别的社会等级制度的产生和正常化之间的关系。研究将设在华盛顿特区，这座城市在胡同住宅方面有着公认的历史，以种族与政治经济发展之间的联系而闻名，最近转向了胡同复兴项目。此外，作为20世纪70年代初唯一由国会管理的美国城市，华盛顿特区是了解历史上国家政策是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.