I read Rosalyn Deutsche's article "Architecture of the Evicted", and inferred ultimately that when a run down urban area is re-furbished it creates problems, often displacing those who lived in said area. "Only by recognizing that the effects of redevelopment in individual urban spaces are not circumscribed but radiate outward and that redevelopment projects are part of larger, indeed global, spatial patterns can we discern, beneath the appearance that gentrification is random and spontaneous, its systematic character and extensive proportions" (153). I do not understand how redevelopment projects affect spaces globally, let alone evict people in the immediate space. Perhaps I am just naive.
My grandmother, Tally Sweat, is the president of Olmsted Linear Park Alliance in Atlanta. This is a successful restoration of a park that gives back to the community. $9 million was raised for the restoration of this park. It was not federally funded, so it could not have had a negative economic impact. It may have displaced the homeless during the construction period. Again, I do not see a negative. Deutsche states, "The homeless must therefore be evicted not only from redeveloped spaces but also from the image of redevelopment" (156). I find it interesting that Deutsche uses the verb "evicted". Are the homeless not homeless because they were once evicted to begin with? So now they are re-evicted? And then evicted again from the "image of redevelopment?" The homeless weren't part of the original image of the park, so why should is there a focus on them being evicted from an image they were never meant to be a part of?
Rosalyn Deutsche. “Architecture of the Evicted.” Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985. Ed. Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 150-165
I think Sydney misses the point when she asks "[t]he homeless weren't part of the original image of the park, so why ... is there a focus on them being evicted from an image they were never meant to be a part of?" Although the homeless may not have been in mind when the park was developed, I understand Deutsche as saying that, nevertheless, they are there. One may choose to ignore the homeless in his/her redevelopment plans, but the fact still remains that people do, and will, use that space in ways that differ from the original conception.
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