Representing ‘‘Neighborhood’’: Growth Coalitions, Newspaper Reporting, and Gentrification in St. Louis David Wilson University of Illinois Thomas Mueller California University of Pennsylvania Newspaper reporters are important actors in promoting gentrification. This study of St. Louis examines their use of a prominent representation of neighborhood in this process: dying neighborhoods in need of middle-class technical salvationists. We examine its use to help drive two processes to promoting gentrification: legitimating restructuring at actual or anticipated sites and isolating ‘‘revitalization-contaminating’’ communities. We discover this neighborhood representation is applied primarily to legitimate restructuring at specific sites. Revitalization-threatening neighborhoods, represented differently, indicates this representation is task specific in this city’s ‘‘gentrification project.’’ Key Words: gentrification, growth coalitions, representation, neighborhoods.

Introduction ewspaper reporters across America promote gentrification as key growth coalition actors (cf. Parisi and Holcomb 1994; Lauria 1999).1 Discussions of neighborhoods help to rationalize and normalize this process ( Parisi and Holcomb 1994; Molotch 1999). One powerful representation organizes this reportage: dying neighborhoods in need of middle-class technical salvationists (Roberts 1991; Smith 1996). This representation, many note, relies on the use of two vivid metaphors. A living organism metaphor, first, makes neighborhoods live beings with body parts (e.g., ‘‘hearts,’’ ‘‘spines’’) and functions (e.g., ‘‘breathing, ‘‘limping’’) that code them with animate requirements (e.g., ‘‘nourishment,’’ ‘‘resuscitation’’). A technical salvationist metaphor, second, codes neighborhoods as needing benevolent involvement from planners, developers, and gentrifiers.2 But an important question remains unanswered in this literature: What tasks does this newspaper reporting accomplish in a city’s ‘‘gentrification project?’’ Many suggest this representation of neighborhood is applied primarily to gentrifying and gentrification-ripe neighborhoods to rationalize site-specific restructuring (cf. Wilson 1993, 1996; Smith 1996). But recently, others suggest something else: this neighborhood representation is also applied (as

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a gentrification-supporting ‘‘intervention’’) to low-income areas to isolate ‘‘contaminating’’ land and populations. This thesis has been advanced with the realization that such isolating strategies are as important to fostering gentrification as legitimating restructuring in select enclaves (Knopp 1990; Mele 2000). This ‘‘isolating imperative,’’ they declare, needs this same kind of disparaging, afflicting representation. This paper seeks to shed light on the specific use of this neighborhood representation offered by newspaper reporters. We deem this important; use in the two key processes essential to cultivating gentrification (legitimating restructuring at select sites and keeping ‘‘contaminating’’ populations away) would reveal it as a multipurpose, ideological construct. It would be, paraphrasing Harvey (1989a), one coalition mega-representation. Two questions guide this investigation of St. Louis: Do reporters of local growth and development apply this neighborhood representation only to gentrifying and gentrification-ripe areas? And if not, are lowincome or marginal neighborhoods (not ripe for gentrification but potential obstructions to gentrification) also targets of this representation? We need to know more about relations between growth-coalition rhetoric and gentrification (Lees, 1996). Rhetorical formations now widely chronicled—bold explorers engaging wild inner cities, new postindustrial sensibilities

The Professional Geographer, 56(2) 2004, pages 282–294 r Copyright 2004 by Association of American Geographers. Initial submission, November 2001; revised submission, December 2002; final acceptance, April 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, U.K.

Metaphors, Language, and Gentrification in St. Louis needing to replace old industrial aesthetics, gentrification as cultural reclamation—have been discussed but underexplored (cf. Kenny 1995; Hamnett 2000). This paper, responding to this shortcoming, focuses on the way neighborhoods are represented that is at the heart of such rhetorical formations. In this context, considerable work illuminates a dominant neighborhood representation in these formations: the dying or diseased urban neighborhood in need of ‘‘treatment’’ by outside technicians. But a central issue remains unclear: Is this a focused undertaking (i.e., merely used to legitimate restructuring at actual or anticipated sites of gentrification) or a dominant portrayal of neighborhoods to meet gentrification’s other central task (isolating populations and land uses)? We propose a central thesis—this metaphorically laced representation is applied in St. Louis to accomplish one of the fundamental tasks promoting gentrification (to legitimate restructuring at select neighborhoods). This imagerich neighborhood representation, following a host of recent expositions, is expected to focus on anticipated or actual areas of gentrification. We believe that no kind of ‘‘marginal,’’ gentrification-threatening neighborhood has been significantly subjected to this reportage (i.e., black low income, white low income, or Hispanic and mixed-race low income). We speculate, following Omni and Winant (1994), Haworth and Manzi (1999) and Jacobs and Kemeny (1999), that these neighborhoods are represented differently as they are marginalized and isolated. Why the focus on newspaper reporters? Our study follows recent expositions on growth coalitions that recognize three key reasons for this. First and foremost, these actors are overwhelmingly allied with growth coalition designs due to a complex context of constraint (see Parisi and Holcomb 1994; Lauria 1999). This context—principally, editor expectations and newspaper political alliances with businesses and growth organizations—structurally limits the possibility of deviating from this context even while there is sufficient flexibility to choose reportage styles (e.g., intensely realist, foreboding, and ominous). Second, local reporters are key constructors of reality (see Boyle 1997; Short 1999). Their eyes and pens mediate notions of city and neighborhood circumstances and conditions. Finally, these actors

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are widely trusted as chroniclers of local life and events ( Parisi and Holcomb 1994). Unlike national reporters and pundits often associated with politics and subjectivity, these people are widely accorded a ‘‘grass-roots’’ and factreporting status. Newspaper reportage thus profoundly reflects growth coalition designs. How they narrate growth and development, stylistically diverse and agency tinged, is bounded by pragmatic realities (Logan and Molotch 1987; Molotch 1999). Such mainstream reportage— conscious and willful—reflects human agency, political constraints, and cultural boundedness. It incorporates creative stylistic endeavor (e.g., style of writing), habit and convention (e.g., accuracy in reporting of facts, depicting neighborhoods in evocative imagery), and realities of political options (e.g., who is villainized, what are community problems). These, to Molotch (1999), meld to produce a product we commonly see in mainstream newspapers across America: interesting, politically safe, and predictable renditions of neighborhood growth. In this context, it must be recognized that this neighborhood construct is poignant and creative. People are implored to imagine ‘‘ailing’’ communities in desperate need of astute middleclass intervention. Medical and expert-technical imaginings discipline vision and understanding by taking people down narrow paths to ‘‘see’’ neighborhoods and their salvationists (Barnes and Duncan 1991; Barnes 1996). Only supportive, medically and technically resonant props (e.g., dying downtowns, sick neighborhoods, astute engineers of city growth) are placed along this path. Other views of neighborhood and problem solvers are obliterated in a political metaphor of reality that illuminates (decrepit and dying communities, wise grassroots technicians) and conceals (alternative conceptions of neighborhoods, other community helpers). A discursive path to imagine becomes central to ‘‘setting-up’’ the logic of gentrifying neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Change in St. Louis St. Louis since 1985 has significantly gentrified. Its immediate roots are in the unexpected 1980s Midwest recovery from devastating deindustrialization (Warf and Holly 1997). As the East and West Coasts continued to experience office

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overbuilding, the collapse of financial firms, and reductions in military spending, the Midwest witnessed renewed prosperity. Years of land devaluation, firms downsized to adjust to economic malaise, and reduced wage-rates laid the grounds for new investment and job inmigration (Warf and Holly 1997; Knox 1997). For St. Louis, growth in service-sector jobs was significant. Between 1980 and 1990, new ‘‘high-end’’ service jobs (i.e., living wage with possibilities for advancement) concentrated in banking, finance, and accounting (U.S. Census Bureau 1980, 1990). ‘‘Lower end’’ service jobs (i.e., low wage and dead end) concentrated in the retail sector and also proliferated (see Public Policy Research Center, 2001a, 2001b). This 1980s Midwest economic reversal is important to this study; it encouraged the St. Louis growth coalition to aggressively seize the moment. This coalition, like its Midwest counterparts, began to reinvent itself and its city, ideologically recontextualizing the plight and possibilities of St. Louis. The argument, spearheaded by a new, local ‘‘entrepreneurial state’’ cropping up across Midwest cities (see Harvey 1989b; Leitner 1990; Wilson 1991), was forceful: once seemingly intractable economic and physical decline was being reversed, and possibilities for urban growth abounded. But now the world was supposedly different, and what opportunities that existed had to be pursued by respecting a new reality: globalization. St. Louis had purportedly become a subject in a complex global network; growth strategies had to confront this reality. A path for city survival was asserted: St. Louis had to be optimally entrepreneurial. This discourse pushed a vision of growth that emphasized posh neighborhoods, high technology growth nodes, elite culture districts, and conspicuous consumption retail zones (Civic Progress 1998). Past conceptions of growth incorporated issues of wealth redistribution, public resource provision, and equity; this one peripheralized these. To make their case, the coalition anointed St. Louis in bold rhetoric the ‘‘Jewel of the Mississippi’’ and cast itself as seeking to rise from the ashes of industrial decimation. Investment climates, middle-class livability, and high-tech and service job attraction were centered as keys to urban turnaround. The fate of St. Louis would supposedly be determined by ability to play in the new inter-

locality competition. The city now had to remake itself residentially, aesthetically, and culturally to compete in new global times and stake out a path of civic health. The St. Louis growth machine has been anchored by five players: Monsanto, Ralston Purina, Anheuser-Busch, Emerson, and city government. An ‘‘entrepreneurial state’’ has increasingly become the coalition coordinator and key resource provider (e.g., subsidies, public-private partnerships, political enablement) (see Harvey 1989a; Leitner 1990). Their influence was forcefully institutionalized in the early 1980s revitalization of a growth-lobbying organization, St. Louis Civic Progress (SLCP) ( Jones, Portz, and Stein 1997). SLCP was once a low-key player in city growth but struck out aggressively after 1985 with the entrepreneurial state’s emergence. With intensified oratory, other companies affiliated with SLPC and became active coalition participants: Edward Jones, RCGA, Sverdrup, Southwest Bell, Firstar, and Mercantile Bank Corporation (cf. Ward and Kilgen 1997; St. Louis Business Journal 2000). A first phase of significant city restructuring was termed ‘‘anchoring,’’ followed in the mid1980s to drive downtown renewal. Key neighborhoods and prominent complexes were provided public and private funds: the Washington University Medical Center, the 12block Westminster Place Community, the Missouri Research Park, and the Soulard district. SLCP also worked to rehabilitate the historic Arch Park and expand Lambert Airport (Civic Progress Annual Report 1996). Boosterism elevated these projects to prominence, public and private sector resources pushed the restructuring (cf. Ward and Kilgen 1997). But socioeconomic segregation and poverty in low-income neighborhoods also deepened at this time. Indicative of this, the three most prominent low-income neighborhoods ( Jeff Vander Lou, Mark Twain, Kingsway East) experienced median family income declines of 6%, 7%, and 11%, respectively (U.S. Census Bureau 1980, 1990). A second wave of restructuring in the early and mid-1990s featured downtown gentrification. New and ‘‘innovative’’ growth instruments were aggressively used: tax abatements, tax increment financing, historic preservation, and public-private partnerships. More than $10 million and $8 million in tax abatement and

Metaphors, Language, and Gentrification in St. Louis tax increment financing flowed to St. Louis neighborhoods between 1987 and 1993 (St. Louis Planning Commission 2000). At the same time, 14 neighborhoods were declared historic districts between 1987 and 1993 (St. Louis Cultural Resources Office 1999). Soulard, Lafayette Square, Compton Heights, and Central West End were dramatically restructured (Figure 1). But as before, poverty in low-income neighborhoods further increased. Between 1990 and 2000 Jeff Vander Lou, Mark Twain, and Kingsway East experienced further family income declines of 6%, 4%, and 8% (U.S. Census Bureau 1990, 2000).

Data and Methods Our investigation of gentrification and newspaper reporting in St. Louis focused on the dominant mainstream newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This paper, with a readership of over 250,000, daily narrates neighborhood change and gentrification (Mueller 1999). Over 45 reporters wrote pieces on growth and development issues in St. Louis neighborhoods (e.g., development projects, neighborhood growth strategies, growth problems) between 1980 and 2000. Two reporters—Charlene Prost and E.F. Porter—operated across much of the time frame. These approximately 300 articles on neighborhoods between 1980 and 2000 constituted our database. These articles, sorted by neighborhood, allowed us to randomly choose 20 articles to review on each neighborhood type studied. This newspaper reportage served another methodological purpose: it helped operationalize the neighborhood concept. The notion of neighborhood can mean many things and be defined in numerous ways (see Knox and Pinch 2000). In this context, St. Louis City Planning Department’s use of names and boundaries— reflecting a base of rich local perceptions— guided our construction of the ‘‘neighborhood mosaic.’’3 This methodological practice, following U.S. National Commission on Neighborhoods (1968) and Jablonsky (1993), relies on perceptions and attitudes to delineate neighborhoods. Our logic was that such boundaries as perceptual units inform actions and activities of people, institutions, and government (Filstead 1970; Yin 1994). We thus defined neighborhood as perceptual microlandscapes that structure people’s sense of local community (see Knox and

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Pinch 2000). Following City Planning’s release of neighborhood maps and use of these names, we crafted Figure 1. Question 1 examined the metaphorical use of gentrifying, gentrification-ripe, and lowincome, not-likely-to-gentrify neighborhoods. This assessed whether the neighborhood representation (the living neighborhood needing affluent-technical salvation) would be widely used to characterize only the first two neighborhood types. Six neighborhoods from each category (a total of 18, randomly selected) were chosen for study. We examined use of the metaphors individually (living organism, technical salvationist) and in total. To operationalize the assessment, three ‘‘indicator’’ kinds of neighborhoods were used as surrogates: intensely reinvested (gentrifying neighborhoods), proximity to intensely reinvested (ripe-for-gentrification neighborhoods), and low-income not proximate to intensely reinvested (low-income, notlikely-to-gentrify neighborhoods). Use of such proxies, common in studies of urban neighborhoods (cf. Rex 1986; Ley 1987; Allen and Turner 1996; Greene 1997), become valid surrogates on the theoretical grounds we now discuss. First, intensely reinvested neighborhoods (as gentrified areas) display massive new investment that is the hallmark of gentrification (Smith 1996; Hamnett 2000). This investment influx, to many researchers, signals gentrification. Second, neighborhoods proximal to intensely reinvested neighborhoods (as gentrification-ripe areas) are prime sites for new investment as ‘‘grafting-onto-gentrification’’ places. Real-estate investors are attracted by possibilities to create ‘‘restructuring corridors’’ (while such processes as depreciated land value and housing stock are important in this context) (Wyly and Hammel 2000; Hamnett 2000). Finally, low-income, not proximate to intensely reinvested neighborhoods (as low-income, not-likely-to-gentrify areas) are the contemporary city’s residual, out-of-the-way places (Harvey 1989; Smith 1996). Gentrification, to Harvey and Smith, is a distinctive uneven development that fails, at least for a sustained time, to ‘‘rediscover’’ such neighborhoods. Question 2 examined the metaphorical use across diverse kinds of low-income neighborhoods that were not likely to gentrify: black low-income, white low-income, and Hispanic and mixed-race low-income. This assessment

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Figure 1 Studied neighborhoods in St. Louis.

Metaphors, Language, and Gentrification in St. Louis sought to illuminate the kinds of low-income neighborhoods conceivably targeted for this metaphorical representation. Gentrification, we now know, requires isolating populations and land uses (i.e., neighborhoods) believed detrimental to ‘‘the gentrification project.’’ But whether the representation of dying or diseased neighborhoods needing expert outside intervention is applied to accomplish this, and, if so, is concentrated in one neighborhood type, is unclear. Selection of neighborhoods also had a theoretical foundation. Troublesome and problem populations in cities have tended to be defined along racial and class lines (Boyer 1984; Nyden 1991; Wilson and Grammenos 2000). Poor black neighborhoods, Boyer’s (1984) ‘‘veritable urban villain,’’ have been most singled out for problems in U.S. cities: failed urban renewal in the 1950s, failed public housing in the 1960s, urban tax base erosion in the 1970s, and others (see also Widick 1972). In this context, we differentiated three low-income neighborhood categories—black, white, and Hispanic/racially mixed—to see if black poverty areas would be most intensely constructed as villains to upgrading and, ultimately, targets of this living organism neighborhood representation. This scapegoating, carrying over to ‘‘the city growth and gentrification question,’’ could make this kind of neighborhood a core target for such representation. In this context, we tabulated the amount of metaphorical use in all these neighborhood types ( for the two questions). We focused on each neighborhood type and computed a ratio of the number of sentences in newspaper reportage using these metaphors versus total sentences of reportage. Similar techniques, used in studies by Ley and Mercer (1980) and Wei (2000), also deconstructed text to uncover ratios of specific language use. A random sample of 20 articles reporting on each neighborhood making up a ‘‘type’’ comprised the database. One ratio per neighborhood type was ultimately computed. Our selection of articles was confined to reporting on neighborhood growth and development. Uncovering the metaphorically laden sentences was time-consuming and tedious. We read the articles in detail and identified sentences using the metaphors. Words or phrases carrying the human organism metaphor (e.g.,

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‘‘thriving,’’ ‘‘alive,’’ ‘‘healthy,’’ ‘‘robust,’’ ‘‘once on its deathbed,’’ ‘‘barely breathing’’) and the middle-class salvationist metaphor (e.g., ‘‘need for technicians,’’ ‘‘need for fixers,’’ ‘‘bold agents of change,’’ ‘‘gentrifiers were whiz kids,’’ ‘‘savvy progressive developers’’) implicated that sentence. Sentences that described conditions, processes, plans, and problems of growth but without direct references to these metaphors were discounted. Our method, following recent content analyses of metaphorical usage by Jennifer Wei (2000) and John Hull (2001), allowed data to be aggregated and subjected to statistical analysis.

Results Our results confirmed expectations about newspaper reportage of St. Louis neighborhoods. Post Dispatch reporters apply the two metaphors (the city as organism and the middle-class technician as salvationist) primarily in reportage of gentrifying and gentrification-ripe neighborhoods (Tables 1 and 2). A comparison of magnitudes reveals significant differences in metaphorical use across all three categories; differentiation was most pronounced between low-income neighborhoods not likely to gentrify and the other two neighborhood types. These two metaphors were contained in 15.9% and 8.2% of total sentences for ‘‘gentrified neighborhoods’’ and ‘‘proximate to gentrified neighborhoods,’’ but in only 3.2% of total sentences in ‘‘low-income, not-in-vicinity-to-gentrification neighborhoods.’’ As shown by analysis of variance, differences across each of the three categories were statistically significant (Table 2). Similar results appear when we examine the two metaphors individually (Tables 1 and 2). Again, significant differences were evident in the magnitude of metaphorical use across the three categories. The living organism metaphor was contained in 17.3% and 7.8% of total sentences in reportage of ‘‘gentrified neighborhoods’’ and ‘‘proximate-to-gentrified neighborhoods.’’ This figure was only 2.6% of total sentences for ‘‘not-in-vicinity-to-gentrification neighborhoods.’’ For the technical salvationist metaphor, 15.1% and 7.2% of total sentences in reportage of ‘‘gentrified neighborhoods’’ and ‘‘proximate-to-gentrified neighborhoods’’ contained this. This figure was only 3.7% of total

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Table 1 Comparison of St. Louis Neighborhoods, 1980–2000 Comparison of Sentences Including the Metaphors Both Kinds of Metaphor

Living Organism Metaphor

Technical Salvationist Metaphor

Neighborhoods Gentrified Category Average Central West End Lafayette Square Soulard LaSalle Park Compton Heights DeBaliviere

15.9 12.0 21.0 9.0 34.5 9.5 9.5

17.3 6.5 12.5 11.0 46.0 13.5 14.5

15.1 22.0 24.5 9.0 30.5 7.5 6.0

Proximate to Gentrified Neighborhoods Category Average Vandeventer Marine Villa Benton Park Lewis Place The Gate District Fountain Park

8.2 11.0 10.5 8.5 8.5 9.0 10.5

7.8 8.5 7.0 6.5 7.7 8.5 9.0

7.2 7.0 8.5 6.5 7.2 8.0 8.5

2.6 2.5 2.0 1.0 3.5 4.0 3.5

3.7 7.0 2.5 2.5 4.0 2.0 4.5

Low-Income and Not Proximate to Gentrification Category Average 3.2 Benton Park East 4.2 Jeff Vander Lu 2.2 Tower Grove South 1.8 Kingsway East 3.8 Mark Twain 3.0 Southampton 4.0

sentences for ‘‘not-in-vicinity-to-gentrification neighborhoods.’’ Analysis of variance reveals (Table 2) that these differences were statistically significant across all categories under study. Our results also confirmed expectation that low-income, black neighborhoods would not receive significantly greater application of the

metaphors than the other two kinds of lowincome neighborhoods (Tables 3 and 4). Magnitudes of metaphorical application within and among the three neighborhood categories hardly differed. Averages for the neighborhood types (low-income black, low-income Hispanic or racially mixed, low-income white) was 2.7%,

Table 2 Analysis of Variance for Use of Metaphors in Kinds of Neighborhoods, 1980–2000 Sum of Squares A. Analysis of Variance for Both Metaphors Among 487.75 Within 528.13 Total 1015.88 Kruskal-Wallis-T 15.1579 DF 2 B. Analysis of Variance for Living Organism Metaphor Among 65.53 Within 1224.542 Total 1694.07 Kruskal-Wallis-T 12.5380 DF 2 C. Analysis of Variance for Technical Salvationist Metaphor Among 524.34 Within 560.80 Total 1265.736 Kruskal-Wallis-T 10.37134 DF 2

Degrees of Freedom

Mean Squares

F

2 15 17

243.87 35.21

6.93

2 15 17

328.76 81.63

3.93

2 15 17

262.17 37.39

7.01

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Table 3 Comparison of St. Louis Neighborhoods, 1980–2000 Proportion of Sentences Using the Metaphors Both Kinds of Metaphor

Living Organism Metaphor

Technical Salvationist Metaphor

Low-Income Black Category Average Jeff Vander Lou St. Louis Place Mark Twain Wells/Goodfellow Carr Square Hamilton Heights

2.7 3.5 2.5 2.0 4.0 1.5 2.5

2.6 2.5 2.0 3.0 4.5 1.0 3.0

2.8 4.0 3.5 1.0 4.5 1.5 2.5

Low-Income Hispanic or Racially Mixed 1 Category Average Dutchtown Marine Villa Princeton Heights Tower Grove East Benton Park West Tiffany

2.4 3.0 2.0 3.5 1.5 2.0 2.5

2.7 2.5 2.5 3.8 2.0 2.5 3.0

2.0 3.0 1.0 3.0 1.0 2.5 1.5

Low-Income White Category Average Boulevard Heights Holly Hills Tower Grove South Carondelet North Hampton Shaw

2.3 4.5 1.5 1.0 2.0 2.5 2.0

2.2 3.5 1.0 2.0 2.5 3.0 1.0

2.1 5.0 1.5 0.5 1.5 1.0 3.0

1 The 2000 Census estimates that approximately 20,000 Hispanics live in St. Louis. They are concentrated in 2 neighborhoods, Dutchtown and Cherokee. The other 4 neighborhoods in this category are mixed black/white.

2.4%, and 2.3% respectively. Most intense application of the metaphors in any of the 18 neighborhoods, Boulevard Heights (low-income, white neighborhood), was a minuscule 4.5% of total sentences. As shown by analysis of variance, these differences across the three

categories of neighborhoods were not statistically significant (Table 4). Similar results follow when we examine the two metaphors individually. The living organism metaphor was used across the three neighborhood types an average of only 2.6%,

Table 4 Analysis of Variance for Use of Metaphors in Kinds of Neighborhoods, 1980–2000 Sum of Squares A. Analysis of Variance for Both Metaphors Among .5278 Within 14.4170 Total 14.9444 Kruskal-Wallis-T 8.24 DF 2 B. Analysis of Variance for Living Organism Metaphor Among 1.0 Within 14.125 Total 15.125 Kruskal-Wallis-T 7.10 DF 2 C. Analysis of Variance for Technical Salvationist Metaphor Among 2.528 Within 28.042 Total 30.569 Kruskal-Wallis-T 5.52 DF 2

Degrees of Freedom

Mean Squares

F

2 15 17

.2638 .9611

0.76

2 15 17

0.5 0.9417

0.53

2 15 17

1.264 1.869

0.68

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2.7%, and 2.2% of total sentences. The most intense application of this metaphor, in Wells/ Goodfellow (low-income black) was 4.5% of total sentences. Analysis of variance shows these differences in application across the three categories of neighborhoods not statistically significant (Table 4). Similarly, the technical salvationist metaphor was used across the three neighborhood types an average of 2.8%, 2.0%, and 2.1% of total sentences. Most intense application of this metaphor, in Boulevard Heights (low-income white), was 5.0% of total sentences. Analysis of variance shows again these differences across the three categories of neighborhoods as not statistically significant.

Discussion Our results suggest that these reporters apply this metaphorically laced way to see neighborhoods (struggling beings needing middle-class technical salvationists) to meet one key requirement in order to foster gentrification: to legitimate it at actual or anticipated sites of restructuring. These metaphors are mobilized only in discussions of gentrification and gentrification-ripe neighborhoods. This application largely bypasses low-income neighborhoods in general and their specific types: low-income black, low-income Hispanic and racially mixed, and low-income white. We conclude that this representation, task specific and thematically targeted, is not used by reporters as a coalition ‘‘mega-representation’’ in St. Louis in the drive to promote gentrification. But it is clear that gentrification in St. Louis requires more than this. Promoting gentrification, to Neil Smith (1996), always involves the crucial process of isolating investmentthreatening land uses ( factories, unwanted land uses) and ‘‘contaminating’’ populations (the homeless, the poor, disadvantaged minorities). The processes of legitimating gentrification and protecting turfs for significant investment, many now concur, connect, and mutually support. Indeed, as this paper chronicled, St. Louis after 1985 experienced growing lowincome social isolation at the time of gentrification’s ascendance. As downtown restructuring heated up, neighborhoods like Jeff Vander Lou, Mark Twain, and Kingsway East were increasingly stigmatized and sociospatially isolated. One critic of St. Louis, activist Todd Wright

(2001) noted, ‘‘to physically carve out their version of ‘the good [gentrification],’ the media and its honchos had to clearly and decisively keep away ‘the bad.’’’ But without the living organism representation imposed to drive this isolating effect, what neighborhood construct assisted it? This study examined only one neighborhood representation—the living organism needing middle-class technical salvationists—but we speculate there are multiple possibilities. First, low-income neighborhoods could have been served up as functional ‘‘reservations of the poor.’’ Metaphors and narratives here invoke holding containers, expedient repositories, and residual storehouses. Loic Wacquant (1992), for example, identifies this representational practice in media reportage in Chicago. Such neighborhoods— offered as ‘‘underclass’’ places that spatially contain—are reduced to disorganized but important holding tanks. This rhetoric in Chicago, to Wacquant, was sharpened with ascendant gentrification across the downtown. There is a second possibility: these lowincome neighborhoods could have been projected as mobile and infectious cancers (rather than living but struggling beings). This alternative, not mutually exclusive from the previous representation of neighborhood, presents unstable, incendiary, and mobile territories: ‘‘underclass terrains,’’ ‘‘hyperghettos,’’ ‘‘slum zones’’ (cf. Malveaux 1993; Wilson 2000). It commonly uses metaphors and exclamations of medical imaginings to make its case, for example, ‘‘deadly youth cultures,’’ ‘‘migrating cancers,’’ ‘‘diseased social ways,’’ and ‘‘infectious cultures.’’ Growth coalitions in Chicago and Birmingham, for example, commonly script poverty neighborhoods as aggressive zones of cultural dysfunction (Malveaux 1993; Wilson 2000). Again, constructions become more explicit and audacious in periods of ascendant gentrification in cities. Yet this organismic neighborhood representation we studied—only selectively applied in St. Louis—is important to this city’s gentrification project. Making gentrification progressive and important at desired sites is central to this enterprise (in St. Louis and beyond). Such legitimation, following Neil Smith (1996), is the engine that powers a potentially contentious restructuring. Before it is a reality, such sites need to be made deformed, deficient, and needing

Metaphors, Language, and Gentrification in St. Louis outsider attention. Gentrification needs to be certified as constructive and beneficial. It, like any creative human construction, needs a host of things (ideological justification, political support, economic support) that pivot around the most basic resource: provision of a logic to undertake it. But this representation is labor intensive and potentially contentious. It, to C. Mele (2000), must make a denigrating way to see communities and populations normative and acceptable. What must be normalized is potentially daunting: neighborhoods with problem and substitutable social fabrics, places whose people can be easily transported elsewhere (displacement), and people with easily replaceable senses of community and ties to institutions. That growth coalitions have been able to do this testifies to their perseverance and constructive creativity. This constructing, it follows, must normalize a process (gentrification) whose inequalities are visible and always threaten to throw it into crisis. Appearances of naturalness, in the process, can easily give way to impressions of class-imposition and unfair restructuring. We conclude, without full details, that multiple representations of neighborhood are used in St. Louis to foster gentrification. At issue is their core ‘‘epistemes’’—how they should be commonly thought and imagined (what we have studied in this paper). The pool of possibilities is diverse: places of contagious cultures, fixed brick and mortar storehouses, kinds of population agglomerations, dying beings in need of outsider technical intervention, and others. Such core epistemes, we now know, are building blocks to project notions of viable, problem, or decrepit neighborhoods (Roberts 1991; Smith 1996). Elaborations of villains, ominous forces, and correctable processes commonly follow. St. Louis neighborhoods, as made and understood things, were thus not unities in the sense of being common things—living beings, population agglomerations, or mobile cancers. They were ‘‘ontologized’’ in different ways that gave them different core foundations. The rhetoric of gentrification in St. Louis can thus be characterized as multi-textured. How people, places, and processes were represented varied. The proof: one crucial thing, neighborhood, was presented as multiple real things. They were made very different objects for common imagining. Neighborhoods were dif-

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ferent not merely in physical, demographic, or socioeconomic content, but also as grounded, real entities. Neighborhoods can be distinguished superficially, that is, on the basis of content or characteristics. Alternatively, they can be differentiated as Gregory, Martin, and Smith’s (1994) ‘‘distinctive objects in the ontological imagination.’’ To meet one need to bolster gentrification in St. Louis, neighborhoods were living beings. To meet another need, they were (we speculate) contagious cultures or fixed population storehouses. Representations of this ‘‘core real,’’ in the final analysis, fluctuated to meet pragmatic constructive needs.

Conclusion Newspaper reportage of local growth and development, the leading edge of growth coalition designs to foster gentrification, continues unabated across urban America. Nearly 3,000 reporters in America’s 100 largest cities routinely narrate neighborhood growth (e.g., new development plans, ideal community growth trajectories, growth impacts on community) ( Pew Center for Civic Journalism 2001). They reflexively understand and report on cities, but in the confines of political pragmatics that bolster coalition designs. Such reporters, following David Harvey (1989a), helps build ‘‘local knowledge regimes’’ that enable gentrification. These reporters—central information producers about cities—regulate understandings of urban people, places, and processes with potent political-economic consequences. Of concern to this paper, their gentrificationsupportive accounts of neighborhood growth are rooted in constructions of a central object: neighborhoods. In St. Louis, these representations are centerpieces for tales of gentrification’s desirability ( featuring luminous renditions of beneficial and city-serving restructuring). Against this representation of neighborhood (currently diseased communities that need middle-class technical salvationists), the potentiality of fine homes, robust shops, and clean streets makes sense. In the process, planners and private-sector ‘‘miracle-workers’’ become empowered to intervene and restructure. This representation, like a gatekeeping device, manages common consciousness. It disciplines common thought to accept potentially contentious

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kinds of neighborhood change, given this ‘‘truth’’ of current neighborhood. In this context, we call for a deeper understanding of such representations used by reporters. Persuasive representations of neighborhood—today as before—are a potent source of power and persuasion. They can normalize a range of potentially problematic and controversial kinds of restructuring. This representing, it follows, has an enormous capacity to wield oppression. To Norman Fairclaugh (1992), representing the world is the new, modern alternative to violence and overt oppression. The game in complex societies, to Fairclaugh, is to make and normalize ‘‘knowledges’’ rather than overtly punish and discipline. Thus, gentrification in cities is painstakingly coded to reveal potentialities and conceal inequities. Central to this, narrative seeks to mute its most contentious aspects: affluent land grabs, residential displacement, and demonization of lives and cultures. Metaphors, metonymies, sanitary codings, and other language tropes are crucial; they build realities for public consumption that assist growth coalitions. Our findings suggest a number of important areas for further research. This work should extend and deepen our results that must be seen as case-specific and preliminary. Most generally, we need to know if newspaper reporting of neighborhood growth in other cities compares to the St. Louis case. In this context, a number of precise issues arise: Is use of this metaphorically laden representation of neighborhoods confined to gentrification and gentrificationripe neighborhoods? Are low-income neighborhoods in general (that must be managed and isolated in the gentrification process) represented through a different neighborhood construct? If so, what are these neighborhood constructs that are mobilized in concert with the living organism representation? Answers will deepen understanding of the rhetorical formations that continue to push gentrification in U.S. cities. Without this knowledge, we are destined to know incompletely these formations that wield such influence in contemporary America.’

Notes 1

Following Logan and Molotch (1987) and Jonas and Wilson (1999), we define growth coalitions as networks of institutions that coalesce and interact

as resource distributors to push a common vision of community and city growth. In St. Louis as in many cities, the prominent coalition was anchored by major developers, builders, corporations, realtors, and city government (see next section). 2 Other metaphors typically operate at the same time in these rhetorical formations. Thus, the two metaphors studied (living organism and technical salvationist) often interacted with other metaphors, e.g., St. Louis’s role as ‘‘subject’’ in a complex global network, the region’s role as a ‘‘magnet’’ to attract resources in a competitive regional ‘‘competition.’’ 3 One step the St. Louis City Planning Commission follows to delineate city neighborhoods is to engage perceptions of local people and institutions across the city. The commission, through ‘‘neighborhood experts,’’ solicits input on neighborhood boundaries to help generate this neighborhood map.

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DAVID WILSON is an associate professor in the Department of Geography, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801. E-mail [email protected]. His work focuses on the political economy of the U.S. city, urban political processes, and social geography. THOMAS MUELLER is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth Science, California University of Pennsylvania, California, PA 15419. E-mail: [email protected]. His interests include urban social geography, sports geography, and GIS.