Fractured Mobilization: Miami’s Little Haiti Confronts Mega-Real Estate Speculation

Author: Richard Tardanico ID

Disenfranchised urban communities worldwide are increasingly vulnerable to land dispossession and cultural erasure as neoliberal regimes unleash intensified financial speculation within polarizing and splintering local/global class and racialized disparities. A dilemma of disenfranchised communities when confronting speculative intrusions where prospective allies have become marginalized or eliminated is whether, and to what degree, to resist such threats contentiously at the risk of zero-sum defeat versus accommodative negotiations seeking to rescue modest benefits while mitigating dislocations. The forms and intensities of community responses can be conceptualized as embedded within multiscalar state society and local politico-spatial configurations. From that perspective, I address a predominantly Black immigrant district, Miami’s Little Haiti, as it confronts mega-real estate speculation within a metropolitan political economy of corporate real estate hegemony and accelerating racialized expulsions. The contentious versus accommodative dilemma and local/supralocal political landscape fractured and neutralized the Haitian collective responses. I conclude by discussing the case’s theoretical/comparative implications.

PDF

204 views

References

Bastien, M. 2019. ‘Don’t let Magic City development destroy Little Haiti.’ Miami Herald 27 February 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article226889744.html

Bojnansky, E. 2021. ‘Developers crushing Miami underfoot.’ Biscayne Times 28 June 2021. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://www.biscaynetimes.com/news/developers-crushing-miami-underfoot/

Buteau, P. H. 2021. ‘Little Haiti Revitalization Trust receives 3 million.’ The Miami Times 5 March. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://www.miamitimesonline.com/news/little-haiti-revitalization-trust-receives-3-million/article_c874fccc-7c35-11eb-beaa-d3fd1284c4d4.html

Can, A. 2022. ‘How gentrification works in Istanbul, Turkey, ways to resist it and where we’re falling short.’ Minim 24 January 2022. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://minim-municipalism.org/magazine/how-gentrification-works-in-istanbul-turkey-ways-to-resist-it-and-where-we-are-falling-short

Chéry, D-N., C. Morales 2023. ‘Little Haiti residents fear losing their ‘home away from home’.’ New York Times 15 July 2023. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/realestate/little-haiti-miami.html

Connolly, N. D. B. 2014. A world more concrete: Real estate and the remaking of Jim Crow South Florida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Díaz-Parra, I. 2021. ‘Generating a critical dialogue on gentrification in Latin America.’ Progress in Human Geography 45 (3): 472-488. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132520926572

Dikeç, M., E. Swyngedouw 2017. ‘Theorizing the politicizing city.’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 41 (1): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12388

Gastón, P. 2018. ‘Contention across social fields: Manipulating the boundaries of labor struggle in the workplace, community, and market.’ Social Problems 65 (2): 231-250. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spw039

Gierczyk, M. 2020. ‘Magic City Killjoys: Women organizers, gentrification, and the politics of multiculturalism in Little Haiti.’ Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 16 (1): 10, 1-21. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://doi.org/10.33596/anth.409

Goldman, M. 2023. ‘Speculative urbanism and the urban-financial conjuncture: Interrogating the afterlives of the financial crisis.’ Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 55 (2): 367-387. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X211016003

Harvey, D. 2020. The anti-capitalist chronicles. London: Pluto Press.

Inguane, A. 2019. ‘Gentrification and involuntary displacement: The nightmare for Africa’s urban poor.’ Thomas Reuters Foundation News 26 November 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://news.trust.org/item/20191126133236-inxbh/

Latortue, D. F. L. 2019. ‘Concerned Leaders of Little Haiti.’ Le Floridien 17 March 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://www.lefloridien.com/concerned-leaders-of-little-haiti/

Leitner, H., E. Sheppard 2023. ‘Unleashing speculative urbanism: Speculation and urban transformations.’ Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 55 (2): 359-366. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X231151945

Leitner, H., E. Sheppard, K. Sziarto 2008. ‘The spatialities of contentious politics.’ Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers 33 (2): 157-172. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2008.00293.x

Levien, M. 2018. Dispossession without development: Land grabs in neoliberal India. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

LH [Little Haiti] n.d. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://www.socialexplorer.com/122f71276c/view

MC [Magic City Innovation District] n.d. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://magiccitydistrict.com/

Nightingale, C. H. 2012. Segregation: A global history of divided cities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Portes, A., A. C. Armony 2018. Global edge: Miami in the twenty-first century. Oakland: University of California Press.

Portes, A., A. Stepick. 1994. City on the edge: The transformation of Miami. Berkeley: University of California Press.

PZ 2018. City Commission, Planning & Zoning. City of Miami, 15 November 2018. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://miamifl.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=6

PZ 2019a. City Commission, Planning & Zoning. City of Miami, 28 February 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://miamifl.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=47

PZ 2019b. City Commission, Planning & Zoning. City of Miami, 28 March 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://miamifl.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=79

PZ 2019c. City Commission, Planning & Zoning. City of Miami, 27 June 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://miamifl.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=152

Robinson, C. J. 1983/2021. Black Marxism: The making of the Black radical tradition, 3rd ed. rev. London: Zed Books.

Roy, A. 2017. ‘Dis/possessive collectivism: Property and personhood at city’s end.’ Geoforum 80 (March 2017): A1-A11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.12.012

Roy, A. 2019. ‘Racial banishment.’ Pp. 227-230 in Antipode Editorial Collective: T. Jazeel, A. Kent, K. McKittrick, N. Theodore, S. Chari, P. Chatterton, V. Gidwani, N. Heynen, W. Larner, J. Peck, J. Pickerill, M. Werner, M. W. Wright (eds.) Keywords in radical geography: Antipode at 50. New York: John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119558071.ch42

Sassen, S. 2014. Expulsions: Brutality and complexity in the global economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Sassen, S. 2015. ‘Who owns our cities -and why this takeover should concern us all.’ The Guardian 24 November 2015. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/24/who-owns-our-cities-and-why-this-urban-takeover-should-concern-us-all

Smiley, D., A. Viglucci. 2017. ‘Redesigning Miami, 9 acres at a time.’ Miami Herald 21 January. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article126501109.html

Tarrow, S. 2022. Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Viglucci, A. 2019. ‘The massive Magic City project wins a final OK. Will it help or destroy Little Haiti?’ WLRN 28 June 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://www.wlrn.org/news/2019-06-28/the-massive-magic-city-project-wins-a-final-ok-will-it-help-or-destroy-little-haiti

Viglucci, A., C. I. Smalls II, R. Wile, Y. López. 2022. ‘‘A history of broken promises’: Miami remains separate and unequal for Black residents.’ Miami Herald 30 May 2022. Retrieved 1 June 2024, from https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article244524772.html

Please, login first to add a comment.
Document Type
article
ISSN
2336-2839
Volume / Issue
11 / 1
Pages
127-136
https://doi.org/10.13060/23362839.2024.11.1.570
Date of publication
20.6.2024
Keywords:
land markets and housing policy , minority ethnic groups and housing , urban policy and planning , globalisation

Cite this article

copy
Tardanico, R. 2024. ‘Fractured Mobilization: Miami’s Little Haiti Confronts Mega-Real Estate Speculation.’ Critical Housing Analysis 11 (1): 127-136. https://doi.org/10.13060/23362839.2024.11.1.570