Abstract

Scholars have recently begun to explore how social and politically liberal gentrifiers make sense of the classed and racial inequalities linked to gentrification. In this article I ask how residents of one new urbanist “bourgeois utopia”—the Mueller Development in Austin, Texas—experience and give meaning to their neighborhood in a context of gentrification. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews I explain how new urbanism has reimagined and marketed “diversity” and “community” to middle-class and wealthy consumers and provides these to affluent people as neighborhood amenities. I show how residents draw on diversity ideology and multicultural capital to neutralize what they see as their neighborhood’s role in gentrification. In doing so this article adds to our theoretical understanding of how contemporary urban development exploits pursuits for the social good as rhetorical tools to assuage privileged guilt while promoting profitable enterprises.

摘要

学者们最近开始探索社会和政治自由派绅士如何理解与绅士化相关的阶级和种族不平等。在本文中，我问一个新的都市主义“资产阶级乌托邦”（德克萨斯州奥斯汀市的穆勒发展区）的居民在高档化的背景下如何体验其社区并赋予其意义。在31次深度访谈中，我解释了新的城市主义如何重新构想并向中产阶级和富裕消费者推销“多样性”和“社区”，并将其提供给富裕的人们作为社区便利设施。我展示了居民如何利用多样性意识形态和多元文化资本来中和他们所认为的邻里化在高档化中的作用。