Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Shadows of a Sunbelt City
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Calgary
STATE:
COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY:
https://geog.ucalgary.ca/profiles/eliot-tretter * https://endofaustin.com/2016/05/24/interview-with-geographer-eliot-tretter/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | n 2015060568 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/n2015060568 |
| HEADING: | Tretter, Eliot |
| 000 | 00519cz a2200121n 450 |
| 001 | 9983610 |
| 005 | 20151009171927.0 |
| 008 | 151009n| azannaabn |n aaa |
| 010 | __ |a n 2015060568 |
| 040 | __ |a DLC |b eng |c DLC |e rda |
| 100 | 1_ |a Tretter, Eliot |
| 670 | __ |a His Shadows of a sunbelt city, 2016: |b ECIP title page (Eliot Tretter) data view (assistant professor of geography at the University of Calgary; he has written many articles including “Austin Restricted : Progressivism, Zoning, Private Racial Covenants … “) |
| 953 | __ |a rf14 |
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Clark University, B.A., 1997; Johns Hopkins University, M.A., 2001, Ph.D., 2004.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, teaching assistant, 1998, instructor, 2003; Texas A&M University, College Station, visiting assistant professor, 2005-07; University of Texas at Austin, lecturer, 2007-13; University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada, assistant professor, 2013–.
MEMBER:Urban History Association, Urban Affairs Association, Association of American Geographers, Society for Philosophy and Geography, Socialist Geographers Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, Environmental Perception and Behavior Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, Political Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.
AWARDS:Research Undergraduate Fellowship, National Science Foundation, 1997; Abel Wolman Graduate Fellow, Johns Hopkins University, 1998-99; fellowships from Johns Hopkins University Program for Social Theory and Historical Inquiry at Charles S. Singleton Center, Florence, Italy, 1999, 2001; Graduate Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation, 1999-2002; Johns Hopkins University Fellow to School for Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, 2001; Cesar E. Chavez Se Si Puede Award, People in Defense of Earth and Her Resources, 2010; grant from Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis, University of Texas at Austin, 2012; Monkey Wrench of the Year Award, Monkey Wrench Books, 2013; Dean’s Research Fellow, Faculty of Arts, University of Calgary, 2013-15; grant from Faculty of Arts, University of Calgary, as principal investigator, Urban Centre/Partnership Workshop, 2015-17; Connection Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2017; UCalgary Research Development Grant, Office for the Vice-President Research, University of Calgary, 2015-18.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Sustainability in the Global City: Myth and Practice, Musical Performance and the Changing City, and Cities, Nature, and Development. Contributor to journals, including International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Professional Geographer, Urban Studies, and Journal of Urban Affairs.
SIDELIGHTS
Austin, the capital of Texas and home to the main campus of the University of Texas, has a reputation as a diverse, progressive city with a thriving cultural scene, shaped by residents involved in the arts and technology. Geographer Eliot M. Tretter, however, paints a different picture of Austin in Shadows of a Sunbelt City: The Environment, Racism and the Knowledge Economy in Austin. He asserts that the university and Austin’s business leaders have had an outsize impact on the city’s development, and that this development has often come at the expense of minorities and the working class. Austin’s “system of asymmetrical power relations … has engendered both uneven development among neighborhoods and inequalities among peoples,” he writes. “From urban renewal programs to Smart Growth planning efforts, those people who were in a relatively more vulnerable position than others (for a variety of reasons) have shouldered more of the costs associated with changes to the city’s urban environment.” One portion of the book focuses on the 1950s through the 1990s, when university officials worked with state and local governments to attract business to Austin, often destroying poor neighborhoods in the process, according to Tretter. Another section examines how the city accommodated environmental concerns in the 1990s and later, and Tretter says that again, affluent residents benefited the most. To solve the problems facing Austin, he writes, “the discussion has to recognize the significant role of social, geographical, and institutional unevenness, both historically and contemporarily, in shaping the varying fortunes and fates of different people and places.”
“I realized that the standard account of what made Austin grow, something that I heard over and over again when reading doing interviews in Austin, was inconsistent with large parts of the historical record,” Tretter told an interviewer at the End of Austin website. “I note a couple of problems in the book, but the most glaring issue was how these accounts completely overlooked the role of the University of Texas as a land-developer and the significant impact this role had on the city’s urban and regional development.” In another interview, with Austin American-Statesman contributor Dan Zehr, he commented: “There’s a long precedent for the university to connect its own desires for growth … to what the local government and the local business community is doing.” He added that “growth is sort of seen as this endless continuum of good,” but that is not always the case, as growth sometimes negatively affects certain residents, especially those with the least power. In the End of Austin website interview, he encouraged Austinites “to think less about what makes the city unique because doing so can block out what can be learned from other cities and places.”
Some critics thought Tretter made important points. He demonstrates “the price black and brown communities have paid for [Austin’s] growth and innovation, the effect this growth has had on the environment, and the role the State of Texas and the University of Texas have played,” observed Dwonna Goldstone in Southwestern Historical Quarterly. She noted that while general readers may not be familiar with the politics of growth and enviromental sustainability, Tretter “does an admirable job bridging the gap between specialists and those who are simply interested in how cities like Austin grow while remaining cognizant of the need to protect the environment.” Journal of Southern History reviewer Michan Connor remarked: “Tretter effectively critiques both ‘creative class’ and ‘smart growth’ analyses by highlighting the elite politics that created them and the skewed distribution of their costs and benefits.” Connor found that the author’s chronological approach “does not always present recurrent themes to best advantage,” but added: “Historians writing studies of the knowledge-economy cities Austin exemplifies should find in this book a number of provocative ideas to evaluate through future archival research.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Austin American-Statesman, February 6, 2016, Dan Zehr, “Book Explores the Shadows over Austin’s Development.”
Journal of Southern History, August, 2017, Michan Connor, review of Shadows of a Sunbelt City: The Environment, Racism, and the Knowledge Economy in Austin, p. 751.
Southwestern Historical Quarterly, January, 2017, Dwonna Goldstone, review of Shadows of a Sunbelt City, pp. 409-410.
ONLINE
End of Austin, https://endofaustin.com/ (May 24, 2016), interview with Eliot M. Tretter and excerpt from Shadows of a Sunbelt City.
University of Calgary Website, http://ucalgary.academia.edu/ (January 15, 2018), brief biography and curriculum vitae.
Education
Eliot Tretter Assistant Professor The University of Calgary 2500 University Dr. NW Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4
Phone: (403)608-8192 etretter@ucalgary.ca
PhD Geography, Johns Hopkins University, 2004
MA Geography, Johns Hopkins University, 2001
BA Geography and Philosophy, Clark University, 1997
Academic Employment and Teaching
University of Calgary, Assistant Professor, 2013-Present University of Texas at Austin, Lecturer, 2007-2013
Texas A&M University, Visiting Assistant Professor, 2005-2007 Johns Hopkins University, Instructor, 2003
Johns Hopkins University, Teaching Assistant, 1998
Books
Eliot Tretter, 2016. Shadows of a Sunbelt City: The Environment, Racism and the
Knowledge Economy in Austin. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Journal Publications (*indicates peer-reviewed):
*Eliot Tretter, 2015. Live Music, Intercity Competition, and Reputational Rents: Austin, Texas "Live Music Capital of the World," Human Geography 8(3), 49-65.
*Eliot Tretter, 2013. Sustainability and Neoliberal Urban Development: Austin, a Case Study, Urban Studies, 50(11), 2222-2237.
*Eliot Tretter, 2013. Contesting Sustainability: 'Smart Growth' and the Redevelopment of Austin's Eastside, The International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(1), 297-310.
*Eliot Tretter, 2011. The Value of "Europe": The Political Economy of Culture in the European Community, Geopolitics, 16(4), 926-948.
*Eliot Tretter, 2011. The Power of Naming: The Toponymic Geographies of Commemorated African-Americans, The Professional Geographer, 63(1), 34-54.
*Eliot Tretter, 2010. The Internality of Scale, Environment, Space, and Place 2(1), 121-146.
*Eliot Tretter, 2008. The Cultures of Capitalism: Glasgow and the Monopoly of Culture, Antipode 41(1), 111-132.
*Eliot Tretter, 2008. Scales, Regimes, and the Urban Governance of Glasgow, The Journal of Urban Affairs, 30(1), 87-102.
Eliot Tretter, 1996. Worcester Common Fashion Outlets: A Post-Fordist Experience. Proceedings of the New England Saint Lawrence Valley Geographical Society Annual Meeting.
Book Chapters
*Eliot M. Tretter (2015). The Environmental Justice of Affordable Housing: East Austin, Gentrification, and Resistance. In Sustainability in the Global City: Myth and Practice. Eds. Cynthia Isenhour, Gary McDonogh, and Melissa Checker, pp : 350-375. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
*Eliot Tretter and Caroline Polk O'Meara, 2013. Sounding Austin: Live Music, Race, and the Selling of a City. In Musical Performance and the Changing City. Eds. Carsten Wergin and Fabian Holt, pp. 52-76. London: Routledge.
Eliot Tretter and Melissa Adams, 2012. The Privilege of Staying Dry: The Impact of Flooding and Racism on the Emergence of the Mexican Ghetto in Austin's Low- Eastside, 1880-1935 in Cities, Nature, and Development. Ed. Sarah Dooling and Gregory Simon, pp. 187-205. Burlington: Ashgate.
Manuscripts Forthcoming
- With Elizabeth Mueller. Transforming Rainey Street: Decoupling equity from environment in Austin’s Smart Growth Agenda. Handbook on the Spaces of Urban Politics. Eds. Byron Miller, Andrew Jonas, David Wilson, and Kevin Ward. Routledge
Manuscripts under Review
- with Reuben Rose-Redwood and Maral Sotoudehnia. “Turn your brand into a destination”: toponymic commodification and the branding of place in Dubai and Winnipeg. Urban Geography
- with Elizabeth Mueller and Rich Heyman. Supply-Side Sustainability: Can Real Estate Developers Save the World? Urban Studies
Other Publications
Eliot Tretter, 2017. Response to Critics. Book Review Forum on Shadows of a Sunbelt City: The Environment, Racism, and the Knowledge Economy in Austin, Nik Heynen, Melissa W. Wright, Rachel Brahinsky, Alex Loftus, Ipsita Chatterjee, Roger Keil & Eliot M. Tretter. The AAG Review of Books 5: 3.
Eliot Tretter, 2016. Shadows of a Sunbelt City: An Excerpt on The End of Austin, Eliot Tretter, https://endofaustin.com/2016/05/24/shadows-of-a-sunbelt-city-an- excerpt/, 24 May.
Eliot Tretter, 2013. Downtown Real Estate and the Music Scene. The End of Austin. http://endofaustin.com/2013/01/08/the-end-of-austin/
Eliot Tretter, 2013. Restricted. Pecan Press, Volume 39 (1).
Eliot Tretter, 2012. Austin Restricted: Progressivism, Zoning, Private Racial Covenants, and the Making of a Racially Segregated City. Report, The Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis (IUPRA), University of Texas at Austin.
Eliot Tretter, 2004. The Culture of Urban Renewal: Glasgow, Britain, and the European Community. Doctoral Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University.
Book reviews
2010. "194X: Architecture, Planning, and Consumer Culture on the American Home Front," by Andrew Shanken. Journal of Historical Geography, 36(3), 362-363.
2008. "Martin Heidegger: Theorist of Space," by Theodore Schatzki. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(4), 953-954.
2007. "Institutions, Discourse and Regional Development: The Scottish Development Agency and the Politics of Regional Policy," by Henrik Halkier. European Planning Studies, 15(10), 1461-1463.
Grants/Fellowships
2015-2018. Office for the Vice- President Research, University of Calgary, Co- Investigator, UCalgary Research Development Grant ‘Human Dynamics in a Changing World’ Strategic Research Theme, Global, Social and Environmental Implications of Smart Cities Principal.
2017. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Application #931269 Connection Grant, Co-Principal Investigator, The social and environmental implications of Smart Cities: Toward a global comparative research agenda.
2015-2017. Faculty of Arts, University of Calgary, Principal Investigator, Urban Centre/Partnership Workshop.
2013-2015. Faculty of Arts, University of Calgary. Dean's Research Fellow.
2012. The Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis (IUPRA), University of Texas at Austin. Grant for a research project titled Austin Restricted: Private Deeds and Affordable Housing in Texas, Summer.
1999-2002. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.
2001. Johns Hopkins University Program for Social Theory and Historical Inquiry at the Charles S. Singleton Center, Florence, Italy. Seminar: Economic Historian Louis Galambos, Globalization, Fall.
2001. Johns Hopkins University Fellow to the School for Criticism and Theory, at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Seminar: Political Theorists Susan Buck- Morris, Aesthetics After Art, Summer.
1999. Johns Hopkins University Program for Social Theory and Historical Inquiry at the Charles S. Singleton Center, Florence, Italy. Seminar: Intellectual and Cultural Historian Anthony Pagden, Defining Humanity, Fall.
1998-1999. Abel Wolman Graduate Fellow, Johns Hopkins University.
1997. National Science Foundation Research Undergraduate Fellow, Summer.
Teaching and Research Interests
Primary:
Cultural Political Economy Urban Political Economy Urban Governance
Critical Sustainability Studies Critical Knowledge Economies Environmental Justice
The Philosophy of Social Science The History of Geographic Thought Critical Human Geography
Racism
Secondary
Teaching
University of Calgary, Assistant Professor Urban Social Geography
Urban Systems Development Globalization and the City
University of Texas at Austin, Lecturer The Modern American City
Frontiers in Geography (Geography Capstone) Race, Ethnicity, and Place
Place, Economy, and the City The City, Society, and Space
Texas A&M, Visiting Assistant Professor Human Geography
Introduction to the Global Village Geographical Urban Issues
Johns Hopkins University Introduction to Geography
Practice of Environmentalism
Advising
University of Calgary
University of Texas at Austin
Texas A&M University
Graduate
Yawei Zhao (Phd), Advisor
Ray Yeung (PhD), Committee
Erli Kang (MA), Committee
Son Edworthy (MA), Committee
Leo Cardoso (PhD), Committee
Sunny Lin (MA), Committee
Undergraduate Advisor Urban Studies Program
Senior Honors Thesis Advisor
Timmy Huynh Melissa Adams
Senior Papers in Urban Studies
Yola Blake Justin Gronquist Melissa Adams Dahyun Kim
Directed Study
David Angus
Teaching achievements
2011. Teacher Appreciation Award from the Hispanic Business Student Association.
2007. Featured in the Aggieland Yearbook as one of the most influential professors for the graduating class.
Invited Professional Presentations
2016. "Fossilized Knowledges," University of Calgary, Department of Geography.
2016. "Shadows of a Sunbelt City," UT Lamp Lecture Series, University of Texas at Austin.
2015. "Live Music, Intercity Competition, and Branding: Austin, 'the Live Music Capital of the World.'" Victoria. Invited by the Department of Geography Colloquia, University of Victoria
2014. "Warming to Gentrification: The New Urban Politics of the Post-Carbon Economy and Gentrification." Austin. Invited by the Society of Economic Anthropologists Annual Meeting.
2013. "Live Music, Intercity Competition, and Branding: Austin, 'the Live Music Capital of the World.'" Okanagan. Invited by the Urban Studies Graduate Program, University of British Columbia Okanagan.
2013. "The Environmental Justice of Affordable Housing: East Austin, Gentrification, and Resistance." Los Angeles. Invited by the UCLA Department of Geography.
2011. "Branding a City 'Live Music Capital of the World.'" Toronto. Invited by City Institute at York University.
2011. "Branding a City 'Live Music Capital of the World.'" Austin. Invited by Center for American Music Lecture Series on Music and American Geographies at the Butler School of Music.
2011. "Branding a City 'Live Music Capital of the World.'" Cincinnati. Invited Seminar Society for American Music Scholars on Music and American Cities.
2010. "The Privilege of Staying Dry: The Impact of Flooding and Racism on the Emergence of the Mexican Ghetto in Austin's Low-Eastside, 1880-1935," Rice University, Houston, TX. Invited by Professional Teacher Development Program.
2010. "The Entrepreneurial University: The Expansion of the University of Texas and the Fate of the Blackland," Rice University, Houston, TX. Invited by Professional Teacher Development Program.
2009. "Sustainability and Neoliberal Urban Development: Austin, a Case Study," Philadelphia. Invited Session at the American Anthropology Association Annual Meeting.
2008. "The Fight for European Culture," University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Invited by the Center for Critical Inquiry, International and Global Studies, Department of German, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese Studies, and Kohler Fund for Transcultural Communities in Europe Conference.
Professional Presentations
2017. 50 Years of Clark Radical Geography, Eliot Tretter, Jayson Funke, Cindi Katz, Kevin Surprise, Daniel Weiner, and Waquar Ahmed, Boston, Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2017. "Fossilized Knowledges," Boston, Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2016. "Fossilized Knowledges," , London, Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers Annual Meeting.
2016. "Panel: After New Urbanism," Eliot Tretter, Yonn Dierwechter, Gordan MacLeod, Leah Montage, Nicholas Phelps, Daniel Trudeau and Susan Moore, San Francisco, Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2016. Author-Meets Critics Eliot Tretter's Shadows of a Sunbelt City, Nik Heynan, Roger Keil, Ipsita Chatterjee, Alex Luftus, Rachel Brahinsky, and Eliot Tretter, San Francisco, Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2016. "Is Density the Problem?", with Elizabeth Mueller, San Francisco. Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2016. "What Does Climate Change," with Gwendolyn Blue and Noel Keough, University of Calgary, Platypus Society.
2015. "Knowledge Rent and Green Economy." Chicago. Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2014. "New Urbanism and Land Values: The Continual Need for Purity." Tampa.
Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2013. "New Urbanism and Land Values: The Continual Need for Purity." San Antonio. Urban Affairs Association Annual Conference.
2013. “Austin Restricted: Austin Restricted: Progressivism, Zoning, Private Racial Covenants, and the Making of a Racially Segregated City,” University of Texas at Austin. Department of Geography and the Environment.
2013. "The Environmental Justice of Affordable Housing: East Austin, Gentrification, and Resistance." Los Angeles. Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2012. “Austin Restricted: Austin Restricted: Progressivism, Zoning, Private Racial Covenants, and the Making of a Racially Segregated City,” University of Texas at Austin. Department of Community and Regional Planning.
2012. "Branding a City 'Live Music Capital of the World.'" Pittsburgh. Urban Affairs Association Annual Conference.
2012. "Interstate Competition and The University of Texas at Austin: The Geographies of the High-Technology Sector and the Birth of the Entrepreneurial University." New York. Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2011. "Branding a City 'Live Music Capital of the World.'" Seattle. Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2010. "Reading and Writing the Line in Contemporary Literature: A Cartographic Interpretation of Mason Dixon and Measuring the World." Baltimore. The International Association for the Study of Environment, Space, and Place Annual Conference.
2010. "The Entrepreneurial University: The Expansion of the University of Texas and the Fate of the Blackland." Washington, DC. Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2010. "The Privilege of Staying Dry: The Impact of Flooding and Racism on the Emergence of the Mexican Ghetto in Austin's Low-Eastside, 1880-1935, "University of Texas at Austin. Department of Geography and the Environment.
2009. "The Entrepreneurial University: The Expansion of the University of Texas and the Fate of the Blackland," University of Georgia Athens. Critical Geographers Mini-Conference.
2009. "Sustainability and Neoliberal Urban Development: Austin, a Case Study," Manchester, England. Royal Geographical Society.
2009. "Sustainability and Neoliberal Urban Development: Austin, a Case Study," Las Vegas. Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2008. "The Cultures of Capitalism: Glasgow and the Monopoly of Culture," Boston. Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2008. "New Perspectives on Critical Place-Name Studies Panel Discussant," Boston. Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.
2007. "The Geography of African American Commemoration," Bryan. SWAAG Annual Conference.
2007. "Scales, Regimes, and the Urban Governance of Glasgow," University of Texas at Austin. Department of Geography and the Environment.
2007 "Scales, Regimes, and the Urban Governance of Glasgow," San Francisco. Association of American Geographers Annual Conference.
2006. "The Internality of Scale," Towson University. The Eighth Annual Conference of the Geophilia Society.
2006. "The Politics of Culture in Glasgow 1990," Chicago. Association of American Geographers Annual Conference.
2005. "The Culture of Tension and Renewal: Glasgow European Capital of Culture 1990," Towson University. The Seventh Annual Conference of the Geophilia Society.
2005. "The Culture of Tension and Renewal: Glasgow European Capital of Culture 1990," Denver. Association of American Geographers Annual Conference.
2005. "The Urban Governance of Glasgow and Glasgow 1990," Texas A&M University. Department of Geography.
2004. "The Place of Identity and the Identity of Place in Geography," Towson University. The Sixth Annual Conference of the Geophilia Society.
2004. "European Culture or the Culture of the Europeanist," Philadelphia. Association of American Geographers Annual Conference.
2003. "The Culture of Rent," New Orleans. Association of American Geographers Annual Conference.
2001. "Heidegger and Environmental Determinism," Towson University. Third Annual Conference of the Society for Philosophy and Geography.
2001. "Kant, Race, and the Philosophy of Nature," New York. Association of American Geographers Annual Conference.
2000. "Kant, Race, and the Philosophy of Nature," Towson University. Second Annual Conference of the Society for Philosophy and Geography.
1999. "Worcester Common Fashion Outlets," Towson University. Third Annual Conference of the Society for Philosophy and Geography.
1998. "Heidegger and Environmental Determinism," Boston. Association of American Geographers Annual Conference.
1996. "Worcester Common Fashion Outlets," Clark University. New England Saint Lawrence Valley Geographical Society Annual Meeting.
Public Presentations:
2016 Book presentation on Shadows of a Sunbelt City: Austin History Center, Austin History Center, 26 April,
2016 East Austin Public History and Geography Jane's Walk with Fred McGhee and Tara Dudley, April.
2016. Book discussion on Shadows of a Sunbelt City with Food for Black Thought. MonkeyWrench Books, April.
2016. Book discussion on Shadows of a Sunbelt City. Bookpeople, April. 2012. "Urban Geography Lesson Part 7." Monkey Wrench Books, June. 2012. Led Austin's "Jane's Walk." East Austin Neighborhood, April.
2012. " Urban Geography Lesson Part 6." Monkey Wrench Books, April. 2011. "Urban Geography Lesson Part 5." Monkey Wrench Books, June. 2011. "Urban Geography Lesson Part 4." Monkey Wrench Books, May. 2011. Led Austin's "Jane's Walk." East Austin Neighborhood, May. 2010. "Urban Geography Lesson Part 3." Monkey Wrench Books, March.
2010. "Of Art and Politics: Tales of the Really White Vigilante, Panel discussion with author Michael Schliefke (author/artist of Tales of the Really White Vigilante), Shea Little (artist and co-founder of the East Austin Studio Tour), and Ben Reed (writer and former 'Accidental Gentrifist' columnist)," Monkey Wrench Books, February.
2009. "Urban Geography Lesson Part 2." Monkey Wrench Books, December. 2009. "Urban Geography Lesson Part 1." Monkey Wrench Books, November.
2008. "Radical Interpretation of the Wall Street Meltdown." Monkey Wrench Books, October.
Memberships in professional organizations:
Urban History Association, Urban Affairs Association, Association of American Geographers, Society for Philosophy and Geography, Socialist Geographers Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, Environmental Perception and Behavior Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, Political Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers
Service in professional organizations:
Member, Jim Blaut Award Committee for the Socialist and Critical Geographers
Specialty Group, 2006-2007.
Chairman, Awards Committee for Socialist and Critical Geographers Specialty Group, 2007-2009.
Treasurer, Socialist and Critical Geographers Specialty Group, 2008-Present.
Chairman, Outstanding Environmental Documentary Award from the Department of Geography and the Environment, 2008.
Professional service:
Facilitator of the Urban Studies Research Group, University of Calgary. 2014- Present.
External reviewer for Environment, Place, and Ethics, The Journal of Urban Affairs, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning, Political Geography, Urban Geography, Growth and Change, Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Languages
German, Very Good. Studied in Freiburg, at Goethe-Institut for 350 hours from 9/30/97-1/29/98.
Spanish, Moderate. Studied Spanish in Oaxaca, Mexico, Fall Semester 1995.
Italian, Fair. Studied in Florence, at Centro Lingua Italiana Calvino for 220 hours from 9/6/99-11/19/99 and for 80 hours from 9/10/01-10/12/01.
Media appearances
2016. Swathi Narayanan. East Austin Walking Tours Tell the Area’s History Through its Landmarks. Reporting Texas: http://reportingtexas.com /east-austin-walking- tours-tell-the-areas-history-through-its-landmarks/
2016. End of Austin, Austin, Interview with Geographer Eliot Tretter, 01 June website: https://endofaustin.com/2016/05/24/interview-with-geographer-eliot- tretter/
2016 KOOP Radio. Monitor Radio with Michael Kanin, 2 May
2016. Austin American-Statesman. Inteview with Dan Zehr, 06 February,
2016. KOOP Radio. Interview on People United with Allan Campbell, 13 May: https://archive.org/details/PeopleUnited20160513
2015. Dan Zehr. Austin American-Statesman, Austin’s history of discrimination threatens its future, January 18, 2015.
2015. Dan Zehr. Austin American-Statesman, How Austin isolated Latinos with a unique form of segregation, January 18, 2015.
2014. Austin Chronicle. Jessica Luther, Black Eastsiders: Powers a Friend Will the
next UT president continue Powers' work repairing the relationship between UT and East Austin, July 18.
2013. 90.1 KUT. Joy Diaz. Gentrification Challenges the Long-Held Character of District 3, Oct 22, 2014.
2013. Reporting Texas. Hannah B. Shea, "Piñata Shop Thrives in a Changing East Austin," April 11.
2012. 91.7 KOOP. Allen Campbell, "Branding of Austin as "The Live Music Capital of the World," May 17.
2012. Daily Texan. Shreya Banerjee, "East Austin tour focuses on racial history," April 16.
2010. 90.1 KUT. Erika Aguilar, "People Trust Starts New Affordable Housing Projects in Southwest Austin," December 8.
2010. Radio Onda Rossa. Pierpaolo Mudu, "Interview: The USA and the Rising of the Right in Texas," May 17.
2010. Todo Austin. Katie Walsh, "East Austin Youth Breathe Legal Pollution," April.
2009. Daily Texan. Ben Wermund, "Healthy eating for lower-income Austin: Local organization educates residents in 'food deserts,'" June 11.
2009. Daily Texan. Hudson Lockett, "Grade inflation report sparks debate," March 2.
2008. Austin Chronicle. "Letter to the Editor: Even a Stopped Clock Is Right Twice a Day." January 18-24 Edition.
2008. KBTX News College Station. Steve Fullhart, "War in Iraq Enters Its Fifth Year," March 11.
2007. 89.1 KEOS: Touchstone Radio, Srikanth Sastry, "Interview: Political Life in College Station."
1996. Daily News (New York). Jim Dwyer, "These Sneakers Really Stink: 1 Women Shames Nike and Crosses the Jordan," July 18.
1996. United Press International. "Sporting goods protesters hit Chicago," July 13.
1992. The Washington Post. Kevin McManus, "It's Easy Being Green," September 18, Weekend Section.
Community service
2013. Recipient of the Monkey Wrench of the Year Award from Monkey Wrench Books.
2010. Recipient of the Cesar E. Chavez "Se Si Puede Award from People in Defense of Earth and her Resources (PODER).
2008-2009. Member of the Barton Springs Interpretative Plan Working Group. 2008. TSEU State Delegate at the TSEU General Assembly Meeting.
2007-2013. Collective Member, Monkey Wrench Bookstore, all-volunteer owned and run bookstore and political space in Austin, Texas.
2007-2013. Member, Texas State Employees Union (TSEU)/CWA Local 6186 AFL- CIO.
Quoted in Sidelights: “I realized that the standard account of what made Austin grow, something that I heard over and over again when reading doing interviews in Austin, was inconsistent with large parts of the historical record,” Tretter told an interviewer at the End of Austin Web site. “I note a couple of problems in the book, but the most glaring issue was how these accounts completely overlooked the role of the University of Texas as a land-developer and the significant impact this role had on the city’s urban and regional development.”
“to think less about what makes the city unique because doing so can block out what can be learned from other cities and places.”
Interview with Geographer Eliot Tretter
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What inspired you to write Shadows of a Sunbelt City?
Two factors inspired me to write Shadows of a Sunbelt City. One was the very practical matter of needing to find a viable research agenda and publish relevant academic material. I wanted to do this, in part, so I could secure a more permanent academic position at a university. From 2005 to 2013 I held non-tenured appointments at UT Austin and Texas A&M in College Station. In this more tenuous position, I was unable to access substantial research funds that would have helped me revise my doctorate on Glasgow, Scotland, into a full-length book. In order to keep engaging in academic labor and to get a better job, I needed a new long-term research project. After doing some research on Austin, I was struck by how the problems, perils, and promises of Austin’s efforts to create a more sustainable city were related to larger academic debates about urban sustainability. While my first publications about Austin did engage my activist concern for social and ecological problems, Austin primarily provided a low-cost research environment for me to write relevant publications for academic audiences. A second reason for writing the book, however, soon became more apparent as I began to do more research. I realized that the standard account of what made Austin grow, something that I heard over and over again when reading doing interviews in Austin, was inconsistent with large parts of the historical record. I note a couple of problems in the book, but the most glaring issue was how these accounts completely overlooked the role of the University of Texas as a land-developer and the significant impact this role had on the city’s urban and regional development. I should also say that I became increasingly interested in seeing whether it was possible for me to give an account of Austin’s development, and the transformations of its urban form, in the terms of a school of thought in economic and urban geography that I had been trained to think with. The framing of the book’s theoretical section around rent-seeking and seeing the transformation of the urban environment as an environmental problem stems from the ways that recent critical geographers approach these issues. There will certainly be critics, but I think that on the latter two points the book, in my mind at least, is certainly a success.
What worries you about Austin right now?
There is a lot to worry about in Texas, especially urban Texas, at the moment. I think the impact of global climate change on cities in Texas will be much more significant and negative than is anticipated by many people. In particular, I think there are a lot of false assumptions about the equilibrium qualities of ecological systems and the robustness of the ecology to withstand small but collectively significant changes. I think that the many small changes taking place in the ecological system could make the largely urbanized populations in Eastern Texas very vulnerable to a host of grave ecological crises. I think too that the widening wealth gap in Texas is cause for alarm. Large numbers of people in Texas’ urbanized areas live in terribly precarious conditions, and urban uprisings as a result of social polarization have not been as uncommon as one might expect in Texas’ history. But what most worries me in Austin is the belief that good planning and more building are enough to make Austin a more sustainable city. My good friend Rich Heyman, who sits on the CodeNEXT Advisory Group, recently noted that people are hoping that reforming the city’s land development code will solve all kinds of city problems, e.g., housing affordability, inadequate transportation infrastructure, unsustainable suburban growth, the need for better ecological protections, etc. But, he noted that “most of what people hope to see in those areas requires work outside of the code itself.” What Heyman is referring to is that it will require much more than simple technical solutions to the development code to solve the host of ecological and social challenges that confront the city. There are no simple fixes to a large number of the city’s most pressing problems nor are there cost-free solutions. In large measure these issues are political problems, in that they are created by human institutions (whether we are thinking about the market or the state), and they will require human solutions and particularly a strong political will. I worry that people will become so frustrated that they will give up on trying to implement difficult and creative socially and ecologically sensitive solutions to problems in favor of what is most expedient.
What has the impact of UT been on the city?
A couple of years ago Blake Gumprecht published a book called The American College Town. It’s basically an attempt to classify and characterize different kinds of towns in the US whose growth and social and cultural life are deeply connected to a university, a college, or a collection of universities and colleges. For some reasons that Gumprecht provides he decided Austin did not fit the mold of an American college town and he did not include it in his survey. To say the least, I found his exclusion of Austin to be very odd, as Austin is a city whose reputation, form of life, and urban fortune has been shaped in a vast number of ways by the domineering presence of the University of Texas. So, to answer the question succinctly, its impact has been enormous. In fact, I do not think it is really possible to capture the extent of the university’s influence on Austin’s cultural or social life. All of the best manuscripts about the city, from Douglass Rossinow’s The Politics of Authenticity to Barry Shank’s Dissonant Identities to Anthony Orum’s Power, Money, and the People, point to the unique role of UT in their stories, whether their books are about the rise of the New Left on the “Thirdcoast,” the evolution of contemporary popular music, or the urban development of Austin. I am deeply indebted to all of these books, and many more, for the attention they give to UT. For me a main part of Austin’s uniqueness involves UT’s role as a land developer and intellectual property holder and the relationship of its endowment and the state government in propelling Austin’s regional growth.
Your book suggests that business interests have a tremendous influence on the city, something that is often misunderstood or overlooked. How does that influence work? And why don’t most Austinites understand this basic fact of their city?
I should say that I think Austinites, or at least a certain group of them, are consumed, even obsessed, by a concern for local politics. If one were to read the three major news outlets, the Austin Monitor, Austin Chronicle, and Austin American-Statesman, one would have the sense, based on the coverage, that the workings of local government, especially the City Council, are very significant to many people. A strong subset of this very politically engaged group are members of the mainstream environmental community and neighborhood association activists and these people are very aware of the influence that the business community has on the local political agenda, particularly as it pertains to the expansion of roads and suburbanization and new infill developments. In this regard, all these people tend to see local politics as a matter of the local government and the various interest groups that seek to influence their representatives on the City Council. Some of these groups, especially some neighborhood associations, are very deft at getting parts of their agenda served, so it looks as if the ability to persuade the City Council is a real measure of a group’s power. I do not want to suggest groups other than the business community are not influential, they certainly are, but I do not want to limit an understanding of how influence in a city operates to the workings of the local government.
Certainly, the ability to control what kinds of priorities are fulfilled by the “peoples’ representatives” in City Hall is significant. In this regard, issues like the extent of campaign financing and voter mobilization are very important because they can influence who has the electoral power. Looked at from this vantage point, the power to influence how the city develops comes from the local government. But what if I suggested that power is much more diffused into private institutions and that not all private institutions have the same capacity to influence the direction of the city’s priorities? In many respects the business community’s principal organizations have a lot more resources to persist much longer than other communities, a relatively low existential threat, and the capacity to mobilize a relatively uniform agenda over a large geographical space. Furthermore, institutional rules make it easier for the business community to prevent policy proposals from being put on the table or stopping the implementation of democratically arrived at decisions by other means; these formal arrangements are also very important to local governance.
Let us put aside the question of how issues or policy proposals even come to the table, i.e., what is taken as the acceptable courses of action, and focus solely on how some issues are taken off the table. For example, in the last 30 years, the business community has appealed to the Texas State Legislature to overturn Austin’s ordinances many times. One could also note the many items that have passed the City Council only to die in citywide referendums. Why do these items fail to garner the electorate’s support even if they are agreed to by the majority of the electorate’s representatives on the City Council? For sure some of these items were unsuccessful because a group failed to mobilize popular support (even if they had the support of large swaths of the business community). But if we look back over the last 30 years, we will see that there are very few successful referendums that did not have the full support of the business community. There are so few, in fact, that it would be hard not to assume that an item needs the business community’s support for electoral success. In fact, the few successful referendums opposed by the business community pop out as dramatic instances in the city’s history. This, I think, is why the success of the referendum for the Save Our Springs ordinance is so very telling about this situation — it is really the exception that proves the rule. I am not suggesting the business community always gets its way, nor are there secret conspiracies that shape the agenda of the local government, but to really understand how major issues in the city’s history were resolved, one needs to appreciate how the business community’s positions help set the boundaries and limitations of the city’s democratic institutions.
Austin likes to think of itself as unique (“the live music capital of the world,” home of the “weird”), but is it just another sunbelt city in most ways?
I do not think we can call any city ”just another Sunbelt City” because every city has different characteristics that make it unique and Austin certainly has distinctive cultural and social currents and a particular physical geography. But I think that people might be surprised how much one can learn about Austin, especially the features of its urban governance, by looking regionally to other Sunbelt cities, and especially other cities in Texas, but also to cities in California. I learned a lot from reading about and comparing Austin to other studies of the political economy of cities in the western and southern United States such as Mike Davis’ City of Quartz, Robert Self’s American Babylon, Clarence Stone’s Regime Politics, Joe Feagin’s Free Enterprise City, and Stephen Elkin’s City and Regime in the American Republic. These books, in addition to many others, helped me to think about issues that I raised in my book like how institutional racism shapes urban growth, the limits of mainstream environmentalism as a force for radical progressive change, the politics of neighborhood associations, and the role of non-local forms of government. Let’s take Elkin’s book, a book that is primarily concerned with Elkin’s frustration and preoccupation with how undemocratic urban governance is in Dallas. Elkin’s study continues to stand out to me because of his focus on the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, and particularly the Dallas Citizen’s Council, and his concern with how private-public organizations come together in Texas to shape democratic possibilities in local governance. So, yes, people might be surprised that many of the features found in Austin can be found in cities throughout the Sunbelt, such as its strong boosterist ethic (sometimes this has taken forms of self-promotion that have swerved into outright deception); the importance of state laws for imposing significant limits on local government decisions, which is often related to constraining popular control over the local development process; and the strong developmentalist agenda that is supported by close formal and informal institutional collaborations between the local government and the business community, particularly the Chamber of Commerce.
What does Austin need to do differently?
One could answer this question in at least two ways, in terms of either policy or theoretical prescriptions. In terms of policy, I think Austin needs to improve its public infrastructure. It is really amazing for such a large city that it is nearly impossible to get from one place to another in a reasonable amount of time without the use of a single-occupancy vehicle. There is a lot working against implementing a host of important changes in the city, such as a very unfriendly state legislature and electorate. Moreover, the impact of the city’s mass transit efforts may be too limited and selective to make a substantial difference regionally. But there are also some things to be hopeful about. Significant parts of the business community now see the need for a comprehensive and integrated mass transit system, at least to be able to move people to and from some of the outer suburban rings and within some of the central areas. Furthermore, there is a lot of precedent in Texas for enpowering local authorities to intervene to create better and more comprehensive transit systems in ways than just building more roads. I think there is more room to deliver progressively on this issue than, say, on the problem of housing affordability, despite my belief that it is more important for the city to create a more comprehensive network of public or permanently subsidized rental housing opportunities throughout the city. Theoretically, I see this question as strongly related to your previous one. Austinites, I believe, need to think less about what makes the city unique because doing so can block out what can be learned from other cities and places. I do not mean to say that Austin could just adopt wholesale the “best practices” of other cities, like Bogota’s TransMilenio or New York’s PlaNYC. I mean that Austinites should engage in a critical self-reflective process and try to understand their city’s opportunities and challenges better by looking at the successes and failures of projects from other cities as they attempt to transform Austin’s urban form.
Eliot Tretter is Assistant Professor of Geography and Undergraduate Advisor of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Calgary. Before coming to UofC, he was a Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development, especially in the emerging fields of critical sustainability and knowledge studies. He received his PhD in Geography from Johns Hopkins University. His academic work has appeared in the Journal of the Urban Affairs, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Antipode, Geopolitics, The Professional Geographer, Urban Studies, and Environment, Space, and Place. He is the author of Austin Restricted: Progressivism, Zoning, Private Racial Covenants, and the Making of a Racially Segregated City and Shadows of a Sunbelt City: the Environment Racism, and the Knowledge Economy (University of Georgia Press). An excerpt of this book is part of the summer 2016 issue of The End of Austin.
Eliot Tretter
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of Calgary
Dr. Eliot Tretter’s research areas include but are not limited to: sustainability and urban development with a regional specialty in both Northern Europe and the Southern United States. He has recently begun a research project that investigates the production of geospatial knowledge for the development of unconventional hydrocarbons.
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Research Categories
Energy›Energy Systems›Sustainability
Energy›Energy Use and Demand›Urban Design
Energy›Policy, Economics and Outreach›Energy Policy and Regulatory Framework
Affiliations
Faculty of Arts›Geography
Contact Details
Office Phone:(403) 220-2894
Email:etretter@ucalgary.ca
Location:Earth Sciences 456
Links of Interests
Personal Website
Department Website
Grand Challenges
Energy Innovations for Today and Tomorrow›Cumulative effects of energy-related processes
Selected Publications
Tretter, E.M. Shadows of a Sunbelt City: The Environment, Racism and the Knowledge Economy in Austin. 2016. (University of Georgia Press).
Tretter, E.M. 2009. The Cultures of Capitalism: Glasgow and the Monopoly of Culture. Antipode, 41 (1), pp. 111-132.
Tretter, E.M. 2013. Contesting Sustainability: ‘SMART Growth” and the Redevelopment of Austin’s Eastside. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37 (1), pp. 297-310.
Tretter, E.M. 2008. Scales, Regimes, and the Urban Governance of Glasgow. Journal of Urban Affairs, 30 (1), pp. 87-102.
Biography
Dr. Eliot Tretter graduated from Clark University in 1997 with a BA (honours) in geography and philosophy. He went on to attend John Hopkins University, where he received his MA and PhD in geography (2001 and 2004, respectively).
Prior to his current role as an assistant professor at the University of Calgary, he worked as a teaching assistant, and later as an instructor at John Hopkins University. From there he would go on to act as a visiting assistant professor, and eventually a lecturer at Texas A&M University.
Research Profile
Dr. Eliot Tretter’s research has recently explored the racial and environmental underpinnings of the post-industrial knowledge economy in his book, Shadows of a Sunbelt City (2016). With a regional specialty in both Northern Europe and the Southern United States, Eliot has also written about racism, memory, the political economy of culture, the politics of urban development, geographic scale, and urban sustainability.
Last modified date: 26/07/2016
Quoted in Sidelights: "Tretter effectively critiques both 'creative class' and 'smart growth' analyses by highlighting the elite politics that created them and the skewed distribution of their costs and benefits." "does not always present recurrent themes to best advantage," "Historians writing studies of the knowledge-economy cities Austin exemplifies should find in this book a number of provocative ideas to evaluate through future archival research."
Shadows of a Sunbelt City: The
Environment, Racism, and the
Knowledge Economy in Austin
Michan Connor
Journal of Southern History.
83.3 (Aug. 2017): p751+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Full Text:
Shadows of a Sunbelt City: The Environment, Racism, and the Knowledge Economy in Austin. By Eliot M. Tretter. Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016. Pp. x, 179. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-4489-8; cloth, $74.95, ISBN 978-0-8203 4488-1.)
Contemporary development theory and practice presume, following Richard Florida, that thriving cities attract a diverse, creative, and educated workforce through cultural eclecticism and environmental sustainability. Austin, Texas, celebrated as "weird," tops many lists of such cities. Eliot M. Tretter contends that Austin's culture was less important to its development than were decisions made beginning in the 1950s by a coalition of local, state, and federal entities, particularly University of Texas (UT) officials, to remake the city's institutions and physical spaces to attract investment in the electronics industry. This coalition and its successors razed working-class and minority neighborhoods and prioritized the needs of research professionals and investors, showing that the creative-class city is a "system of asymmetrical power relations that has engendered both uneven development among neighborhoods and inequalities among peoples" (p. 142).
Tretter divides his book into two parts. The first, stretching from the 1950s to the 1990s, describes the rise of UT's growth coalition, while the second critically evaluates the selective incorporation of environmentalism into growth politics after 1990. Readers familiar with recent studies of urban renewal will recognize in the first part a description of local leaders empowered by the Housing Act of 1949 to declare land blighted, seize it, and redevelop it. Tretter enhances this history by arguing that UT, spurred by a 1957 commission to generate more lucrative
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intellectual property, adroitly linked its need for research facilities to the property value goals of the Austin Urban Renewal Agency. Later. UT leveraged the university's bond power to subsidize the costs of private production facilities through university-industry partnerships.
The second part addresses contemporary development politics. Municipal officials, drawn evenly from developer and conservationist constituencies, began in the early 1990s to embrace a "sustainability fix" for a political impasse that allowed Austin's suburbs to capture development (p. 7). Intensifying land use in central Austin accommodated state support for suburban sprawl, mollified influential water quality activists, and attracted professionals to redeveloped neighborhoods, enhancing land value, while pushing burdens of pollution and displacement onto politically marginalized communities of color.
Tretter effectively critiques both "creative class" and "smart growth" analyses by highlighting the elite politics that created them and the skewed distribution of their costs and benefits (pp. 146, 147). A knowledge economy did not spring spontaneously from brainpower gathered at UT; it was nurtured by public commitment to physical and institutional infrastructure that ignored working-class and minority constituencies and by UT's turn toward entrepreneurial pursuits. And "smart growth" policies reconciled the concerns of affluent and liberal environmentalists with growth by supporting redevelopment and gentrification in central and eastside Austin neighborhoods. As a disciplinary matter, some historians may find Shadows of a Sunbelt City: The Environment, Racism, and the Knowledge Economy in Austin less a history of UT's and Austin's intertwined development than a set of essays that use history to (again, effectively) debunk influential development pieties. The organization of the book does not always present recurrent themes to best advantage; for example, a discussion of enduring at-large council elections (which diluted the power of students, minorities, and the poor) would have lent a useful structure to following chapters had it been presented in the introduction of the book rather than in chapter 6. While Tretter's writing is concise, the book is slim, offering a chronology of plans, ideas, and decisions without extensive engagement with the voices of either the elites driving policy changes or the disadvantaged affected by them. That said, historians writing studies of the knowledge-economy cities Austin exemplifies should find in this book a number of provocative ideas to evaluate through future archival research.
Michan Connor Dallas, Texas
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Connor, Michan. "Shadows of a Sunbelt City: The Environment, Racism, and the Knowledge
Economy in Austin." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 3, 2017, p. 751+. PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501078190/GPS?u=schlager& sid=GPS&xid=c57a79f3. Accessed 23 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A501078190
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Quoted in Sidelights: “There’s a long precedent for the university to connect its own desires for growth … to what the local government and the local business community is doing.” He added that “growth is sort of seen as this endless continuum of good,”
Book explores the shadows over Austin’s development
business
By Dan Zehr - American-Statesman Staff
0
Posted: 12:00 a.m. Saturday, February 06, 2016
Austin’s business and real-estate community don’t hold an unusually strong influence on the region’s evolution, according to the author of a new book on the city’s development.
If anything, said Eliot Tretter, the vast volumes of urban, social and economic research suggest that the powerful influence of business on urban development is very much the norm.
Yet over the years, Austin has featured two unusual factors in its development, Tretter argues in his newly released book, “Shadows of a Sunbelt City.” The first is the influence of the University of Texas at Austin, which more than most universities has brought federal, state and local funding and interests to bear on its place in the city.
For an example, look no further than the cranes that rise above the new Dell Medical School and the early plans for an innovation district to go along with it.
The effort to get the school established, spearheaded by Sen. Kirk Watson, was nothing if not fully upfront about its efforts to draw public revenue in support of the project. And Travis County voters ultimately voted for an increase in their own property taxes to indirectly fund the school.
“There’s a long precedent for the university to connect its own desires for growth … to what the local government and the local business community is doing,” said Tretter, a former University of Texas lecturer and researcher who now is a professor at the University of Calgary.
The other phenomenon, Tretter said, is a general ignorance of how deeply ingrained business and developer interests have become in the region.
“What is impressive to me about Austin is just the complete kind of denial of the ways the business community, through its various principal organizations, is able to control power,” he said.
That doesn’t reveal itself in an outright dominance over city and county leaders, he said. In fact, Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce officials noted last week that they haven’t brought a single corporate subsidies package to the Austin City Council in two years, mainly because of the city’s tighter restrictions on such incentives.
That powerfuly influence moves in more indirect ways, Tretter said, such as bond elections, the rewriting of the city’s land-use codes and other avenues. Government leaders adopt policies that never quite come to fruition, he said, and rather than recognizing the business community’s sway in that, residents tend to blame the council as ineffective.
“There’s a weird way in which the left and the right have a unified position, an anti-government position,” he said. “So what ends up happening is you always end up blaming the political leaders for the failure of certain policies to mature, rather than looking at how the power structure in the city organizes itself to succeed in certain agendas.”
State law inhibits many inclusionary initiatives that Austin might otherwise use, both in zoning and other policies. But the city also has few examples of a coalesced, countervailing force that can rival the business and development community.
In Austin, Tretter notes in his book, one of the few examples of a broader, community-based response against developers came from Save Our Springs and the fight to limit development over the Edwards Aquifer.
But ultimately, he writes, even those efforts were pulled into an odd sort of alliance with the development community. Environmental concerns came to include only the non-human environment, with less consideration given to other, disadvantaged communities in the city.
And in that sense, Tretter argues, a co-opted environmentalist was integrated into the broader, established interests that hold sway over much of the region’s development. Efforts to build equity and inclusion remained one-off battles outside the mainstream.
“Something like growth is sort of seen as this endless continuum of good, where these little fights are seen as little skirmishes,” he said last week. “If you have a bigger picture of that bigger process, then it begins to fit into a narrative of affordability, inclusion and the types of development we want or don’t want.”
Quoted in Sidelights: “the price black and brown communities have paid for [Austin’s] growth and innovation, the effect this growth has had on the environment, and the role the State of Texas and the University of Texas have played,” “does an admirable job bridging the gap between specialists and those who are simply interested in how cities like Austin grow while remaining cognizant of the need to protect the environment.”
Dwonna Goldstone
Shadows of a Sunbelt City: The Environment, Racism, and the Knowledge Economy in Austin. By Eliot M. Tretter. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016. Pp. 192. Bibliography, index.)
Eliot Tretter’s engaging Shadows of a Sunbelt City: The Environment, Racism, and the Knowledge Economy, examines how Austin, Texas, became the “typical prospering innovative city” (2) after being barely big enough to be considered a city in 1940. In his introduction, Tretter recognizes what many have fervently come to believe about Austin: that it has a “great quality of life” and is a “dynamic and creative place for new start-up firms and a base for artists and musicians” while also offering “sunny weather, great food, and a fantastic nightlife” (2). What Tretter’s book does differently and so well, however, is to focus on what he calls “Austin’s shadows”—the price black and brown communities have paid for this growth and innovation, the effect this growth has had on the environment, and the role the State of Texas and the University of Texas have played in “creating the industrial landscape in Austin” that we see in 2016 (3).
Tretter’s book is divided into two parts and six chapters, though he warns his readers that it was not written with an historical chronology. Part one deals with the knowledge economy and the changing role of universities (specifically the University of Texas) as “drivers of urban and regional development” (5). Part two shifts to “contemporary planning practice in Austin, particularly Smart Growth and its relationship to the city’s urban governance” (7), examining Austin’s shift toward urban sustainability and, specifically, how this related to Austin’s strategy of “revitalizing its existing urban core” (7). It then looks at how Austin’s revitalization efforts have affected the city’s “more modestly resourced communities of color” (7).
Well written and well researched, the book does an exemplary job of succinctly explaining how Austin “acquired a reputation as one of the most progressive, creative, and tolerant cities in the United States” (79). Tretter’s research clearly explains how the local government, including the Austin Chamber of Commerce, took a series of “progressive steps to implement a range of innovative, ecologically sustainable initiatives,” propelling it to the top of the rankings of the American Business Journal’s Green Cities Index (81). Tretter then concisely explores how city policies affected the redevelopment of Austin’s downtown and how the policies of the business community and the local government “moved from a strict law enforcement agenda (“cleaning it up”) to a more environmental one (“greening it up”) (82). During this process, Tretter argues, these “ecological benefits” have also been used to justify further excluding homeless people from downtown areas as well as pushing people of color away from prime downtown real estate by allowing developers to build properties specifically for Austin’s middle-and upper-class citizenry. [End Page 409]
As an African American woman who lived in Austin from 1994–2001 while a graduate student at the University of Texas, I had many racialized experiences in Austin and around UT’s campus. Although most of my white classmates rarely wanted to talk about race and racism in Austin and at UT because it did not seem to directly affect them, it was not something I could so easily ignore. I am glad Tretter did not ignore the racism that led to black and brown Austinites being moved away from the lucrative parts of the city into less desirable neighborhoods, but I wish he had written more specifically and in more depth about the long-term effects of this displacement on these two communities. Nonetheless, sustainability and the knowledge economy are challenging topics to make interesting to readers, and Tretter does an admirable job bridging the gap between specialists and those who are simply interested in how cities like Austin grow while remaining cognizant of the need to protect the environment.
Dwonna Goldstone
Austin Peay State University
Quoted in Sidelights--and for fair use purposes, these should be considered quotes from the entire book: “system of asymmetrical power relations … has engendered both uneven development among neighborhoods and inequalities among peoples,” he writes. “From urban renewal programs to Smart Growth planning efforts, those people who were in a relatively more vulnerable position than others (for a variety of reasons) have shouldered more of the costs associated with changes to the city’s urban environment.”
“the discussion has to recognize the significant role of social, geographical, and institutional unevenness, both historically and contemporarily, in shaping the varying fortunes and fates of different people and places.”
In 2013, popular Texas Monthly magazine published a collection of commentaries on Texas’s major cities, and two of them were about Austin. One, written by John Spong (a Texas Monthly staff reporter), titled “All Grown Up,” suggested that although Austin’s physical and social environment had changed substantially over the previous twenty years, the city still retained an abiding culture of tolerance to difference, a culture that not only provided the city with its great quality of life but was the main factor in propelling its phenomenal growth. While reserving animus for those who complained that the city’s growth had changed it for the worse, Spong amicably parroted the tall tale (that has been repeated ad nauseam) about the large role the city’s culture played in driving its rapid urban development. Notably, his article attracted very little commentary, critical or otherwise.
The other commentary, penned by Cecilia Balli (an associate professor of journalism at ut Austin), was titled “What Nobody Says about Austin.” In it she declared that Austin was the most segregated city in Texas and that its citizens refused to confront the lingering impact of white supremacy on the city’s governance. But perhaps most importantly (at least in terms of the public response), she insinuated that while Austinites were supposedly renowned for their tolerance to difference, their open-mindedness was, by and large, extended only to the quirky behavior associated primarily with “white” people. Balli’s article prompted a vigorous discussion in Austin’s blogosphere, and while there was some support for her editorial, it was overshadowed by a torrent of outrage.
Although Balli can be faulted for some factual errors, ahistorical assumptions, and hyperbolic claims, the vast majority of the negative responses to her article did not point to any of these issues. Instead, they relied on racist, misogynist, and other ad hominem attacks that, more than anything, showed how intolerant Austinites can be, especially to those who cast even a small amount of shade over the city’s excessively sunny image.
The articles by Spong and Balli poignantly represent two of the most common conversations taking place in and about Austin today. On the one hand, there is an interminable debate about whether the changes in the city’s physical infrastructure are good, principally as they pertain to Austin’s cultural life. On the other hand, there is an ongoing discussion about Austin’s stark pattern of racial segregation and how what is considered “Austin’s culture” is pregnant with notions of whiteness. Both of the authors, despite speaking to only one of these discussions, are optimistic that the problem they identify can be solved. One suggests that there is no cause for alarm because of the durability of a local sensibility, and the other, while concerned, believes that a new multicultural sensitivity to difference will emerge. However, both authors overlook the more fundamental question driving both of their discussions: who has relatively more control over who (or what) bears the costs associated with how the city has been developing?
In my new book, I demonstrate how the past and present patterns of urban development in Austin have been strongly influenced by a historically varying, but still relatively stable, system of asymmetrical power relations that has engendered both uneven development among neighborhoods and inequalities among peoples. From urban renewal programs to Smart Growth planning efforts, those people who were in a relatively more vulnerable position than others (for a variety of reasons) have shouldered more of the costs associated with changes to the city’s urban environment. Moreover, a series of growth coalitions with different, albeit similar, political configurations have had determinately more influence over local governance and the policies and programs that were (or could be) enacted to facilitate specific changes in Austin’s urban form. If there is any hope of resolving the issues brought up in these popular discussions, the discussion has to recognize the significant role of social, geographical, and institutional unevenness, both historically and contemporarily, in shaping the varying fortunes and fates of different people and places.
Eliot Tretter is Assistant Professor of Geography and Undergraduate Advisor of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Calgary. Before coming to UofC, he was a Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development, especially in the emerging fields of critical sustainability and knowledge studies. He received his PhD in Geography from Johns Hopkins University. His academic work has appeared in the Journal of the Urban Affairs, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Antipode, Geopolitics, The Professional Geographer, Urban Studies, and Environment, Space, and Place. He is the author of Austin Restricted: Progressivism, Zoning, Private Racial Covenants, and the Making of a Racially Segregated City and Shadows of a Sunbelt City: the Environment Racism, and the Knowledge Economy (University of Georgia Press).
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