Immigrants and the Revitalization of Los Angeles: Development and ...

policing, and drastic changes in the physical appearance of the park and the neighborhood. This puzzle—actual major improvements in a marginal area that did not lead to the neighborhood's disruption or displacement—is the guiding anomaly that motivated this study and its attempt to shed new light on a recurring problem in the field of city planning.

1.2. The Problem

City planning as a profession has been deeply involved in the contentious efforts to revitalize low-income neighborhoods. The contentiousness, which can cause hostility to city planning itself, stems from an inherent contradiction within redevelopment. This difficult and continuous problem—that improving marginal areas leads to the displacement of the areas' low-income residents—has existed since the inception of the city-planning field.

Redevelopment is supposed to revitalize marginal areas experiencing disinvestment by changing the institutional structures within those places and intervening in markets within those neighborhoods. Such interventions, however, have historically been led by elite business interests stemming from the central business district (CBD) wanting to reclaim those marginal areas for their own economic benefit. The consequences have been extremely detrimental to those neighborhoods, as the new investment in housing stock, infrastructure, and public amenities has meant an increase in apartment rents and, thus, the consequent displacement of the low-income population. In certain historical periods, such as the era of urban renewal, this contentious process has meant forceful removal through the power of eminent domain to make way for the “highest and best use” of the land, which really meant the economic interests of the political elite and the economic elite of the CBD. Thus, the inherent contradiction of redevelopment and the consequent political backlash directed toward city planning from low-income minority populations have reflected the political and economic relationships between the CBD elite and their efforts to capitalize on low-income neighborhoods.

The redevelopment literature is awash with studies focusing on the detrimental effects redevelopment has had on marginal neighborhoods