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Title: Stockton Isn’t Flint, or Is It? Race and Space in Comparative Crisis Driven Urbanization
Citation Type: Book, Section
Publication Year: 2021
ISBN: 978-90-04-44617-5
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Abstract: The Flint Water Crisis (fwc) refers to widespread exposures of the majority Black and low- income population of Flint, Michigan to toxic lead levels in the city’s water supply. This poisoning followed a “cost- saving” drinking water supply switch to the Flint River from Lake Huron through the Detroit Water District in April 2014 by a state- appointed Emergency Manager (Fasenfest 2019). This manifestation of environmental racism was exacerbated through privatization, regulatory cover- ups and arguably criminal behavior, spearheaded by majority white elites working at the metropolitan and state levels (Benz 2019; Pulido 2016; Sadler and Highsmith 2016). In 2016, Flint initiated a contract with a transnational private company to assist with its water management. A private engineering firm promoted the treatability of the Flint River water in 2011 and consulted with officials after April 2014 and faced civil charges in June 2016 over their involvement in the fwc (Pauli 2019). The fwc presents a sociological “enlightenment function” similar to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans and the US Gulf Coast (Beck 2006; Picou and Marshall 2007). Similar to the case of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, in the fwc we see how environmental racism “works” and is embedded in the prevailing political and economic structures that produce some places and bodies as pollutable. Márquez (2014) and Pellow (2016; 2018) calls this status, “expendability,” so that the status quo based on racism, profit, extraction, and violence can remain. In the fwc, we also see how water injustices are produced through the connections of racial segregation, urban disinvestment, neoliberalism, and political fragmentation that span public and private institutions (mcrc 2017; Ranganathan 2016; Sadler and Highsmith 2016). Meanwhile, in California’s San Joaquin Valley (sjv), tens of thousands of people of color and/ or low- income people pay and use bottled water because they do not have access to clean drinking water systems (Balazs and Ray 2014; London et al. 2018; Ranganathan and Balazs 2015). Despite legislative measures that recognize water as a human right in California (London 2019), water service delivery has been historically structured to protect some geographic and political units, particularly cities, over the interests and wellbeing of less powerful, unincorporated locales (Pannu 2012). Contaminated tap water in areas of the sjv contains high levels of nitrates from harmful agricultural fertilizers, mega- dairy cow manure, pesticides and other toxic substances (Balazs et al. 2011; 2012). These water injustices are compounded by race- and classbased climate vulnerabilities (English et al. 2013) and unequal exposures to pesticides and other environmental health hazards in the air, land, and water environments (Harrison 2011; Huang and London 2012; Liévanos 2017, 2018a, 2018b; Liévanos et al. 2011; London et al. 2008; Sadd et al. 2014; Sadd et al. 2015). Water access and inequalities are seen as a rural problem, yet they range from the bodily, household, community, urban and county to the state (Balazs and Ray 2014). In this chapter, we situate the fwc in a historical- comparative analysis with Stockton— a major urban center of the sjv. As in Flint (Highsmith 2015), racial segregation and uneven development intertwine throughout Stockton’s history (Liévanos 2019a; Mabalon 2013; Ogbu 1974). Recent developments suggest Stockton offers a counterpoint to the rural drinking water injustices of the sjv following the high- stakes contract to privatize its drinking water in 2003 with omi- Thames, a transnational corporation. A lawsuit from an antiprivatization coalition ended the contract in 2008, but the contract resulted in negative consequences (Robinson 2013: 4). Adverse impacts from this water privatization failure have more recently manifest in water quality concerns for Stockton’s privileged and predominantly white Northside. According to one account, “Stockton is embroiled in controversy over a proposal to change the way it disinfects North Stockton’s drinking water. (O)bservers … charge that … proposed switch from chlorine to chloramines poses a serious public health risk similar to that seen in Flint, Michigan … Stockton isn’t Flint.” (emphasis added, Bagalayos 2016). The suggestion here is that the local particularities of the Stockton case mean that it “isn’t Flint.” We treat this suggestion empirically: are Stockton and Flint comparable, and if so, why or why not? What is at stake in framing urban water crises comparatively? The answers to these questions have important implications for understanding how race, space, neoliberalism, and “crisis driven urbanization” unfold unevenly across Flint and Stockton, and the myriad of U.S. cities that “are potential crisis cities” (Gotham and Greenberg 2014: 16). Through a series of spatial, political and environmental crises, post war US cities limit the life chances and economic security of some, to the benefit of others, in the areas of wealth accumulation, housing, and education (Highsmith 2015). First, we summarize our theoretical model of racialized crisis driven urbanization. We develop this model through engagement with Gotham and Greenberg’s (2014) crisis cities framework, and a synthesis of urban and racial theory with environmental justice studies. We then present our historicalcomparative analysis of racialized crisis driven urbanization in Flint and Stockton. We draw on original data collection of historical and multi- scalar spatial contexts, including an original analysis of land use and housing valuation data, longitudinal census data, and contemporary water quality data with geographic information systems. We argue that the production of contemporary water crises in both Flint and Stockton is constituted by multiple “racial projects” of crisis driven urbanization. A racial project is “an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines” (Omi and Winant 1994: 68). In Flint and Stockton, crisis driven urbanization is shaped by historically specific racial projects of (re-)organizing race and space in order to consolidate racial capitalism (Robinson 2000 [1983]), in particular, its hierarchical and historical order of “differential value” of racialized bodies and spaces, with non- white bodies variously stratified at the bottom of the social, economic and political order (Pulido 2016; 2017). We offer new empirical insights and show how racialized crisis driven urbanization unfolded consistently but unevenly from the 1930s New Deal era recovery from the Great Depression through crises that led to the contemporary water crisis in Flint and Stockton. Crisis driven urbanization in the United States is co- constituted by multi- scalar racialized dynamics of devaluation, dispossession, exclusion, and environmental hazard exposures grounded first in racist policy developments in housing and schools and transformed by neoliberalism.
Url: https://brill.com/display/book/9789004446175/BP000005.xml
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Authors: Flint, MI in Context
Editors: Benz, Terressa A; Cassano, Graham
Pages: 80-120
Volume Title: Urban Emergency (Mis)Management and the Crisis of Neoliberalism
Publisher: Brill
Publisher Location:
Volume: 184
Edition:
Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Health, Land Use/Urban Organization, Natural Resource Management, Population Mobility and Spatial Demography, Race and Ethnicity
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