Book chapter - Moving Beyond Gentrification

Moving Beyond Gentrification: Regenerative Mapping for Geographies of Radical Resilience DRAFT Book Chapter in Research Agenda for Gentrification, edited by Winifred Curran and Leslie Kern

(primary author) Elizabeth Walsh, PhD Center for Community Engagement to advance Scholarship and Learning University of Denver (contributing authors in alphabetical order) Jeremy Auerbach, PhD Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences Colorado State University Cara DiEnno, PhD Center for Community Engagement to advance Scholarship and Learning University of Denver Yessica Holguin Center for Community Wealth Building Adriana Lopez Valverde Neighborhood Association Evon Lopez Valverde Neighborhood Association Carrie Makarewicz, PhD Urban and Regional Planning University of Colorado Denver Solange Muñoz, PhD Department of Geography University of Tennessee Jessica Villena Sanchez Department of Geography University of Denver Dani Slabaugh, MLA Urban and Regional Planning University of Colorado Denver

1

ABSTRACT Mapping is a primary tool used by the State and those responsible for gentrification. The State uses cartography to make its land and labor legible; that which can be (re)defined, divided, and controlled.

Mapping also reveals the dilemmas marginalized communities face: remain illegible to the State or make their concerns legible in ways that can negotiate standing with the State (Scott, 1999). These two options are limiting, forcing traditionally marginalized communities to either hide from or fight the State. Similarly, in urban neighborhoods historically burdened by environmental racism and structural disinvestment, communities are often forced either to hide from or fight public investments to resist gentrification, as new mobility and green infrastructure investments tend to put previously redlined neighborhoods “on the map,” subjecting them to a flood of speculative investment, rather than advancing community-rooted health and wealth for long-term residents. In response, researchers have relied on social vulnerability mapping to identify drivers of displacement. While these cartographic tools are necessary to make oppression and vulnerability to displacement legible, they are insufficient to end gentrification. These methods have been employed for over a decade in major urban areas across the globe, and yet gentrification and displacement continues unabated, given the dominance of extractive, exploitative, exclusive capitalism in urban development (Chapple & Zuk, 2016; Easton et al., 2020; Richardson et al., 2020).

To address this outcome gap, this chapter proposes that those fighting gentrification expand their toolbox with methods based on a radical understanding of the cartographic gaze behind maps, and underlying assumptions about power. Instead of seeing like a State, we are called to sense like a sovereign body, as understood by Indigenous geographers (Harjo 2019). The idea of returning to our bodies, our embedded and emplaced lived experiences, and our differences as a source of power is core to epistemologies produced at the center of intersectional struggles (Suarez 2018). While social vulnerability mapping can help identify drivers of precarity and name intersectional oppression, it has generally been ineffective in cultivating community resilience or supporting resistance to gentrification.

Radically sovereign approaches to knowledge production are essential in identifying drivers of vitality, recognizing mutually flourishing relationships, and cultivating resilience in the face of displacement pressures. Drawing on a review of existing literature with a novel conceptual framework for regenerative mapping, this chapter provides a set of tools for the researcher to unite with countermapping and more traditional social vulnerability mapping: asset mapping, story mapping, promise mapping, and kinship mapping. We also illustrate the practical application of these tools with a case study of participatory action research against gentrification. We argue that by exercising the power to shift the state of the cartographic gaze to sense like a sovereign body, researchers and community members can enact geographies of radical resilience through acts of resistance and regeneration supported by an expanded set of mapping tools.

2

TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... 2 1

Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 4

2

Regenerative Mapping for Geographies of Radical Resilience ............................................................. 5 2.1

3

4

5

Shifting the Cartographic Gaze to Sense like a Sovereign Body ................................................... 6

Valverde Movement Project: Regenerative Mapping in Action ........................................................... 8 3.1

Community Asset Mapping ......................................................................................................... 10

3.2

Story Mapping: Story Lines, Story Circles, and ESRI Story Maps ................................................ 11

3.3

Promise Mapping ........................................................................................................................ 13

3.4

Kinship Mapping ......................................................................................................................... 13

Discussion: Emergent Outcomes and Actions .................................................................................... 14 4.1

Expanded Capacity for Valverde Neighborhood Association ..................................................... 15

4.2

Reclaiming and Naming Ulibarri Park ......................................................................................... 15

4.3

Guiding the West Area Plan & Infrastructure Investment .......................................................... 15

Concluding Propositions on Regenerative mapping ........................................................................... 16 5.1

Emergent, Adaptive Strategy for a Shifting Horizon ................................................................... 18

5.2

Institutional Infrastructure for Regenerative Mapping .............................................................. 18

6

Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................ 20

7

Notes ................................................................................................................................................... 26

3

1 INTRODUCTION This chapter takes as a first point of departure that displacement is the central experience of gentrification, as well as climate change and other manifestations of contemporary life in the Capitalocenei and its geographies of displacement, dispossession, and extermination. The nature of urban development itself stands on a history of serial forced displacement – today’s cities are built upon stolen land, the enclosure of public commons, and the growth of an extractive, exploitative, and exclusive capitalist economy enabled by colonialism, racism, paternalism, ableism, and other interdependent processes of systemic, structural oppression. Dispossession and displacement are endemic to global capitalism and urban development (Fullilove & Wallace, 2011; Harvey, 2009; Hern, 2017).

Even as an era of revolutions unfolded in the 18th century that gave rise to western European experiments in democracies established by – and for – “the people,” our cities have been built by – and for – capitalist growth that drives both displacement and extermination (Boggs & Boggs, 1974; Moore, 2017). Modern capitalism and western democracy co-evolved, both operating under the influence of Enlightenment Era conceptions of sovereignty, cartography, and rationality, with profound implications for the exercise of power in relationship with land and people, the practice of cartography, and the purpose of universities.

Sovereignty in this world view means “supreme authority within a territory,” primarily by the State (e.g. nation state), but also by elite private property owners (e.g., gentry) (Hern, 2017). In this context, cartography developed as a means through which the State could make its land and labor legible; that which can be (re)defined, divided, and controlled (Scott, 1999). Universities supported processes of colonization, and evolved to privilege the pursuit of generalizable, a-contextual, objective Truths by established scientists (Edney & Pedley, 2020; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Stein, 2020).

Second, we posit that if we are to engage in research and mapping that moves beyond gentrification and geographies of displacement, we must move beyond mere critique to enact reimagined forms of cartography and knowledge production. Decades of social vulnerability mapping have made vulnerability to displacement legible, yet gentrification continues unabated (Chapple & Zuk, 2016; Easton et al., 2020; Richardson et al., 2020). Since the inception of social vulnerability mapping, researchers have questioned whether the same institutions that created conditions of precarity for marginalized communities can be trusted to use social vulnerability maps to protect people they have made to be vulnerable (Wisner, 1993).

Moreover, social vulnerability mapping risks framing marginalized people solely as victims, while methodological constraints have failed to (1) center community knowledge and strengths enabling resilience, (2) identify intersectional oppressions and name them as such, and (3) advance community activism (Jacobs, 2019). These constraints limit such analyses in producing meaningful change and contributing to the self-sovereignty of communities on the frontlines of displacement struggles.

Third, we posit that reimagined forms of mapping and knowledge production are not enough to move beyond geographies of displacement; we must also transform our conceptions of sovereignty that give form to cartography. As Matt Hern asserts in What A City Is For: Remaking the Politics of Displacement, “any attempts to ameliorate displacement are doomed if not rooted in an aggressively equitable and decolonized politics of land, ownership and sovereignty” (2017, p. 30). What does it take to root ourselves in a decolonized politics of sovereignty? Fundamentally, it requires learning from indigenous thought and 4

practice, especially regarding governance with people and land. In sharp contrast to sovereignty as a right to do what you want with property, Anishinabe spiritual leader Eddie Benton-Benaie profoundly expressed sovereignty as “a responsibility you carry inside yourself” (Harjo, 2019, p. 60) – an embodied sovereignty that translates into care for self, neighbors, and the earth. This in turn translates to sovereignty embedded within communities and emplaced within ecosystems. As Mvskoke geographer Laura Harjo (2019, p. 60) expresses this theory of radical sovereignty: “[I]f we look inward to our own energy, power, and knowledge, and outward to that of our relatives and community – there is where we will collectively find the map to the next world, the map to the lush promise.”

This conception of embodied, embedded, and emplaced sovereignty stands in opposition to the colonial sovereign rationalities at the core of perpetual processes of dispossession, displacement, and extermination under capitalism (Hern, 2017; Moore, 2017). Yet it is fundamental to the praxis of diverse, marginalized communities that have developed systems of mutual care for people and land, even in circumstances where they have no legal rights to the land or housing (Campbell et al., 2020; Hern, 2017).

Thus we draw from critical indigenous studies, black feminist thought, environmental justice methodologies, and regenerative development literature to offer a framework of critical and co-creative methodologies through which academic researchers and community members can collaboratively map the way to geographies of radical resilience. At its core, the framework supports co-inquirers in shifting their cartographic gaze from “seeing like a State” to “sensing like a sovereign body.” The framework includes four regenerative mapping methods – asset mapping, story mapping, promise mapping, and kinship mapping – that can be conducted internally through the leadership of community members, or as a participatory process led by academic researchers and city and regional planners, with community members.

To illustrate this theoretical framework in practice, we then offer reflections drawn from our experiences about the challenges and opportunities presented in the application of such approaches through the story of the Valverde Movement Project, a community-engaged, multi-sector action research initiative in a Denver neighborhood subject to decades of serial forced displacement pressures, most recently, gentrification. We write in a collective voice drawn from our varied personal, professional, civic, organizational, and institutional backgrounds. Most of us are situated in academia. Half of us share whitesettler positionality. Almost all of us share female positionality. We all hold an intention to embody antiracist, decolonial, and feminist praxis in our lives and work.

2 REGENERATIVE MAPPING FOR GEOGRAPHIES OF RADICAL RESILIENCE In referring to geographies of “radical” resilience, we join Muñoz et al. (2021) in employing the etymological meaning of radical, “of, or having roots,” as an emplaced, embedded, and embodied understanding of the production of space, place, community and home. In the context of displacement research, we employ “rootedness” as the opposite of displacement and “resilience” as the antidote to its traumatic effects. Research shows that the local ecological knowledge, social capital, and place attachment associated with such rootedness are sources of knowledge and power that enable community resilience in the face of natural disasters (Afifi et al., 2020). These rooted forms of knowledge and network 5

power are also key to the effectiveness of asset-based community development, mutual aid networks, community land trusts, and cooperative enterprise that help marginalized communities build resilience in the face of gentrification and other threats (Corburn, 2005; Medoff, 1994; Nangwaya & Akuno, 2017; Nembhard, 2014; Scharpie, 2017).

Moreover, we build on the concept of “regenerative mapping” presented by Muñoz et al. (2021) and inspired by practitioners of regenerative design and development (Hes & Plessis, 2014). “Regenerative” mapping is grounded in the power of all living beings and systems to regenerate, e.g., to heal and recreate personal, social, and ecological wellbeing. This use of “regenerative” resonates with calls for a just transition to a regenerative economy – one that is "based on ecological restoration, community protection, equitable partnerships, justice, and full and fair participatory processes” (United Frontline Table, 2020, p. 6).

2.1 SHIFTING THE CARTOGRAPHIC GAZE TO SENSE LIKE A SOVEREIGN BODY While colonial sovereign rationalities aim to impose supreme control over bounded territories to develop them according to their highest and best economic use, radical sovereignty is deeply rooted in reciprocal relationships of care among people and land. In the words of Phillip Blake (Blake, 1977, pp. 7–8), a chief of the Dene nation from Fort McPherson (emphasis added): “We have lived with the land, not tried to conquer or control it or rob it of its riches. … [W]e have not tried to conquer new frontiers, or out do our parents or make sure that every year we are richer than the year before. We have been satisfied to see our wealth as ourselves and the land we live with. … I believe your nation might wish to see us, not as a relic from the past, but as a way of life, a system of values by which you may survive in the future. This we are willing to share.”

Inspired by critical indigenous traditions (Harjo, 2019; Kimmerer, 2015; Lyons & Mohawk, 1998), we posit that these relationships of care and their system of values are rooted in three natural laws, or principles for vitality in living systems: reciprocity, integrity, and liberty (Walsh, 2021). Translated into practice: ●

●

●

Reciprocity is the exercise of awareness and power to support mutual flourishing relationships, supported by responsively metabolizing feedback and practicing gratitude for diverse gifts and strengths; the practice of reciprocity depends upon an appreciative gaze – a view capable of recognizing gifts and expressing both appreciation and attribution in ways that enable the twoway flow of diverse gifts – including feedback (Ghaye, 2010; Macy & Johnstone, 2012); Integrity is the exercise of awareness and power to restore broken promises and integral health in living systems; the practice of integrity depends upon a compassionate gaze – a view capable of imagining a state of complete wholeness in which all parts belong, and suffering can be held together and transformed into energy for action (Cunningham, 2021; Greenberg & Turksma, 2015); Liberty is the exercise of awareness and power to create and choose powerful states of being and empowering storylines of desired futures that call us forward; the practice of liberty depends upon a decolonial gaze – a capacity for self- and system-awareness that can name and disrupt

6

structures of oppression, creating space for personal and collective self-expression, co-creativity, and collective action (Harjo, 2019; Suarez, 2018).ii Together, these capacities for system-awareness establish a foundation to make a shift to sensing like a sovereign body and exercising liberatory power. With this foundation, researchers and community members can enact geographies of radical resilience through regenerative mapping techniques including asset mapping, story mapping, promise mapping, and kinship mapping, as summarized in Table 1.

Technique Asset Mapping

Practices of sensing as sovereign bodies Practice of reciprocity & an appreciative gaze

Story Mapping

Practice of liberty & a decolonial gaze

Promise Mapping

Practice of integrity & a compassionate gaze

Kinship Mapping

Integrated practices & gazes of reciprocity, liberty, & integrity

Overview of technique Community asset mapping is centered on the theory that local communities can do more together by focusing on what they have—their tangible and intangible gifts, talents, and community assets—instead of what they are missing (Boyd & Bright, 2007; Ghaye, 2010; Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993). Asset maps can be produced spatially using participatory analog or digital GIS techniques and technologies, and/or visualized conceptually using network mapping.

Story mapping further supports asset-based community development by drawing out and documenting stories of neighbors as they see, experience, remember, and interpret their neighborhoods (Sandercock, 2003). As a form of participatory GIS, story mapping tells individual and collective place-based narratives with digital and spatial data (LungAmam & Dawkins, 2020) Story mapping is a particularly liberatory practice when community members use it to disrupt oppressive, limiting narratives and replace them with empowering storylines (Suarez, 2018).

Promise mapping spatially documents past promises and agreements made by the State or other players, especially from previous city plans, and pairs them with photographs that document present conditions.iii By contrasting past recommendations to present conditions, communities may either hold officials accountable for desired promises that are unfulfilled, or organize resistance to problematic and illegitimate recommendations that imperil desired futures.

Kinship maps use social network mapping techniques to visualize vital connections and flows of social capital among people who experience a sense of kinship (e.g., belonging, trust, mutual care) usually related to a common sense of purpose. The dynamic interface enables facilitated dialogue and collaborative sense-making, allowing members to see themselves as a whole that is more than a sum of its parts (Capra, 2016).

7

3 VALVERDE MOVEMENT PROJECT: REGENERATIVE MAPPING IN ACTION To illustrate the practical application of these tools in struggles against gentrification, we offer a case study from the Valverde Movement Project (VMP)iv in Denver, CO. VMP is a collaboration between more than 25 partners including neighborhood leaders from the Valverde Neighborhood Association (VNA), advocacy organizations, university researchers, and staff from city and regional governments united in a quest to undo redlining by re-imagining mobility investments to advance equitable, community-rooted health and wealth.

Motivation for VMP is three-fold: 1. Past transportation investments in many urban neighborhoods have eroded structures of health and wealth by contributing to infrastructural racism and forced displacement (Fullilove, 2004; Fullilove & Wallace, 2011); 2. Historically redlined neighborhoods often lack safe, integrated access to dense, frequent and reliable transportation options (thereby limiting access to jobs, education, goods, and services needed to support health, wealth, and resistance to gentrification); moreover, growth in new mobility investments (e.g., bicycle lanes, light rail, and Bus Rapid Transit) in these neighborhoods often triggers gentrification (Zuk et al., 2017); and 3. The Valverde Neighborhood – a historically redlined neighborhood located less than 4 miles west of the Colorado State Capitol and Denver’s Central Business District, but cut off on all sides by major arterial roads and highways (see Figure 1) – not only represents these general challenges, but also benefits from neighborhood leaders and a host of academic, public, civic, and private sectors partners who are motivated to collaborate on research, design, action, evaluation, and adaptation.

Figure 1 Context Map & Demographics: Valverde Neighborhood, West Denver Valverde

Valverde Latino population Under 18 population One parent households Attended college High school drop-out 2019 Income <40,000 Median income Median home value

Denver

Latino population Under 18 population One parent households Attended college High school drop-out 2019 Income <40,000 Median income Median home value

Ratio

77.3%

29.0%

267%

30.0%

20.0%

150%

28.0%

13.9%

201%

25.0%

71.0%

35%

34.0%

12.0%

283%

43.8%

29.3%

149%

$ 46,736

$68,592

68%

$190,400

$ 390,600

49%

Source: ACS 2019 (5-Year Est.); U.S. Census Bureau

Denver

77.3%

29.0%

267%

30.0%

20.0%

150%

28.0%

13.9%

201%

25.0%

71.0%

35%

34.0%

12.0%

283%

43.8%

29.3%

149%

$ 46,736

$68,592

68%

$190,400

$ 390,600

49%

Source: ACS 2019 (5-Year Est.); U.S. Census Bureau

8

Ratio

Research shows that although major investments in transportation (e.g., through transit-oriented development) often trigger displacement, those that have proven to be equitable have frequently been in communities with traditions of community organizing and movement building, and where public planning processes have engaged the participation of these community leaders and generally incorporated the political, social, cultural, and financial capital that already exist in these communities into the planning and implementation process (Sandoval, 2018; Sandoval & Herrera, 2015). Core to VMP’s theory of change is our understanding that improving freedom of movement - within, to, and from a neighborhood - depends on the power of intersectional movements and asset-based community development.

Supported by an NSF Civic Innovation planning grant spanning February through May 2021,v VMP partners set out to develop and implement an intersectional, asset-based, transdisciplinary, communityrooted approach to mobility system research and design, drawing on black feminist (Crenshaw, 2017; hooks, 2001; Lorde, 2013), critical indigenous (Harjo, 2019; Smith, 1999), environmental justice (Angotti & Sze, 2009; Corburn, 2005), and regenerative design (Hes & Plessis, 2014; Regenesis et al., 2016) scholarship. VMP’s approach calls us to practice liberty, reciprocity, and integrity by employing (1) a decolonial gaze to name, expose, and disrupt intersectional and infrastructural oppression, (2) an appreciative gaze to recognize and appreciate diverse strengths and desires, and (3) a compassionate gaze that helps us engage suffering in ways that allow us to construct liberating structures in support of the desired visions of community members.

This culturally responsive approach is designed to name harm, center joy, and build on collective strengths of numerous individuals and organizations – especially those leading on the frontlines of community resilience. VMP’s potential is rooted in organizing efforts of the VNA. Under the leadership of President Adriana Lopez, VNA has served as an active voice and emergency response force for Valverde neighbors during the pandemic, launching a new electronic newsletter, creating a brand, organizing food drives, hosting events, talking to the news media about the correlation between redlined neighborhoods and COVID-19 (given that Valverde had the highest COVID-19 hospitalization rates in Denver (Minor, 2020)), and working with the State to host a special clinic for Valverde neighbors, which led to the vaccination of 950 neighbors in the area. The VMP team has designed all community engagement related to its mobility system research in ways that amplify VNA’s communitybuilding and organizing efforts.

The four regenerative mapping methods outlined previously have been central to our intersectional, asset-based research approach. We used these and other collaborative approaches in multiple languages to strengthen civic capacity in Valverde while guiding investments in contextually appropriate mobility solutions. In the following sections, we present a summary of the regenerative mapping methods we have applied, with a focus on the four-month planning period in general, and the Valverde Movement Fest (VMF) in particular.

Held April 24, 2021, VMF was a COVID-safe, outdoor, intergenerational, multilingual community celebration attended by more than 100 residents and several nonprofits – including an antidisplacement coalition focused primarily on affordable housing strategies that incorporate a community land trust, and a coalition that supports refugees displaced from their homes in other nations. Folklorico dancers, prizes, and free food from a local food truck set a celebratory tone, while interactive, intergenerational regenerative mapping and story activities engaged neighbors in collaborative efforts 9

to understand shared challenges and opportunities in the neighborhood. For instance, neighbors engaged in asset mapping and story mapping about general life in the neighborhood, as well as transportation-specific activities including a “dot-mocracy” activity in which they could vote for preferred mobility solutions from a transportation toolkit derived from pre-vetted, regionally available mobility options, and a transportation survey that allowed them to share their personal transportation experiences in light of the potential mobility investments.

Figure 3. Valverde Movement Fest: A celebration of community – food, culture, knowledge, and power

3.1 COMMUNITY ASSET MAPPING Through a participatory mapping exercise, the research team asked neighbors to identify areas in and around their neighborhood that they loved and areas where they wanted improvements or felt unsafe.

When residents had identified these places and marked them with green and red dots, respectively, they were asked to share why they chose the places they did.

Figure 3. Participatory Asset Mapping Activity

Roughly 25 residents participated, offering a wide range of responses. Many expressed positive feelings for their parks and green space, as well as a much-loved Vietnamese Bakery, neighborhood schools, and 10

more. Residents also shared concerns about park improvements and maintenance, sidewalks that are too small to use, poorly equipped bus stops, traffic safety, and both violent and non-violent crime – all issues that make them hesitant to walk, bike, and spend time in their neighborhood’s public spaces. In general, participants shared hope that neighborhood spaces would continue to improve, and that community assets in the parks and neighborhood schools could be improved to create more opportunities for young people, in particular. Findings from the activity are represented in two story maps – one focused on VMF, and one that integrates participatory mapping results with secondary GIS data.vi

3.2 STORY MAPPING: STORY LINES, STORY CIRCLES, AND ESRI STORY MAPS Embracing the power of stories in cultivating community and building social movements, Valverde Movement Fest included two key storytelling activities: the Story Line and Story Circles.

Figure 4. Story Telling Activities: The Story Line and Story Circles

In the Story Line activity, neighbors could complete one or more story cards sharing a memory reflecting on the who, what, when, and where of Valverde. They could then add their card(s) to the collective Valverde Story Line, a clothesline-timeline upon which photos of landmark events were also hung, both to name harm and center community vitality. These timeline markers helped set the stage for neighbors’ stories of resilience, resistance, and regeneration.

11

Forty-one story cards were completed at the event. Some cards captured brief anecdotes about people and places of importance, like the insights recorded through the mapping activity. Other cards reflected rich and revealing stories from the more distant past, like this one from a man remembering his teenage years living in Valverde in the 1960s and 1970s, when his parents, Fred and Elaine Ullibari, were active community-builders and activists in the Chicano Movement: “We would ride around the neighborhood often times making friends, building up our community and looking out for those in harm’s way. In fact, it was common place for us to stop and help the senior citizens, rake a lawn, or throw their trash. … We were teachers of sorts, and bike mechanics – bikers were being served each day, all teaching each other whenever wrenching on our bikes, working to add a seat, and even building bikes from the ground up. If we did not know how to do something we would engage my father or our neighbor George next door. We had so much fun, sometimes riding through the alleys picking apples and from overgrown gardens that grew into the alleys. The backyard alleys in Valverde are so cool, always common place for us to hang out when we were kids.”

Midway through the event, all participants were invited to join “Story Circles” a small-group, one-hour, facilitated story sharing activity to explore memories and hopes for Valverde while building connections to fellow neighbors. Through this process we gathered 26 oral histories from neighbors, ranging from stories about the 1965 flood, Florence Crittenton High School (for teenage mothers), a favorite restaurant, and a long walk through the neighborhood to the park.

The “Valverde’s Past” online story map integrates some of the personal narratives (both text and audio clips) with archival research and other historical accounts of West Denver, including recognition of the original inhabitants and caretakers of the “Green Valley” for which Valverde is named. This story map includes stories of displacement – from stories of settler colonialism to gentrification – as well as stories of resistance, resilience, and socio-ecological regeneration.

Figure 5. Valverde’s Past: Origin stories of a Green Valley

12

3.3 PROMISE MAPPING Ultimately, all these mapping activities are meant to be in service of collaborative, co-creative efforts to fulfill Valverde’s promise as an inclusive, diverse, equitable, and flourishing neighborhood. VMP created a “Valverde’s Promise” story map that asks visitors, “What is next for Valverde?” and offers an overview of initiatives and planning processes currently underway, a “Movement Toolkit” with different mobility investment options and civic tools like participatory budgeting, and a library of “Past Plans & Promises.”

The library of “Past Plans and Promises” forms the foundation of the “Promise Map” – an interactive map that identifies promises and recommendations made for specific places in past plans, linked to a photo of current conditions. Many of the photos reveal a pattern about which neighbors have voiced: past plans tend to sit on shelves, leaving promises broken and calling the value of public participation into question. Strikingly, the 1991 plan prioritized investment in a community center supporting youth and geared towards preventing poverty-driven crimes. This promise is only now being fulfilled, through a new Youth Empowerment Center on the edge of the neighborhood that will support youth, citywide.

The 1991 plan also called for work to secure child care, a grocery store, and pharmacy services, as well as place-making efforts including naming two un-named pocket parks and reclaiming and renovating the historic Valverde Neighborhood House for community use. Thirty years later, these are unfilled promises that remain key neighborhood priorities.

Figure 5. Snapshots of “Valverde’s Promise” map contrasting current photos and past plans & promises for those sites

3.4 KINSHIP MAPPING While the asset mapping, story mapping, and promise mapping focused primarily on engagement with those who live, work, and play in Valverde, our intersectional, collaborative research approach also employs kinship mapping to support relationship-building and asset-inventorying among diverse, multisector organizations leading aligned work at various scales. The core research team held over 100 exploratory meetings with potential partners in the civic, public, nonprofit, and academic sectors throughout the city, region, and nation. These conversations helped us assess the technical, financial, and temporal feasibility of our proposed mobility solutions and cultivated relationships across a network of aligned actors – both individuals and organizations.

To help track these conversations and map the evolution of this network of allied players, we used two different approaches to kinship mapping with two different software applications: 7vortex and SumApp. The 7vortex platform helped the core research team track our conversations with diverse players as 13

they unfolded through a dynamic, easily curated “mind map” format that allowed us to more easily visualize the diverse organizational and individual players in the mobility system and how they related to each other and different essential functions (e.g. movement of people, and safe access to food, housing, jobs, education). We used this tool internally for the core team.

In contrast, we used the SumApp/Kumu tool towards the end of our initial exploratory interviews to support collective sense-making of the VMP as an ecosystem. We used the SumApp survey to guide all VMP members in a reflective process about their commitments, contributions, and needs with respect to the VMP as a whole. This survey fed into a linked Kumu social network mapping platform, which allowed all VMP members to see (1) the network of diverse, aligned players as a whole, purposeful system with diverse assets, (2) the unique gifts, roles, and intentions of each member, and (3) the current strength of collaborative relationships among the members, in their evolution over time (see Figure 6). Each of the 28 VMP member organizations received a unique hyperlink for their survey, through which they could update their bio, complete a survey, note the extent to which they collaborate with other partners in the network in the present, and view the evolving social network map. Currently, this map is used only for collective sense-making within the VMP network; it is not currently public and can only be accessed through the unique links created for each organization. In time, the VMP network may choose to publish the Kumu map publicly, and further develop maps that include individuals and Valverde community members.vii Figure 6: Valverde Movement Project Visual Directory via SumApp and Kumu

4 DISCUSSION: EMERGENT OUTCOMES AND ACTIONS Taken together, the asset mapping, story mapping, promise mapping, and kinship mapping have advanced VMP’s core knowledge production priorities while also (1) creating and maintaining reciprocal relationships characterized by mutually beneficial exchange, (2) fostering collective memory and co-

14

creating empowering storylines, and (3) cultivating practical knowledge that is helping to extend meaning-making, community-building, and collective action within the community.

4.1 EXPANDED CAPACITY FOR VALVERDE NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION The Valverde Movement Fest (VMF) generated not only essential embodied, embedded, and emplaced understandings of community health and wealth in the Valverde neighborhood, but also cultivated new relationships and energy for the Valverde Neighborhood Association (VNA). Building on the momentum of VMF and responding to neighbors’ desire to reclaim and activate neighborhood parks, VMP hosted a Summer Series of four pop-up events with varied themes at a neighborhood park, West-Val-Bar-Wood (bit.ly/ValverdeSummerSeries). Like VMF, these pop-ups included asset mapping and storytelling activities in a festive environment. The Summer Series culminated in a mobility-themed event with a bike rodeo and a raffle through which VMP partners were able to give 10 bicycles with safety gear to neighbors, mostly children, as well as grocery store gift cards and public transit passes. VNA now has over 100 members receiving its electronic newsletter.

4.2 RECLAIMING AND NAMING ULIBARRI PARK Momentum and insights from VMF and the Summer Series has also translated into a new collective effort to name a neighborhood park after unsung champions of the Chicano Movement and communitybuilders in Valverde: Elaine and Fred Ulibarri. VMF activities revealed an array of stories about the Ulibarri family that spoke not only of the challenges faced by Mestizo/a families (including English only policies and discrimination in work and education), but also of community resilience and vitality. The previously quoted Story Card from one of the Ulibarri’s sons is illustrative; it points to the long-standing traditions of mutual care, skill sharing (in this case, bike repair), and commons management (including yard maintenance, trash pickup, and gleaning of edible landscaping) that have been present in the neighborhood over generations. These and other stories of resilience now appear in an online story map supporting the park naming campaign: https://bit.ly/ValverdePark.

The Promise Map activity also revealed that naming and signing this park has been a priority since 1991 when it first appeared in the Valverde Neighborhood Plan as an action item assigned to “Neighborhood Group and Parks and Recreation Department.” Documentation of thirty-year-old policy recommendations and the legacy of Elaine and Fred Ulibarri have helped the effort with the Parks and Recreation Department (PARD); after many clearly targeted and compassionately written emails, letters, and phone calls from VNA, PARD officials finally granted organizers the right to collect signatures for a petition to name the park. Network activation cultivated through VMPs extensive multi-sector engagement and reflected in our kinship maps have also helped the effort, as officials from other city departments and City Councilmembers made inquiries with the Parks Department about needs and priorities for Valverde. Thirty years later, one of these unfilled promises is coming to fruition, the naming of the pocket park, “Ulibarri Park” (which also means “new village”). With this momentum, VNA and their VMP partners are working to move forward on many other key neighborhood priorities.

4.3 GUIDING THE WEST AREA PLAN & INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT Informed by findings from regenerative mapping, VMP’s public sector and nonprofit advocacy partners are advancing context-specific priorities for Valverde in ongoing planning and policy initiatives – 15

especially the City of Denver’s West Area Planning process currently underway. VNA leaders have been active on the West Area Plan Steering Committee, and they and other equity-focused neighborhood leaders are organizing around an anti-displacement agenda for reparative and regenerative neighborhood planning. Their recommendations include advocating for inclusion of participatory budgeting processes in the plan as a means by which the City of Denver can invest in both civic infrastructure and physical infrastructure, especially to redress harm caused by redlining in West Area neighborhoods. The VMP project team also submitted a report of findings from the planning grant that should be considered for adoption within the WAP. VMPs intersectional approach has expanded and deepened network connections across multiple sectors. Although the National Science Foundation did not award VMP a Stage 2 implementation grant, relationships and network/ecosystem awareness cultivated over the course of the project have resulted in pursuit of new funding opportunities to continue the work via alternative channels and on priorities in the order the community has identified rather than the NSF Stage 2 one-year timeline. Based on community insights, academic and community partners are continuing to research solutions and funding opportunities for Participatory Budgeting, affordable discount passes through apps, novel ideas for affordable car sharing and loan-to-own e-bike programs, and partnerships with a regional social enterprise focused on transportation logistics for food delivery and local economic development.

5 CONCLUDING PROPOSITIONS ON REGENERATIVE MAPPING At the outset of this chapter, we explored how Enlightenment Era conceptions of sovereignty, cartography, and rationality have propelled capitalist expansion and its geographies of displacement, while also shaping academic institutions and their systems of knowledge production. We distinguished that – from the cartographic gaze of “seeing like a State” – sovereignty means supreme control over bounded territory, and that cartography emerged as a tool through which land is made legible and subject to control by sovereign States. We briefly reviewed how social vulnerability mapping emerged as a tool intended to predict, prevent, or ameliorate displacement, yet in practice it has generally failed to (1) center community knowledge and strengths that enable resilience, (2) identify intersectional oppressions (let alone disrupt them), (3) advance community activism, and (4) decrease vulnerability to displacement.

In other words, although it often accurately predicted displacement, it has generally failed to support the self-sovereignty of communities working to advance community resilience on the frontlines of displacement, and has tended to reify inequities in power and resource distribution.

Recognizing these constraints and outcomes, we have proposed a conceptual framework for “regenerative mapping” to navigate from geographies of displacement to geographies of radical resilience. These intersectional, community-rooted, action research framework includes: (1) Decolonizing our conceptions of sovereignty, from a view of “supreme authority within a territory” and practice of extractive, exploitative, and exclusive politics of land, to the view (and practice) of cultivating responsible relationships with land and people rooted in reciprocity, liberty, and integrity; (2) Shifting our cartographic gaze from seeing like a State to sensing like a sovereign body, including an appreciative gaze, decolonial gaze, and compassionate gaze; and 16

(3) Naming harm, centering joy, and building on community-strengths by mapping both drivers of precarity and vitality through methods of asset-mapping, story mapping, promise mapping and kinship mapping.

Through our literature review and praxis story of the Valverde Movement Project, we find evidence to support our proposition that these approaches can create and maintain reciprocal relationships, foster collective memory, and cultivate awareness that empowers practical, ethical action and structural changes required to decolonize our politics of land and expand community-rooted health, wealth, power, and ownership. Our literature review and early experiences suggest that sensing like a sovereign body can help cultivate the kinds of knowledge and power that contribute to tangible forms of sovereignty, such as community land trusts, cooperative economic development, and mutual aid networks that have supported geographies of radical resilience from Jackson, MS to Boston, MA (Medoff, 1994; Nangwaya & Akuno, 2017; Nembhard, 2014; Scharpie, 2017). We find that regenerative mapping contributes to knowledge production as “a form of wayfinding,” which, in Harjo’s words, “means re-associating our knowledge with what it has been dissociated from -our bodies, our senses, or feelings.”(2019, p. 100).

Although VMP has yet to have a measurable impact on preventing gentrification, our diverse members are practicing embodying, embedding, and emplacing a decolonized politics of sovereignty in our everyday interactions, long-term vision, and strategic actions with diverse partners.

The ever-evolving online story maps of Valverde’s Past, Present, and Promise and ongoing efforts to name and sign Ulibarri Park may not look like “anti-gentrification” strategies of a radical politics at first glance – however, the stories we tell about the past are particularly critical in gentrifying neighborhoods. As Hern (2017, p. 35) notes, “ahistoricity is a prime capitalist strategy: constantly wiping the slates clean so that each successive person, family, and neighborhood can claim ignorance and/or nonresponsibility for what happened previously, even if it was very recent and right under our feet.” Newcomers to neighborhoods experiencing gentrification pressure rarely learn about the rich local histories of cultural vitality and community leadership in their new homes, or how processes and policies of disinvestment and displacement like redlining created the economic opportunity they enjoy today. They often arrive with a story of themselves as “urban pioneers” ready to inhabit “fixer-uppers” and “civilize the urban frontier”; usually unaware of their participation in cycles of displacement endemic to settler colonialism and structural racism (Schuerman, 2019).

Disrupting these narratives by centering – and broadly sharing – powerful stories of community vitality is an essential foundation for a politics of radical sovereign bodies. As Cyndi Suarez (2018) observes, the “stories one tells oneself and others transmit or transmute power.” She asserts that the liberatory practice of shifting from stories of victimhood to stories of self-sovereignty is critical to effective social change. As stories are shared, mirror neurons allow the receiver of the story to connect with the storyteller in ways that can foster compassion and motivation to act (Hess, 2012). As such, they are a powerful basis for organizing in social justice movements, especially in facilitated environments where individuals can share their “story of self” in ways that connect to a larger “story of us” and a “story of now” that directs the power of an expanded collective will to strategic actions that emerged in the process of sharing stories (Ganz, 2010). In this sense, stories are maps to the future through resistance to present actions by those

17

who neither acknowledge an existing community nor recognize the value of cooperative and regenerative paradigms of economic development.

5.1 EMERGENT, ADAPTIVE STRATEGY FOR A SHIFTING HORIZON We humbly acknowledge that the work of VMP is still in its beginning as a collective effort to undo redlining and reimagine infrastructure investments that support community-rooted health and wealth.

We did not secure the $1 million “phase 2” grant from the NSF Civic Innovation program, and VMP has yet to improve material conditions in Valverde in ways that either (a) reduce neighbors’ vulnerability to displacement, or (b) improve neighbors’ access to material resources contributing to health and wealth (beyond giving away 10 bikes to community residents at the VMF).

That said, over a short time, VMP has accomplished a great deal through co-creative efforts with diverse partners, clarifying and expanding the horizon of possibilities. All partners – especially VNA leaders – took leaps of faith to create the trust required to propel collective efforts. Through disciplined, embodied practices of reciprocity, integrity, and liberty in every day interactions over the four-month planning period (culminating in Valverde Movement Fest), VMP team members cultivated increasing levels of trust, especially among the core engagement team including neighborhood leaders, academics, non-profit advocates, and staff from city and regional agencies. Regular Zoom meetings and sustained support by diverse partners continue to build lasting relationships and collective action - from park naming efforts and West Area Plan policy recommendations, to efforts to increase land sovereignty through community acquisition of the historical Valverde Neighborhood House and support of community land trust strategies with the West Denver Renaissance Collaborative.

By actively bringing an appreciative, compassionate, and decolonial gaze to our work, we were also better able to hear each other out (with our diverse experiences, feelings, and forms of knowledge) in the face of conflict. These practices of self- and relational awareness also helped us avoid common pitfalls resulting from false binaries like “always trust experts who’ve studied the problem extensively” or “always defer to neighborhood leaders closest to the problem.” Both binaries disregard heterogeneous opinions, needs, and experiences by neighborhood residents and various experts, among other limitations. Instead – while practicing awareness of complex power dynamics – we collectively cocreated a learning environment that fostered trust, facilitated mutual understanding, and allowed for collaborative adaptation through transparency and continual communication, including cloud-based notes, virtual meetings, and email. Most of us were moved – and surprised – by the quality and scale of work we were able to produce together. These practices of “sensing like a sovereign body” have helped us communicate more authentically as individuals, which allowed us to respond, learn, and adapt together with greater ease in a rapidly changing environment. viii

5.2 INSTITUTIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE FOR REGENERATIVE MAPPING We are hopeful for this collective work to continue. We also recognize that community-based action research in general--and regenerative mapping in particular--requires trust, which, in turn, requires (1) time, and (2) diverse, multi-sector partners willing to embrace their vulnerability, disrupt structures of oppression, and enact practices and structures of liberation. This project benefited from significant institutional support – the City of Denver increasingly emphasizes equity and engagement as core values (and has invested in equity training for its staff); academic partners at University of Colorado Denver and 18

University of Denver also have institutional commitments to undoing racism, supporting community engagement, and advancing applied interdisciplinary research; core partners like the Center for Community Wealth Building and Mile High Connects have built regional capacity for equity-centered collaboration (Howell & Wilson, 2019); and NSF funding enabled stipends for community leaders. To support such community-based research efforts assisting communities battling urban displacement, long-term, place-based institutional support is needed, such as community engaged, transdisciplinary, action-oriented research networksix; participation in the anchor institution movement (Birch et al., 2013); aligning academic grant funding agency priorities with the aims of community organizations; and valuing the time it takes to conduct and publish from applied research. In summary, by exercising the power to shift the state of the cartographic gaze to sense like a sovereign body, researchers and community members can enact geographies of radical resilience through acts of resistance and regeneration supported by an expanded set of interactive and authentic mapping tools that allow for low-tech and high-tech data collection and dissemination.

19

6 BIBLIOGRAPHY Afifi, R. A., Abdulrahim, S., Betancourt, T., Btedinni, D., Berent, J., Dellos, L., Farrar, J., Nakkash, R., Osman, R., Saravanan, M., Story, W. T., Zombo, M., & Parker, E. (2020). Implementing Community‐Based Participatory Research with Communities Affected by Humanitarian Crises: The Potential to Recalibrate Equity and Power in Vulnerable Contexts. American Journal of Community Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12453 Altvater, E., Crist, E. C., Haraway, D. J., Hartley, D., Parenti, C., & McBrien, J. (2016). Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (J. W. Moore, Ed.; 1st edition). PM Press.

Angotti, T., & Sze, J. (2009). Environmental Justice Praxis: Implications for Interdisciplinary Urban Public Health. In N. Freudenberg, S. Klitzman, & S. Saegert (Eds.), Urban Health and Society: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research and Practice (1st ed). Jossey-Bass.

Birch, E., Perry, D. C., & Taylor, H. L. J. (2013). Universities as anchor institutions. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 17(3), 7–13.

Blake, P. (1977). Statements to the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. In M. Watkins (Ed.), Dene Nation (pp. 5–9). University of Toronto Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctvcj2xwk.6 Boggs, G. L., & Boggs, J. (1974). Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century. Monthly Review Press.

Boyd, N. M., & Bright, D. S. (2007). Appreciative inquiry as a mode of action research for community psychology. Journal of Community Psychology, 35(8), 1019–1036. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20208 Campbell, L., Newman, A., Safransky, S., & Stallmann, T. (Eds.). (2020). A People’s Atlas of Detroit (Illustrated edition). Wayne State University Press.

20

Capra, C. (2016, October 29). Network Maps & Family Trees. Greater Than The Sum. https://greaterthanthesum.com/network-maps-family-trees/ Chapple, K., & Zuk, M. (2016). Forewarned: The Use of Neighborhood Early Warning Systems for Gentrification and Displacement. Cityscape, 18(3), 109–130.

Corburn, J. (2005). Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice. The MIT Press.

Cunningham, D. (2021). Awareness Based Systems Change and Racial Justice. Journal of AwarenessBased Systems Change, 1(2), 9–13. https://doi.org/10.47061/jabsc.v1i2.1590 Easton, S., Lees, L., Hubbard, P., & Tate, N. (2020). Measuring and mapping displacement: The problem of quantification in the battle against gentrification. Urban Studies, 57(2), 286–306. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098019851953 Edney, M., & Pedley, M. S. (Eds.). (2020). Cartography in the European Enlightenment (Vol. 4). University Of Chicago Press. https://geography.wisc.edu/histcart/volume-4-cartography-in-the-europeanenlightenment/ Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making Social Science Matter (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Fullilove, M. T. (2004). Root shock: How tearing up city neighborhoods hurts America, and what we can do about it (1st ed). One World/Ballantine Books.

Fullilove, M. T., & Wallace, R. (2011). Serial Forced Displacement in American Cities, 1916–2010. Journal of Urban Health : Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 88(3), 381–389. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-011-9585-2 Ganz, M. (2010). Leading Change: Leadership, Organization, and Social Movements. In Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice: A Harvard Business School Centennial Colloquium. Harvard Business Press.

21

Ghaye, T. (2010). A Reflective Inquiry as Participatory and Appreciative Action and Reflection. In N. Lyons (Ed.), Handbook of Reflection and Reflective Inquiry: Mapping a Way of Knowing for Professional Reflective Inquiry. Springer Science + Business Media, LLC. Greenberg, M. T., & Turksma, C. (2015). Understanding and Watering the Seeds of Compassion.

Research in Human Development, 12(3–4), 280–287. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427609.2015.1068060 Harjo, L. (2019). Spiral to the Stars: Mvskoke Tools of Futurity. University of Arizona Press.

Harvey, D. (2009). Social Justice and the City (Revised). University of Georgia Press.

Hern, M. (2017). What a City Is For: Remaking the Politics of Displacement (Reprint edition). The MIT Press.

Hes, D., & Plessis, C. du. (2014). Designing for Hope: Pathways to Regenerative Sustainability (1 edition).

Routledge.

Hess, M. (2012). Mirror Neurons, The Development Of Empathy, And Digital Story Telling. Religious Education, 107(4), 401–414. https://doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2012.699412 Howell, K., & Wilson, B. B. (2019). Preserving Community through Radical Collaboration: Affordable Housing Preservation Networks in Chicago, Washington, DC, and Denver. Housing, Theory and Society, 36(3), 319–337. https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2018.1490812 Jacobs, F. (2019). Black feminism and radical planning: New directions for disaster planning research.

Planning Theory, 18(1), 24–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095218763221 Kimmerer, R. W. (2015). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (First Paperback Edition). Milkweed Editions.

Kretzmann, J. P., & McKnight, J. (1993). Building communities from the inside out: A path toward finding and mobilizing a community’s assets. The Asset-Based Community Development Institute, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University ; Distributed by ACTA Publications.

22

Lung-Amam, W. S., & Dawkins, C. (2020). The power of participatory story mapping: Advancing equitable development in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Community Development Journal, 55(3), 473–495. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsy064 Lyons, O., & Mohawk, J. (Eds.). (1998). Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations & the U.S. Constitution. Clear Light.

Macy, J., & Johnstone, C. (2012). Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy. New World Library.

Medoff, P. (1994). Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood. South End Press.

Minor, N. (2020, June 23). The Durability Of Redlining In Denver’s Past Is Shaping Coronavirus Hot Spots Now, Researchers Say. In Colorado Public Radio. https://www.cpr.org/2020/06/23/thedurability-of-redlining-in-denvers-past-is-shaping-coronavirus-hot-spots-now-researchers-say/ Moore, J. W. (2017). The Capitalocene, Part I: On the nature and origins of our ecological crisis. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44(3), 594–630. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2016.1235036 Muñoz, S., Walsh, E. A., Cooper, J. A., & Auerbach, J. (2021). Community-Engaged Regenerative Mapping in an Age of Displacement and COVID-19. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 0(0), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2021.1978838 Nangwaya, A., & Akuno, K. (2017). Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black SelfDetermination in Jackson, Mississippi. Daraja Press. https://darajapress.com/publication/jackson-rising-the-struggle-for-economic-democracy-andself-determination-in-jackson-mississippi Nembhard, J. G. (2014). Collective courage: A history of African American cooperative economic thought and practice / Jessica Gordon Nembhard. The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Regenesis, Mang, P., & Haggard, B. (2016). Regenerative Development and Design: A Framework for Evolving Sustainability (1st edition). Wiley.

23

Richardson, J., Mitchell, B., & Edlebi, J. (2020). Gentrification and Disinvestment 2020 – NCRC. National Community Reinvestment Coalition. https://ncrc.org/gentrification20/ Sandercock, L. (2003). Out of the Closet: The Importance of Stories and Storytelling in Planning Practice.

Planning Theory & Practice, 4(1), 11–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/1464935032000057209 Sandoval, G. F. (2018). Planning the Barrio: Ethnic Identity and Struggles over Transit-Oriented, Development-Induced Gentrification. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 0739456X18793714. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X18793714 Sandoval, G. F., & Herrera, R. (2015). Transit-Oriented Development and Equity in Latino Neighborhoods: A Comparative Case Study of MacArthur Park (Los Angeles) and Fruitvale (Oakland). https://doi.org/10.15760/trec.58 Scharpie, M. (2017). Building community resilience through placemaking (Creative Placemaking for Comprehensive Community Development). Enterprise. https://www.enterprisecommunity.org/resources/creative-placemaking-communitydevelopers-5901 Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books.

Stein, S. (2020). A colonial history of the higher education present: Rethinking land-grant institutions through processes of accumulation and relations of conquest. Critical Studies in Education, 61(2), 212–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2017.1409646 Suarez, C. (2018). The Power Manual: How to Master Complex Power Dynamics. New Society Publishers.

United Frontline Table. (2020). A People’s Orientation to a Regenerative Economy: Protect, Repair, Invest, and Transform. https://climatejusticealliance.org/wpcontent/uploads/2020/06/ProtectRepairInvestTransformdoc24s.pdf Walsh, E. (2021). (R)evolutionary powers for regenerative economies: Learning from natural law and leaders in Jackson, Mississippi. The Urban Transcripts Journal, 4(1).

24

http://journal.urbantranscripts.org/article/revolutionary-powers-for-regenerative-economieslearning-from-natural-law-and-leaders-in-jackson-mississippi-elizabeth-a-walsh/ Wisner, B. (1993). Disaster vulnerability: Scale, power and daily life. GeoJournal, 30(2), 127–140. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00808129 Zuk, M., Bierbaum, A. H., Chapple, K., Gorska, K., & Loukaitou-Sideris, A. (2017). Gentrification, Displacement, and the Role of Public Investment. Journal of Planning Literature, 33(1), 31–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412217716439

25

7 NOTES i

By 2016, geologists concurred that the planet had entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, so named in reference to the profound geological changes induced by human beings. More recently, environmental historians have begun to refer to the current era of planetary crises as the “Capitalocene,” in reference to the profound social and ecological crises arising from the emergence of capitalism as a system of power relations focused on ‘discovering’ and appropriating ‘nature’ for use by elite power brokers (Altvater et al., 2016; Moore, 2017). This naming is more helpful in identifying root causes of current planetary crises, while also acknowledging that human beings can – and have – had reciprocal relationships with the living systems of which we are part. ii Suarez’s (2018) theories pertaining to practices of mindful-awareness supporting the exercise of liberatory power resonate with the concept of “decolonial love” that Harjo (2019) credits to Leanne Simpson and introduces as part of her theory of radical sovereignty. Both emphasize grounding oneself in expanded awareness and exercising the power to disrupt internal and external narratives of oppression and co-create liberating storylines in community. iii We introduce “promise mapping” as a concept that builds off of a “promise inventory” practice developed by Meaghan McSorley in collaboration with the Harambee House in Savannah, Georgia (McSorley et al., 2021) iv

https://valverde-movement-project-dugis.hub.arcgis.com/

v

VMP was supported by NSF under the award #2043330, a four-month planning grant allocated in spring 2021.

“Valverde’s Present” story map: https://valverde-movement-project-dugis.hub.arcgis.com/pages/valverdespresent vii The current version of the map is based on organizational membership. Ideally, future kinship maps would include individual community members and all their internal and external connections, e.g. to show bonding, bridging, and linking social capital. vi

viii

This was particularly helpful when, in the course of everyday logistics planning, conflicts surfaced about ideal actions in messy contexts with wicked problems. For example, when planning VMF, a community leader raised a concern about an upswing in gang violence in the neighborhood and the potential of an acute threat at the event.

A district officer from the police department attends neighborhood meetings to provide reports on crime, and the community leader wondered if the officer could help address this concern. A research team member named a concern about whether police presence would support safety, or if it would make people feel unsafe, or even invite problems. VMP’s theoretical approach, rooted in intersectionality, has been influenced by abolitionist theory on crime reduction through community-building and investment. For those of us working to abolish prisons and a police state, the thought of inviting police presence to the event was deeply problematic – not only on principle, but also out of compassion for community members who may not feel safe around police officers. For community members committed to community-building, while living with the realities of neighborhood shootings and threats of violence, inviting a well-known district officer to participate un-uniformed felt like a reasonable way to manage risk. A perfect solution did not exist. Practicing compassion – for ourselves, our team members, diverse community members, gang members, and police officers – we created more spaciousness for dialogue, discernment and intentional action. The result was a choice we were willing to go with, along with side benefits of increased mutual understanding and trust to be invested in future work. Without compassion, we also would have ended up with a decision, but likely at the expense of trust and social capital. At the event, we learned that the threat of violence related to gang and criminal activity is a significant and exceptionally complex barrier to mobility justice in Valverde. ix Precedents include National Science Foundation support of applied, transdisciplinary sustainability research networks with increasing emphasis on community engagement (e.g., https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=505707)

26