From backyard revolution to backyard reaction: Protest, development, and the anti-politics machine in Cleveland, 1975--2005

The last twenty-five years have witnessed the construction of a new arrangement for the production of housing in urban areas with depressed real estate markets. This arrangement has been widely celebrated both for its effectiveness in reviving poor neighborhoods and its demonstration of the ability of civil society organizations and public-private partnerships to do what the state cannot. This dissertation objectifies and analyzes these claims in two ways. First, it situates the development of this system in a broader history of civil society and political contestation in Cleveland. Situating the field of community development in this way reveals that the success of the arrangement is premised upon a narrowing of possibility in the civil society of the city and is, in fact, dependent upon the marginalization of neighborhood-based politics. In this sense, community development has come to operate as an "anti-politics machine". Second, rather than focusing on a few exemplary organizations, this dissertation examines the field of community development as a whole and finds that it is split between two competing logics. On the one hand are organizations that use housing development in support of the electoral operations of ward-based politicians. On the other are organizations that use housing development to further the efforts of local growth-oriented elites to expand real estate values and attract professionals back into the city.