| This dissertation is an ethnographic study of contemporary community life and development in Ybor City, a National Historic Landmark District in Tampa, Florida. Once a vibrant turn-of-the-century factory town for immigrant cigar workers from Cuba, Spain, Italy, Sicily, and Germany, Ybor City fell into a gradual state of decline brought on by the mechanization of the cigar industry, the growth of Tampa, and middle-class upward mobility. However, in recent years, people have "rediscovered" Ybor City and various Tampa officials and entrepreneurs have begun to develop and promote the area as a night clubbing district and tourist zone. Ybor City is undergoing a period of tremendous transformation, as buildings are renovated, profits created, and residents relocated.;Such revitalization of ethnic areas into urban historic districts is alternatively applauded by scholars as urban renewal or criticized as empty superficial attempts to evoke and spectacularize history merely as a means to attract tourists. Arguing that such critiques treat historic districts as static sites and infer passive observers, this study offers a communicative, dialogic approach to studying such sites. The study is situated within eighteen months of fieldwork as an Ybor City resident and attempts to critically interpret the contemporary transformation of Ybor City by drawing on a wide variety of data: interviews, poetry, city council meetings, advertisements, journalism, architecture, development plans, graffiti, music, and everyday conversation. The study focuses on the conflicting notions of "community" people employ when they talk about, perform, or otherwise represent Ybor City, and seeks to understand the complex ways that "memories" of the neighborhood, and of the recent past in general, affect accounts of community in the present. Related from the position of an interested resident, the project is partial and perspectival, and provides an analysis of the nature of Ybor City development, a document of a period of intense transformation, and a more personal account of an attempt to make a home and belong to a community. |
