Multi-Generational Stories of Urban Renewal:
Preliminary Interviews for Map-based Storytelling
Myeong Lee, Mark Edwin Peterson, Tammy Dam, Bezawit Challa, Priscilla Robinson
iConference @ Renmin University of China
Short Research Papers 19
26 March 2021
Presented by Mark Edwin Peterson
Urban Renewal
Archived Property Records in Asheville
"1,100 homes, six beauty parlors, five barber shops, five filling stations, fourteen grocery stores, three laundromats, eight apartment houses, seven churches, three shoe shops, two cabinet shops, two auto body shops, one hotel, five funeral homes, one hospital, and three doctor’s offices”
Ndiaye (2010), quoted in Nickoloff (2015)
Special Collections of UNC-A
Special Collections of UNC-A
Background
Grew from initial problem of the complicated files of HACA.
Built upon recent scholarship in the Humanities which has looked at the issues of race and federal real estate policies.
Used a value-sensitive design (VSD) approach, considering stakeholder responses, document patterns & literature review.
Considered recent work on user-centered design of digital tools to develop computational archival science approach to this data.
Built upon recent scholarship in the Humanities which has looked at the issues of race and federal real estate policies.
Used a value-sensitive design (VSD) approach, considering stakeholder responses, document patterns & literature review.
Considered recent work on user-centered design of digital tools to develop computational archival science approach to this data.
"Urban renewal in Asheville: A history of racial segregation and black activism." S. Nickoloff. Thesis, Western Carolina U. (2015).
"Twilight of a neighborhood: Asheville’s East End." NC Humanities Council. Crossroads (2010).
"Renewing inequality: Urban renewal, family displacements, and race: 1955-1966." Digital Scholarship Lab. U. Richmond (2021).
"Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the American city." Colin Gordon. U. Iowa (2021).
"We could, but should we?: Ethical considerations for providing access to GeoCities ..." J. Lin, et al.(2020).
"Reconsidering nature: The dialectics of fair chase in the practices of American Midwest hunters." N. Su and E. Cheon (2017).
"Twilight of a neighborhood: Asheville’s East End." NC Humanities Council. Crossroads (2010).
"Renewing inequality: Urban renewal, family displacements, and race: 1955-1966." Digital Scholarship Lab. U. Richmond (2021).
"Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the American city." Colin Gordon. U. Iowa (2021).
"We could, but should we?: Ethical considerations for providing access to GeoCities ..." J. Lin, et al.(2020).
"Reconsidering nature: The dialectics of fair chase in the practices of American Midwest hunters." N. Su and E. Cheon (2017).
User Groups
- Various users require different information & tools.
- Affected Southside residents
- Genealogists
- Researchers
- Activists
- Librarians
- Current Asheville residents
None certain to know databases or archives.
Main goal is to provide access to complicated data.
- For one of our tactics, we decided to interview potential users of various types to understand:
- How they would use the collection?
- What they would want in an online tool?
- What values they would bring to issues like urban renewal and homeowner privacy?
Snowball sampling approach brought us different users from different groups to examine these questions.
For project development (and this paper), quotes were placed on Asheville map to show the range of opinions on places concerning urban renewal, segregation, and gentrification.
- On the Hillcrest Neighborhood
- P1-“There’s only one way in and one way out and like there’s these [Black] neighborhoods that are just like geographically isolated so that there’s no intermingling.”
- P2-“Even though it was segregated, all the white and Black, everybody intermingled … everybody knew everybody. … Urban renewal program came in and started dividing, not only did it divide the community of Blacks and destroy that, it destroyed quite a few, quite a bit of the white community too.”
User Values
Values identified in project development phase were tagged in interview transcripts for qualitative analysis.
Design Framework
- Conceptual Dimension
- Accessibility control
- Individual position
- Authenticity-digitization tension
- Value reflection and neutrality
- Boundary
- Guardianship and ownership
- Collection development
- Transparency towards the digitization process
Multi-Generational Stories
People from different backgrounds see issues differently. Race shaped individual views on urban renewal, but we also found differences clearly linked to the age of Asheville residents.
Direct experience with federal projects gave people very negative views on urban renewal and a sense of loss for destroyed communities that was unfamiliar to younger people.
Direct experience with federal projects gave people very negative views on urban renewal and a sense of loss for destroyed communities that was unfamiliar to younger people.
- Interviewees
- P1 - often viewed Asheville places in terms of failures of local government
- P2 - focused on changes and loss for the people who used to live there - “Valley St. (now Charlotte St.) was a close-knit Black community.”
Discussion
- Interviews Helped Us Narrow Down Concerns and Needs for Several User Groups
- More pictures!
- Interest in people affected.
- Less concern about privacy than expected.
- Little concern about provenance.
- Potential for this project to help with restitution.
- Most had negative views on urban renewal.
- Project could be model for similar collections.
Our Developed Plan
- Six Phases:
- Scanned documents for 900+ properties
- Created database of owners & offers
- Interviewed potential users
- Create map of properties linked to data
- Interview same people on effectiveness
- Revise online tool
Thank You!
Please feel free to ask any questions.
George Mason
Community Informatics Lab
https://myeonglee.com