This project began with the question, given declining church attendance, how can churches repurpose their unused property to resist exploitative development? Especially in low-income neighborhoods, churches believe they can contribute to the built environment in a way that isn’t based on profit. Journalists have reported that churches want to support community programs, create public green spaces on their parking lots, and work with developers to build affordable housing on their property.
Over the last year, my project sought to understand the strengths and weaknesses of church-based neighborhood engagement and development, how it depends on other neighborhood institutions, and how local neighborhood history might shape this process. My ethnographic case study centers a historic Black church in the San Antonio district of East Oakland seeking to develop a public park and affordable housing on its property, and its reliance on a majority Asian American and White church, an Asian American-founded human services nonprofit, and a neighboring “community-based” public school to engage its neighborhood.
As I spent time in the field, I found that Black church is on the brink of closure not only because of cultural, organizational, and policy changes but because the neighborhood is no longer Black due to gentrification and displacement. It is now primarily occupied by Asian American professionals and refugees and Latinx entrepreneurs and migrant workers who support the infrastructure of Silicon Valley, demanding new types of neighborhood institutions and changing what neighborhood institutions need to supply. The next phase of my research is asking: is the globalization of cities an independent variable causing the purported weakening of community institutions in America, such as the secularization of churches, the professionalization of human services, and the privatization of schools? Are all neighborhood institutions in globalizing cities weakening, or are certain kinds of neighborhood institutions strengthening? How is the governance of inequality changing in globalizing cities, and what kinds of neighborhood institutions are best suited for solidarities between socioeconomic and racialized groups?