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CONTENTS FIGURES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii 1 FACING THE _HOMELESS PROBLEM_: Subsistence, Survival, and Skid Row. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 2 URBAN ECOLOGY AND PUBLIC SPACE: Disney, Development, and Dystopia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 3 PATTERNS OF EXCLUSION: The Perversity of Homeless Criminalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 4 MAPPING THE TERRITORY: Meanings, Methodologies, Means and Ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 5 CASE IN POINT: A Brief History of the Tempe Sidewalk Ordinance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 6 THE ECOLOGY OF RESISTANCE: Human Rights Struggles and the Contested Realms of Public Space . . . . . . . . .169 7 CITIES OF THE FUTURE: Localizing the Global, Globalizing the Local . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .265 FIGURES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Downtown Tempe, Arizona (circa 2004) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 2. Editorial cartoon re: homeless people on Mill Avenue . . . . . . . . 84 3. New York newspaper headline re: _Homeless Crackdown_ . . . .111 4. Openly defiant agitprop in Tempe (circa 2007) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 5. Protest against anti-homeless policies in Tempe, 2004 . . . . . . . 207 vi FOREWORD With Lost in Space, Randall Amster offers us a beautifully incendiary book, a book that burns with outrage, erudition, and human engagement. The erudition is evident throughout Lost in Space; each chapter of this fine book incorporates an evocative m¿lange of intellectual innovation and reasoned critique. Gleaning insights from a remarkable range of perspectives _ cultural geography, sociology, cultural and critical criminology, urban studies, social history _ Randall Amster builds throughout these chapters an elegant analysis of the late modern city and its spaces. As he demonstrates, knowing the political and cultural coordinates of urban space is essential to understanding the social conflicts that emerge as that space is traversed, occupied, and controlled. As he also shows, knowing something of anarchism is important, too, since anarchic sensibilities often animate such spaces, providing street people and urban scholars alike ways of resisting spatial domination. Amster intertwines this analysis with a revealing case study, a close account of a city, an avenue, and the social and economic forces circulating there. As he takes pains to point out, this single case incorporates the global predations of late capitalism and the pervasiveness of contemporary social control _ but it also incorporates human beings and human agency. And so Amster lets us hear from the individuals involved, lets them make their case: politicians, newspaper reporters, businesspeople, and especially the homeless folks whom the local authorities wish most to silence. Amster lets us hear from himself as well; after all, as the reader soon discovers, he_s as much a part of the case, of the spatial conflict he documents, as anyone else. Put differently, Randall Amster didn_t just write this book, he lived it _ and has continued living it for years. Because of this, because of his own integration of erudition and human engagement, he accomplishes something seldom seen, even in the best of scholarship: he takes us from a little patch of Arizona sidewalk to the largest of social concerns, to the very heart of contemporary society and its constructions of crime and social control. And it is here that the outrage emerges _ and rightly so. Amster meticulously documents the insidious erosion of public space in society ix x Foreword and with it the undermining of the spatial foundations on which democracy and community are built. He unflinchingly records the mean-spirited strategies by which public space is today cleansed of the homeless, the marginalized, and the itinerant; as he shows, the contemporary political economy of urban space is not a pretty one, no matter how many flowers are planted, no matter how many high-end shops are erected. Most revealingly, he exposes the campaigns of obfuscation through which political and economic authorities go about this work, exposing also those powerful groups and individuals who lack even the courage to acknowledge what they seek to accomplish. In all this, Amster pulls down the cheap facades of _civility_ and _urban redevelopment_ that the powerful have erected in today_s urban spaces, revealing instead emerging configurations of inequality and injustice that stretch from the cities of Canada to those of South Africa. Together, this mix of erudition, engagement, and outrage makes Lost in Space a model of critical scholarship _ and one of the very best analyses of contemporary spatial control that I have seen. But while a scathing indictment of economic domination and anti-democratic public policy, the book is at the same time a handbook of hope, a chronicle of direct resistance to a tightening circle of enforced conformity. You see, as it turns out, Randall Amster wasn_t only a participant in the case he documents; he was a primary force in organizing resistance, in turning a case of urban control into a defense of public space. If reading Lost in Space doesn_t get you in the mood for hope and resistance, doesn_t encourage you to think hard about the very nature of spatial democracy and social justice, then I_d suggest you read it again, this time with an eye toward outrage. Jeff Ferrell March 2008 PREFACE This is both a new book and an old book at the same time. It is new in the sense that the processes and phenomena described here are, to greater or lesser degrees, now happening in nearly every city across the United States and the world over. Exploring a decade of events in one particular locale (namely Tempe, Arizona) gives insight into processes taking shape nearly everywhere, indicating that an investigation of a single piece of a whole reveals something of the nature of that whole. While they may not hold true all the time, lessons learned from a micro-exploration illuminate our understandings of macro trends. Indeed, indigenous cosmologies often devolved upon such a vision of the world, and now modern physics has traced back to the same conclusion: the workings of the entire universe are related to and reflective of the life of a single particle. By analogy, a case study of one city would tell us something about cities in general, and to that end cities across the U.S. and around the globe are compared in this new work. Furthermore, an investigation of any particular social issue will suggest ways of understanding all social issues, and while this is not to imply a literal one-to-one mapping across a range of problems _ for instance, racism and littering may appear to be quite different matters _ there are still common threads to be explored, analogies to be drawn, and reflexive relationships to be found. This to me is the essence of an ecological perspective, and its teachings form the framing of this work. Having said that, it is also the case that this is in some ways an old book. I have been investigating the particular issues that are front and center here _ the proliferation of homelessness, the privatization of space, the criminalization of status, and the globalization of these processes _ for the better part of a decade. I titled my dissertation Spatial Anomalies: Street People, Sidewalk Sitting, and the Contested Realms of Public Space, and completed it in 2002. Two years later, it became a book called Street People and the Contested Realms of Public Space, in which I updated the research and broadened the focus to include both additional locales and more voices. Now, with four more years having passed, I return to these familiar spheres of inquiry with renewed vigor and a simultaneous sense of trepidation and hopefulness, with the former due to a profound feeling that the problems I consider here have largely gotten worse, and the latter reflecting my strong sense xi xii Preface that an awareness of this is now well known across a range of academic disciplines and in nearly every corner of the globe. While I am grateful that earlier versions of this work have played some small role in the dissemination of a critical perspective on these important social issues, I am also aware that we need new ways of looking at old problems and that the map of the world quite literally keeps changing. Here then is my attempt to connect the dots of the old with the needs of the new. The world has undergone profound changes in the last few years. The full implications of the so-called _war on terror_ have begun to sink in, with war economies, surveillance societies, crackdowns on dissent, and hostilities toward _others_ now prevalent. Similarly, the full dimensions of _corporate globalization_ are being felt by people everywhere, including the dismantling of social safety nets, the loss of unique cultural identities, the relentless extraction of natural resources, and the ongoing immiseration of low-wage (or even no-wage) workers. Further, global awareness of environmental issues has been aroused by phenomena including the ubiquity of _climate change_ as a potentially apocalyptic scenario, the increasing shortages of basic resources such as water, the regular extinctions of animal species, and the worldwide health threats posed by toxins. The simultaneity of these three dominant examples of an emerging consciousness _ militarization, globalization, and environmental degradation _ is most definitely not coincidental. Indeed, the issue of homelessness is one moment where they all connect: veterans returning from war sometimes wind up on the streets; neoliberal economics pushes people to the margins; and global warming contributes to hurricanes and tsunamis that uproot people. All of this suggests the value of an ecological perspective on homelessness. And that brings me back to the gist of this work, where I strive to maintain a perspective that focuses upon interconnections, reflexive relationships, and root causes (a deeper meaning of the word _radical_). In the life story of a single homeless person, there is a kernel that speaks to the global forces noted above. Likewise, in one parcel of public space becoming private there is a metaphor for what is happening to the entire planet itself. When franchised _chain stores_ take over the downtown of a particular city, it renders that place largely indistinguishable from all other places where the same has occurred. And when a local contingent resists these processes, they are in fact confronting forces of oppression and totalization that occur the world over. It is in this spirit that I offer this small work for your consideration and, hopefully, your inspiration to continue the struggle ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many are due thanks for their assistance and support in sustaining this project over the past decade, and while I forbear to list everyone here, a few are notable for their unique contributions. Pat Lauderdale helped set the tone and establish the framework for the study, sharpening queries and checking realities throughout in ways for which I remain deeply grateful. Jeff Ferrell_s gracious agreement to write the foreword to this volume is deeply appreciated; his words and deeds continue to inspire the intellect and incite the imagination. Luis Fernandez and Mare Schumacher contributed many insights along the way that added numerous dimensions to the project. Gabriel Kuhn read drafts of many of the chapters in various forms over the years, offering new perspectives and positive encouragement. Leo Balk and the editors at LFB provided invaluable assistance in bringing this work to fruition. The Center for Urban Inquiry at Arizona State University generously provided funding during the crucial early research phases of the project. My parents, sister, and brother-in-law all provided support and sounding-board moments throughout the duration. Kathleen Halbert shared in the tribulations of the writing, graciously edited the final manuscript, and lovingly endured the all-consuming nature of the process. My children, Arlo and Zeno, are the reason I write at all. Parts of this work have appeared in journals as earlier versions and works in progress, for which I am grateful to the respective editors and reviewers. Portions of Chapter Four appeared in the Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, while aspects of Chapter Two were initially inspired by articles appearing in both Anarchist Studies and the Contemporary Justice Review. A significant part of Chapter Three comprised an article for Social Justice and was further honed in talks sponsored by the Free to Camp Coalition and the Arizona Coalition to End Homelessness, while aspects of Chapter Seven were developed in a keynote address for the Local to Global Justice annual teach-in. Finally, the emerging urban ecology framework suggested throughout this volume was partly cultivated in a workshop facilitated at the Master of Arts Program colloquium at Prescott College. Notwithstanding the generous support and encouragement offered and received throughout, any omissions, errata, misconceptions, or other shortcomings are the author_s responsibility alone. Xiii
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication:
Homelessness.
Homelessness -- Arizona -- Tempe.
Urban ecology.
Public spaces.
Homeless persons.
Crime and globalization.