Gainesville’s Forgotten Neighborhood

This study contributes to our understanding of how planning reproduces the “dominant narratives” of the most powerful, especially those that stigmatize minority neighborhoods, but also how equity-minded planners can identify and apply residents’ views, or their “counternarratives.” To enable the focus on social equity, we used critical race theory (CRT) to examine enduring racial stigma, particularly against African Americans, in historical and current planning narratives. Specifically, we conducted a case study of more than 5 decades of neighborhood planning in the Porters neighborhood of Gainesville (FL) to understand how planners’ roles in storytelling and narratives reinforce inequity. Using a thematic narrative analysis, we discovered patterns and relationships in stories and narratives from within and outside the neighborhood and how dominant narratives became embedded in planning documents. The thematic narrative analysis of the Porters case was informed by our 2017–2018 research project to pilot a participatory neighborhood narrative for use in local planning. Through this analysis of practice in an African American community within a Deep South college town, we conclude that narratives matter and have profound consequences. Although neighborhood planning has shifted to include participatory methods, planners often fail to examine their own biases and the racist presumptions of planning culture and institutions before crafting policy. Narratives are not only externally imposed on locales by surrounding residents but are also integrated and reproduced in planning documents. Reflective equity-minded planners can use narrative inquiry and CRT to deliberately examine the prevailing narratives within their historic and current policies. Using this study’s approach as a starting point, planners can examine how narratives can compete and are reproduced in the media and planning documents, by planning staff, and among neighborhood residents and to what ends.