This thesis presents an analysis of the production of space in the South Shore community on Chicago’s South Side. Using Henri Lefebvre’s theory of
The Production of Space as a theoretical- analytical framework, it analyses the multiple processes and structures that contribute to spatial production in this community. Through a mixed-method qualitative research design, this thesis provides an original empirical application of Lefebvre’s spatial theory. A discourse analysis of articles by three Chicagoan newspapers and cartographic representations of South Shore demonstrates that South Shore is publicly represented as a violent “no-go” area, determined and indelibly shaped by violence and crime. Ethnographic research in South Shore foregrounds how community members experience and resist this public representation of their community. Such resistance centres on the production of residents’ own and different lived images and symbols of everyday life in South Shore as well as through residents’ performance of spatial routines and practices within South Shore’s urban built environment. Lefebvre’s spatial theory retains special relevance in comparison to other critical approaches to social space because it provides a complex and multi-layered approach for a thorough examination of the various political, socio-economic and cultural processes entailed in the production of space. This thesis contributes to an emergent and still underdeveloped scholarship on empirical applications of Lefebvre’s spatial dialectics, with a particular focus on how space is socially produced in a Black urban community in the United States in which racism pervades its political economy. South Shore currently experiences major urban transformation processes resulting from the decision by former president Barack Obama to build his Presidential Centre on Chicago South Side. This thesis argues that deciphering contemporary spatial production in South Shore allows to anticipate how this redevelopment process will impact the community in the future.
Space, violence and resistance : a Lefebvrian analysis of everyday life on Chicago's South Side
Schwarze, T. (Author). 1 Dec 2020
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis (PhD)