"A street of hopes and dreams": rehabilitation, revitalization, and gentrification along Market Street in Wilmington, Delaware
Date
2011
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Revitalization projects are intended to stimulate positive social and economic change; in reality professionals often impose their own cultural ideologies on the rehabilitation process. Once revitalization is deemed successful, the environment created by rehabilitated historic structures often has the unintended effect of creating exclusionary public spaces. The purpose of this thesis is to show how established settlement patterns, policy decisions, and the resulting built environment promote gentrification and socioeconomic segregation as a means to achieve revitalization in historic downtowns. Wilmington, Delaware, is a city with a complex social history that is evident in its segregated landscape. Market Street functioned as Wilmington’s main thoroughfare as the city grew from a seventeenth century port to an industrial city to a modern corporate center. Beginning in the 1940s, social strife, suburbanization, and the decentralization of the job market contributed to the city’s socioeconomic decline. In 1968, race riots prompted a nine-month long occupation of Wilmington by the Delaware National Guard, which was quartered along lower Market Street. The riots and subsequent occupation further alienated and segregated the black community and discouraged suburbanites from frequenting downtown. Since the 1970s, private developers, individuals, and nonprofit organizations have worked in conjunction with the city government to preserve and revitalize the area. During the past ten years, a new wave of revitalization projects made possible by state historic preservation tax credits has resulted in the substantial rehabilitation of properties in the Market Street Historic District. Yet businesses in the area still cater to Wilmington’s black community, which represents over half of the city’s population. Most of these structures have not been rehabilitated, and signage and window displays do not fit in with professional developer’s concept of an economically healthy and safe main street. Strict rehabilitation guidelines often result in the elimination of architectural elements popular with the existing population. Revitalization professionals view this historic district as an opportunity to create an attractive environment for heritage tourism and economic growth. However, members of the black community perceive rehabilitation, especially of structures along lower Market Street that were once occupied by the National Guard, as yet another way to cover up a history of oppression. Promoting gentrification as the only way to improve the economic social health of downtown will create an exclusionary public space, unless steps are taken to include the entire community in the revitalization and future of Market Street.