From Placemaking to Placekeeping: Learning from Equity-Based Urban Planning to Address Gentrification in Dual-Language Programs

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 3:45 pm - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Dual Language Programmatic Planning and Design

Abstract

How might the gentrification of dual language (DL) programs be addressed through learning from equity-based urban planning? I argue that DL programs are caught up in placemaking, to court middle-class, white families. Urban planning researchers claim “placemaking is complicit in the historic and pervasive violences of systemic racism…gentrification, and socioeconomic elitism” (Moran & Berbary, 2021, p. 1), and placekeeping is needed to address the relationship between “creative placemaking and gentrification” (Bissell, 2017, p. 1).

Through multimodal critical discourse analysis, I demonstrate how a Texas school district’s DL promotional materials “make” places (i.e., placemaking) where white, English-speaking families are more valued and juxtapose this with a placekeeping project taken up by bilingual youth, educators, and urban planners in the same city.

Author

• Steve Daniel Przymus, University of Rhode Island