Territorial Valorization: How Positive Stereotypes Advance Water Insecurity in Suburban Detroit

• In Event: 50405 - Contested Urban Spaces—Politics of Resource Distribution & Place-Making

Abstract

Suburbs have a legacy of building and protecting white wealth, but racial, ethnic, and class diversification has engendered what some have termed the “suburbanization of poverty” in recent years. Our case addresses this phenomenon through an underexplored but most essential resource: household water access. Drawing on 15 interviews with a hard-to-reach population of suburban residents conducted as part of a two-year collaboration with a Detroit advocacy group, we reveal the effects of an organizational mismatch between the availability and need for water assistance programs. We identify two structural factors that contribute to this outcome: 1) municipal fragmentation, which creates a diverse landscape of assistance programs and hinders collective information-sharing across suburban landscapes, and 2) the stigmatization of poor and low-income people living in historically middle- and upper-class suburban areas. We introduce the term territorial valorization – the relational correlation of territorial stigma – to capture the latter phenomenon, naming the process through which areas historically defined by positive stereotypes may be less willing and equipped to serve low-income and poor residents due to the risk of negative reputational effects. We show the significant impact this has on suburban low-income residents whose struggles and needs are largely unmet and invisibilized.

Authors

• Dana Kornberg, University of California-Santa Barbara

• Mackenzie Taradalsky