SpaceX Starbase, Boca Chica Beach, and Contested Meanings of Space in Brownsville, Texas

• In Event: Governing Space

Abstract

This paper examines the cultural and economic impacts of the arrival of SpaceX Starbase on the Brownsville, Texas community. It unpacks conflicts over the right to the land and the meaning of progress as community members untangle the social, cultural, and economic impacts of this recent development on Brownsville and struggle over the meanings of change. How do residents make sense of SpaceX’s impacts on the ground? How do social position and geographical experience shape community members’ sensemaking and imagined futures? How do respondents on all sides of the debate invoke land and its economic and cultural value? And how do local residents’ constructions of place compare to how state and industry actors (re) define and recategorize the contentious piece of land where Starbase now sits? I draw on 25 preliminary interviews (as data collection is ongoing) with long-term community members affected by the construction of SpaceX, including those with deep-seated histories and attachments to Boca Chica Beach (right next to SpaceX and the newly incorporated city of Starbase) and those in small business, local politics, and non-profits with varied perspectives. I also analyze archival materials, including state archives of the Texas legislative sessions and bills and media accounts relating to SpaceX's contested development. I trace how local, state, and federal regulatory regimes supported this hyper-charged development and how community groups opposed these moves, unpacking conflicting appeals over the right to space. I argue that we can understand residents' conflicting interpretations of SpaceX’s arrival by examining their differing temporal orientations on the one hand, and conflicting conceptions of space and belonging on the other. Actors with distinct temporal orientations and positions in the power structure interpret SpaceX’s transformations of the land differently. Many pit environmental and economic interests against each other, as well as short- and long-term impacts, in their assessments. These conflicting narratives reveal contested definitions of land and belonging embedded in different temporal orientations and perspectives of both the past (which both supporters and critics invoke, in varying ways) and the (ideal) future.

Author

• Kathleen Griesbach, University of Texas-Austin