Diverging Space for Deviants: The Politics of Atlanta's Public Housing (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780820359526)

This book explores the often-overlooked positive role of public housing in facilitating social movements and activism. Taking a political, social, and spatial perspective, the author offers Atlanta as a case study. Akira Drake Rodriguez shows that the decline in support for public housing, often touted as a positive (neoliberal) development, has negative consequences for social justice and nascent activism, especially among Black women. Urban revitalization policies target public housing residents by demolishing public housing towers and dispersing poor (Black) residents into new, deconcentrated spaces in the city via housing choice vouchers and other housing-based tools of economic and urban development.

Diverging Space for Deviants establishes alternative functions for public housing developments that would necessitate their existence in any city. In addition to providing affordable housing for low-income residents--a necessity as wealth inequality in cities increases--public housing developments function as a necessary political space in the city, one of the last remaining frontiers for citizens to engage in inclusive political activity and make claims on the changing face of the state.

Author: Akira Drake Rodriguez
ISBN-10: 0820359521
ISBN-13: 9780820359526
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Language: English
Published: 05/15/2021
Pages: 268
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.73lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.67d