Counter-mapping Narratives of Suburban Commercial Landscapes And Identity
This is a modal window.
The media could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.
Formal Metadata
| Title |
| |
| Title of Series | ||
| Number of Parts | 41 | |
| Author | ||
| License | CC Attribution 3.0 Unported: You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor. | |
| Identifiers | 10.5446/58229 (DOI) | |
| Publisher | ||
| Release Date | ||
| Language |
Content Metadata
| Subject Area | ||
| Genre | ||
| Abstract |
|
State of the Map US 20229 / 41
1
4
7
8
14
18
21
22
24
27
28
30
37
39
00:00
Identity managementGateway (telecommunications)Line (geometry)Data storage deviceDigital photographyFamilyService (economics)Focus (optics)Ring (mathematics)Field (computer science)Multiplication signVulnerability (computing)AreaMathematicsNeighbourhood (graph theory)Connected spaceMappingHuman migrationPRINCE2Execution unitMenu (computing)Sign (mathematics)QuicksortSpacetimePlastikkarteFormal languageComputer programmingMereologyAssociative propertyLatin squareDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Identity managementBitWebsiteDisplacement MappingFigurate numberMetropolitan area networkNumberCohesion (computer science)Lattice (order)Software developerView (database)Strategy gameGroup actionInteractive televisionOnline helpSheaf (mathematics)Social classDescriptive statisticsGateway (telecommunications)Computer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:03
My name is Noel Alvarez and I come from UMD College Park in Maryland, close to DC. I'm a PhD candidate in the Urban and Regional Planning and Design program at the School of Architecture and Planning. So today we're going to talk about suburbs and immigrant communities in the suburbs.
00:21
So I don't know how aware, you know, but a lot of changes have occurred. Most of the time people think that suburbs are just, you know, white affluent families that live there, but in the last two or three decades, the suburbs have completely changed. They're actually way more diverse now than downtowns or central cities.
00:41
A lot of people are moving to the suburbs. You know, initially we had ethnic enclaves and now we have ethnoburbs, as one scholar describes them. And with these changes, a lot of the immigrants that are moving to the suburbs are hailing from Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
01:02
So what's happening in the suburbs when this is changing? These kind of migrations are changing completely now. We're having successful immigrant small businesses in a lot of these ethnoburbs, or I mean technically there are kind of like ethnic enclaves too, but just in the suburbs. So a lot of these businesses are able to provide unique needs to the community.
01:25
They're usually very small, they usually employ less than 20 people, at most usually 10 or less, so they're there in grand number of businesses and they create cultural identity, leadership, and the social cohesion.
01:41
And most of them tend to be in industries that are more in the food, retail, and service industries. So think of grocery stores that have local needs of the customers from the suburbs or check cashing stores, or just a plethora of other restaurants, you know, whether it's
02:00
Latin food, food from different Asian countries, of that like. So my dissertation focuses on Langley Park. Langley Park is an unincorporated community not far from the University of Maryland. The University of Maryland is the red star on the map, and what's on here is the census
02:23
designated place border. So it's a little bit weird because Langley Park is also right by the border of another county. So it's in Prince George's County, which is right next to DC, and it's also in Montgomery County. Most people get confused, you know, they might be on the Montgomery side which is outside
02:40
the black outline, but they're actually in Prince George's County. And bear with me as I'm a novice for OSM, so this is just me telling you what I propose to do with OSM for my dissertation, how I'm going to describe this community. So the highlighted in pink is a commercial corridor, and as I said, you know, not all
03:04
of it is in Prince George's County, there's also parts in Montgomery County. And there are two very different jurisdictional counties. You know, one side may have tenant policies, you know, protections, while one other side does not. But obviously, for commercial purposes, there are no tenant protections in these spaces.
03:26
So my focus is on the commercial corridor of these two landscapes in the suburbs. And you can see it's not too far away from DC, it's only like a 15-minute drive. Obviously, for people in DC, this is like an hour away. But this is really close actually to the border.
03:42
So my idea is looking at, okay, so what about these small businesses? Like, why am I looking at small businesses in this inner ring suburb? Well, many times we're trying to ask the question, you know, how do we help small businesses? Well, it's a little bit different when you're trying to help immigrant businesses because they serve multiple purposes.
04:03
You know, a store, a grocery store is not just a grocery store. A grocery store in Langley Park is a checked-hashing store inside. It's a jewelry store inside. It's another little stand selling, like, fruits with, I don't know, tajin, the little spicy pepper. So it's multiple, it serves multiple purposes.
04:24
So my idea is thinking of, okay, so these businesses are very different, how do their narratives of their vulnerabilities and challenges differ from what top-down local officials think their vulnerabilities are? And what, how do they perceive that community Langley Park?
04:42
And Langley Park is right now going through many changes. First of all, pandemic, you know, but even though the pandemic has been there, I mean, a lot of businesses have lost clientele, the businesses there are still booming. It's very rare to see vacant spaces in Langley Park.
05:01
Also there's a light rail being built, it's called a Purple Line, so it's going to connect Montgomery County with Prince George's County, and you can also connect it to D.C. Metro as well. So that's being built at the moment, and a lot of people are nervous about what sort of changes this is going to bring, gentrification, displacement.
05:22
Many people that live in Langley Park, two-thirds are renters, there are no rent protections in place. Many of them are immigrant families, most people who live in Langley Park are from Guatemala and El Salvador, like 80%, basically. And so what is this going to happen, like what's going to happen?
05:42
What kind of changes are going to happen? You have small businesses that are catering to the needs of people that live there, but also people that are traveling outside to go to Langley Park. I mean, I myself don't live that far from Langley Park, and I'll go there if I want Guatemala food, like my family's from Guatemala, and I know I'm going to find the best Guatemalan food there. But I also know I can find other things, you know, I can find pubusas, Salvadoran food,
06:04
or if I want really good Indian food, I know that I can go there. So what's going to happen with gentrification? So this is what I'm trying to analyze, how are these narratives different? And my other second question is thinking about lately economic development strategies imposed by planners and city officials, they really kind of lean towards marketing and
06:25
branding as a way to increase that economic development of a commercial corridor section. But is that always right to kind of market and capitalize on their identity? Is that really going to help businesses stay in place and not be displaced?
06:41
So in the 1950s, these are photos of Langley Park. You know, Langley Park is very common of the suburbs, it was built in the 50s, a lot of the apartments and single family units that are there, which is only one third, were catered to returning soldiers from World War II. So you have your plazas that were being built.
07:03
And in the 80s, a lot of changes happened, you had the Immigration Act in the 60s, and you had civil war that was happening in El Salvador. And a lot of immigrants started coming into the DC metropolitan area, but a lot of them were settling in the suburbs. And that's something that's been happening even today.
07:21
A lot of Latinx folks that were living in DC were also starting to get displaced in the 70s because of gentrification. So another community that they were seeking to move to was Langley Park. So Langley Park was also a transition community, but it was also a community where first migrants were moving into.
07:40
So in the 80s, you know, in the 70s, Langley Park was predominantly white, old Jewish working class community. By the 80s, there was a growing population coming from El Salvador and different Southeast Asian countries. So you see photos here on the left, a food truck called La Chiquita, then this huge mall there called Asian Town,
08:03
and then an old Langley Park Plaza when steak was only $2.99. Okay, so this is a present. So in the middle, you have Asian Town, and then on the left, you have La Union, and La Union was named after a department in El Salvador, and this is the inside of La Union on the right.
08:20
There's a lot of different stores, a lot of Guatemalan restaurants and bakeries as well, but, you know, just like a barber shop and a piñata store, you know, a store for quinces and stuff like that. So I explained the changes that are happening right now. So there's been a lot of, maybe for the last three decades, there's been a lot of ways of thinking of how to,
08:43
how do we change Langley Park? How do we capitalize on that identity? So if you look on Google Maps, sometimes it pops up as International Quarter, and the International Quarter name was designed by actually a professor of the urban planning program at my school, but most people that live there
09:02
don't even know it's called International Quarter. Then there's also a business association that's only in the Montgomery side called Tacoma Langley Crossroads, and only people there may call it that, or people that help businesses call it that. And then you have a local politician come in recently and calling that area the Northern Gateway.
09:21
Nobody knows that name. I've asked people, they're like, oh, we didn't know that we were called that. And then most recently, a person from LA was able to change, I think, one neighborhood in LA as like the Salvadoran Quarter. So now it's like his mission to seek other neighborhoods in the country to call them Salvadoran Quarter. And I was in a meeting with him,
09:41
this was during the pandemic, and other people that are involved in Langley Park, and he was really marketing like, yeah, we're gonna call it Salvadoran Quarter. And I'm like, well, it's not just Salvadoran, still live there. If anything, there are more Guatemalans now. So it's always that contentious question like, when do you give a place an identity? And how long does it stay with that identity?
10:04
So my whole idea is to map the businesses, to take photos of plazas, sidewalks, storefronts, and in-store interaction. So not just by talking and interviewing businesses, but also to map it and visualize it. So using OSM sort of as a digital humanities approach to actually visualize the sites of the businesses.
10:22
So from the photos, I'll properly map the stores and OSM intact and important identity markers, you know, what sort of languages are in the storefronts, you know, the signs that you see, is it only in English, are there Spanish? Is there Chinese or Vietnamese or something? And what sort of services do they provide? And then my whole idea is to extract the data
10:41
and then, you know, either put it on QGIS or Carto to kind of do this interactive map of Langley Park. So, so far I've only been able to do 70% of the field work and some mapping. I did have some setbacks because of COVID-19, Langley Park was one of the hardest communities hit in the DC metro area.
11:02
But I've been able to go back, plus it's been really cold and now it's getting really nice. So now I can do my field work soon. So this is just one store right now and you see it's Casa Blackup Bakery. This is one of the photos that I put and then on the sign there, you see that they're looking for people to work there and that sign is in Spanish. So this is actually a taco store,
11:21
but it was also selling these very random items. So this is something that I want to reflect on OSM, you know, when I tag buildings, you know, how do we tag these buildings? And then what about these faces, right? If this person is here every Saturday, do I tag a person? They're selling the items that he's selling.
11:45
So this is inside a grocery store, like I explained, sometimes you have check cashing stores or you have mobile services like this. A lot of people buy cards or minutes to call back home in their country. So this is inside an Indiana,
12:01
no, it was like a sorry store, but I went with Daniella, my friend. She helped me do field work. But what was surprising is that we were in the store checking out the dresses, the sorry, and in the back of the store, there's another store with like actual doors. And we're like, wait, what?
12:20
And it was a jewelry store. So it was like a store within a store. So it's like, okay, how do we map this? Because if you look at the map, it's just going to be like two separate, but they're actually like inside each other. So this is a bakery, a Brazilian bakery store. And when I saw it, I took a photo of the menu because they're not just selling Brazilian goods, they're selling things of the community too.
12:42
They're selling pupusas, they're selling tamales. So it's not just the Brazilian, but obviously they have Brazilian treats as well. And then we also saw this restaurant, African and Salvadoran cuisine, right? Something you probably would have never seen before, but you see it here in Langley Park.
13:00
So this is another sign we saw. It was a vacant, a rare vacant sighting of a place in Langley Park. And it was just somebody saying that they moved and they're trying to sell this place too. Oops, sorry. Okay, another example.
13:22
So this is when I started doing OSM, tagging. This is what it looks like. Basically, it's not mapped at all. No one has done work in Langley Park. Look at this, very empty. You only see one store over stock furniture. And this is what the view looks when editing. So this is what I've been doing so far. You know, I've added Señor Chicken, Minette Copy,
13:41
but in the descriptions and tagging, I'm adding more additional things. I'm adding, you know, language. You know, it's not just English, it's also Spanish. I'm adding service, I'm trying to, actually that's a question I have for you all. How do you add multiple services to a place? Because if you look at it, it just looks like it's a restaurant, but it's not just a restaurant.
14:01
Also, it could be a check fashion store, right? So that's where I am right now. So, you know, that's my initial question in the beginning, what I shared with you all. And basically, I'm just trying to understand, you know, how do we serve these small businesses in the face of commercial gentrification and displacement
14:20
and using OSM to kind of figure out, you know, the digital and the visual part of my dissertation. And that will be triangulated with interviews that I will be conducting with TopDown and BottomUp. And BottomUp for me is, you know, the small businesses that serve the community. So that's it, thank you.