| Diverging Space for Deviants : The Politics of Atlanta's Public Housing 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. AKIRA DRAKE RODRIGUEZ is a joint lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania's Weitzman School of Design and Social of Social Policy and Practice. She received her PhD in planning and public policy from Rutgers University. She was born in Alexandria, VA, and grew up in Louisville, KY. She lives with her husband and son in Philadelphia, PA. |