Date of Award

August 2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Architecture

First Advisor

Arijit H Sen

Committee Members

Anne E Bonds, Lane Hall, Gail L Dubrow, Robert S Smith

Keywords

care, class, everyday, housing, neighborhood, structural

Abstract

This dissertation examines views of, approaches to, and acts of neighborhood care, which is the stewardship of social and physical resources, relational networks, and infrastructures done to meet individual and collective needs. This examination of care at the scale of the neighborhood is based on historical documents and ethnographic evidence from Sherman Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from 1980–2020. Drawing upon scholarship in ethics, feminist theory, spatial studies, and ethnography, this dissertation builds a lens to examine care in neighborhood settings as a form of collective stewardship in relation to specific context of place. Evidence from oral histories, archival research, and fieldwork is examined with a grounded theory approach to explore the formulation of neighborhood care and its needs, practices, and perceptions.

The first chapter examines the historical conditions that shape neighborhood care. Sherman Park has been heavily impacted by de facto segregation, deindustrialization, the foreclosure crisis, police brutality, and a growing contingency of out-of-state rental housing investors. The second chapter examines the implications of class formation for neighborhood care; namely, that owner-occupants have been well-organized in addressing the issues they felt were important, yet renters and their needs have often been left out of the framework of neighborhood care. The lack of stewardship identified by owner-occupants was a result of increasing rental housing investment, which has made survival difficult for renters, exacerbating precarity in the neighborhood. Lastly, this study explores specific practices commonly associated with neighborhood care to better understand what is prioritized in the practice of neighborhood care. Many discussed tidying, clearing, and beautifying public-facing private property.

With these findings, this study addresses a gap in care scholarship with place-based grounded theory analysis that reveals the relationship of neighborhood care to structural problems, class, and aesthetics. In expanding the possibilities of care to address crises that affect neighborhoods, practices aimed at strengthening shared spaces, relational networks, and common resources must be in focus.

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