Constructing the Antiracial City: City Planning and Antiracialism in the 21st Century

This study asks: How does racism continue to shape city spaces in the 21st century marked by more subtle forms of new racism or antiracialism? This article performs a rhetorical analysis of the city of Cleveland's urban planning documents from the early 2000s to explore how rhetorics of contemporary urban planning rely on a form of neoliberal racism or antiracialism to at once recognize race while eliding the relevance of racism in the construction of urban spaces. Three strategies-market logic, hegemonic memory, and multiculturalism-give appeal to the plan by giving voice to issues of race, diversity, and even urban inequality while filtering out the more complex issue of structural racism.