Why Delridge? Narratives of Neighborhood Fragility and Economic Liability in Seattle

Abstract

This paper examines the contradictions of neighborhood level visions of development in Delridge, Seattle contradictions — how they work discursively to produce a geographic imaginary of Delridge that molds itself to the ontology and epistemology of urbanism under neoliberalism while still subject to the ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’ across geographic scales of the City of Seattle and Delridge neighborhood. Through primary research rooted in participant observation, archival work and geovisualization, we demonstrate the ways in which neighborhood-level organizations navigate the politics, discourse, and economics of those contradictions offers a critical insight into the ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’ produced in neighborhoods.