Hip-Hop and Housing: Revisiting Culture, Urban Space, Power, and Law

Authors

Lisa T. Alexander, Texas A&M University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-2011

Journal Title

Hastings Law Journal

ISSN

0017-8322

Abstract

U.S. housing law is finally receiving its due attention. Scholars and practitioners are focused primarily on the subprime mortgage and foreclosure crises. Yet the current recession has also resurrected the debate about the efficacy of place-based lawmaking. Place-based laws direct economic resources to low-income neighborhoods to help existing residents remain in place and to improve those areas. Law-and-economists and staunch integrationists attack place-based lawmaking on economic and social grounds. This Article examines the efficacy of place-based lawmaking through the underutilized prism of culture. Using a sociolegal approach, it develops a theory of cultural collective efficacy as a justification for place-based lawmaking. Cultural collective efficacy describes positive social networks that inner-city residents develop through participation in musical, artistic, and other neighborhood-based cultural endeavors. This Article analyzes two examples of cultural collective efficacy: the early development of hip-hop in the Bronx and community murals developed by Mexican immigrants in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. These examples show that cultural collective efficacy can help inner-city residents mitigate the negative effects of living in a poor and segregated community and obtain more concrete benefits from urban revitalization in their communities. Cultural collective efficacy also provides a framework to examine important microdynamics in the inner-city that scholars and policymakers have ignored. Lastly, this Article devises new combinations of place-based laws that might protect cultural collective efficacy, such as: (i) historic districts with affordable housing protections secured through transferable development rights, (2) foreclosure prevention strategies, (3) techniques to mitigate eminent domain abuse, and (4) reinterpretations of the Fair Housing Act's "affirmatively furthering" fair housing mandate. These examples of place-based lawmaking may more effectively promote equitable development and advance distributive justice in U.S. housing law and policy.

First Page

803

Last Page

866

Num Pages

64

Volume Number

63

Issue Number

3

Publisher

University of California Hastings College of Law

Notes

Portions of this article were reprinted in Lisa T. Alexander, Hip-Hop and Housing: Revisiting Culture, Urban Space, Power, and Law, in Hip Hop and the Law 359-369 (Pamela Bridgewater et al. eds., 2015)

Recommended Citation

Lisa T. Alexander, Hip-Hop and Housing: Revisiting Culture, Urban Space, Power, and Law, 63 Hastings L.J. 803 (2011).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/769

File Type

PDF