{"id":24208,"date":"2015-10-07T09:19:43","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T12:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=24208"},"modified":"2025-08-07T12:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T15:08:07","slug":"root-shock-how-tearing-up-city-neighborhoods-hurts-america-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=24208","title":{"rendered":"Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It [BOOK REVIEW]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

In the field of psychiatry, there has never been a word that formally diagnoses the pain and trauma resulting from being\u00a0removed<\/a> from a home. In her book, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It<\/a><\/em>, research psychiatrist Dr. Mindy Fullilove gives this phenomenon a name: root shock<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"rootshock\"<\/a>\u201cRoot shock,\u201d Fullilove says, \u201cis the traumatic stress reaction to the destruction of all or parts of one\u2019s emotional ecosystem.” She later adds: \u201cRoot shock, at the level of the local community\u2026 ruptures bonds, dispersing people to all the directions of the compass. Even if they manage to regroup, they are not sure what to do with one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book focuses on the destruction of predominately black neighborhoods by \u201curban renewal\u201d policies in the United States. By Fullilove’s estimate, nearly 1,600 neighborhoods were destroyed in the period from\u00a0the 1949 Housing Act<\/a> through the 1960s. \u201cThis massive destruction caused root shock on two levels. First, residents of each neighborhood experienced the traumatic stress of the loss of their life world. Second, because of the interconnections among all black people in the United States, the whole of Black America experienced root shock as well. Root shock, post urban renewal, disabled powerful mechanisms of community functioning, leaving the black world [in the US] at an enormous disadvantage for meeting the challenges of globalization.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the immense migration of black Americans to cities following slavery, they settled largely in central urban areas that \u201cwere the beginning and the end of their options for housing. As [those] neighborhoods became \u2018black,\u2019 segregation created a boundary that was rigidly, and even violently, enforced.\u201d In the US, \u201cBlack America [was]… a many-island nation within the American nation.\u201d Following Brazil’s participation in the atrocities of the slave trade, in which about ten times as many black slaves arrived in Brazil as were sent to the United States<\/a>, Brazil never had a structural\u00a0apartheid like the US. However,\u00a0freed slaves congregated in urban areas like Rio’s Port region<\/a>\u00a0and often found refuge in favelas, such that segregation<\/a> became an urban reality anyway. According to the 2010 census, over 63% of Rio’s favela residents are black, compared to just 1.5% in Lagoa<\/a>, Rio’s wealthiest neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Fullilove describes urban African-American communities as places that \u201cevolve[d] over time, as each effort at problem resolution [became] part of the collective memory.\u201d Similarly, in Rio’s favelas\u00a0infrastructure and community identity have evolved constantly and, without significant state intervention<\/a>, organically<\/a>. Although sometimes stereotyped as impoverished and crime-ridden<\/a>, in reality, favelas are rich in history and full of entrepreneurship<\/a>, sustainable living practices<\/a> and culture<\/a>. Crime and poverty are not inherent, but rather the product of systematic isolation from the formal city and lack of opportunity due to stigmatization, both of which make favelas easy targets for criminal elements.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In Roanoke, Virginia, the process of urban renewal scattered African-American residents around the town. One resident described his original neighborhood’s “tight community”\u2014the stroll of ‘howdy’s’\u2014that resulted from “an active street life” as residents walked everywhere. After removal, the resident highlighted the struggle of the “loss of old friendships” and the shift away from pedestrian street life towards greater car use due to being more spread out. “No longer were people likely to walk down the street saying \u2018Howdy\u2019 to the right and to the left.\u201d These characteristics of strong community identity and familiarity in neighborhoods better suited for pedestrians than drivers\u00a0are paramount to favela life too. And because these traits\u00a0are organically created, it is proving immensely difficult to recreate them in Rio’s\u00a0planned public housing\u00a0neighborhoods<\/a>, which is why organic communities should receive recognition and protection.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Fullilove’s research suggests the impacts of scattering the members of a neighborhood are not only social, but political and cultural. Sala Udin, a member of the city council for Pittsburgh\u2019s Hill District, said, after being displaced from his home: \u201cWe are scattered literally to the four corners of the city, and we are not only politically weak, we are not a political entity\u2026 And, all of that, I think, contributes to a broken culture, broken values, and a broken psyche, and weakness in this city.\u201d In the context of the active organizing<\/a> efforts in Rio’s favelas, we must consider how much harder fighting for rights becomes when established networks are broken up and residents are moved to militia-dominated housing<\/a> that controls political organization<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fullilove offers this word of caution on the consequences\u00a0of tearing neighborhoods apart without a massive-scale plan to repair the damage done: \u201cAbsent the appropriate post-disaster remedy, it was in a state of overwhelming injury that black people faced a series of crises: the loss of unskilled jobs, the influx of heroin and other addictive drugs… violence… The present state of Black America is in no small measure the result of \u2018Negro Removal\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the significant parallels between Rio’s current public policies and former US urban renewal policies suggest Rio policymakers are unaware of the vast literature on US housing failures, including Fullilove’s warning. In the US, urban renewal was seen as a synonym for \u201cprogress\u201d throughout the 1950s, though it lacked public participation<\/a>. Fullilove writes: \u201cConspicuously absent from the picture, and from the decision-making processes, were poor people, black people, and women.” In Rio, everything<\/a> from the p0licing program<\/a> to housing<\/a> and infrastructure<\/a> have suffered from subpar participatory processes<\/a>. The City government has ignored the Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a> community’s proposed (and internationally recognized) People’s Plan<\/a> for the neighborhood’s development alongside the Olympic Park.<\/p>\n

Fullilove\u2019s book is full of statistics on the history of America’s failure to provide adequate affordable housing for its population. In Newark, only 3,760 low-income housing units have been created since 1959, whereas approximately 8,000 units have been demolished in the name of urban renewal. In Detroit the numbers are more drastic; only 758 units have been built since 1956 despite\u00a0almost 12,000 families being displaced. In Rio, the favelas serve as affordable housing<\/a> for lower-income residents, so they are essential to\u00a0guaranteeing the city is accessible to all. If they’re not preserved as such, Rio will see ever greater skyrocketing housing costs\u00a0and\u00a0gentrification<\/a> even more than many\u00a0American cities have experienced, given Rio’s complete lack of regulation of the housing market (US cities regulate at some level).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A main critique of American urban renewal is that it overtly and inadvertently stripped downtown areas of residences and replaced pedestrian street layouts with \u201cmegablocks and mega buildings surrounded by parking lots.\u201d Despite some well-intentioned public policies to rebuild or upgrade poorer black neighborhoods in the center of cities, profiteering incentives took priority for many municipal governments which were persuaded to sell land to private developers to increase their tax base. In Rio, with the Olympics<\/a> less than a year away, it is clear that this city too is beholden to private construction and real estate interests, and time will tell\u00a0whether the city authorities will let these forces govern Rio at the cost of the favelas and affordable, accessible housing in general.<\/p>\n

Finally, Fullilove argues: \u201cWhen all the fancy rhetoric about \u2018blight\u2019 is stripped away, American urban renewal was a response to the question, \u2018The poor are always with us, but do we have to see them every day?\u2019 The problem the planners tackled was not how to undo poverty, but how to hide the poor.” Those being evicted today in Rio are being moved to the far peripheries<\/a> of Rio in the West Zone<\/a>, away from richer neighborhoods that are popular with tourists or developers, and experiencing a reduction<\/a>–not improvement–in their quality of life, much like how Black Americans were removed to the peripheries of US cities.<\/p>\n

Fullilove\u2019s narrative of the failures of urban renewal in the United States\u00a0is detailed, enlightening and poignant in its own right. When compared to the current injustices in Rio de Janeiro\u2019s favelas, however, this narrative is\u00a0even more poignant because of the striking similarities–and warnings. Fullilove urges us to see \u201ca city is not so much a solid, however solid it looks, [but] a fluid, constantly taking new shapes as we clear and build, clear and build.\u201d She warns that a\u00a0rigid apartheid-like system leads to greater distress. Her remedies include being conscious of the subtle divisions that are reinforced by\u00a0public policies, like race<\/a> and class, and building sufficient quality\u00a0affordable housing, something both Brazil and the US have failed to do well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas In the field of psychiatry, there has never been a word that formally diagnoses the pain and trauma resulting from being\u00a0removed from a home. In her book, Root Shock: How Tearing […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":7001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1293,1288,1271,335,1334,329,328,1329],"tags":[1720,221,11,65,282,26,25,878,152,146,423,1817,210,809,124,1555,270,421,279,1403,196,1353,4,365],"writer":[1732],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-evictionswatch","8":"category-highlight","9":"category-favelaqualities","10":"category-policies","11":"category-reviews","12":"category-solutions","13":"category-understanding-rio","14":"category-by-international-observers","15":"tag-affordable-housing","16":"tag-favela-culture","17":"tag-forced-evictions","18":"tag-gentrification","19":"tag-housing","20":"tag-housing-rights","21":"tag-human-rights","22":"tag-international-comparison","23":"tag-participation","24":"tag-porto-maravilha","25":"tag-psychological-terror","26":"tag-psychology","27":"tag-public-housing","28":"tag-public-security","29":"tag-race","30":"tag-redes-de-desenvolvimento-da-mare","31":"tag-resistance","32":"tag-segregation","33":"tag-slavery","34":"tag-solution","35":"tag-planning","36":"tag-usa","37":"tag-vila-autodromo","38":"tag-zero-participation","39":"writer-david-robertson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24208"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81368,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24208\/revisions\/81368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24208"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=24208"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=24208"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=24208"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=24208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}