A Dangerous, Costly Neighborhood: A Critique of Blight and Obsolescence Claims in Local Media Coverage of a Planning Project

ABSTRACT

This article examines how local newspaper stories in a college town created a dominant cultural narrative about an urban redevelopment project using tropes of physical blight and financial obsolescence. The article discusses descriptive tactics that appear throughout 16 years of coverage alongside patterns in the stories’ frequency, focus, and authorship. The conclusion shares a series of practical takeaways for technical writers looking to collaborate with communities facing redevelopment.

KEYWORDS:

• Archival technical communication research
• social justice/ethics
• urban planning communication
• narrative in technical and professional communication

Acknowledgements

The research for this article was funded through support from an Elo and Olga Urbanovsky Assistantship from the Urbanovsky Board of Trustees. The author would like to thank the Urbanovsky Board for their financial support and keen interest in this research. The author would also like to thank the two anonymous editors, Lisa Dush, Fernando Sánchez, , and Antonio Ceraso for feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In keeping with my institutional IRB linked to a series of interviews about this redevelopment project published in Elliott (2021), I have used a second set of pseudonyms to discuss the same redevelopment project, city, neighborhood, and local news sources, including Aguilar (2007).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Urbanovsky Board of Trustees.

Notes on contributors

Timothy J. Elliott

Timothy J. Elliott is an Assistant Professor at DePaul University in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse Department. He researches technical communication, local media, and engagement projects, often in urban planning settings.