Contesting the City: How Divergent Imaginaries Produce Tucson

This research explores downtown redevelopment in Tucson, Arizona to investigate who is imagined as the constituent for the redeveloped spaces of downtown Tucson. Drawing from various cases (primarily between 2010-2013), this study resonates with significant contributions of urban geographers to understand the ways that various forms of urban governance, placed subjectivities and political economy help to produce U.S. cities. This research provides a trialectic understanding of forces shaping downtown redevelopment, powers of: social memory; city policies and mechanisms; and economic investment. These forces constantly appear throughout the remaining pages and are informed by each other at times in reactive ways while in other moments in conciliatory ways. Each of these forces--social memory, city policies and mechanisms, and economic development--circulate within a complex of social relations and each, in varying ways (re)produces administrative and institutional norms and juridical regulations

The Streetcar Effect: Capital, Revitalization and the Battle over Gentrification in a Sunbelt City

This dissertation investigates how, after three decades of failed attempts to revitalize Tucson’s downtown, reinvestment increased rapidly amid the Great Recession and the elements that seemed to have coalesced to build momentum. The findings presented herein center on the early stages of contemporary gentrification and redevelopment to expand our analysis of those state actions that create the possibilities for each. As such, this dissertation expands on our understanding of the economic cycles that lead to gentrification by looking specifically at actions fostered by the state that create the possibility for profit in Tucson’s downtown. The political priorities and possibilities envisioned by governments and quasi-governmental agencies shape the scale and content of redevelopment in Tucson’s downtown. Through these three central papers, findings demonstrate that active state intervention in the property market plays a critical role in both producing the conditions for redevelopment and spurring downtown investment. Specifically, public incentives function as gap financing (Appendix A), allowing local developers to gain construction loans in a credit-constrained city. In the case of investment attributed to the streetcar (Appendix B), much of the purported $1 billion in investment is from public coffers to the disadvantage of actual transit riders. Finally, these more contemporary actions are rooted within a long history of property dispossession in the United States, a process supported by the state against racialized peoples – a process that is maintained, in part, through patterns of uneven development that foster redevelopment and displacement (Appendix C). Taken together, these three papers extend the theorization of the so-called entrepreneurial state and the new techniques to channel public investments in a way that drives tax revenues into a pauper-state’s coffers. Yet, these moves are not simply about the state’s role in driving innovative redevelopment schemes. Rather, these papers discuss what’s at stake in urban revanchism as well as, and through, the on-going pathologization of nonwhite land and property.Release after 22-May-202

Drawing the Line: Spatial Strategies of Community and Resistance in Post-SB1070 Arizona

In North America, and globally, the topics of immigration and immigration policy have become among the most divisive fault lines of political struggle and debate. In this paper, we reflect upon the State of Arizona's embrace of the "Attrition Through Enforcement" (ATE) doctrine as exemplary of contemporary U.S. anti-immigrant policies that target the social reproduction of non-citizens. Reflecting on ATE and movements against it, we argue for the inadequacy of scholarly and activist approaches that would normatively deploy frameworks of "citizenship" or demands for "no borders" to articulate the stakes and composition of contemporary immigration struggles. Borrowing from political scientist Joel Olson and his concept of "democratic Manichaeism," we argue instead the imperative to radically confront and unsettle the normative divisions between citizen and non-citizen that anti-immigrant actors and policies would police. Through two case studies in Tucson, Arizona, we examine the possibilities and challenges related to mobilizing such a Manichaean framework through the quotidian spaces of everyday life. We conclude by proposing "community composition" as both a political agenda and a methodological framework through which to attend to everyday geographies of belonging and exclusion while confronting the normative political categories that structure the nation-state and justify its violence.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Drawing the Line: Spatial Strategies of Community and Resistance in Post-SB1070 Arizona

In North America, and globally, the topics of immigration and immigration policy have become among the most divisive fault lines of political struggle and debate. In this paper, we reflect upon the State of Arizona's embrace of the "Attrition Through Enforcement" (ATE) doctrine as exemplary of contemporary U.S. anti-immigrant policies that target the social reproduction of non-citizens. Reflecting on ATE and movements against it, we argue for the inadequacy of scholarly and activist approaches that would normatively deploy frameworks of "citizenship" or demands for "no borders" to articulate the stakes and composition of contemporary immigration struggles. Borrowing from political scientist Joel Olson and his concept of "democratic Manichaeism," we argue instead the imperative to radically confront and unsettle the normative divisions between citizen and non-citizen that anti-immigrant actors and policies would police. Through two case studies in Tucson, Arizona, we examine the possibilities and challenges related to mobilizing such a Manichaean framework through the quotidian spaces of everyday life. We conclude by proposing "community composition" as both a political agenda and a methodological framework through which to attend to everyday geographies of belonging and exclusion while confronting the normative political categories that structure the nation-state and justify its violence.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Increased soluble urokinase plasminogen activator levels modulate monocyte function to promote atherosclerosis

People with kidney disease are disproportionately affected by atherosclerosis for unclear reasons. Soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR) is an immune-derived mediator of kidney disease, levels of which are strongly associated with cardiovascular outcomes. We assessed suPAR’s pathogenic involvement in atherosclerosis using epidemiologic, genetic, and experimental approaches. We found serum suPAR levels to be predictive of coronary artery calcification and cardiovascular events in 5,406 participants without known coronary disease. In a genome-wide association meta-analysis including over 25,000 individuals, we identified a missense variant in the plasminogen activator, urokinase receptor (PLAUR) gene (rs4760), confirmed experimentally to lead to higher suPAR levels. Mendelian randomization analysis in the UK Biobank using rs4760 indicated a causal association between genetically predicted suPAR levels and atherosclerotic phenotypes. In an experimental model of atherosclerosis, proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin–9 (Pcsk9) transfection in mice overexpressing suPAR (suPARTg) led to substantially increased atherosclerotic plaques with necrotic cores and macrophage infiltration compared with those in WT mice, despite similar cholesterol levels. Prior to induction of atherosclerosis, aortas of suPARTg mice excreted higher levels of CCL2 and had higher monocyte counts compared with WT aortas. Aortic and circulating suPARTg monocytes exhibited a proinflammatory profile and enhanced chemotaxis. These findings characterize suPAR as a pathogenic factor for atherosclerosis acting at least partially through modulation of monocyte function