Did Locked In, Locked Out, change your perception of Puerto Rico and its people? What insights did you gain/acquire?

As I describe in my book, there is an intimacy that I brought to my research that made my relationship to the idea of “discovery” very different. One of the chapters I wrote—on gardens—was completely unexpected. What the book did was reveal the many ways in which the home and neighborhood spaces we inhabit are used and deployed to sustain race and class distinctions and inequities. But the book did not really change my perception of Puerto Rico and its people. It mostly showed me that people get very creative in supporting inequality, and that they do it in seemingly imperceptible ways.

In your book, you discuss two interrelated methods of gated communities: the first is the method in which middle-class and upper-class residents deliberately gate themselves in via private security guards and the building of walls and gates; the second—perhaps a more pervasive—method is one where the State intentionally gates—or “traps in”—working-class or society’s least desirables by surrounding them with gates and fences and controlling access to these public spaces. Can you please provide us with a succinct discussion of this matter for those readers who have yet to pick up your book?

Most people think gated communities are those neighborhoods where the rich put up a guard or have an electronic gate. These gates are seen as only operating in service of those who reside there. What I try to explain in the book is that there are multiple “gates,” varied functions of the gates, and that they are pervasive and are often erected for or against low-income communities of color. These gates may not necessarily be physical or obvious (as they are in the ones in the book), but they may still exist structurally--in regulations, in policies, and in practices. The gates are paramount in sorting, segregating, and keeping inequality. In the neighborhoods I study, public housing residents spoke of being locked in by the gates, while the privileged spoke about who was being locked out. Gates look both in and out and operate with varying but complementary logics. This ultimately informs opportunities and access.

What is your next research project?

I have a number of projects going on. I am working on a book that looks at real estate practices in a “Latino” and a “Black” neighborhood in Brooklyn to understand how built environments and space are manipulated to justify increasing property values. I am especially interested in how race is manipulated in those formulations. I am also working on a book on planning in Puerto Rico and the international reaches of those programs in Puerto Rico. This project may end up changing with Maria, as I contemplate how those planning practices that I have researched have then resulted in the current disaster.

I had planned to write the real estate book first, followed by the Puerto Rico planning book. That may change, as I figure out how to become actively involved in the rebuilding of a 2.0 Puerto Rico. My aspiration has always been to do more than research, to be engaged in policy and applied research, which is why I have urban planning and policy degrees in addition to the sociology degree. Last year, I became a board member of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and that has been rewarding and a way to reach beyond the research and the writing to the lives of people. Going forward, I’m trying to keep that commitment to myself.

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