Criminalized Landscape: Oakland's Historically and Socially Constructed Image of Criminality

I distilled over 400 spatial analyses into a summary set of compelling maps and graphics and presented them to a committee of professionals from a diverse set of disciplines, each of whom commented on my ability to clearly articulate my project and conclusions. A brief summary is below, though the full text is freely available.

One aim of my thesis was to define a criminalized landscape, which came to be:

A criminalized landscape is reified in the imaginations and conceptions of the public, as a place where criminal activity may or may not actually occur and is a place where control mechanisms are instituted as a result. It is spatial with definitive, yet varied, physical attributes.

The abstract is quoted below for the entire project is as follows:

This thesis is about the criminalized black and Latino landscapes of Oakland. It is my contention the political and corporate dynamics of the last century and a half produced perpetually criminalized landscapes, through mechanisms of discrimination (relating to people), control (relating to activity), and segregation (relating to space). Our current understanding of criminalization refers to people and activities, but there is no explicit definition of criminalization as it relates to space, therefore, the first step was to define a criminalized landscape. The method for defining criminalized landscapes involved extensive review of material regarding those who shape the urban landscape at an institutional level, as well as those who shape it at the individual level. Simultaneously, this method has contributed to the second aspect of the thesis. Using the definition as a point of departure, key historical moments in the development of Oakland were revealed to describe Oakland’s history of criminalization. The next step was to spatialize those historical moments, and test the relationship between history and contemporary incidents, discretionary police stops, through regression analysis. Finally, through remapping and rethinking the criminalized landscape, images of past and present Oakland merge to formulate a vision for decriminalized landscape future. The goal of the thesis was to produce a work that both revealed and speculated. The revelations are too important to ignore, but are also too complex to consider fully in one project. Therefore, after a process of identifying and quantifying criminalized landscapes, I will propose a future scenario to assist landscape architects and planners in imagining possibilities that could change outcomes for the people of color who reside there.

This thesis had four steps. The first was to define a criminalized landscape. The second was to narrate a criminalized landscape that exists in reality: Oakland, CA. This narrative pointed out alterations and demarcations to the built environment that were done in the name of reducing crime: criminalization. Then, I mapped these alterations and demarcations in order to run a statistical analysis testing a hypothesis that any area with a longer history of criminalization also had more police stops. This hypothesis is strongest when considered among all demographics and among African Americans. Finally, I collaged a reconfiguration of Oakland to rethink the criminalized landscape.

The work was inspired by Dr. Victor Rios’ Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys.