Remaking Place and Asserting Space: The Land Trust Experience in Winter Park, 1991-2010__Ep 3: The Making of a Theortical Framework

Photos by Kelsey Von Wormer












The Plan for Winter Park








Allison England and I continue our efforts to understand the CLT experience in Winter Park. We can say firmly--there is a complex story related to housing policy and local story. We continue to deepen our understanding of local story. Recently, we took a walking tour around Hannibal Square. As the images can attest, the physical layout of the community tell a story about development on the "other side of the tracks." There are a number of possible avenue we can take to highlight, understand, and explain the Winter Park experience. Incorporating the established literature on race and housing, we can place the local African-American experience within a broader regional perspective. Recently Allison reviewed Andrew Wiese's work and noted the “domestic service employment suburb” that housed “shopkeepers, mechanics, industrial workers, and the servants who made it possible for white residents to "live comfortably in the palatial homes" within whites communities he identified in his research relates easily to the Winter Park experience. In addition, we have considered the work of Gwendolyn Wright and Dolores Hayden to understand the social implications associated with the home. Our analysis has established a strong culture of property ownership for African-Americans and the implications of that culture on perceptions about community continue to shape resident's perceptions, even as broader economic, social, and political changes have worked to marginalize Hannibal Square.

For me, as a historian of urban planning history, I can see how traditional tensions over race and class framed Winter Park's development. As we move forward I think our research will allow us to explore the link between community, policy, and the home. As we currently struggle over the effort to promote middle-class homeownership, the history of this type of policy offers important lessons. Key to this analysis in my opinion is how the assumptions about property and public policy practice at the turn of the century--social control, order, and modernity were refined in significant ways by municipalities throughout the twentieth century. In Florida, the importance of modernity, consumer consumption, and the socialization of space play a crucial part shaping perceptions of the lived experience. Winter Park's story can and will inform our understanding of the American housing experience.