Erualdo R. González
Erualdo R. González is an urban planning and ethnic studies scholar. His research interests are housing and community development, neighborhood planning, planning and health, and urban politics and governance. He contemplates urban questions by examining these topics with social justice and equity, race, ethnicity, class, and immigration lenses, with an emphasis on Chicana/o-Latina/o communities. He is the author of Latino City: Urban Planning, Politics, and the Grassroots.
Subjects: Geography , Urban Planning, Urban Studies
Biography
Erualdo R. González’s research interests are housing and community development, neighborhood planning, planning and health, and urban politics and governance. He contemplates urban questions by combining his interests with social justice and equity, race, ethnicity, class, and immigration lenses, with an emphasis on Chicana/o-Latina/o communities. He is the author of Latino City: Urban Planning, Politics, and the Grassroots.Erualdo is intrigued with understanding how and why local community development practices and policies are made, implemented, and questioned, and associated transformative outcomes. His scholarship spans basic and applied traditions and includes mixed and community-based methods. He has over 20 years of national and state level evaluation and strategic planning experience of healthy communities and community building initiatives in communities of color and rural and urban settings.
González's book Latino City: Urban Planning, Politics, and the Grassroots provides an in-depth case study of new urbanism, creative class, and transit-oriented models of planning and their implementation in Santa Ana, California, one of the United States’ most Mexican communities. It provides an intimate analysis of revitalization plans re-imagine and alienate a place, and how community-based participation approaches address the needs and aspirations of lower-income Latina/o urban and central areas undergoing revitalization. The book provides a critical introduction to the main theoretical debates and key thinkers related to new urbanism, creative class, and transit-oriented models of urban revitalization. It is the first book to examine contemporary models of choice for revitalization of US cities from the point of view of a Latina/o-majority central city, and thus initiates new lines of analysis and critique of models for Latina/o inner city neighborhood and downtown revitalization in the current period of socio-economic and cultural change.
González has published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research and Environment and Planning A, among other journals. He has co-authored or authored Special and Supplemental Issues in Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability entitled Emerging Issues in Planning: Ethno-Racial Intersections, Preventive Medicine on Active Living, and the Californian Journal of Health Promotion examining health disparities in Latina/o communities.
Education
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Ph.D., University of California, Irvine, 2006
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Housing and community development, neighborhood planning, planning and health, urban politics and governance; Chicana/o Studies, Latina/o Urbanism; and program evaluation and community-based methods.
Websites
Books
Articles
Culture-led downtown regeneration or creative gentrification?
Published: Jan 04, 2017 by The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration. Oxon, UK: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 536-547
Authors: González, E. R. & L. Guadiana
This case study examines a culture-led regeneration project gentrifying a Mexican immigrant and working class downtown commercial district. We use mixed methods, including a survey of downtown businesses, to examine the where creative class type gentrifying businesses are most visible. One finding is that "creative gentrification" is encroaching from two sides of the Mexican, immigrant, and working-class commercial district and appears to be working its way inward.
Sorting through differences: The problem of planning as reimagination
Published: Mar 23, 2016 by Journal of Planning Education and Research (forthcoming article published OnlineFirst/ahead of print)
Authors: Lejano, R. P. and E. R. González
Subjects:
Geography
We examine the erasure of existing community and reimagination of an alternative one. This follows an evolutionary notion of development as ecological succession, involving the intersectionality of race, class, and other markers. This leads to a genitocracy built around systems of differences. We examine present-day redevelopment practice on the Southern California city of Santa Ana. We illustrate how differencing and rendering undermine the sociocultural fabric of authentic community life.
Emerging issues in planning: Ethno-racial intersections
Published: Jun 23, 2015 by Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, 20 (6) 600-610
Authors: González, E. R. and C. Irazábal
The need for increasing the publication output of faculty of colour becomes most apparent when we consider the inequities in numbers of faculty of colour in the planning academy compared to that of white faculty. This Special Journal issue encourages scholars of colour and provideds them the opportunity to publish, while expanding the academic literature on issues of concern to communities of colour and their allies.
The changing politics of Latino consumption
Published: Jan 01, 2015 by Race and Retail: Consumption Across the Color Line. Rutgers University Press, pp. 176-199
Authors: Londoño J. and E. R. González
We examine new urbanist and creative class redevelopment and consumption debates in the downtown core central city of Santa Ana in Southern California. We provide a case study to explore how New Urbanism and the creative class approaches to development foster ethnic and class controversy . The city is majority Latina/o and immigrant. We ask: what are the roles of ethnicity and class in city-wide debates about redevelopment in a Latino and immigrant commercial district?
The Active Living Research 2014 Conference: ‘Niche to norm.’
Published: Jan 01, 2014 by Preventive Medicine, 69, Supplement 1
Authors: Pollak, K., E. R. González, E. Hager, and J. Sallis
This Supplemental Issue brings together research and practice papers that were presented at the 2014 Active Living Research Conference. The papers highlight the movement from niche to norm of active living in different sectors, such as schools and built environments.
Urban revitalization and health justice: Questions and recommendations
Published: Jan 01, 2013 by Californian Journal of Health Promotion, 11(2), iv-vii
Authors: González, E. R. and M. Mouttapa
This editorial problematizes placed based initiatives in areas undergoing revitalization and gentrification.
Health disparities in Laitno communities
Published: Jan 01, 2012 by Californian Journal of Health Promotion, 10, v-viii.
Authors: Californian Journal of Health Promotion, 10, v-viii.
This is an introduction to a Special Issue on health disparities in Latino communities. I review key concepts that bring together the articles, such as health disparities, health equity, and social justice.
The grassroots and new urbanism
Published: Jan 01, 2012 by Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, 5(2-3), 219-239
Authors: González, E. R., Sarmiento, C. S., Urzúa, A, S., and S. Luévano
We examine the benefits and challenges of community organizing and action research for the types of needs in lower-income Latino urban areas undergoing New Urbanism. We use the case of Santa Ana, which recently released a plan for the Station District project to revitalize a transit-oriented area supported by a Mexican and working-class urban neighborhood. We examine how a coalition planned within and outside the public policy process in pursuit of a community benefits agreement.
Communities creating healthy environments to combat obesity
Published: Jan 01, 2012 by Californian Journal of Health Promotion,10, 88-98.
Authors: González, E. R., Villanueva, S., & C. N. Grills
Little research is available examining the successes and challenges of community organizing in Latino communities attempting to reduce obesity. Using process and outcome evaluation data, we present preliminary findings from a study of two community-based organizations that are making efforts to increase access to physical activity and access to healthy foods. The organizations are part of Communities Creating Healthy Environments, a national initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
New urbanism and the barrio
Published: Jan 01, 2009 by Environment and Planning A, 41(12), 2946-2963
Authors: González, E. R., and R.P. Lejano
There is a growing turn toward New Urbanism in the redevelopment of central cities. The City of Santa Ana released a New Urbanist plan to revitalize a transit-oriented district and government center supported by two neighborhoods. The plan exemplifies promotes mixed income neighborhoods and respect local culture. We use a case study to investigate these principles. We describe community-wide perspectives concerning ‘redevelopment’ and employ a textual analysis of the Renaissance Plan.
News
New book looks at redevelopment battles
By: Erualdo R. González
Subjects: Urban Planning, Urban Studies
http://www.ocweekly.com/news/csuf-professors-new-book-on-redevelopment-in-santana-8067114
Erualdo Gonzalez is chosen for television segment on gentrification
By: Erualdo R. González
I provide expert commentary on the history of Downtown Santa Ana's 1970s transition to La Calle Cuatro, a Mexican, immigrant, and working class commerical district. This interview was part of KABC Vista L.A.'s television segment exploring gentrification in neighborhoods throughout Southern California. This transtion and on-going gentrification form the basis of my book Latino City: Urban Planning, Politics, and the Grassroots.
Erualdo Gonzalez appears on public radio to debate gentrification
By: Erualdo R. González
Southern California Public Radio KPCC invited me to participate in a panel to deabte gentrification in Downtown Santa Ana's Calle Cuatro, which is the topic of my book Latino City: Urban Planning, Politics, and the Grassroots. The image is of the panel.
From KPPC's website: On August 19, as part of AirTalk’s 30th anniversary regional tour, Larry Mantle was at the Discovery Cube in Santa Ana—a city that is more than 78 percent Latino—to discuss gentrification and the struggle to preserve a community’s culture while also boosting business.
"Erualdo González studies gentrification in his native Santa Ana", OC Register
By: Erualdo R. González
The local newspaper Orange County Register profiled my research and upcoming book Latino City: Urban Planning, Politics, and the Grassroots.