The foundation of this project draws from a large academic base of place making literature to explore one particularly overlooked form of public art: busking. This research includes contextual background in a short literature review analyzing the history of busking in Seattle, a variety of place making tactics, and other literature looking at how they intersect. My methodology outlines a qualitative look at how busking is perceived by both performers and the public. Through a collection of interviews with important stakeholders, an analysis of local and national policy, and a personal exploration of spaces that buskers perform, I am sharing a personal, qualitative story of busking in Seattle. I interviewed ten buskers, to learn about the busking experience firsthand, and ten alternative sources to get an idea of how these experiences are perceived. This project enlightened me on how the public, the performers, and the city perceive busking culture. By sharing this project in a magazine as a human-interest story, citizens of Seattle can better access, connect with, and identify with these important human experiences.

Cultural festivals provide the opportunity to share and celebrate ideas, values, art, food, etc. from the heritage of other homelands. Aside from other smaller gatherings, these mass public festivities are typically held only once a year. With such a limited window for this type of cultural sharing, it is ideal that people of the represented community share fully their experiences of their culture and have the accommodating infrastructure to do so to increase cultural competency. Creating inclusionary spaces that allow cultural expression and celebration is termed cultural placemaking. After reviewing issues in Journal of Planning Education and Research from 2017-2010 I discovered that cultural placemaking was well intentioned but was not well reported or practiced. This is an issue when communities are projected to increase in density and in diversity. It is important for planners and city officials to know the significance of public spaces that allow for cultural expression in order to increase community development and cohesion as communities continue to grow. Through literature review, attending several festivals in Seattle, and interviews of students and festival participants, cultural festivals can provide a deeper understanding of culture instead of perpetuating stereotypes. The purpose of this project is to reintroduce the significance of cultural festivals to planners and city officials in the form of a white paper that also provides some suggestions to help local festival coordinators increase local participation, community support and create meaningful experiences for both visitors and people with cultural heritage.

The Black Lives Matter movement is arguably the most popular social movement of the twenty first century. Black Lives Matter protests and rallies have occurred in almost every major city in America. Scholars from all disciplines have examined the movement on the national and global scale. However, very few academics dare to explore Black Lives Matter operating on the local scale and if it works towards community development. In the small, previously segregated and historically black neighborhood the Central District, Seattle, Black Lives Matter shapes into a movement against gentrification at the intersection of 23rd and Union. Swallowed by aggressive development and rising property taxes, the Central District utilizes Black Lives Matter to combat racial displacement brought on by gentrification. My research investigates if the Black Lives Matter movement informs politics on race and gentrification on 23rd and Union, Central District. The research structures a theoretical framework around new urban social movement theory, critical race theory, gentrification, and growth machines and regimes to understand if Black Lives Matter works to combat white supremacy rooted in the built environment. My study goes beyond understanding systems of power through qualitative methodologies. Local residents are not simply framed as victims of the local white elite but as members of a community resisting displacement. Semi-structured interviews served as a platform for local residents to reshape the geographic imagination of the Central District. In addition, a cognitive mapping project reflects Central District residents’ sense of territoriality and preserves local knowledge. Shifts in residential population are measured using Markov Chains and displayed at the block and block group levels. My research fills gaps within the discipline of geography by intersecting race, gentrification and social movements.

The city of Seattle has experienced immense urban change. Over the past 15 years, we see companies expanding, neighborhoods evolving, and populations being displaced. Recently, sociologists have discovered that neighborhoods that were traditional oases for queer life and living, including neighborhoods in Seattle, have experienced losses in the queer population. The body of research emerging on this topic largely credits this to a greater public acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities which have reduced barriers that kept queer populations from living in other areas. Though many public sources of information, news sites, blogs, and forums, propose gentrification of these neighborhoods as the force driving queer people from their homes. Between 2000 and 2012 Seattle’s traditional gayborhood, Capitol Hill, has seen a significant decrease in same-sex couples, according to the US census. With Amazon and other tech companies expanding into the Capitol Hill neighborhood and subsequent rising rents in that area, it may be the case that queer people can no longer afford to live in the gayborhood has made itself known in Seattle. In this research project I examine the motives for why queer people leave Capitol Hill through a series of interviews with LGBTQ+ people who are moving out of Capitol Hill. These interviews will provide insight into how gentrification and greater acceptance of LGBTQ+ people and other social factors may play a role in this new form of urban change.

The city of Seattle currently finds itself in a state of emergency in reference to a growing number of people experiencing homelessness. In 2016, 4,505 people in King County were identified as living outside, and 6,183 living within the shelter system. While some in Seattle struggle to meet their most basic needs, others thrive in the economic growth of the cloud computing industry. Many tech workers are moving to Seattle to take these high-skill, high-paying jobs, and are subsequently reshaping neighborhoods and local economies. Historically, people experiencing homelessness have been forced out of Seattle’s gentrifying neighborhoods through processes of banishment. Banishment is defined as the legal removal of individuals from specified urban spaces for extended periods of time, and operates through police policies that criminalize activities associated with the poor. In recent years, many of these policies have been abandoned or deemed unconstitutional in the city of Seattle. Regardless, there appear still to be sanctioned spaces for homelessness and spaces where it is mysteriously absent. I have conducted series of interviews with people experiencing homeless in a rapidly gentrifying Seattle neighborhood. My sample includes individuals of a wide range of backgrounds and forms of homelessness to reveal the complex ways in which identity and homelessness intersect. Through analysis of response content, I have identified common themes that illuminate the social interactions that take place between housed and homeless community members throughout the process of neighborhood gentrification. These findings may help us to understand social forces that influence the migration of people experiencing homelessness between Seattle neighborhoods, and to understand broader concepts of the exclusion, seclusion, and accumulation of urban poverty. Results from this research may also help inform the provision of social services for people experiencing homelessness.