RE/GENERATION BARRIO LOGAN:
A Place-based Audio Tour of Transitions and Continuities from 2007-2013

When I began this project in 2007, I remembered back to when family members in LA would share stories of homes being in the way of construction for Interstate 5. I will never forget thinking how one’s home could be bulldozed for the sake of urban expansion. So when I noticed that more than half of the 1700 block of Logan Avenue was to be uprooted, I instantly grabbed my camera and began documenting the changes as they unfolded.

La Entrada

Track 1 »

A Local's History

Track 2 »

Tres Generaciones

Track 3 »

Take it as is

Track 4 »

Voz/Public

Track 5 »

Erasing Local Color

Track 6 »

Environmental Justice

Track 7 »

The Spot

Track 8 »

Future Barrio

Track 9 »

About the Project

In its original format, Re/Generation Barrio Logan is a place-based mobile-app walking tour. It explores an alternative narrative to gentrification based on a 7-year study of urban development in San Diego’s Barrio Logan. Triggered by the decade-old Petco Park Baseball Stadium, ballpark encroachment has transformed the barrio into a hip industrial arts district.

For over a hundred years, the barrio has experienced destructive changes in land use as a result of unjust city zoning. However, a history of racialization coupled with the Chicano arts movement made Barrio Logan into a rich cultural landscape. As the neighborhood is once again threatened by displacement, the community is eager to hold on to the place they have made their own.

Today, local residents mobilize to fight against the usual displacement caused by urban development, in favor for urban change to benefit the community. This project captures this phenomenon through photography and recorded conversations to investigate both the transitions and continuities of a community that refuses to be dismantled by outside forces.

Credits

Interviewees

  • Hector Villegas
    Lifelong barrio resident and artist
  • Delia Chavez and son Richard Chavez
    Lifelong barrio residents
  • Miki Iwasaki
    Co-founder of The Bakery and Sherman Heights Resident
  • Georgette Gómez
    Former resident and Associate Director of the Environmental Health Coalition’s (EHC) Toxic-Free Neighborhoods Campaign
  • Carlos Beltran
    Gallery Curator for Voz Alta
  • Dago Arias
    Owner of Ye Olde Town Pump
  • Maria Moya
    Environmental rights advocate and former EHC employee
  • Gary Leslie
    Shipyard worker and former resident
  • “Roberto”
    Local auto shop employee
  • Milo Lorenzana
    Owner of The Spot, now La Bodega Gallery & Studios
  • La Bucky
    Former Gallery Manager for The Spot
  • Brent Beltrán
    Current resident, activist, and writer for San Diego Free Press

Production

  • Frida Ibarra
    Digital music composition for tracks 8 and 9
  • Rigo Lara
    Voiceover translation for track 6
  • Freddy Ibarra
    Voiceover translation for track 7
  • Jeannette Ibarra Shindell
    Photography, oral interviews, digital music compositions for tracks 1-7, audio mixing, writing, voiceover, and web development

Thank You

This project was part of my MFA thesis at San Diego State University (2014). There, I want to thank John Putman, Roberto Hernández, Richard Keely, Irene Lara, and my thesis chair, Kim Stringfellow. And of course, none of this would have been possible without those who participated, a million thanks.

Funding for project was made possible by the Clara De Escudero Scholarship in Chicano Studies.