UC San Diego

Gentrification and development in urban and rural spaces overlap on the economic prospect of renewal and investments in undesirable spaces, yet at face value these processes appear distinct due to historic understandings of urban and rural space and their land use. How land is used, in both urban and rural areas, has determined the type of labor required to maintain a predetermined land use. For places like the Coachella Valley, the focus of this study, investments in a white spatial imaginary have determined the mainstream understanding of developmental discourse. As a result, this continues to marginalize immigrant communities through a direct denial of essential infrastructure despite the need for immigrant labor to maintain white spatial imaginaries. In addition, immigrant communities in rural areas are forced to assimilate through the economic opportunities that are created through development that support the exclusive leisure class. Gentrification and development of white spatial imaginaries have taken root in the desert areas, even in the face of extreme climate catastrophes. Undeterred by the exclusionary forces of luxury development, immigrant communities have moved towards civic engagement at public hearings to steer community development towards a public health lens. White spatial imaginaries in the Coachella Valley deny the complex histories of underrepresented Latinx immigrant communities who shape and maintain rural lands. Community testimonios in public hearings become sites for knowledge production that build anti-gentrification and environmental justice movements that center public health over economic development. My ethnographic methods include the use of oral histories and literary analysis to explore how immigrant justice movements counter rural gentrification through zines, theater, and public hearings. I analyze public hearing testimonios and collaborate with community organizations in policy writing to support housing and environmental justice policies that impact the immediate needs of disadvantaged rural immigrant communities in Riverside County. The practice of organizing around public hearings reveal how immigrant community members of all ages will make their communities visible to stall the negative impact of development for exclusive white leisure spaces.