Turning TRIC: A Feminist View of Land Tenure from Brothel to Block Chain

Keywords: Urban Geography, City Planning, Feminist Geography, Nevada
Session Type: Virtual Paper
Day: Thursday
Session Start / End Time: 4/8/2021 09:35 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada)) - 4/8/2021 10:50 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 23

Abstract

The Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, more commonly referred to as TRIC, in Storey County, Nevada has a storied history indeed. Located just twenty miles east of the California border and spanning more than one hundred thousand acres of arid Great Basin, no other place in America can trace its sequent occupance from the native Paiute people, to the infamous Mustang Ranch brothel, to the largest industrial development in the world. The TRIC political economy is controlled entirely by powerful men who have institutionalized neoliberal federal, state, and local land use policies that exploit women in the planning process. With minimal regulatory entitlements and environmental permitting, TRIC attracts a cadre of Silicon Valley technology elite looking to build grand and build fast, most notably construction of imposing Tesla Gigafactory 1. Future regional expansion plans call for buildout of a 67,000-acre blockchain utopia only furthering inequitable domination of the desert landscape.