Military Pasts, City Futures: The Transition of Brooks, San Antonio from Military Base to a Peri-Urban Mixed-Use Development

Keywords: Property, property transfer, urban studies, finance, city planning
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Through a case study of Brooks — a former military base turned mixed use development in San Antonio, TX — this paper explores some of the ways military landscapes are reconfigured through gendered and racialized urban planning to shape city futures. Given increasing military base transitions across the US, Brooks may become a national model for urban development. Techniques used at Brooks involve strategies that are emblematic of contemporary urban planning in the US, such as property ownership structures involving public-private partnerships and new kinds of financing mechanisms. Urban geographers have demonstrated that such practices have the potential to exacerbate race, class, and gender inequalities. Given additional research that shows how the military influences local economic development, cultural aspects of city life, and the built environment in the US, the Brooks site offers an opportunity to understand how urban development takes shape. The paper will specifically illustrate how financial and policy practices have corresponded with physical changes, property ownership, and land value at the site. My analysis brings together Critical Property Studies, Cultural Geography, and Urban Studies with feminist theory to analyze data collected through interviews, archival research, and participant observation. Situated in the US South, a region underrepresented in Urban Studies, this paper, and the larger dissertation project it is a part of, contributes to scholarship that examines how urban development works and who benefits in addition to work that interrogates relationships between cities and the military.