Engineering Main Street: The Spatial Dimension of Organizations and Revitalization in Boston

Ph.D. candidate Taylor Cain, under the advisement of Professor Japonica Brown-Saracino, seeks to identify how place attributes (including income, racial/ethnic composition, and residential and commercial property values) influence the strategies for and consequences of revitalization in two geographically proximate Main Streets business districts in Boston.

Taylor Cain
Taylor Cain graduated in 2011 with a B.A. in the Science in Society Program from Wesleyan University. Taylor’s current project looks at how a national initiative for commercial revitalization complicates existing understandings of “local” business and “local” economy. More broadly, Taylor is interested in how neighborhoods get imagined, quantified and valued through commercial projects.

Presentations:

• “Competitive Streets: Do Market Driven Principles Take Over Neighborhood Revitalization?” American Sociological Association Section on Economic Sociology Mini Conference. August 2016.
• “Backstage on Main Street: The Organizational Mechanics of a Neighborhood’s Commercial Revitalization – (Boston).” The Dynamic City: Futures for the Past, Boston University. April 2016.
  2016.
• “Backstage on Main Street: Conflicting Logics of Commercial Revitalization.” Eastern Sociological Association Conference. March 2016.

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