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The problem of homelessness in America underpins the definition of an American city: what it is, who it is for, what it does, and why it matters. And the problem of the American city is epitomized in public space. Mean Streets offers, in a single, sustained argument, a theory of the social and economic logic behind the historical development, evolution, and especially the persistence of homelessness in the contemporary American city. By updating and revisiting thirty years of research and thinking on this subject, Don Mitchell explores the conditions that produce and sustain homelessness and how its persistence relates to the way capital works in the urban built environment. He also addresses the historical and social origins that created the boundary between public and private. Consequently, he unpacks the structure, meaning, and governance of urban public space and its uses.
Mitchell traces his argument through two sections: a broadly historical overview of how homelessness has been managed in public spaces, followed by an exploration of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence that expands our national discussion. Beyond the mere regulation of the homeless and the poor, homelessness has metastasized more recently, Mitchell argues, to become a general issue that affects all urbanites.
About the author
Don Mitchell is an ecological anthropologist, writer, book designer, and photographer who lived among the Nagovisi people of Bougainville for several years in the 1960s and 1970s, and returned in 2001 after Bougainville's war of secession.
He grew up in Hilo, on the island of Hawai'i, and graduated from Hilo High School. He studied anthropology and creative writing at Stanford and earned a PhD in anthropology from Harvard.
For many years he was a professor of anthropology at Buffalo State, a unit of the State University of New York.
In his non-academic life, he was a dedicated marathon and ultra-marathon runner and a professional road race timer (operating as Runtime Services). He continues to tackle long distances on foot, though much more slowly.
He lived in Buffalo and later in Colden, New York, before moving back to his childhood home in Hilo, where he lives with the poet Ruth Thompson.
He published an academic book and articles about Nagovisi, but in the early 1990s returned to writing fiction and poetry. His stories have won praise from many quarters, including a Pushcart nomination and awards from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology, New Millennium Writings and other journals.
He has been an Artist in Residence for the City of Portales, NM, and in 2019 shared (with Ruth Thompson) the Jack Williamson Visiting Professor of English Chair at Eastern New Mexico University.
He is actively involved in matters concerning Mauna Kea, Hawai'i's tallest and most contested mountain.
