Framing Struggles: How Race, Class, and Space Shape Perceptions of Rezonings among Residents and State Actors

Although zoning changes are a common policy tool for addressing housing affordability concerns, the political struggles they spark are underexplored. Drawing on in-depth interviews, archival research, and observations of virtual public hearings, this article fills this gap by comparing the participatory rezoning process in two New York City (NYC) neighborhoods between 2014 and 2021. City officials, community advocates, and residents from these communities, with different class and racial compositions, engaged in framing struggles over the motivations and expected effects of these rezonings in the context of a citywide housing crisis and rampant gentrification. By advancing the concept of Situated Policy Narrative Frames (SPNFs), I argue that place-based policies, such as rezonings, present three tensions that engaged actors must make sense of: spatial, social, and temporal. I demonstrate that, to resolve these tensions, proponents and supporters used a technocratic frame, while opponents used a populist frame. Engaged actors also used justice and neighborhood change frames in both cases, although with striking differences based on each neighborhood’s socio-spatial characteristics.