The following excerpt is adapted from “Dismantling the Master’s Clock: On Race, Space, and Time” (AK Press) by Rasheedah Phillips, a lawyer, Afrofuturist writer and the director of housing and land justice at PolicyLink.

Gathered with about a hundred others amid the early morning chill of North Philadelphia, I watched as a part of the city’s history was about to be erased. Two out of the three Sharswood-Blumberg towers, which had been part of the Norman Blumberg Apartments, a half-century-old public housing complex, were set for demolition on that day in March 2016.

As the towers imploded and then crumbled, so did a piece of the Sharswood community’s heart. These buildings, though stigmatized as symbols of poverty and crime, were home to generations of families. Their destruction was emblematic of a broader, often-overlooked narrative: how urban renewal initiatives, driven by promises of progress and revitalization, can perpetuate cycles of displacement and racial inequity.

“Life as we know it is going to change,” Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) president Kelvin Jeremiah said before the demolition. But at what cost to the community’s fabric and history?

The plan to replace the towers with new residential and commercial developments, including PHA’s new headquarters, was a microcosm of urban redevelopment’s impact on communities. It raised critical questions about who benefits from such plans and at whose expense. The acquisition of over 1,300 properties, many through eminent domain, underscored the tension between development and displacement.

Temporalities of gentrification, displacement, and redevelopment in marginalized communities represent a convergence of time, space, and socioeconomic dynamics. These processes often condense time, accelerating changes in the community fabric at a pace that is disorienting to the established rhythms of life. This rapid transformation can starkly disrupt the shared experiences of time and history within a community. These communal temporalities are deeply rooted in collective memories, traditions, and the lived experiences of residents, forming a vital part of the community’s identity.

Such urban redevelopment often leads to the erasure of public memory. Historical buildings, local landmarks, or cultural hubs that hold communal significance are demolished or repurposed, effectively erasing physical reminders of the community’s past. This loss extends beyond physical structures; it represents a severance of the community’s connection to its history and a disruption in the transmission of collective memories and identities.

These redevelopment processes also foreclose access to the temporal domain of the future for current residents. This means that as neighborhoods are gentrified, the original inhabitants often find themselves alienated from the future development of their own community. They may face displacement due to rising living costs or find that the evolving neighborhood no longer reflects their cultural and social needs. The intentions behind redevelopment, whether for affordable housing, market-rate, or luxury developments, do not necessarily mitigate these temporal disruptions. Even well-intentioned efforts can result in adverse effects if they fail to consider and respect the existing temporalities and histories of the communities involved.

Philadelphia, which for many years consistently ranked highest among the top ten most impoverished big cities in America, is a place where gentrification and racialized segregation have manipulated the landscape of Black communities, working to push residents to the edges of the city where they become locked into temporal-spatial ghettos. Housing instability in particular impacts some areas of the city more than others.

North Philadelphia — the 19121 ZIP code in particular — is where the highest percentage of the city’s poor, Black, and Hispanic residents live in what is called “racially concentrated poverty.” It is also where the city’s highest levels of evictions and displacement occur. In this area of the city, inequalities related to poverty are magnified. The poverty rate in Philadelphia in 2016, was 26%; while in the 19121 ZIP code the poverty rate was at 52.5%.

In the 19121 ZIP code, disparities starkly divide the community. As certain neighborhoods within the boundaries of 19121 suffer from increased poverty, poor health, and crime, other parts are swiftly transitioning through gentrification. Deteriorating homes, vacant lands, and uninhabitable properties make land deals cheap for out-of-town developers who then demolish the old to erect luxury dwellings and properties priced well above the market average.

As Warren McMichael, a lifelong resident of this ZIP code who grew up on Sharswood Street, told me of the pace of North Philly: “I never realized it was going to move at the pace it moves at now. I think it moves rapidly. With all the development that’s going on. I own another property. I get, every week, cards from developers, realtors, wanting to buy my property.”

Sharswood, a predominantly Black neighborhood, in 2015 became a focal point for eminent domain and extensive redevelopment initiatives spearheaded by the city and the PHA. Sharswood spans an “arrowhead-shaped” locale bounded by Girard and Cecil B. Moore Avenues, stretching from 19th to 27th Streets. At its heart once stood three towering high-rises and fifteen low-rise, multi-unit dwellings known as the Norman Blumberg Apartments, inaugurated in 1966 under the stewardship of the PHA.

In this compact region, the city’s disparities in poverty are accentuated. While Philadelphia’s median household income in 2016 stood at $41,449, Sharswood’s median income plummeted to $23,790, witnessing a near-28% decrease from 1999 to 2013.

In 2013 PHA received a grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which they used to develop and implement the 2015 Sharswood-Blumberg Neighborhood Transformation Plan, a $500+ million redevelopment project that involved the execution of eminent domain and demolition of 1,300 properties in the neighborhood and the demolition of two high-rises housing nearly 500 families, as well as several dozen low-rise public housing units owned and managed by PHA.

Although new affordable housing was desperately needed in the area due to significant neglect and a backlog of repairs of the public housing stock, the plan required homeowners, renters, and businesses to be temporarily and permanently relocated, while historic properties of great cultural significance were demolished, sold, or rendered unusable by neglect.

Sharswood’s historical narrative unfurls against a backdrop of transformative epochs, beginning as part of a larger tract of farmland known as the Penn District, with Ridge Avenue, its eastern boundary, serving as a Lenape trail before European settlement. The neighborhood owes its name to George Sharswood, a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania who once resided in the area. By the 19th century, Sharswood had evolved into a streetcar suburb offering residence to Irish and German brewery workers (for which the adjacent neighborhood, Brewerytown, is named).

The early 20th century marked a significant demographic shift, with Sharswood becoming a hub for African American culture during the Great Migration. Notable residents included James B. Davis of The Dixie Hummingbirds and artist Dox Thrash. The area around Ridge and Columbia Avenue became renowned for its jazz clubs and nightlife, attracting legendary musicians like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Odean Pope. The brief residence of Malcolm X in 1954, during his tenure as a minister for the Nation of Islam, further adds to the neighborhood’s historic significance.

The Norman Blumberg Apartments, named for a prominent Philadelphia AFL-CIO Council chapter president, were constructed as a mixture of three high-rise towers and 15 low-rise apartment buildings totaling 510 units from 1966–67. The neighborhood had, just two years before, experienced a riot in which its residents were effectively cut off from all resources and had their homes stripped of all value.

In 1964, during a period of race riots and Black uprisings across the United States, the Columbia Avenue Riot lasted two days and occurred along a business and residential district that ran through Sharswood. The riot utterly devastated what had been a thriving community of local business owners, artists, and activists of all backgrounds and ethnicities. Most of the district’s businesses, such as theaters, grocery stores, restaurants, and furniture stores, could not recover from their losses, and business activity in North Philadelphia declined.

The neighborhood continued to experience significant challenges, including a decrease in population, the impacts of deindustrialization, and a reduction in economic investment, contributing to its status as one of Philadelphia’s most impoverished areas, characterized by extensive property vacancies and a notably high incidence of violent crime.

To an observer from the outside and judging solely by the socioeconomic conditions of the neighborhood, it may appear as if time stood still within the Sharswood community. The conditions of the neighborhood today are parallel to the socioeconomic stagnation of 1960s North Philadelphia when public housing was first built in the area. The socioeconomic backdrop during the 1964 race riots highlights the disparities; the average yearly income then was $3,352, about 30% below the city’s overall average. Unemployment rates fluctuated between 13% and 20%, particularly affecting youth and laborers at a range of skill levels.

A more nuanced scrutiny of the temporal practices within the neighborhood reveals a deliberate orchestration of intercommunal temporalities — shared communal understandings and negotiations of time that diverge from mainstream linear conceptions. Time has been dynamic in this community — that is, until PHA, HUD, Philadelphia City government and other government agencies began to accelerate time through the Transformation Plan and the swift, external injection of capital over five decades too late for the despairing community. Despite the residents’ proactive engagement through civil unrest, the civil rights movement, and local organizations, these efforts were overshadowed by a top-down imposition of time and space that disregarded the neighborhood’s layered temporal tapestry.

Urban redevelopment and gentrification are not merely physical transformations but also temporal interventions. They disrupt established temporalities within communities and impose new temporal orders that prioritize future potentialities aligned with capitalist values. This imposition erases the existing temporal narratives of communities and individuals, especially those rooted in resistance to capitalist exploitation and marginalization. By seizing spaces and predetermining futures, these interventions deny residents the right to define their own temporalities and futures, effectively erasing their histories and potential legacies.