Race, Religion and the Contested Convivial: A Pittsburgh Case Study

This paper focuses on the role of community and religious organisations in urban regeneration initiatives in two neighbourhoods in the city of Pittsburgh. Drawing on fieldwork data gathered during the first year of the Trump presidency the paper focuses on the struggle of African American communities to engage in regeneration whilst attempting to resist gentrification and largescale displacement in their communities. At the same time that local communities are engaged in struggles for their neighbourhoods, developers, politicians, entrepreneurs, local and federal policy makers also have plans for these urban landscapes, hoping to transform them into mixed income, multicultural spaces of conviviality. Relations of power, of trust, of local democracy and accountability come to the fore in these contexts and the paper reflects on the implications of these relations for convivial and equitable community development in the city and beyond.