Uneven development and the anti-politics machine: Algorithmic violence and market-based neighborhood rankings

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of supposedly objective algorithms in producing uneven urban spaces through market-based neighborhood rankings. Focusing on the Market Value Analysis (MVA), we argue that municipal governments' failure to explicitly account for the racialized and class-based production of urban space in ranking algorithms hinders their capacity to foster equitable and vibrant neighborhoods. Instead, these algorithms deepen existing inequalities and reinforce market-based approaches to neighborhood typologies and spatial organization, effectively serving as tools for capital accumulation. Through a comparative analysis of the Market Value Analysis (MVA) and historical Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps across 10 cities, we illustrate how the MVA preserves wealth while simultaneously producing poverty in certain areas to benefit affluent landowners. We argue that the MVA typology, presented under the guise of technological objectivity, functions as part of an anti-politics machine that depoliticizes and institutionalizes race- and class-based housing segregation. By positioning city residents as "customers" and aligning government spending with market-driven priorities, the MVA algorithm places profit motives above the immediate needs of vulnerable communities. Consequently, it perpetuates and amplifies existing disparities in urban geographies, reinforcing racial capitalism through ostensibly "objective" market-based approaches to public policy. Toward realizing a more equitable and just future, our findings challenge claims of the objectivity of technical planning products and instead elucidate the role algorithms can play in the differential valuation of urban territory.