From the Flats to the Future: New Report Shares Historical Data, Recommendations from West Side Community
After 18 months of deep listening with community and extensive data analysis, we were honored to join the West Side Community Organization (WSCO) last night for the public launch of our new report "From the Flats to the Future: Understanding Displacement on Saint Paul's West Side."
Today, many of us know the West Side Flats — an area on the west side of the Mississippi River in Saint Paul — as an industrial park targeted for redevelopment and intentional transformation. But before the warehouses and concrete, the West Side Flats was a vibrant community of diverse immigrants, persevering through municipal neglect to create homes, businesses and social networks. Sixty years ago these communities were forcibly displaced by the City of Saint Paul, replaced by the Riverview Industrial Park.
That intentional removal was not an isolated event. Long before the wave of migrants in the 1900s, the West Side Flats was the ancestral home of the Dakota people. They too were forcibly moved by the federal government to enclose the land as the state of Minnesota.
Our new report in partnership with WSCO reveals not only the specific actors and impacts of the West Side Flats removal but situates the event within ongoing cycles of displacement that have put economic gain ahead of community, time and time again. These cycles are not historic or in the past — they are present and active today, with urgent and imminent implications for the people living on the West Side.
In 2022, WSCO began conversations with representatives from the Saint Paul Mayor’s Office about accountability and redress for the West Side Flats displacement in the 1960s. In 2023, WSCO contracted with RIA to conduct an in-depth research process and innovative partnership to:
advocate for recognition and repair for the harm enacted against the families who were displaced from the West Side Flats,
bring into public memory the histories and truths of displaced families and their descendants,
build solidarity and neighborhood power to resist displacement caused by gentrification as the old West Side Flats are redeveloped and
make recommendations that inform WSCO’s West Side (10-Year) Community Plan.
“At Research in Action, we sat with community members, and co-developed strategies to preserve affordability and push for equitable redevelopment of the Flats,” says Dr. Brittany Lewis, Founder and CEO of research in Action. ”Community members described their visions for new development that serves them — including housing for seniors and people with disabilities, healthy grocery options, and the opportunity for people displaced from the West Side to return and live affordably."
Using our innovative mixed-method approach and Equity in Action process model, RIA translated community voice into actionable recommendations.
As Monica Bravo, WSCO's Executive Director, emphasized at the public report release: "We’re here to not only bring back into public memory what has been publicly forgotten, but to take a look at how this community is going to stand up and get the things we deserve because of the harms that have been done in the past."
Read more in the full report or Executive Summary — and take action with WSCO through their From the Flats to the Future campaign.
