Virgin Beach is globally celebrated for its shimmering resort hotels, wide boardwalks, and pristine neighborhoods. However, this immaculate landscape was built on layers of systematic land theft, forced displacement, and serial gentrification. This project exposes the historical processes that privatized a shared coastal heritage.
Long before European colonization, the Chesapeake and Powhatan peoples stewarded this coastal paradise. The foundation of Virginia Beach’s real estate began with the violent expropriation of their ancestral lands.
Following Emancipation, formerly enslaved Black Americans established thriving, self-sustaining coastal communities like Seatack. As seaside tourism boomed, aggressive gentrification and eminent domain erased their footprints.
From direct, affordable railroad transit connecting urban workers to the ocean, to high-speed luxury car corridors and gated enclaves. Explore how Virginia Beach's transportation design served as an economic barrier.
The contemporary resort geography of Virginia Beach is not an accident of nature; it is the physical architecture of exclusion. From the original theft of Indigenous Powhatan and Chesapeake lands, to the mid-century gentrification that systematically dismantled Black wealth in Seatack and Croatan, the city has continually shifted its boundaries to enclose high-value property for exclusive, affluent developments.
Today, as high-speed express lanes, gated complexes, and luxury parking restrictions line the coast, the oceanfront stands as a private yard for the privileged few. By restoring these forgotten histories, we hope to challenge the sanitized narratives of seaside leisure, revealing the structural inequalities embedded deep beneath the shifting sands.