Search Results

Community-led regeneration: learning loops or reinvented wheels?

Mike Rowe and Marilyn Taylor

in The politics of evaluation: Participation and policy implementation

This chapter examines the evidence-based policy discourse for assuming that there can be clear and uncontested outcomes from interventions, which can then be fed back into policy implementation. It ... More

This chapter examines the evidence-based policy discourse for assuming that there can be clear and uncontested outcomes from interventions, which can then be fed back into policy implementation. It explores the extent to which this rational process was achieved in two local regeneration initiatives established as part of the URBAN programme in Brighton and Nottingham. It concludes that the learning from the evaluation was limited to those directly involved and registers the disappointment felt by participants that the learning from URBAN was not taken on board by the New Deal for Communities (NDC). This is attributed to the determination of the NDC to start afresh without concern that they might be reinventing wheels and this failure to learn from past experiences as seen as a characteristic of the last thirty years of regeneration programmes in the UK.Less

New York Liberalism and the Fight against Homelessness

Ella Howard

in Making Sense of American Liberalism

This chapter uses the city of New York as a case study of the challenges facing liberals as they struggled to tailor their social policies to a political culture often hostile to public aid to the ... More

This chapter uses the city of New York as a case study of the challenges facing liberals as they struggled to tailor their social policies to a political culture often hostile to public aid to the indigent. It traces the interaction of liberal policy making and the fortunes of those on the margins of society over the second half of the twentieth century. The chapter examines efforts to reform the behavior of the homeless as well as campaigns to renovate the areas in which they lived. New York liberalism shaped the development of urban renewal programs, substance abuse treatment programs, and mental health reform, and studying homelessness through that lens lends insight into an understanding of both liberal compassion and its limits.Less

Power and Its Limitations

in Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer

The year 1966 marked a significant change in the attitudes of many Americans toward their government, including their representatives in Washington. Fading was the short-lived optimism that the ... More

The year 1966 marked a significant change in the attitudes of many Americans toward their government, including their representatives in Washington. Fading was the short-lived optimism that the federal government could solve all (or even most) societal problems. Nowhere was this change in attitude more profound than in the two areas to which Weaver had devoted his career. By the end of the year, the problems of race relations and the “crisis of the city” were merged. At the same time, the traditional liberal approaches to both these issues — the belief that professionally managed urban redevelopment programs could solve city decline and that legislation combined with professional mediation could overcome racial prejudice — were under attack. The Department of Housing and Urban Development's first year witnessed dramatic changes in the nation's understanding of these issues. As the nation's “urban czar” and its highest black official, Weaver was at the center of these conflicts.Less

Redevelopment Planning and Distributive Justice in the American Metropolis

Susan S. Fainstein

in Justice and the American Metropolis

This chapter examines the redevelopment policy, intended to improve the quality and efficiency of existing cities and of suburbs. It examines the forces shaping American redevelopment policy and its ... More

This chapter examines the redevelopment policy, intended to improve the quality and efficiency of existing cities and of suburbs. It examines the forces shaping American redevelopment policy and its outcomes. It then traces the history of government-sponsored redevelopment programs in the United States since the Housing Act of 1949, which set forth the federal Urban Renewal program. Redevelopment policy constitutes the principal place-targeted approach to bettering urban areas within the United States. Major programs for redevelopment have occurred under both local and national guidance and have involved a variety of strategies. Urban programs were envisioned as providing public investment so as to make cities competitive with suburbs and to replace dilapidated housing with high-quality residences.Less

The Choice Conundrum: Challenges and Opportunities for Voluntary School Desegregation Policy

Genevieve Siegel-Hawley

in When the Fences Come Down: Twenty-First-Century Lessons from Metropolitan School Desegregation

This chapter uses the school choice trajectories of four different districts to highlight how choice can be used to either promote or undermine school diversity efforts. It also draws upon the ... More

This chapter uses the school choice trajectories of four different districts to highlight how choice can be used to either promote or undermine school diversity efforts. It also draws upon the experiences of other school systems to illustrate how school choice might best in the movement toward educational regionalism.Less

Community Garden Interventions

Melvin Delgado

in Social Justice and the Urban Obesity Crisis: Implications for Social Work

This chapter focuses on community gardening as an intervention aimed at addressing obesity. Community gardens originally sprang up in the United States as a response to social and economic crises ... More

This chapter focuses on community gardening as an intervention aimed at addressing obesity. Community gardens originally sprang up in the United States as a response to social and economic crises dating back to the late nineteenth century. When these gardens are planted and cultivated by the community, they achieve a variety of key social, economic, political, educational, and health-related goals. A social justice perspective adds an important dimension to community gardens, particularly in its emphasis on community inclusion and participatory democracy. This chapter begins with a historical overview of urban farming before defining the phrase urban garden program. It then discusses the history of urban community gardening and potential pitfalls of community gardening. It also presents case examples that illustrate how community gardens facilitate comprehensive approaches that successfully allow health promotion to be conceptualized along a range of dimensions, including social justice-inspired change.Less

Atlanta’s Empowerment Zone

Michael J. Rich and Robert P. Stoker

in Collaborative Governance for Urban Revitalization: Lessons from Empowerment Zones

This chapter describes the advantages that Atlanta gained by competing for Empowerment Zones (EZ) designation. These included extensive experience with federal urban programs and a high profile ... More

This chapter describes the advantages that Atlanta gained by competing for Empowerment Zones (EZ) designation. These included extensive experience with federal urban programs and a high profile antipoverty initiative. Atlanta's EZ designation Housing and Urban Development (HUD) assistant secretary Andrew Cuomo called Atlanta “the Michael Johnson of Empowerment Zones,” a reference to the American sprinter who won gold medals. However, when its EZ activities had expired, Atlanta returned $29 million in unspent EZ funds to the federal government. The remainder of the chapter attributes Atlanta's poor EZ performance to the weaknesses and deficiencies of its local governance.Less

Community development: historical overview

Michael Pitchford and Paul Henderson

in Making spaces for community development

This chapter provides an overview of community development over the period of 40 years to provide a ‘backcloth’ for the changing practice of community development. The chapter begins with the 1960s ... More

This chapter provides an overview of community development over the period of 40 years to provide a ‘backcloth’ for the changing practice of community development. The chapter begins with the 1960s during which social work was prevalent and community development officers were first appointed within the local authority social work departments. The chapter then moves on to the radical campaigns of the 1970s and the challenging reports from the community development projects (CDPs). In the 1980s, community development suffered significant cutbacks. It was also a period marked by a move away from social services departments as the ‘sponsor’ of community development towards that of economic development. This was developed further in the 1990s with the urban regeneration programmes in which community development became intertwined with the community involvement aspects of regeneration programmes. By the turn of the twenty-first century, community development has gained a higher prominence with the New Labour government that highlighted the indispensable role of the community in improving public services and promoting local democracy. However, it has also brought with it tensions due to the lack of a community voice which is significant for the achievement and success of community development work. This chapter aims to refer to the main signposts in community development and to provide readers an essential background required for the book as a whole.Less

Community Development and Place-Based Neighborhood Change

Larry M. Gant

in A Twenty-First Century Approach to Community Change: Partnering to Improve Life Outcomes for Youth and Families in Under-Served Neighborhoods

Abstract: This chapter describes the model of community development used by the University of Michigan School of Social Work’s Technical Assistance Center (UMSSW/TAC). The chapter presents a ... More

Abstract: This chapter describes the model of community development used by the University of Michigan School of Social Work’s Technical Assistance Center (UMSSW/TAC). The chapter presents a definition and description of community development as a distinct model of community practice. The chapter discusses the goals of community development, core values and principles of community development. The chapter summarizes the role of place based initiatives in community development. The limits and challenges of discerning the evidence base of the effectiveness of community development are reviewed, and an emerging perspective of possibilities of evidence based community development is outlined. The chapter ends with thoughtful considerations about the tactical use of community development within municipal communities during Detroit’s more recent times of turbulent economic, financial and political change.Less

When technocracy met Marxism: community development projects in Britain

Akwugo Emejulu

in Community development as micropolitics: Comparing theories, policies and politics in America and Britain

This chapter analyses the competing discourses and identities within the Urban Programme’s Community Development Projects (CDPs) in Britain from 1968 to 1975. It explores community and development in ... More

This chapter analyses the competing discourses and identities within the Urban Programme’s Community Development Projects (CDPs) in Britain from 1968 to 1975. It explores community and development in the UK and how it should be understood primarily as an official institutional practice of the welfare state. Two discourses are identified in this chapter: The ‘Rationalist discourse’ that is constituted by the texts, language and practices of the Wilson Government’s Home Office and the Gulbenkian Foundation, and the ‘Structuralist discourse’ that is constituted by the texts, language and practices of those newly created professional community workers seeking to reconstruct the identity and practices of both the community development profession and the role of the state. What remains uncontested in each of the discourses is that the state and the professional – not local people – are constructed as the key subjects invested with agency and the central agents to achieve social change.Less