Constructing Professional Knowledge: the Neighborhood Unit Concept in the Community Builders Handbook
Constructing Professional Knowledge: the Neighborhood Unit Concept in the Community Builders Handbook

Author: Jason S. Brody

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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This dissertation concerns the diffusion of Clarence Perry0́9s Neighborhood Unit concept between 1929 and 1969. It is grounded in a discourse analysis of the use of the Neighborhood Unit concept in the literature of twenty professional and governmental organizations. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, the Neighborhood Unit was influential primarily in advancing the changes in development practices advanced by Adams and institutionalized by the FHA: planning and development by district rather than by lot, provisioning of infrastructure concurrent with subdivision, inclusion of community functions in residential development, and a hierarchical street system with arterial roads at the unit0́9s edge. Other aspects of the concept 0́3 Perry0́9s advocacy of home owners associations, for instance 0́3 had less of an impact. I argue that a pragmatic view of professional knowledge is necessary to understand this history. A pragmatic view of knowledge helps explain the Neighborhood Unit concept0́9s roles as a boundary object communicating information across professional communities and as a lever of change catalyzing the adoption of new practices, regulations, and ways of thinking. Perry0́9s Neighborhood Unit concept was a leading idea in urban planning and development in America in the twentieth century, but it was less a paradigm then a leading meme that evolved along with the practices it addressed.

Beyond the Neighborhood Unit
Beyond the Neighborhood Unit

Author: Tridib Banerjee

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1984-09-30

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0306415550

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Much of the research on which this book is based was funded almost a decade ago by separate grants from two different agencies of the U. S. Public Health Service, of the then still consolidated Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The first grant was from the Bureau of Community Environmental Management (Public Health Service Research Grant J-RO J EM 0049-02), and the second from the Center for Studies of Metropolitan Problems of the National Institute of Mental Health (Public Health Service Grant ROJ MH 24904-02). These separate grants were necessary because of budget cuts that truncated our original effort. We were fortunate to receive subsequent assistance from NIMH to conclude the research, as it is doubtful that a project of the scope and intent of our effort--even as completed in abbreviated form-will be funded in the 1980s. The original intent of this project, as formulated by our colleagues Ira Robinson and Alan Kreditor, and as conceptualized earlier by their predeces sors-members of an advisory committee of planners and social scientists ap pointed by the American Public Health Association (APHA)-was to rewrite Planning the Neighborhood, APHA's recommended standards for residential design. In particular, it was proposed that the new study take the point of view of the user in terms of residential standards. Hitherto, the private sector had domi nated these considerations (i. e. , the designer's predilections, the requirements of builders and material suppliers, and lenders' needs for mortgage security).

Social Life and Development in Hong Kong
Social Life and Development in Hong Kong

Author: Ambrose Y. C. King

Publisher: Chinese University Press

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9789622013377

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The papers in this volume, prepared by social scientists with different specializations, address selected aspects of Hong Kong's post-War development.