The Chicago Housing Authority s Plan for Transformation repudiated the city s large-scale housing projects and the paradigm that produced them. The Plan seeks to normalize public housing and its tenants, eliminating physical, social, and economic barriers among populations that have long been segregated from one another. But is the Plan an ambitious example of urban regeneration or a not-so-veiled effort at gentrification? Is it resulting in integration or displacement? What kinds of communities are emerging from it? Chaskin and Joseph s book is the most thorough examination of the Plan to date. Drawing on five years of field research, in-depth interviews, and data, Chaskin and Joseph examine the actors, strategies, and processes involved in the Plan. Most important, they illuminate the Plan s limitations which has implications for urban regeneration strategies nationwide."
An assessment of the relationship between race and poverty in the United States, and potential solutions for the issue. Renowned American sociologist William Julius Wilson takes a look at the social transformation of inner-city ghettos, offering a sharp evaluation of the convergence of race and poverty. Rejecting both conservative and liberal interpretations of life in the inner city, Wilson offers essential information and several solutions to policymakers. The Truly Disadvantaged is a wide-ranging examination, looking at the relationship between race, employment, and education from the 1950s onwards, with surprising and provocative findings. This second edition also includes a new afterword from Wilson himself that brings the book up to date and offers fresh insight into its findings. Praise for The Truly Disadvantaged “The Truly Disadvantaged should spur critical thinking in many quarters about the causes and possible remedies for inner city poverty. As policymakers grapple with the problems of an enlarged underclass they—as well as community leaders and all concerned Americans of all races—would be advised to examine Mr. Wilson’s incisive analysis.” —Robert Greenstein, New York Times Book Review “The Truly Disadvantaged not only assembles a vast array of data gleamed from the works of specialists, it offers much new information and analysis. Wilson has asked the hard questions, he has done his homework, and he has dared to speak unpopular truths.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “Required reading for anyone, presidential candidate or private citizen, who really wants to address the growing plight of the black urban underclass.” —David J. Garrow, Washington Post Book World
Despite the best hopes of the past half century, black urban pathologies persist in America. The inner cities remain concentrations of the uneducated, unemployed, underemployed, and unemployable. Many fail to stay in school and others choose lives of drugs, violence, and crime. Most do not marry, leading to single-parent households and children without a father figure. The cycle repeats itself generation after generation. It is easy to argue that nothing works, given the policy failures of the past. For Lewis D. Solomon, fatalism is not acceptable. A complex and interrelated web of issues plague inner-city black males: joblessness; the failure of public education; crime, mass incarceration, and drugs; the collapse of married, two-parent families; and negative cultural messages. Rather than abandon the black urban underclass, Solomon presents strategies and programs to rebuild lives and revitalize America’s inner cities. These approaches are neither government oriented nor dependent on federal intervention, and they are not futuristic. Focusing on rehabilitative efforts, Solomon describes workforce development, prisoner reentry, and the role of nonprofit organizations. Solomon’s strategies focus on the need to improve the quality of America’s workforce through building human capital at the socioeconomic bottom. The goal is to enable more people to fend for themselves, thereby weaning them from dependency on public sector handouts. Solomon shows a path forward for inner-city black males.
This volume documents the continuing growth of concentrated poverty in central cities of the United States and examines what is known about its causes and effects. With careful analyses of policy implications and alternative solutions to the problem, it presents: A statistical picture of people who live in areas of concentrated poverty. An analysis of 80 persistently poor inner-city neighborhoods over a 10-year period. Study results on the effects of growing up in a "bad" neighborhood. An evaluation of how the suburbanization of jobs has affected opportunities for inner-city blacks. A detailed examination of federal policies and programs on poverty. Inner-City Poverty in the United States will be a valuable tool for policymakers, program administrators, researchers studying urban poverty issues, faculty, and students.
Michael Porter has argued that a sustainable economic base can be created in the inner city only if it has been created elsewhere: through private, for-profit, initiatives and investment based on economic self-interest and genuine competitive advantage-not through artificial inducements, charity, or government. Porter's ideas have prompted endorsement as well as criticism. More importantly, they have inspired a search for new solutions to inner city distress as well as a reassessment of current approaches. The Inner City defines a core debate in the United States over the future of a racially divided urban America. It is of inestimable importance to policy analysts, government officials, African American studies scholars, urban studies specialists, sociologists, and all those concerned with inner city revitalization.
This book covers all the main aspects of government policy and practice in British inner city regeneration. Chapters deal with the development of policy, agencies for regeneration, housing, social issues. The UK edxperience is compared with that of other countries, particularly the USA, and past achievements and future prospects are considered. This book was first published in 1982.
Tracey Meares and Dan Kahan have performed a great public service....[They have] opened up a major debate on a promising idea about how to keep streets safe without throwing out essential legal safeguards. If you live where I live, you know that's a life-and-death issue. --The Reverend Eugene F. Rivers, 3d, from the Foreword Through a searching examination of the constitutional and moral issues of community policing, Tracey Meares and Dan Kahan challenge us to reconsider our ideas about how to fight urban crime and about the role of rights in a democracy. Activists and legal scholars-including Alan Dershowitz and Jean Bethke Elshtain-offer spirited responses. "The New Democracy Forum series is a civic treasure....A truly good idea, carried out with intelligence and panache." --Robert Pinsky The New Democracy Forum is a series of short paperback originals exploring creative solutions to our most urgent national concerns.
Following the restructuring process which swept away the traditional manufacturing economy of the inner city 25 years ago, new industries are transforming these former post-industrial landscapes. These creative, technology-intensive industries include Internet services, computer graphics and imaging, and video game production. The development dynamics of these new sectors are volatile in comparison with those of the classic ‘Industrial City’. But these new industries highlight the unique role of the inner city in facilitating creative processes, innovation and social change. Further, they reflect the intensity of interaction between the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ in the metropolis, and represent key agencies of urban place-making and re-imaging. This book addresses the critical intersections between process and place which underpin the formation of creative enterprises in the emergent industrial districts of the ‘new inner city’. It contains intensive case studies of industrial restructuring within exemplary sites in prominent world cities such as London, Singapore, San Francisco and Vancouver. The studies demonstrate the global reach of development and innovation across these cities and sites, marked by clustering, rapid firm turnover, and interdependency between production and consumption activity. The evocative case studies, brought to life by interviews, sequential mapping exercises, media narratives, and photography, also disclose the importance of local factors (including urban scale, built form, property markets and policy) which shape both the specific industrial structures and socio-economic impacts. The New Economy of the Inner City places inner city new industry formation within the development history of the city, and underscores its role in larger processes of urban transformation. The findings inform a critique and synthesis of urban theory which frame the evolving conditions of the 21st century metropolis. This book would be useful to researchers and students of Geography, Urban Studies, Economics and Planning.
Neighborhood-based initiatives -ranging from settlement houses in the nineteenth century to the Community Action and Model Cities program of the Great Society to the Empowerment and Enterprise Zones of the 1990s -have been called on to help solve a variety of poverty-related problems. This book examines the history of these initiatives.
