Explores Milwaukee, Wisconsin's use of community Geographic Information Systems (GIS) using long-term ethnographic research. Overall, the effects of GIS and other digital technologies are quite varied across different community organizations, influenced strongly by factors such as leadership quality, organizational capacity, and resourcefulness in…

Interviewed 257 impoverished, urban public housing residents regarding how empowerment, sense of community, and neighboring behavior affected the likelihood of their engaging in discussion about community issues directly affecting their lives and the lives of their neighbors. Overall, sense of community and neighboring behaviors predicted…

Considers (1) how judicious planning and administration of public parks in urban areas can act to bridge racial divisions; and (2) how park administrators can, by creating neighborhood parks, give new focus to neighborhoods and prevent their further deterioration. (Author/GC)

Redlining of many urban communities and discrimination against the poor and minorities are common in the insurance industry, and these practices contribute to the deterioration of those communities. The utilization of a structural/disinvestment approach by social scientists should provide additional information about the uneven development of…

The potential of the community development corporation (CDC) as a vital component of inner-city development politics is explored and its limitations are outlined. In some neighborhoods, nonprofit CDCs have helped build an alternative social production process and have advanced a new and progressive development regime. (SLD)

This paper examines the attempts to rebuild downtown Detroit. Two models for redevelopment are examined: (1) the use of private sector investment as exemplified by the Renaissance Center Complex; and (2) the "solidary neighborhood" model, which involves the use of community labor and participation. The "Renaissance model" of…

In 1974, residents of East Humboldt Park, one of the oldest working class communities in Chicago, Illinois, gathered together in a common effort to reverse the process of urban decay and deterioration in their community. With the help of a hired consultant, the citizens planned the future of their community, a process that was completed in 1976,…

The paper describes the Moss Side District Centre (MSCD), a community development project in the inner city of Manchester, England, the problems and struggles associated with it, the social consequences of the MSDC, options for social change, and the need for community action. (MF)

Recent urban redevelopment efforts in Chicago (Illinois) have often come at the expense of current low-income residents as upscale living replaces businesses and homes and raises rents. Local Community Development Organizations (CDOs) offer an alternative path to economic development by being a foundation for neighborhood efforts that meet the…

Gentrification, or the return of the middle class to renovated inner-city neighborhoods, is forcing out the aged and minority poor who can no longer afford the higher cost of housing in those areas. This has created the problem of a population of mostly Blacks and ethnic groups. (Author/MJL)

Presents a case analysis of the effects of an enterprise zone program and its potential to revitalize a seriously distressed community. For Black communities, such as Decatur, IL, programs were found to have only a minimal effect. Graphs of findings included. (PS)

The lives of poor minority city residents demonstrate the diversity, multiple potentials, and vulnerability to external structures. In spite of the stereotypes of failure and the very real problems of the urban poor, there are many strengths among the so-called urban underclass and there are aspects of life that are successful and productive. In…

The suburbanization of employment is examined as a key change in metropolitan settlement structure. Settlement structure refers to the physical landscape of the city and the social landscape of boundaries and routes. The study seeks a middle ground between the breadth of a national study and the depth of a local study. Conditions that characterize…

Metropolitan land use change, with a specific focus on the processes of participation and conflict over neighborhood development, is discussed. The resource paper is part of a series designed to supplement existing texts and to fill a gap between research and accessible materials in geography. Part I deals very generally with the implications of…