Search

This article uses the case of Baltimore's 21st Century School Buildings Program (21CSBP) to investigate the potential of leveraging a school facilities investment for community development. We find that school facilities investments have the potential to catalyze community development along four domains: social, institutional, economic, and physical. However, existing market conditions and community trust and social cohesion can facilitate or constrain whether and how schools catalyze community development. Leveraging school building investments for community development hinges on a clear vision and staff capacity for implementation. Finally, definitional, geographic, and jurisdictional divides between school districts and city agencies can complicate the potential for cross-sector connections at the neighborhood level. Our findings underscore the possibilities of school facilities investments and community schools for supporting community development and affirm the deep-seeded challenges that stakeholders face to work as collective stewards of a shared social agenda for school and neighborhood change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, cities have experienced dwindling state resources and growing socioeconomic inequalities—many scholars have identified this change as neoliberalism. Although these changes have generated much debate, not a lot of scholarship has tried to present alternatives. This article uses the Westside Leadership Institute (WLI) in Salt Lake City, Utah, as a case study to understand what can be done at low cost to address historically disadvantaged communities and improve their conditions. Through leadership development, participants develop cognitive, interpersonal, and strategic skills. They also form a symbiotic relationship with anchor institutions, a Community Development Corporation and the University of Utah. Using data from interviews, focus groups, and surveys, this article examines how residents have applied what they learned in the WLI to create social change at the local level. Although small-scale community development, the WLI has proven to be effective at building and sustaining indigenous leaders, who in turn push a progressive agenda forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-sector partnerships, and collective impact, in particular, have gained increased attention as community-level strategies for tackling wicked, complex, social challenges such as child maltreatment. To date, there has been limited independent research on collective impact, especially in non-metropolitan areas with limited capacity. This case study examines the conditions that supported the development of a collective impact effort in a non-metropolitan community to address child wellbeing. It finds that small communities offer strengths that support collective impact as a social innovation as well as challenges that create vulnerabilities to outside influence that may stymie the development of locally developed social innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Placemaking is a form of public engagement that impacts community development by building social capital, motivating public policy, and shaping real estate development. Popular across public-focused industries, placemaking permeates strategies for community development. This project seeks to elucidate the extent to which community development-centered institutions engage in placemaking and for what reasons. The institutions of focus in this study are community development corporations (CDCs). Employing a survey of CDC associates, the data reveal that placemaking is, in fact, a well-known and oft-practiced strategy among CDCs for myriad reasons – among them an alignment and reliance on local assets – all with the ultimate end of developing communities across the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of a theory to explain why people are motivated to volunteer could be used by community groups to assist in the recruitment of volunteers. The current study was designed to test two aspects of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as a predictor of volunteer behavior. The first aim was to examine the utility of the TPB to predict volunteer behavior in Australians over the age of 18years. The second aim was to examine a revised TPB to assist in decreasing the gap between intent to perform behavior and actual behavior performance (intention-behavior gap). Questionnaires were designed to evaluate the two aims of the study and were distributed to 144 individuals from a range of social backgrounds. The TPB is useful as a predictor of volunteer behavior, although there was no evidence that the revised TPB resulted in a decrease of the intention-behavior gap. The conclusions and implications of the findings in respect of both aims are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New models for urban revitalization continue to emerge as the community development movement evolves. This article discusses a study that explored the formation and activities of a unique community development corporation (CDC) that is situated within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, a part of the Roman Catholic Church in America. It begins with a look at how churches have historically served both anchoring and mediating functions in cities. The discussion then turns to the structure and nature of the archdiocesan CDC, particularly examining the challenge of applying a traditionally place-based model in an institutional context spanning a five county region. Recommendations emphasize deeper citizen participation with the CDC and the codification and adoption of a formal process to secure and then adaptively reuse vacant church properties to advance urban revitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is considerable confusion surrounding the social change goal of community development practice. Academics tend to be doubtful of the social change content of current practice while institutional evaluators struggle to find the conceptual basis to measure the social gains from revitalization initiatives in poor communities. The critics and the experts may be looking at the wrong data. The findings of interviews with the directors of community development corporations (CDCs) provide the basis for a coherent explanation of community-based social change that corresponds well with related civic research and new social movement theory. The author finds that the social change insight of practitioners has important implications for curriculum design, knowledge development, and the measurement of success in community development practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review takes Rebuilding Communities as a starting point to survey the community development literature, the community development field, and external environmental factors, in order to examine what has happened over the past fifteen years to shape the context in which urban community development corporations (CDCs) now operate. This paper is both a bounded literature review and an environmental scan. We identify categories of changes and influences on the community development field. We find that in the last fifteen years, the community development field has grown increasingly professionalized. Policy initiatives have also shaped the field. New evaluations of community development have been conducted and published. We now know much more about the potential and limits of CDCs than we did when the Rebuilding Communities (RC) study was launched in the late 1980s. At the same time, significant gaps in our knowledge of the community development field remain. In particular, there has been insufficient study of how the changes in this context have affected the work that CDCs do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the impact of two long-term community development corporations (CDCs) in Cleveland, Ohio, both of which influenced their communities and the greater Cleveland metropolitan area for over two decades. These two community development corporations were considered the most successful in the city. As a case study, the research team of investigative scholars at Cleveland State University used a variety of neighborhood indicators, as well as a set of measures derived through in-depth interviews with focus groups and key stakeholders. Although it is not possible to establish direct causal connections, the evidence presented points to clear improvements in both neighborhoods that are attributable in part to the efforts of these two community development corporations. But for their efforts, conditions in both neighborhoods would have been much worse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of citizen participation in community development corporations (CDCs). It is argued that CDCs are caught between two distinct forms of participation: instrumental participation that focuses on activities that support project and program activities of CDCs, and grassroots participation that focuses on expanding the role of citizens in local decision-making processes. A continuum based on these two forms of citizen participation is introduced. It is suggested that CDCs are often in the middle of the continuum where they must balance pressures to expand the scope of grassroots participation against the need to use citizen participation techniques to facilitate project and program implementation. The article is based on a series of in-depth interviews with the executive directors of CDCs in Detroit, Michigan. Recommendations growing out of the research focus on how the tendency toward conflicts between the instrumental goals of CDCs and the long-standing value of grassroots activism can be managed better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers and practitioners routinely discuss the impact of urbanization, globalization, fiscal retrenchment, and service devolution on rural livelihoods. These wide-scale transformations have prompted the search for alternative modes and mechanisms of community development. Over the past decade, interest in community economic development (CED) has grown significantly in various parts of rural Canada. CED constitutes a comprehensive, integrated approach to economic and social revitalization that calls upon local residents, leaders, and organizations to assume more active roles in all aspects of the development process. In Manitoba, government and community representatives view community development corporations (CDCs) as important vehicles of CED, particularly through the enhancement of community capacity. The present paper examines the degree of interconnectedness between core aspects of the CED framework and the emergent role(s) of CDCs. This goal is addressed through the discussion of relevant literature and questionnaire data gathered from representatives of 55 rural Manitoba CDCs. The results of the study indicate that CDC mandates and activities reflect CED principles such as multi-sectoral initiatives, community involvement, strategic planning, and inter-organizational partnerships. And, although there is growing recognition of the social development agenda, CDC functions are heavily focused on business and economic development. The CDC model offers important opportunities to integrate economic renewal with other types of community capacity building: leadership development, collective action, and inter-organizational relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]