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This paper examines and interprets the contrived cycle of disinvestment and reinvestment in Bronzeville—the original settlement area of Blacks in Chicago. The historical, political, economic, and social policy of confinement and segregation in Chicago created a high concentration of public housing in Bronzeville. Data reveal that the disinvestment process in Bronzeville correlates with the concentration of public housing. As the cost of local, state, and federal practices to maintain and concentrate public housing in Bronzeville increased, a new public policy of housing demolition to create mixed income housing development, coupled with the decline of Chicago's manufacturing base and subsequent rise in the information and consumption-based economy, sparked reinvestment. Our data show how the rent gap is linked to the process of disinvestment and reinvestment by contrived and planned strategies to ill-develop and redevelop Bronzeville. Under the rhetoric and language of being concerned for the well-being of the urban poor, the primary goal of downtown Chicago and other public and private interests is to reclaim urban space for the creation of a middle and White upper-class elite consumer base in Bronzeville, as well as a space of cultural consumption for tourists. This process entails interlocking linkages between local, state, and federal resources tied to private developers, banks, savings and loan companies, and local media to construct a local growth machine to ultimately weed out the urban poor and minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results of the Black Metropolis Model of service learning are analyzed and illustrated in this paper to explain how to ?put the learning in service learning.? There are many soup kitchens or non-transforming models of service learning where high school, university and college students are asked to serve needy populations but internalize and learn little about the service in their service learning. The results of a successful transforming model of service learning, research, student and community empowerment is presented to demonstrate how to put the learning in service learning for all students. The model integrates community institutions, residents, university faculty, staff, and undergraduate and high school students in hands-on service learning experiences that document changes in public and private housing, commercial development, and culture and class lifestyle conditions in the Black Metropolis of Chicago since the last half of the twentieth century. As the neighborhood experiences rapid gentrification, a reciprocal and collaborative model of service learning offers students and community people unlimited participation in photo documentary and demographic analysis, community survey analysis, oral histories of public housing residents, and an ongoing analysis of the changes occurring along the major commercial strips in the community. The Black Metropolis model of service learning empowers high school and college students, community residents, institutions, and organizations with information and knowledge relevant to understanding the uneven development occurring in the community. The results reveal that the information and knowledge acquired by students in the Black Metropolis Model transforms student knowledge as they internalize how uneven development in housing impacts community residents and their future in the original Black Metropolis of Chicago since the last-half of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]