In “Communities Develop”, James DeFelippis and Susan Seagert offer deep insights into the role as well as the inner workings of the concept of “community”. Their ideas on the function of communities, and how these may exist within a modern, urban setting, are different from anything we have discussed so far.  DeFelippis and Seagert propose that the role of community should not exist within the urban setting, as urbanization acts as a strategy for capitalist growth. These communities within urban centers then act upon consumerist routines which ultimately buy right back into capitalism.  This chapter then touches on what may arise when a community’s needs are not being met by this model, “community development”, as the the focus of O’Connor’s chapter, as well as the seeming context of this class.

Alice O’Connor’s chapter instead focuses in on the rise of community development, and how it has been a response to issues, namely poverty, that arise within individual communities. O’Connor is a Professor of public policy, and focuses specifically on social policy regarding poverty. Public Policy, according to this chapter, is at war with the actual needs of community,  and reinstates issues of poverty, segregation, and general lack of well being. Federal spending then cannot simply repair all the damages within communities as a result of rapid industrialization and growth. Limited government interference is what puts into question the role of development as a volunteer effort rather than a federal responsibility, or what constitutes “public” and “private”. America has this strange culture which associates “private” as something exclusive, and valuable, which goes further to promote two tier urbanism, as well as the exclusion of low income and minority populations from planning processes.  O’Connor also cited the New Deal as a failed federal strategy to revive communities. The New Deal, as a large scale project to revive local economy,  was not specific enough in what funding could be used for. In not citing where the funds would be allocated, the New Deal worked as a means of attaining home ownership and upward growth for Americans. This plan was only viable for the middle class, and its goal of revitalizing struggling communities was not met.  Later on, urban renewal would be the developed strategy to “cure the problem of  poverty”  within cities.

These articles helped lay the groundwork for what we are currently studying. They put the current situation of cities as well as the economic divide into context.

Today we began our more conceptually oriented part of the semester, by talking about the theory and practice of community development.  We discussed the central contradiction with which many scholars and activists are concerned, and that underlies the struggles of all your community contacts: (Place-based) Communities are necessary for our current mode of production/political economic system (global capitalism) to function; but that very system is making it increasingly difficult for communities to function- its priorities are not on meeting human needs or cultivating relationships that help meet those needs, but rather on economic growth and expansion.  As capitalism grows and expands, place-based communities have less and less control over the means of production (the materials, relationships, and practices) used to produce capitalist goods and commodities) and of social reproduction (the materials, relationships, and practices) used to take care of, educate, etc. ourselves and each other, aka the labor force).

The readings for today provide an overview of this contradiction, and how it has been shaped historically by public policies and community development practices.  The chapter by James DeFilippis focuses specifically on the issue of community control (over production and social reproduction), which can be seen in the context of today’s readings and discussion as both necessary and impossible- to achieve, institutionalize, inscribe into policies, infuse into organizing, etc. in order for things to change.  As the semester goes on, we will keep coming back to these contradictory concepts and dynamics in terms of why they persist and what can be done about them, through the readings and your group projects.

Redeveloping and revitalizing communities is primarily a responsibility of the government for its people. Ironically, blighted communities that seem to need the most assistance to combat poverty and the negativities it entails receive it the least. Community development through public assistance, public housing, and public projects has not been sufficient and brought about social stigma. These projects planned out by committees mainly consisting of the elite overshadowed neighborhood interest and forced a Robert Moses style planning approach. The creation of CDC’s was meant to return control to communities but as funding was cut more severely it became a business interest. The pattern with poorer neighborhoods seems to be that the lack of a strong political foothold causes them to lose out on their own planning.
More affluent neighborhoods can follow a Jane Jacobs approach to community planning because of privately sourced funding. Private capital has become of utmost importance in the age of neoliberalism for getting ahead. The New Deal reforms that promoted home ownership and low interest loans served as a boost for the middle class after the Depression but those in deeper poverty were not helped. This again shows the disparity between political influence. The government chose to invest in the communities that appeared to be more promising but left the poorer areas on their own. Post war surplus introduced urban renewal which catered again to an upper class interest.
In the second chapter one of the conclusions was that in order for members of poorer communities to break the poverty cycle their best option is to move out. In the film “El Barrio” there was one member of the Latino community who was more successful and thus able to move into a more expensive development. This changed his perspective on impoverished communities when he spoke about the public housing that was right outside of him. This serves to show how the solution is not clear and despite historical and ongoing efforts of various organizations these demographic differences still exist.

James DeFilippis and Alice O’Connor both make compelling arguments about the current state of communities versus urban cities. Capitalist urbanization allows privately owned businesses and owners to control the movement and growth of the population. They focus on having a high density for a larger profit, thus forcing poorer communities and people out of their houses, which are replaced by unaffordable replacements. Forcing these people out destroys the communities themselves, the values they held, and the history behind them. The people who are forced out also lose their livelihood.  Having a community that you belong to gives you a sense of self, it provides shelter, safety, and nurturance.

Communities mean so much to the people living in them, but they don’t to developers and current public policy. Large-scale policies “undermine” the small sections and their ability to survive. So what can be done? Alice proposes a few ideas that can be key to seeing communities not only survive, but grow. If the government is more involved in the policies surrounding housing, building, zoning, etc. then there will be protection for the lower income, minority communities that are often overlooked and neglected. The only problem is that privately owned buildings/ land cannot be easily controlled by the government.

In order to protect these communities the government must balance their budget with “antipoverty” policies that promote smaller living spaces and the people that call their community home.

James DeFilippis starts the first chapter off by explaining that communities shouldn’t exist today. This is because according to social theorists, capital urbanization disrupts smaller-scaled, interdependent relations that communities are made of. Over time, cities would become so complex that there would be no need for these smaller-scale units, or communities. However, communities undeniably exist and do matter because even in big cities, people act collectively – as a community – to battle things that threaten them. He explains that communities are important because they produce the labor power that capitalism needs to survive. Community is the realms for which workers take care of the health needs and childrearing that are necessary to keep the workforce alive. At a more basic level, communities are the places we live in. Even if there are billions of possibilities that are accessible via the Internet or social networks, communities are were people eat and go to school.

In the next chapter, Alice O’Connor points out that there is no concrete definition of community development. It seems that it is made of programs that keep failing and reappearing without learning from past mistakes. There is little that community development can do to tackle problems because they keeps repeating itself. She introduces the idea of policy contradictions between small-scale interventions and large-scale public policies. Today, this is seen in the way community-based interventions have been undermined by neoliberal policies. She criticizes the government for their policies that encourage the decline of poor communities, their inadequate efforts to save them and their cluelessness as to way they fail so often. Despite numerous place-based strategies, there is little effect because our nation generally looks at economic norms, not particular communities. It takes too much time and money to try to improve these communities that won’t provide them any profit.

Since the ghetto uprisings 1960’s the government has provided aid for poor neighborhoods as an easy way to mitigate any tensions. However, this is just a quick fix that doesn’t solve anything. This tendency to look at norms and take issues on at a surface level relates to last week’s Samuel Stein article about inclusionary zoning. The government thinks that because housing is priced below or around an Area Median Income (that does not actually target the area they are trying to redevelop), communities will somehow be better off.

The last trend that she tackles is that of race. Race is an issue in community development policy. Although these policies do not explicitly target certain races, it is obvious that they will harm poorer communities, thus harming minorities. Yet the government is blind to such problems and in the ever-progressive America. Today, we can clearly see this through the neighborhoods of Harlem that are being targeted for redevelopment.

Discussion Question: If there are trends throughout history that stunt community development, why do we keep following them? Is there a clear way to define community development so that instead of conflicting interests, there will be progress?

The Community Development reader chapters were very interesting because they looked at the essential question of why communities exist. We have talked a lot about preserving communities in New York City and ways to influence policies regarding them, but it is important to discuss why they matter in the first place. In the realm of large urban areas, communities are often overlooked in the bigger economic and political picture of things. However, they are a vital element to the people who live their lives in these cities. While it was thought that urbanization would wipe out the existence of communities, that is simply not the case. Urbanization has changed the ways in which communities operate, but does not erase the need people innately have to connect with one another. Communities in a rural setting were necessary from an economical standpoint because people relied on one another for the goods and services necessary to survive. While this aspect is not necessary in urban environments, the social and psychological services provided by community belongingness is perhaps even more essential in urban centers.

Chapter 2 of the Reader looks at poor communities and the ways the government is working to ‘develop’ them. O’Connor points out that the term community development really doesn’t have any sort of standard definition. Normally it is used to describe interventions into a community as part of a long term strategy. The problem with these individual ‘interventions’ is the creation of an abundance of short term programs which address immediate needs but do not create the infrastructure for lasting improvements in the community. These ‘solutions’ are also competing with the economic interests in a community, especially those in New York City that are targeted for development. Throughout the chapter we see that there are so many different interests at play in one community that there is really no solution that can please everyone involved. The accounts of various housing and development strategies throughout history highlight the fluctuation between different interests and how when one party gets what they want another loses out.

In Chapter 3, DeFilippis looks at the histories of both community control and development. I found this chapter to be the most confusing because the struggle between who should control the fate of communities is so unclear. Each side to the argument has valid claims- residents should have a say in what happens to their homes, but landowners and investors also have a right to invest and develop. While residents have important views regarding their communities, they might not know the bigger picture of the issue or plan. And just as valid, urban developers may know about the big picture of their hopes for the project, but know nothing about the community that exists where they want to view. While learning about this topic, I’m not sure I see a clear side that is right. Hopefully by reading more about the subject I can begin to form a more well rounded view of the issue myself.

DQ: Who has the right to say what happens in a community? What are the qualifications- Land ownership? Years of residence? Income? Education? Public Involvement? Political Office?

James DeFilippis is a professor at Rutgers University. His concentration of planning and public policy deals with community land trusts and alternative forms of housing tenure. Susan Saegert has taught as a professor in the subjects of Environmental Psychology as well as Human and Organizational Development. It is interesting to note that the authors discuss the idea of a community not being envisioned in an urban setting. In theory, cities are meant to be controlled by economic and bureaucratic governance with no other interactions that would interfere with the workings of an urban environment. And yet, communities have made their presence known, a reaction to fight for their human rights. While capitalist and bureaucratic interests look at the bigger picture to develop the city, the individuals experience what affects them on a day-to-day basis. A community development hopes to improve their quality of life and make their issues known to the government. The authors make it a point to emphasize that the quality of life is directly correlated to the success of the city, both economically and socially. Thus it is a good strategy to address a community problem, although, this is not generally realized.

The translation of these issues from community to government is what Alice O’Connor addresses in her chapter. Alice O’Connor is a professor at Johns Hopkins University with publications that deal with the privatization of cities and urban inequality. There is no way to create an organized and efficient plan for community development because of the red tape and legal regulations that counteract any action. The city regulations themselves have produced the problems of segregation, displacement, and suburbanization. The only way to solve this is to create effective laws that assess and directly impact communities in a small scale method.

The first chapter “Communities Develop” by James DeFilippis and Susan Saegert brought up some very interesting ideas that I had thought about before as well. The first theory mentioned was that communities do not truly exist in urban settings. That is a debatable concept because although cities, like New York, are more individualistic than collectivistic, communities still form within neighborhoods in parts of cities. These communities are groups of people who associated with each other, based on similar ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Jane Jacobs may argue that community development cannot flourish in New York because of the continuous zoning and rezoning that takes place. I think that is why she emphasized how neighborhoods should be preserved and sidewalks should maintained for many years since they used to be the meeting point where small groups of communities could enjoy each other’s company. However, gentrification disrupts the growth of communities by introducing outsiders to an area that they may not feel like they belong in right away. Therefore, it may appear as if communities are nonexistent, but they do exist and they do matter. This chapter also discussed the significance of communities because in a capitalist society, one may believe that communities do not contribute to the economic and social progress within a city. However, there are instances in which communities come together to fight against urban renewal and gentrification through protests, with organizations like Picture the Homeless, and protests we saw in Harlem, in the film “Whose Barrio?” Furthermore, the chapter states that communities “play the vital role of reproducing the labor power that is needed for capitalism to survive” (DeFilippis & Seagert, 2012). This highlight of how communities are essential to a capitalist society would be the strongest argument that anyone could provide against urban renewal and the relocation/ breaking up of many communities because gentrification has been used as a tool for finding more space for private investors to build. Therefore, they would care about the harm that tearing down communities produces if it is a fiscal matter.

The second chapter “Swimming Against the Tide” by Alice O’Connor focused on the history of federal policy changes pertaining to communities in poverty. She pointed out policy contradictions, in which small-scale interventions are supposed to revive poor communities, but large-scale federal policy does not allow those communities to survive. I believe that zoning is one of the large-scale strategies that focus on rebuilding and building larger, which drives up land values, so it essentially pushes poor people out of their homes. Moreover, as the years pass by in this post-industrial city, New York continues to become more commercialized and it seems as if there will be no place for poor communities to reside in after a few more decades. Perhaps, the problem is the way that the American federal government aspires to work with local organizations and activist groups to benefit everyone without directly providing for the poor, as an ideal. However, in reality, that is not always the case. In terms of our project relating to homelessness and the shelter industrial complex, the Picture the Homeless is working hard to bring about change and stop the criminalization of the homeless. The federal government allows certain spaces to be used to build homeless shelters, but if more direct help was provided to this group of people, many of them would be able to get back on their feet and contribute to society.

Chapter three “Community Control and Development” by James DeFilippis discussed the history of federal laws that aimed to fight “The War on Poverty,” which were deemphasized in the later years. Therefore, community development corporations (CDCs) formed in order to advance community development by putting more control in the hands of the community. However, the Model Cities Program was designed to give control over poor communities to city governments. This shows a battle between who should decide what happens over communities: the government or the people who make up those communities. It is a very interesting debate that is relevant to this day, and I can understand why certain communities want to empower their people, such as the “black power” movement. However, when private developers run out of space to build and contribute to the economy, they turn to poor communities to refurbish them with little regard for the people. At the end of this chapter, DeFilippis brought up challenges that communities face in order to fend for themselves. However, I feel that most people are not educated enough on the issues, such as race associating with poverty or the history of federal government policy, to achieve the goals of using race as a strategy to shape policy decisions and promote antipoverty policy in general.

Discussion Questions: How can communities become more educated to come up with resourceful solutions to the issues of gentrification and poverty? What would community development look like in New York if the trends of urban renewal continue to raise land value and the poor are forced out of the city altogether?