The battle for communal rights in minority neighborhoods has been a long and arduous one for those willing to fight it. This battle has been particularly demonstrated in a chapter of Angotti’s book. Starting from the budding student protests for housing and community issues back in 1968, the attempt of community control of schools, the creation of CDCs that had a great hand in implementing community policies, the struggle against the urban renewal plan has not gone without hardships. Angotti really captured the gradual progression of the grassroots movements and how once deteriorating neighborhoods slowly started to strengthen over time. Reading about this progression really allows you to appreciate the perspective that you’re given on the issue. However, those getting displaced from their neighborhoods were not given the luxury of knowing that anything would eventually improve at the time. In the moment, they must have only felt devastation and hopelessness.

Wallace’s article paired with Angotti’s piece gave a really interesting take on the whole situation. As Wallace demonstrates in his study,  this constant urban decay had extremely damaging effects on social structure of the communities, which caused a domino effect on various health issues as well. While Angotti’s piece gives a lot of temporal information, Wallace focuses on a different aspect that brings everything full circle. He hones in on the physiological impact that urban decay would have on people and found immense results. I was surprised that Wallace found such a strong correlation between fire occurrences and urban decay, because fire doesn’t come to mind at all when thinking about people getting displaced from their homes. He also suggested that those exposed to this type of trauma tended to be psychologically harmed and more inclined to incurring an illness. These facts just go to show the spontaneous effects that a certain event can have and the importance of looking into the correlations like Wallace had.

DQ: What are some preventative measures that can be taken given the occurrence of urban decay in order to prevent the health impacts on those who are exposed to the deterioration of their neighborhoods? Is there a way for CDCs to remain true to their social mission while adequately addressing financial matters?