Philip Nyden

Academic incentives for faculty participation in community-based participatory research.

Recognizing the need to overcome the obstacles of traditional university- and discipline-oriented research approaches, a variety of incentives to promote community-based participatory research (CBPR) are presented. Experiences of existing CBPR researchers are used in outlining how this methodological approach can appeal to faculty: the common ground shared by faculty and community leaders in challenging the status quo; opportunities to have an impact on local, regional, and national policy; and opening doors for new research and funding opportunities. Strategies for promoting CBPR in universities are provided in getting CBPR started, changing institutional practices currently inhibiting CBPR, and institutionalizing CBPR. Among the specific strategies are: development of faculty research networks; team approaches to CBPR; mentoring faculty and students; using existing national CBPR networks; modifying tenure and promotion guidelines; development of appropriate measures of CBPR scholarship; earmarking university resources to support CBPR; using Institutional Review Boards to promote CBPR; making CBPR-oriented faculty appointments; and creating CBPR centers.

The emergence of stable racially and ethnically diverse urban communities: A case study of nine U.S. cities

Abstract We examine the characteristics of 14 stable racially and ethnically diverse urban communities in 9 U.S. cities and point to policies that could strengthen these communities and encourage the growth of more diverse neighborhoods in American cities. The cities examined are Chicago; Denver; Houston; Memphis, TN; Milwaukee; New York; Oakland, CA; Philadelphia; and Seattle. University researchers and community leaders in each city collaborated on the research for this project. We identify two types of stable diverse communities, “self‐conscious” and “laissez‐faire,” which have evolved for different reasons and with different characteristics. Stable diverse communities will not just happen, but they can be influenced by a number of policy recommendations stemming from our research. These include helping individuals and organizations take leadership roles in their communities, strengthening and enforcing fair housing and antidiscrimination laws, earmarking economic resources to encourage neighborhood di...

Creating Stable Racially and Ethnically Diverse Communities in the United States: A Model for the Future

We examine fourteen stable, racially and ethnically diverse communities in nine US cities to understand what produces such communities. These communities in the context of the US experience of increased, multiracial, and multiethnic diversity in the early twenty-first century can serve as a policy model as both the US and European nations look ahead toward more diverse societies. After providing a brief history of US segregation patterns, we provide an analysis of factors related to stable diversity. We found two types of diversity. Diversity-by-direction communities, which are more likely to be black:white communities, consciously worked to preserve diversity through an array of community-based efforts. Diverse-by-circumstance communities, which are more likely to be multiracial, multiethnic communities with significant immigrant populations, have been faced with an unplanned diversity, which they are now working to preserve. Among the characteristics of stable diverse communities are the presence of: social seams linking different groups, community organizations involved in preserving diversity, public discussion of values of what produces ‘good’ community, and distinctive physical or environmental characteristics that continue to attract new residents.

Comment on James E. Rosenbaum, Linda K. Stroh, and Cathy A. Flynn's “Lake Parc Place: A study of mixed‐income housing”

Abstract Rosenbaum, Stroh, and Flynn confirm existing community leader perceptions that this model mixed‐income development in the predominantly low‐income South Side of Chicago has produced a positive residential environment. Increased tenant voice, not role modeling, seems to be a factor in producing increased resident satisfaction with the building and a strong sense of commitment to the mixed‐income alternative to exclusively low‐income housing projects. The extra resources invested in physical improvements and the extraordinary media attention paid to this model project may have created a “Hawthorne effect,” which also produced higher levels of satisfaction. The existence of this successful model is not sufficient to provide more housing alternatives; community‐based advocacy for more mixed‐income developments is needed.

Overview of the 14 Neighborhoods Studied

The 14 communities studied vary significantly in both the nature of their diversity and the context within which diversity was achieved and is maintained. In the initial stages of the project, 14 neighborhoods were chosen from a pool of 77 neighborhoods in more than 20 cities. To select the final 14 neighborhoods to research, care was given to choose those that varied in relation to the following characteristics: * Racial composition. * The level of segregation in the city. * The age of the city. * The regional location of the city. * The consistency with which informants identified the areas as diverse. * The presence or absence of community organizations committed to sustaining diversity.

Scaling up to Increase Community-Based Organization Voice

ABSTRACT This is a collaborative, community-based study of the merger of two Chicago community-organizing groups seeking to expand their geographic base and political power. Although the merger enabled the new organization to increase and use its power, this case also illustrates the various ways the merger presented opportunities for the new organization to maintain effectiveness at multiple scales while sustaining strong internal democracy and connections to local residents. By consolidating and leveraging new and old political relationships, and by maintaining or increasing the civic benefits of organizing, this merger provides important lessons for organizing in diverse community settings.

Community-based Research in den USA: Ein Überblick über Prinzipien und Prozesse

Seit etwa 20 Jahren verzeichnen amerikanische Universitaten einen deutlichen Anstieg der Bemuhungen, sich auf eine Weise fur die Zivil gesellschaft zu engagieren, bei der beide Seiten profitieren. Den Beginn dieser Entwicklung markierte die Integration von Service Learning in das Curriculum, meist in einer Form, die Studierende einband: Sie boten praktische Dienstleistungen in Schulen an oder in Organisationen, die sich um in unserer Marktwirtschaft unterversorgte Menschen und Familien kummern. Zu diesen praktischen Diensten gehorten z. B. Unterrichten oder die Zubereitung und Ausgabe von Essen.

Searching for the Just City: Debates in Urban Theory and Practice edited by Peter Marcuse, James Connolly, Johannes Novy, Ingrid Olivo, Cuz Poter and Justic Steil

Japonica Brown-Saracino’s A Neighborhood That Never Changes is, in fact, not a study of a neighborhood that has resisted or otherwise deflected social change. Brown-Saracino’s focus instead is 160 residents of four communities that have experienced substantial property value appreciation and an influx of new residents. I have used the term community to further specify a particularity of Brown-Saracino’s study. Her research sites are two gentrifying neighborhoods (Argyle, Andersonville) on Chicago’s North Side, Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the tip of Cape Cod, and a near-coastal farming hamlet, Dresden, Maine. In short, Brown-Saracino defines gentrification broadly, as a process occurring both in highly urbanized and less urbanized places. Brown-Saracino’s deeper claim, and the heart of her analysis, is that the process of gentrification is more complicated than many observers have realized, in large part because the attitudes and behaviors of gentrifiers are more diverse than most researchers have reported. Brown-Saracino’s gentrifier-subjects (her interviewees also include community “oldtimers”) fall into three categories: pioneers, social homesteaders, and social preservationists. The former are the exchange-valueand neighborhood-change-oriented newcomers who populate much of the scholarly and popular literature on gentrification. The latter are indeed gentrifiers, but gentrifiers with a conscience who appreciate local old-timers and the communities they have forged. Social preservationists often adopt a low profile in their new communities and to the degree that they do participate in public affairs, they regularly support initiatives such as affordable housing production aimed at stabilizing local residential populations. Social homesteaders are an intermediate group, appreciative of the physical heritage visible in their communities, not so concerned with preserving a place for long-time residents. For affordable housing activists, Brown-Saracino’s research offers a reassuring prospect: that even in neighborhoods experiencing substantial property value appreciation, many of the newly arrived, more prosperous residents will be inclined to support property tax relief for longstanding homeowners, residential development targeting senior citizens, and the like. The only problem for the activists might be the following: Brown-Saracino’s social preservationists can be so concerned about not imposing themselves on the local milieu that, at least part of the time, they may be difficult to mobilize in support of progressive, socially inclusive community development action.

Restructuring the Philadelphia Region: Metropolitan Divisions and Inequality By Carolyn Adams, David Bartelt, David Elesh and Ira Goldstein with Joshua Freely and Michelle Schmitt Temple University Press. 2008. 248 pages.

ism has focused on the central role of HTAs in facilitating and sustaining Mexican immigrants’ linkages to their communities of birth. HTAs however, as Fitzgerald reveals, are not a recent invention. Hometown associations were actually first encouraged by the church to sustain internal migrants’ linkages with their hometowns. In Arandas, the site of focus for Fitzgerald, domestic HTAs were crucial to local economic development. In fact, domestic HTAs in the mid-20 century appear to have had a far greater developmental impact than more contemporary trans-border ones. Nevertheless, today’s trans-border HTAs are important both economically and politically to emigrant-sending communities. While the state and the church have a more favorable stance toward emigration and migrants’ continued homeland ties, migrants’ transnationalism, at least from the perspective of some of their compatriots, is often unwelcome. While U.S. pundits may decry Mexican immigrants’ refusal to assimilate into the mainstream of American life, the fact is, these very migrants are often perceived by their communities of origin as having become too culturally dissimilar from locals. The term ‘‘norteños,’’ used to describe those who have lived and worked in the United States, has a negative connotation. Norteños are believed to infect their communities with crime, vice and other bodily and social ills. Neither the state nor the church is ready to revert back to their earlier positions on emigration, however, and have instead attempted to valorize what they consider to be ideal migrants. Fitzgerald’s book complicates conventional understandings of assimilation and transnationalism and is an essential reading for immigration scholars. Just as importantly, it is a book for scholars interested in understanding the consequences of globalization on nation-state formation. Fitzgerald argues that with increasing emigration, the ‘‘fusion of a territory, a government and a people has cracked apart.’’(154) This, as Fitzgerald convincingly argues in this study of Mexico, has not led to the dissolution of the nation-state, but rather its reconfiguration.