ard C. Rich

Participation and the social and physical environment of residential blocks: Crime and community context

We propose a framework for understanding the relationship of participation in block associations to a wide range of block-level variables (demographics, the built environment, crime, and the transient social and physical environment. Data were obtained from 48 New York City blocks using (a) a telephone survey of residents (n = 1,081), (b) the Block Environmental Inventory (BEI), (c) police records of reported crime, and (d) a survey of block association members (n = 469).

The physical environment of street crime: Defensible space, territoriality and incivilities

Abstract This study systematically examines the physical context of crime on urban residential blocks. A conceptual framework for understanding the relationship of the objective permanent (defensible space) and transient (territorial markers and incivilities) physical environment and the subjective environment to crime is presented. Forty-eight blocks were selected from three working-class urban neighborhoods. Data were obtained from four sources: a telephone survey of 1081 randomly sampled residents, a 15-month follow-up survey ( n = 471), block-level police records of 1190 crime complaints, and the Block Booster Environmental Inventory-a new procedure for objectively measuring physical signs of disorder, territoriality and the built environment of 576 homes on all 48 blocks. Five different indicators of block crime were used: perceived crime and delinquency, reported serious and ‘quality-of-life’ crimes, and surveyed victimization rate. All data were aggregated to the block level. Although the various measures of crime were not consistently intercorrelated, objective environmental items correlated more strongly and consistently with the crime indicators than did the subjective environment, even after controlling for the demographic profile of the block. Defensible space features of the built environment, demographics and, to a lesser extent, the transient environment (disorder and territoriality) contributed significant variance to a series of regression equations explaining up to 60% of the variance in block crime. Implications for environmental criminology and for community policing and crime prevention are discussed.

Citizen participation and emprowerment: The case of local environmental hazards

Local environmental hazards place millions of citizens at risk of physical, emotional, and financial harm. While the discovery of such hazards can be fundamentally disempowering for individuals and communities, few scholars have examined the dynamics of empowerment in this context. We explore the relationships among forms of empowerment, citizen participation, and local environmental hazards, and offer a model of the processes of empowerment and disempowerment appropriate to a broad range of citizen issues. On the basis of this analysis we recommend a partnership approach to community decision making that is designed both to reduce the likelihood that local environmental hazards will develop and to minimize the disempowering impact of any threats that do occur.

Interaction of the Voluntary and Governmental Sectors Toward an Understanding of the Coproduction of Municipal Services

Fiscal strain and the demandfor more responsive service delivery have combined to create an interest in new ways of involving citizens in municipal service delivery systems and of increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of public service delivery. I suggest in this article that a clear understanding of the relationship between the governmental and voluntary sectors of our society offers a means of accomplishing both ends. I explore the logic of the processes by which public services are coproduced by the actions of public employees and citizen consumers in order to discover ways in which government structures and policies can facilitate or inhibit voluntary, collective effort at community betterment, and ways in which voluntary efforts can impact the needfor and cost of government services.

Neglected Issues in the Study of Urban Service Distributions: a Research Agenda

Research into the distribution of public services in urban America has made impressive empirical, theoretical and methodological progress. To date, however, this work has exhibited several limitations which restrict its contribution to our understanding of the political significance of municipal services. This paper reviews existing research, examines its limitations and suggests ways in which future research could overcome these failings by focusing on outcome rather than output measures of services, interjurisdictional differences, the influence of neighborhood organisations on service patterns, the role of private service options, and equity rather than equality as a standard against which to judge observed distributions.

Equity and Institutional Design in Urban Service Delivery

The issue of equitable provision of public services has been raised with increasing frequency in the past decade. Attaining an equitable distribution of services through political activity or judicial recourse has proven both costly and difficult for the citizens involved. There is no clear evidence that public services are more equitably distributed among urban neighborhoods than in the past. And the effort to insure equitable service delivery through an appeal to the constitutional principal of equal protection of the law has not produced a judicial tradition which promises effective remedies for victims of discrimination (Schumacker, 1971). This paper presents an argument that inequitable service delivery is at least partially a result of institutional failure, and suggests that service delivery systems can be designed in ways which facilitate a more equitable distribution of services without requiring recourse to judicial remedy or extraordinary levels of political participation on the part of affected citizens. I first explore both some of the sources of inequity in public service delivery and some of the difficulties in establishing rules of law that will insure equity across time and space. I then identify several features of present service delivery systems which create problems of inequitable service distribution and present the outline of an alternative arrangement designed to overcome these problems. _ .

A Systems Approach to Understanding and Enhancing Grassroots Organizations

This chapter reports on the use of systems concepts in an action-research project studying and intervening with voluntary community organizations. Voluntary community organizations include block or neighborhood associations, tenant associations, church volunteer groups, youth groups, and merchant associations. They may stand independently or be connected through federations or coalitions.

The Complex Web of Urban Governance Gossamer or Iron

The logic inherent in the design of the American political system is based upon a presumption that overlapping jurisdictions will give citizens access to multiple sets of officials to tend their interests. That logic also presumes that authority must be divided or fragmented if those who exercise governmental prerogatives are to be held accountable for their actions. It may well be that the most critical problems of urban government have derived from excessive efforts to simplify political structures [Bish and Ostrom, 1973: 93-94]. [G]iven its present political organization and decision-making processes, the city is fundamentally ungovernable. By ungovernable I mean that the urban policy- making system is incapable of producing coherent decisions, developing effective policies, or implementing state or federal programs.... City government is an intractable jigsaw puzzle because of the inherent fragmentation of urban service delivery and the historical fragmentation of urban policy-making processes [Yates, 1977: 5,7]. Democracy in the United States is subverted at the local level by a unique development-the cordoning off of various subclasses into political units popu lated by their own kind wherein constituents equally escape the costs that might be imposed by participation of those worse off. Central city populations are left the privilege of voting to impose the costs of social-capital and class-containment expenses upon themselves.... Real class differences under capitalism are obscured by a subdifferentiation of class enhanced by segregating residence and by the particular consumption and class-reproduction activities that accompany that residence [Markusen, 1978: 109].

A Cooperative Approach to the Logic of Collective Action: Voluntary Organizations and the Prisoners' Dilemma

A reexamination of certain tenets of Olsons logic of collective action suggests that it fails to explain some types of behavior found in voluntary organizations, especially mutual assistance groups. Specifically, Olson fails to account for non-coercive and non-individualistic factors and gives insufficient attention to the social context of voluntary organization life. A fresh applications of the prisoners’ dilemma and the introduction of the concept of community expand our understanding of behaviors heretofore unexplained. Implications are discussed for the design and management of voluntary organizations under certain conditions.

Voluntary Action and Public Services: an Introduction to the Special Issue

There are roughly a half a million state and local police officers in the U.S. They make approximately 4.5 million arrests a year, and have perhaps ten times that many other direct contacts with citizens in the course of their jobs. They bear the heavy burden of protecting citizens and enforcing society’s laws. The number of persons involved and the nature of the police task make law enforcement policies