City Community

It has become common practice—and in particular, but not exclusively, in conservative media—to blame the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 for the U.S. subprime mortgage and foreclosure crisis that triggered the global financial crisis. It is argued that the CRA forced lenders to give mortgage loans to high-risk borrowers. This is nonsense for at least five reasons.

We have the task to study indigenous traditions in the public baths in Moscow megapolis today, study the social relations of its visitors, their motivation (mental and physical health, beauty procedures and internal bath communications). Traditions, customs, taboos, which we observe in the public baths, help to analyze one of the aspects of spiritual life of the citizens, reveal one of the components of the modern world in everyday life.

ABSTRACT Recent research indicates that segregation is, in addition to many other undesirable consequences, negatively associated with social capital, in particular, generalized trust within a community. This study investigates whether an individual's residential neighborhood and the stereotypes associated with this neighborhood affect others’ trusting behavior as a specific form of social exchange. Using an anonymous trust game experiment in the context of five districts of the German capital, Berlin, we show that trusting is contingent on others’ residential neighborhood rather than on deliberate assessments of trustworthiness. Participants show significantly greater trust toward individuals from positively stereotyped neighborhoods with favorable sociodemographic characteristics than to persons from negatively stereotyped neighborhoods with unfavorable sociodemographics. Importantly, when stereotypes and sociodemographic factors point in opposite directions, participants’ trust decisions reflect stereotype content.

In recent years, urban neighborhoods in many Western nations have undergone neighborhood restructuring initiatives, especially in public housing developments. Regent Park, Canada's oldest and largest public housing development, is a neighborhood currently undergoing ‘neighborhood revitalization’ based on the social mix model. One tenet of this model is the idea that original public housing residents are benefiting from interactions with middle class residents. Based on qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations with original housing residents as well as new middle–class homeowners, we examine whether cross–class interactions actually occur “on the ground” in Regent Park. By examining an iteration of the model that differs with respect to the direction of resident movement—that is, the revitalization of Regent Park involves more advantaged residents buying into the once low–income neighborhood, as opposed to providing lower–income residents with housing vouchers to move...

... Natasha: Any kid, free of charge. ... As described on the Web site: “From changing the boulevard name to honor Abbot Kinney, to the funding and planting of our 74 palm trees, the AKDA has worked to improve the quality of life in the neighborhood.” 1. ...

The American welfare system has always been characterized by extensive public-private partnerships in the provision of social services. In addition, government financial support became important to private charitable agencies long before the emergence of nationally administered social welfare programs in the 1930s. Although recent research has acknowledged the expanded use of private organizations to deliver government-sponsored services since the Reagan Era, and focused more fully on public-private arrangements since the welfare reform initiatives of 1996, the larger historical context has received scant attention. This article presents a case study of the public-private organizational and financial arrangements in the provision of relief service both before (up to 1934) and after (1935 and beyond) the emergence of nationally-sponsored programs. The study addresses the following questions: (1) What was the public-private organizational arrangement in the delivery of welfare services prior to the expanded government role initiated with the New Deal Legislation of the mid 1930s? (2) How has this arrangement changed since then? (3) How dependent have private charitable organizations (known today as nonprofits) become on government funding? Findings indicate that the inter-organizational arrangement of government entities contracting services through community organizations remains in place despite the emergence of the welfare state. This study also reveals that government-nonprofit partnerships extend beyond funding in the form of citywide coordinating coalitions. Lastly, although investigation of the distribution of nonprofit income sources in 1929 and 1999 reveals a shift away from private funds (the typical agency now receiving between 7 and 61.4 percent of total revenues from government resources), this has not negated the importance of other private income sources. Thus, even though nonprofit agencies have become more financially dependent on government resources, they have maintained a significant degree of independence.

Local governments are responsible for financing and providing an array of public services ranging from police, fire, and emergency medical services to streets, parks, and water. Two mechanisms, civic structure and interlocal collaboration, have the potential to solve the problem of providing high-quality public services in the face of declining resources and increasing needs. We find that civic structure—citizen engagement in solving public problems—is positively and strongly associated with perceived quality of small town public services. Although many rural towns have entered into service agreements with other local governments, this approach is not significantly associated with citizen ratings of overall service quality. Citizens seem to prefer their local government directly providing police services rather than entering into interlocal agreements. This suggests that leaders and heads of departments providing public services need to carefully assess which services are most appro...

Few recent studies of homelessness have focused on the distribution of the phenomenon across different types of community contexts. Nevertheless, claims are often made about the decline of urban skid rows and the increasing spatial ubiquity of the homeless population. Motivated by these claims, our research analyzes 1990 Census S‐night data at multiple geographic levels to determine whether homeless people remain locationally concentrated or have become more dispersed in the contemporary United States. Data from the 2000 Census, though limited in scope, are briefly examined as well. We find that the “visible” homeless are overrepresented in metropolitan and urban portions of the nation, in central cities of metropolitan areas, and in a minority of neighborhoods within these areas. Such an uneven distribution, which favors the concentration over the dispersion perspective, often takes a polynucleated form in large cities. Forces shaping the geography of homelessness are discussed, as...

This article offers a multiscalar, sociohistoric account of the spatial struggles of Toronto artists from 1970 until the present to secure affordable living and work space downtown that foregrounds the contemporary role of the cultural philanthropist–developer. It argues that the cultural capital of artists to identify and embody authenticity facilitated temporary spatial claims that supported the development of a local art scene on Queen Street West, but one that became dependent upon, yet vulnerable to, the sociospatial unevenness of cultural philanthropy. Benevolence in arts and culture is not distributed evenly across time and space. Instead, as the case study of the 401 Richmond arts hub reveals, benevolence in its alliances with the real estate market and property development is concentrated in individualized commitments to particular neighborhoods, buildings, and local relationships, which temporally and operationally constrains its policy–transforming potential.

There are numerous ways in which people make illegal or unauthorized alterations to urban space. This study identifies and analyzes one that has been largely ignored in social science: explicitly functional and civic-minded informal contributions that I call “do-it-yourself urban design. ” The research, which began as an investiga-tion into more “traditional ” nonpermissable alterations, uncovered these cases— from homemade bike lanes and street signs to guerrilla gardens and development proposals—that are gaining visibility in many cities, yet are poorly accounted for by existing perspectives in the literature. This article examines the existing theories and evidence from interviews and other fieldwork in 14 cities in order to develop the new analytical category of DIY urban design. I present findings on the creators of these interventions, on their motivations to “improve ” the built environment where they perceive government and other development actors to be failing, and on the ...

In 1996, the Gamaliel Foundation, a national network of more than 40 congregation‐based community organizing projects, adopted a regional approach to community organizing, consolidating local projects into metropolitan organizations and addressing regional dynamics of sprawl and socioeconomic polarization. Through participant observation and interviews at metropolitan and national levels, I examine the effects of regionalism on community organizing. I find that a regional approach may help organizers manage longstanding dilemmas of ideology—how to balance broad appeal with sharp analysis—and scale—how to maintain democratic participation while organizing beyond the local level. I look briefly at the effects of grassroots organizing on regionalism, and find that it may give it a more radical and populist thrust.

Drawing on an extended case study of the Chicago neighborhood Wicker Park, this article examines the role that neighborhood space plays in organizing the activities of young artists, showing how an urban district can serve as a factor in aesthetic production. The tendency of artists and fellow travelers to cluster in distinctive (usually older) urban neighborhoods is well known. While in recent decades many scholars have recognized that these creative congregations contribute to residential gentrification and other local patterns of increased capital investment, the benefits that such neighborhoods offer for aspirants in creative pursuits are generally assumed, not explained. I use the Wicker Park case to show how the contemporary artists' neighborhood provides both material and symbolic resources that facilitate creative activity, particularly in the early stages of a cultural producer's career. I further connect these observations to the production of culture as a commodit...

Between 2008 and 2011, the dysfunctional North London line was improved and rebranded into a high–quality, high–frequency service: the London Overground. Great ambitions for regeneration came with this project: The improved line, running through deprived areas of East London, was expected to bring inward investment and to open access to new opportunities outside the borough to its residents. Seven years after the beginning of the improvement works, Hackney's Overground stations have emerged as hubs for London's trendy, symbolic economy, and the current commercial dynamism has been interpreted by many as indicative of widespread gentrification. Through census data analysis and 58 interviews with local shopkeepers and experts around four stations of the London Overground—Dalston, Hackney Central, Homerton, and Hackney Wick—this study shows that the emergence of a trendy retail scene should not be mistaken for inclusive regeneration. The North London Line improvements catalyzed...

According to recent investigations of social capital, this social resource represents a key ingredient in a community’s capacity to respond to environmental challenges and promote change. This article investigates the significance of social capital for the health and well‐being of inner‐city residents using data collected from a sample of household decisionmakers residing in a high‐poverty, racially segregated urban neighborhood in a mid‐sized southern city (N=222). A psychosocial resources model of distress is employed to explore the role of social capital as a critical social resource mediating the impact of poverty‐related economic and environmental stressors on residents’ mental health. Regression analyses show no mediating effect of social capital on the relationships between economic and environmental stressors and mental health. While bridging social capital displays a small inverse relationship with distress, bonding social capital is actually positively related to mental di...

In this article we build on prior studies that have used audit methods to document continued discrimination against African Americans in U.S. housing markets. Whereas prior work focused primarily on measuring racial disparities in housing access, here we seek to determine which personal, ecological, and agent factors raise or lower discrimination. Our data come from phone‐based audit studies of rental housing offered in the Philadelphia metropolitan market in the spring of 1999, the fall of 2000, and the spring of 2002. Male and female auditors called listings to inquire about the availability of units using white middle‐class English, black‐accented English, and Black English Vernacular. Results show that whites are more likely to be favored over black auditors of the same gender when the black auditor speaks Black English Vernacular compared with black‐accented English. Access was also lower in suburbs than the central city and it decreased as distance from a predominantly black n...