Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods: Achievements, Opportunities, and Limits. (Book Reviews).

Lezubski, Darren Walter

Keating, W. Dennis and Krumholz, Norman, editors.

Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods: Achievements, Opportunities, and Limits. Thousand Oaks/London/New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999.

236 pp.

ISBN 0-7617-0692-4.

$24.95 U.S. (paper).

Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods is a book that conjures up a whole host of interesting and difficult questions. This highly readable book is another in Sage Publications' "Cities and Planning Series." The series seeks to bridge the gap between academic and professional practice by presenting case studies and planning issues facing communities from a multidisciplinary perspective.

The theme of the book is straightforward and couched within the context of widening racial, social, and economic polarization during a time of relative prosperity. Despite decades of substantial investment through a variety of federal, state, and local government policies and programs, many neighbourhoods continue to experience population decline, job loss, poverty, crime, and hopelessness.

Dennis Keating's chapter on federal policy and urban neighbourhoods provides a nice overview of the origins, priorities and evolution of policies and programs which produced the Federal Housing Administration, Model Cities, Community Development Block Grants, Enterprise Communities, and Empowerment Zones. At the time of writing, many of the Enterprise Community (EC) and Empowerment Zone (EZ) projects had only recently come into operation, making it difficult to measure their impact. Nonetheless, most contributors were less than optimistic that EC and EZ funds would stem the tide.

Case studies focus on severely distressed neighbourhoods and central city locations from across the U.S.A. including Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, South Central Los Angeles, Miami, and New York. A real strength of the book is that each case study stays close to the central theme and substantiates the argument that overall large scale federal urban policies have failed to help those most in need.

Through the case studies an underlying theme suggests that community based strategies, usually led by Community Development Corporations (CDCs) or churches, are an essential element in genuinely rebuilding poor and distressed neighbourhoods. Kenneth Reardon's chapter on East St. Louis, once described as the most distressed small city in America, is perhaps the most compelling success story. Utilizing local churches and planning students from the University of Illinois at Urbana -- Champaign, the Winstanley neighbourhood in East St. Louis demonstrated capacity through the development of a comprehensive neighbourhood stabilization plan focusing on job creation, housing, and community amenities. The achievements in East St. Louis have been modest, but as Keating notes in his introduction, given the scope of devastation, they are remarkable.

Despite the enthusiasm for community-led responses, the contributors recognize that community based solutions have their limitations. Nor are all the local experiences filled with optimism for the future. Many of the neighbourhoods profiled continue to face uncertain futures. Thomas Angotti, in his chapter on New York's Red Hook neighbourhood, nicely sums up the message. He notes that optimism about the future of poor neighbourhoods must be tempered by the fear that in the coming years demands for balanced budgets will lead to further reductions in federal funding to urban areas, more privatization of government and reductions to welfare and other social programs which many need to survive.

The context is American, but there is plenty here for Canadian planners and urban policy makers to contemplate. Interest in Canadian research on neighbourhood inequality is limited but recent research findings from Statistics Canada demonstrate an increasing tendency for high income and low-income families to concentrate in specific neighbourhoods of similar income levels. While not a new phenomenon, the findings do suggest the potential for increasing economic spatial segregation in Canada's largest cities. This is especially intriguing given the suggestion that neighbourhood inequality is occurring independent of the business cycle.

Nonetheless, and despite disturbing trends to the contrary, there remains a sense of optimism that poor, distressed Canadian neighbourhoods retain the assets and capacity to be "reborn" through small scale, locally based initiatives supported by provincial and municipal investment. We should use books like Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods as a reminder that the "field of dreams" strategy of heavily subsidized office buildings, entertainment complexes, and sports venues to attract suburbanites to downtown for a few hours produce few, if any, benefits for poor inner city residents.