Notes
1 Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak call the current model the New Localism. I am not satisfied with this label, since control of the resources that flow into a neighborhood is not local at all. See Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak, The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in an Age of Populism, Washington, DC: Brookings, 2018. On the role of private capital in the congenial partnership, see, e.g., Thomas Miller, “Bridges to Dreams: The Story of the Low Income Investment Fund, Celebrating 25 Years of Impact, 1984-2009,” Low Income Investment Fund, http://liifund.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Bridges-to-Dreams-The-Story-of-LIIF-2009_LRes.pdf.
2 See, e.g., Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005; Jessica Trounstine, Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
3 See, e.g., Matthew Jerzyk, “Gentrification’s Third Way: An Analysis of Housing Policy and Gentrification in Providence,” Harvard Law and Policy Review, vol. 3, 2009.
4 Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth, National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, Community Programs to Promote Youth Development, edited by Jacquelynne Eccles and Jennifer A. Gootman, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2002.
5 The best recent discussion of this history is in Trounstine, Segregation by Design.
6 See, e.g., Richard Florida, “The Downsides of the Back-to-the-City Movement,”
CityLab, September 29, 2016.
7 Fay Strongin, “You Don’t Have a Problem Until You Do: Revitalization and Gentrification in Providence, Rhode Island,” master’s thesis, City Planning, MIT, June 2017.
8 Aaron Weiner, “Poverty Is Moving to the Suburbs. The War on Poverty Hasn’t Followed,” Washington Post, April 5, 2018.
9 Elizabeth Kneebone and Natalie Holmes, “U.S. Concentrated Poverty in the Wake of the Great Recession,” Brookings Institute Report, March 31, 2016.
10 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York: Random House, 1961.
11 Though it is beyond the scope of this essay, the neighborhood trust is also the innovation that comes closest to achieving the “maximum feasible participation” by the poor in charting and controlling their own future, as the original statutory provision for the war on poverty envisioned. On “maximum feasible participation,” see Tara J. Melish, “Maximum Feasible Participation of the Poor: New Governance, New Accountability, and a 21st Century War on the Sources of Poverty,” Yale Human Rights and Development Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, 2010.
12 John R. Seeley et al., Community Chest: A Case Study in Philanthropy, Piscataway, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1988.
13 For a primer on the community land trust, see John Emmeus Davis, “Origins and Evolution of the Community Land Trust in the United States,” The Community Land Trust Reader, Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2010, and “Common Ground: Community-Owned Land as a Platform for Equitable and Sustainable Development,” University of San Francisco Law Review, vol. 51, no. 1, 2014.
14 See Harlem Children’s Zone, “Changing the Odds for Our Kids and Our Nation: Biennial Report, 2016-2017”; “A Community of Opportunity: Biennial Report, 2014-2015”; “Whatever It Takes: A White Paper on the Harlem Children’s Zone,” April 2014; and “History,” https://hcz.org/about-us/history/.
15 Harlem Children’s Zone Consolidated Financial Statement, 2017, https://hcz.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/HCZ-Audited-Financials-FY-2017.pdf; Roland J. Fryer Jr. and Will Dobbie, “The Medium-Term Impacts of High-Achieving Charter Schools,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 123, no. 5, 2015. Perhaps because of its size and prominence, the Harlem Children’s Zone has been the subject of vigorous attacks. Some critics maintain that its charter school, the Promise Academy, performs no better than the average charter school in New York City. Other researchers disagree with this assessment, but in an important sense the charge is beside the point: The charter school is merely one aspect of an entire approach to neighborhood well-being that endeavors to overcome decades of disinvestment and neglect in every aspect of a child’s life. From this perspective, Harlem Children’s Zone’s protection of thousands of at-risk children from the toxic influences that surround them and its success in sending hundreds to college testify to the organization’s effectiveness.
16 See, e.g., Thomas K. M. Cudjoe et al., “The Epidemiology of Social Isolation: National Health and Aging Trends Study,” The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, March 26, 2018; Clifford Singer, “Health Effects of Social Isolation and Loneliness,” Journal of Aging Life Care, Spring 2018.
17 Michael Henry Adams, “The End of Black Harlem,” The New York Times, May 27, 2016; Marie Gørrild, Sharon Obialo, and Nienke Venema, “Gentrification and Displacement in Harlem: How the Harlem Community Lost Its Voice en Route to Progress,” Humanity in Action, 2008.
18 On the Dudley Street Initiative, see Peter Medoff and Holly Sklar, Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood, Boston: South End Press, 1999; Sharon Cho, Koko Li, and Tessa Salzman, Building a Livable Boston: The Case for Community Land Trusts, Boston: Tufts University, April 2016; Dudley Neighbors, Incorporated, History, n.d., www.dudleyneighbors.org/background.html.
19 See grant application by the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, “Boston Promise Initiative,” submitted July 27, 2012.
20 Suzanne Perry, “Harlem Children’s Zone Leader to Step Down,” The Chronicle of Philanthropy, February 10, 2014, www.philanthropy.com/article/Harlem-Children-s-Zone/153575; Harlem Children’s Zone Consolidated Financial Statement, 2017, https://hcz.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/HCZ-Audited-Financials-FY-2017.pdf