Metropolitics

The Promises and Realities of Data-Driven Community Development

Austin Harrison — 2022-02-22T06:00:00Z

Tennessee nonprofit Innovate Memphis has spent nearly a decade designing the Memphis Property Hub, a public data platform for community development corporations (CDCs). Austin Harrison asks if this is a replicable way to democratize neighborhood- and property-level data, so as to level the playing field between community organizers and well-resourced state and market actors, and bring community organizing back to the fore of urban CDCs' activities.
Over the past decade, city governments and

- From the Field / data, open data, smart city, community-based organizations, community organizing, community development, housing, evictions, United States, Tennessee, Memphis

(Re)Constructing Inequality: Community Development in Public and Private

Claire Dunning — 2021-12-14T06:00:00Z

Claire Dunning reviews Jeremy R. Levine's new book, Constructing Community, an ethnographic study of community development projects in Boston.
For a book about urban poverty and redevelopment, Constructing Community recounts few protests or headline-grabbing incidents. Instead, the drama unfolds slowly over the course of a decade in poorly lit community rooms, downtown board rooms, and the backseats of cars. This is a book about the banalities of bureaucracy and governance—a fact that author

- Reviews / Boston, Massachusetts, United States, mass transit, rapid transit, transport, public transportation, community-based organizations, urban poverty, redevelopment, poverty, governance, local governance, urban governance, ethnography

Manifested Stories

Rebecca Blythe Pryor — 2021-01-05T06:00:00Z

Rebecca Pryor traces the history of the revitalization of the Bronx River, illustrating an alternative narrative to the urban-frontier myth—one that centers Black and Brown communities and is community-generated.
At the beginning of the film The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019), which takes place in the not-so-distant future, a curbside preacher asks passersby why San Francisco is only now cleaning the Bay when residents have lived by its toxicity for decades. The cleanup is not for us,

- From the Field / New York, Bronx, urban regeneration, revitalization, gentrification, community-based organizations

Community-Rooted Organizations: Enhanced Accountability and Capacity Building for Community Development

Camryn Smith & Danielle Spurlock & Aliyah Abdur-Rahman & Kay Jowers — 2020-07-10T05:00:00Z

Communities in Partnership, in Durham, North Carolina, uses a “community-rooted” approach to its work that leverages community residents' expertise and resources, as an alternative to “community-based” organizations that can marginalize community voice, limit capacity building, and neglect the underlying causes of community conditions.
Communities in Partnership (CIP), a nonprofit organization in Durham, North Carolina, addresses the structural barriers that impact low-wealth communities of

- Essays / community organizing, community development, capacity building, North Carolina, Durham (North Carolina), United States, community-based organizations, community-rooted organizations, systems change