Neighborhood as Refuge

Neighborhood as Refuge PDF Author: Isabelle Anguelovski
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262322196
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book Here

Book Description
An examination of environmental revitalization efforts in low-income communities in Boston, Barcelona, and Havana that help heal traumatized urban neighborhoods. Environmental justice as studied in a variety of disciplines is most often associated with redressing disproportionate exposure to pollution, contamination, and toxic sites. In Neighborhood as Refuge, Isabelle Anguelovski takes a broader view of environmental justice, examining wide-ranging comprehensive efforts at neighborhood environmental revitalization that include parks, urban agriculture, fresh food markets, playgrounds, housing, and waste management. She investigates and compares three minority, low-income neighborhoods that organized to improve environmental quality and livability: Casc Antic, in Barcelona; Dudley, in the Roxbury section of Boston; and Cayo Hueso, in Havana. Despite the differing histories and political contexts of these three communities, Anguelovski finds similar patterns of activism. She shows that behind successful revitalization efforts is what she calls “bottom to bottom” networking, powered by broad coalitions of residents, community organizations, architects, artists, funders, political leaders, and at times environmental advocacy groups. Anguelovski also describes how, over time, environmental projects provide psychological benefits, serving as a way to heal a marginalized and environmentally traumatized urban neighborhood. They encourage a sense of rootedness and of attachment to place, creating safe havens that offer residents a space for recovery. They also help to bolster residents' ability to deal with the negative dynamics of discrimination and provide spaces for broader political struggles including gentrification. Drawing on the cases of Barcelona, Boston, and Havana, Anguelovski presents a new holistic framework for understanding environmental justice action in cities, with the right to a healthy community environment at its core.

Neighborhood as Refuge

Neighborhood as Refuge PDF Author: Isabelle Anguelovski
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262026929
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book Here

Book Description
An examination of environmental revitalization efforts in low-income communities in Boston, Barcelona, and Havana that help heal traumatized urban neighborhoods. Environmental justice as studied in a variety of disciplines is most often associated with redressing disproportionate exposure to pollution, contamination, and toxic sites. In Neighborhood as Refuge, Isabelle Anguelovski takes a broader view of environmental justice, examining wide-ranging comprehensive efforts at neighborhood environmental revitalization that include parks, urban agriculture, fresh food markets, playgrounds, housing, and waste management. She investigates and compares three minority, low-income neighborhoods that organized to improve environmental quality and livability: Casc Antic, in Barcelona; Dudley, in the Roxbury section of Boston; and Cayo Hueso, in Havana. Despite the differing histories and political contexts of these three communities, Anguelovski finds similar patterns of activism. She shows that behind successful revitalization efforts is what she calls “bottom to bottom” networking, powered by broad coalitions of residents, community organizations, architects, artists, funders, political leaders, and at times environmental advocacy groups. Anguelovski also describes how, over time, environmental projects provide psychological benefits, serving as a way to heal a marginalized and environmentally traumatized urban neighborhood. They encourage a sense of rootedness and of attachment to place, creating safe havens that offer residents a space for recovery. They also help to bolster residents' ability to deal with the negative dynamics of discrimination and provide spaces for broader political struggles including gentrification. Drawing on the cases of Barcelona, Boston, and Havana, Anguelovski presents a new holistic framework for understanding environmental justice action in cities, with the right to a healthy community environment at its core.

Neighborhood as Refuge

Neighborhood as Refuge PDF Author: Isabelle Anguelovski
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book Here

Book Description
Environmental Justice (EJ) scholarship has revealed that communities of color and low-income neighborhoods have been disproportionally affected by 'brown' contaminating facilities and excluded from decision-making on their land, and that residents have used a variety of strategies to address such injustices (Bullard 1990, Agyeman 2003, Susskind and Macey 2004, Corburn, 2005, Pellow and Brulle 2005, Schlosberg 2007). However, traditional EJ literature tends to overlook the fact that residents also fight to achieve long-term equitable revitalization and improve the livability and environmental quality of their neighborhoods through parks, playgrounds, community gardens, fresh markets, and improved waste management. Furthermore, previous studies have not examined the role of historic marginalization, threats of displacement, collective identities, and political systems in framing the demands and strategies of these marginalized neighborhoods, especially in different cities and political systems across the world. My dissertation is motivated by this overarching question: How and why do residents of seemingly powerless marginalized neighborhoods proactively organize to improve environmental quality and livability? To answer this question, I focus on three sub-questions: In what ways do residents and organizations engaged in environmental quality initiatives perceive that their work allowed them to re-build their community from within? To what extent do the environmental struggles of marginalized communities represent a desire to achieve environmental gains as opposed to serving as a means to advance broader political agendas in the city? How do different political systems and contexts of urbanization shape the strategies and tactics that neighborhoods develop and how to they manage to advance their goals? My dissertation is built around an international comparative study of three critical and emblematic case studies of minority and low-income neighborhoods organizing for improved environmental quality and livability in three cities - Casc Antic (Barcelona), Dudley (Boston), Cayo Hueso (Havana), - which have all achieved comparable improved environmental and health conditions around parks and playgrounds, sports courts and centers, community gardens, urban farms, farmers' markets, and waste management. During my eight-month fieldwork in Barcelona, Boston, and Havana, I conducted semi-structured interviews with leaders of local organizations and NGOs working on improving environmental conditions, with a sample of active residents in each neighborhood, and with municipal agencies and policy-makers. Furthermore, I engaged in observation of events, as well as participant observation of projects focused on environmental improvements. Last, I collected secondary data on neighborhood development, land use, and environmental and health projects. This study reveals that activists in Casc Antic, Dudley, and Cayo Hueso use their environmental and health endeavors to holistically re-build and repair a broken and devastated community and build safe havens, associating environmental justice with community development, and improvements in physical health with mental health support. They also frame broader political goals in the city such as addressing stigmas about their place, controlling the land and its boundaries, and building a more transgressive and spontaneous form of democracy. These goals reflect and are reinforced by the attachment and sense of community they feel for their neighborhood. To develop their vision, residents select multi-faceted and multi-tiered strategies, which reveal common patterns across neighborhoods despite differences in political systems: collage and bricolage techniques, broad coalitions and sub-community networks, clever engagement with public officials and funders, and local identity and traditions. This research extends EJ theory by focusing on how residents and their supporters make proactive environmental and health claims and defend their vision for improved neighborhood conditions and safety, gain political power, and address inequalities in planning and land use decisions.

Neighborhood as Refuge

Neighborhood as Refuge PDF Author: Isabelle Anguelovski
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262525690
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book Here

Book Description
An examination of environmental revitalization efforts in low-income communities in Boston, Barcelona, and Havana that help heal traumatized urban neighborhoods. Environmental justice as studied in a variety of disciplines is most often associated with redressing disproportionate exposure to pollution, contamination, and toxic sites. In Neighborhood as Refuge, Isabelle Anguelovski takes a broader view of environmental justice, examining wide-ranging comprehensive efforts at neighborhood environmental revitalization that include parks, urban agriculture, fresh food markets, playgrounds, housing, and waste management. She investigates and compares three minority, low-income neighborhoods that organized to improve environmental quality and livability: Casc Antic, in Barcelona; Dudley, in the Roxbury section of Boston; and Cayo Hueso, in Havana. Despite the differing histories and political contexts of these three communities, Anguelovski finds similar patterns of activism. She shows that behind successful revitalization efforts is what she calls “bottom to bottom” networking, powered by broad coalitions of residents, community organizations, architects, artists, funders, political leaders, and at times environmental advocacy groups. Anguelovski also describes how, over time, environmental projects provide psychological benefits, serving as a way to heal a marginalized and environmentally traumatized urban neighborhood. They encourage a sense of rootedness and of attachment to place, creating safe havens that offer residents a space for recovery. They also help to bolster residents' ability to deal with the negative dynamics of discrimination and provide spaces for broader political struggles including gentrification. Drawing on the cases of Barcelona, Boston, and Havana, Anguelovski presents a new holistic framework for understanding environmental justice action in cities, with the right to a healthy community environment at its core.

The Great Neighborhood Book

The Great Neighborhood Book PDF Author: Jay Walljasper
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1550923420
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191

Get Book Here

Book Description
Abandoned lots and litter-strewn pathways, or rows of green beans and pockets of wildflowers? Graffiti-marked walls and desolate bus stops, or shady refuges and comfortable seating? What transforms a dingy, inhospitable area into a dynamic gathering place? How do individuals take back their neighborhood? Neighborhoods decline when the people who live there lose their connection and no longer feel part of their community. Recapturing that sense of belonging and pride of place can be as simple as planting a civic garden or placing some benches in a park. The Great Neighborhood Book explains how most struggling communities can be revived, not by vast infusions of cash, not by government, but by the people who live there. The author addresses such challenges as traffic control, crime, comfort and safety, and developing economic vitality. Using a technique called "placemaking"-- the process of transforming public space -- this exciting guide offers inspiring real-life examples that show the magic that happens when individuals take small steps, and motivate others to make change. This book will motivate not only neighborhood activists and concerned citizens but also urban planners, developers and policy-makers.

Restoring America's Neighborhoods

Restoring America's Neighborhoods PDF Author: Michael R. Greenberg
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813527123
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
What does it take to mobilize a grass-roots force dedicated to bringing new life into a decaying neighborhood? Can any one person or group successfully halt physical deterioration, drug-related crime, or the encroachment of clusters of factories, highways, and other noxious land uses? Michael Greenberg demonstrates in this book that it can and has been done against all odds. Restoring America's Neighborhoods profiles twenty-four such cases from across the United States. It tells the story of people determined to make the blighted, crime-ridden urban enclaves in which they live and work a better place for everybody. These are people from many different walks of life: ministers working to bring jobs to their communities; city planners and federal employees trying to relocated residents of potential disaster areas; and locals taking matters into their own hands to create a healthier, more pleasing living environment for their children. Greenberg's is a heartening account of courage and unwavering resolve as well as of hope that individuals can make a difference, that violent criminals and uncaring bureaucrats need not carry the day. He calls them "streetfighters," a fitting tribute to their efforts to take back their neighborhoods, block by block and street by street.

Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods PDF Author: Howard W. Hallman
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Hallman's in-depth study begins with the basic definition that a neighbourhood is both a physical place and a social community. Neighbourhoods are analysed as: personal arenas (where individuals perform certain classes of action, e.g. shopping); social communities (where individuals work together in groups and take part in some form of collective life); physical places (where certain amenities are, e.g. houses and hospitals which give an area a cohesiveness as a whole); political communities (of varying degrees of intensity); and as little economies (where people buy houses, rent houses, employ each other etc).

Reclaiming Your Community

Reclaiming Your Community PDF Author: Majora Carter
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1523000295
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Majora Carter shows how brain drain cripples low-status communities and maps out a development strategy focused on talent retention to help them break out of economic stagnation. "My musical, In the Heights, explores issues of community, gentrification, identity and home, and the question: Are happy endings only ones that involve getting out of your neighborhood to achieve your dreams? In her refreshing new book, Majora Carter writes about these issues with great insight and clarity, asking us to re-examine our notions of what community development is and how we invest in the futures of our hometowns. This is an exciting conversation worth joining.” —Lin-Manuel Miranda How can we solve the problem of persistent poverty in low-status communities? Majora Carter argues that these areas need a talent-retention strategy, just like the ones companies have. Retaining homegrown talent is a critical part of creating a strong local economy that can resist gentrification. But too many people born in low-status communities measure their success by how far away from them they can get. Carter, who could have been one of them, returned to the South Bronx and devised a development strategy rooted in the conviction that these communities have the resources within themselves to succeed. She advocates measures such as Building mixed-income instead of exclusively low-income housing to create a diverse and robust economic ecosystem Showing homeowners how to maximize the long-term value of their property so they won’t succumb to quick-cash offers from speculators Keeping people and dollars in the community by developing vibrant “third spaces”—restaurants, bookstores, and places like Carter’s own Boogie Down Grind Cafe This is a profoundly personal book. Carter writes about her brother’s murder, how turning a local dumping ground into an award-winning park opened her eyes to the hidden potential in her community, her struggles as a woman of color confronting the “male and pale” real estate and nonprofit establishments, and much more. It is a powerful rethinking of poverty, economic development, and the meaning of success.

Neighborhood Revitalization

Neighborhood Revitalization PDF Author: Roger S. Ahlbrandt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description


Neighborhoods, People, and Community

Neighborhoods, People, and Community PDF Author: Roger Ahlbrandt
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9781461296836
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book focuses on neighborhoods and the people living in them. It describes differences among neighborhoods in terms of their social and institutional structure, attitudes of the residents, quality of life, and the characteristics of the residents. The book is based on the results of a survey of almost 6,000 residents living throughout the city of Pittsburgh. As such it provides the basis for examining groups of people as well as whole neighborhoods. The communal aspects of urban living are discussed in Chapters 1 and 2; attachment toward the neighborhood in Chapter 3; importance of reli gion, life cycle, and race in Chapter 4; various aspects of individual social support systems and neighborhood social fabric in Chapters 5, 6, and 7; the contextual aspects of the neighborhood environment in Chapters 8 and 9; and the implications for urban policy in Chapter 10. The results of the analysis described in the book pro vide a detailed understanding of differences in the struc ture and composition of urban neighborhoods, and they show why some groups of people are drawn into their neighborhoods whereas others rely more upon the wider community to meet a variety of needs. The analysis pro vides the framework in which to address the implications for urban policy, particularly with respect to mental health prevention and neighborhood and community renewal.

The Great Neighborhood Book

The Great Neighborhood Book PDF Author: Jay Walljasper
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Community development, Urban
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Get Book Here

Book Description