The dual public policy tensions of people prosperity versus place prosperity and need-based versus asset-based approaches to community development provide a conceptual framework to evaluate the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative. In 1994, this thirty-month program set out to revitalize eight inner-city Los Angeles neighborhoods through technical assistance and seed money. Three distinct categories capture the observed discrepancies among the communities that aimed to sustain revitalization efforts. The emergent themes emphasize consensus building (enhancing social capital or networks of trust and reciprocity), image building (short-term visible improvements to restore pride and confidence), and capacity building (leveraging resources with outside funds by joining public private partnerships).
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Agnew, John A. 1984. Devaluing place: “People prosperity versus place prosperity” and regional planning . Environment and Planning D: Society and Space1: 25-45 .
2.
Arefi, Mahyar. 2002. Jump-starting main street: A case study of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative (LANI) . Town Planning Review73 (1): 83-110 .
3.
Baer, William. 1976. On the death of cities . The Public Interest45 (Fall): 3-19 .
4.
Bates, Robert H. 1990. Capital, kinship, and conflict: The structuring of capital in kinship societies . Canadian Journal of African Studies24: 151-164 .
5.
Bolton, Roger. 1992. Place prosperity revisited: An old issue with a new angle . Urban Studies29 (2): 185-203 .
6.
Bothwell, Stephanie E., Raymond Gindroz, and Robert E. Lang. 1998. Restoring community through traditional neighborhood design: A case study of diggs town public housing . Housing Policy Debate9 (1): 89-114 .
7.
Burt, Ronald. 1992. Structural holes: The social structure of competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
8.
Coleman, James S. 1988. Social capital in the creation of human capital . American Journal of Sociology94: 95-120 .
9.
Coleman, James S. 1990. Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap .
10.
Edel, Matthew. 1980. People versus places in urban impact analysis. In The urban impacts of federal policies, edited by Norman J. Glickman, 175-191. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press .
11.
Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. 1989. Building theories from case study research . Academy of Management Review14 (4): 532-550 .
12.
Foley, Michael W., and Bob Edwards. 1999. Is it time to disinvest in social capital? Journal of Public Policy19 (2): 141-173 .
13.
Frieden, Bernard, and Lynne Sagalyn. 1989. Downtown Inc.: How America rebuilds cities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
14.
Gale, Denis E. 1996. Understanding urban unrest: From Reverend King to Rodney King. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage .
15.
Gans, Herbert J. 1968. People, plans, planning problems and solutions. New York: Basic Books .
16.
Gittell, Ross, and Avis Vidal. 1998. Community organizing: Building social capital as a development strategy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage .
17.
Glickman, Norman J., and Lisa J. Servon. 1998. More than bricks and sticks: Five components of community development corporation capacity . Housing and Policy Debate9 (3): 497-539 .
18.
Goldsmith, William W. 1974. The ghetto as a resource for black America . The American Institute of Planners Journal, pp. 17-28 .
19.
Gruber, Judith. 1994. Coordinating growth management through consensus-building: Incentives and the generation of social, intellectual, and political capital. Working paper 617. Berkeley: University of California .
20.
Hoover, Edgar M. 1971. An introduction to regional economics. New York: Knopf .
Innes, Judith E. 1994. Planning through consensus buildings: A new view of the comprehensive planning ideal. Working paper 626. Berkeley: University of California, Institute of Urban and Regional Development .
23.
Innes, Judith E., and David E. Booher. 1997. Consensus building as role-playing and bricolage: Toward a theory of collaborative planning. Working paper 698. Berkeley: University of California, Institute of Urban and Regional Development .
24.
Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The death and life of great American cities. New York: Vintage .
25.
Kaplan, Marshall. 1990. American neighborhood policies: Mixed results and uneven evaluations. In The future of national urban policy, Marshall Kaplan and Franklin James, 210-224. Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
26.
Katzman, Martin T. 1982. The case against bailing out distressed areas. In Public policies for distressed communities, edited by F. Stevens Redburn and Terry F. Buss, 27-36. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books .
27.
Kubisch, Anne C., J. P. Connell, L. Schorr, and C. Weiss. 1995. New approaches to evaluating community initiatives: Concepts, methods, and contexts. Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute .
28.
Lemann, Nicholas. 1994. The myth of community development . The New York Times Magazine, 9 January, 27-60 .
29.
Levitan, Sar A., and E. I. Miller. 1995. Enterprise Zones are no solutions for our blighted areas. In Controversies in American public policy, edited by J. A. Hird, 263-270. New York: St. Martin's .
30.
Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative. 1994. A city of Los Angeles partnership proposal. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative .
31.
Marris, Peter. 1974. Loss and change. New York: Pantheon .
32.
McCarthy, John. 1998. US urban empowerment zones . Land Use Policy15 (4): 319-330 .
33.
Mead, Lawrence M. 1986. Beyond entitlement: The social obligations of citizenship. New York: Free Press .
34.
Moynihan, Daniel P. 1967. Comment: A crisis of confidence? The Public Interest7: 3-10 .
35.
Moynihan, Daniel P. 1969. Maximum feasible misunderstanding: Community action in the war on poverty. New York: Free Press .
36.
Nathan, Richard P. 1992. A new agenda for cities. Washington, DC: National League of Cities .
37.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1997. Investigating in capital, institutions, and incentives. In Institutions and economic development: Growth and governance in less-developed and post-socialist countries, edited by Christopher Clague, 153-181. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press .
38.
Patton, Michael Q. 1987. How to use qualitative methods in evaluation. Newbury Park, CA: Sage .
39.
Perkins, Joyce. 1996. Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative . In Annual Proceedings of the American Society of Landscape Architects, 58-61 . Washington, DC: American Society of Landscape Architects.
40.
Peterman, William. 2000. Neighborhood planning and community-based development: The potential and limits of grassroots action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage .
41.
Porter, Michael, and Anne Habiby. 1999. A window on the new economy: Understanding the economic potential of the inner cities. Inc., May, 49-50.
42.
Putnam, Robert, Robert Leonardi, and Rafella Y. Nanetti. 1993. Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
43.
Riposa, Gerry. 1996. From Enterprise Zones to Empowerment Zones . American Behavioral Scientist39 (5): 536-551 .
44.
Snow, Luther K. 1995. Economic development breaks the mold: Community-building, place targeting, and Empowerment Zones . Economic Development Quarterly9: 185-198 .
45.
Sviridoff, Mitchell. 1994. The seeds of urban revival . The Public Interest Winter: 82-103 .
46.
Turk, Herman. 1977. Organizations in modern life: Cities and other large networks. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass .
47.
U.S. Census Bureau. 1990. Census lookup. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau .
48.
Wallis, Allan. 1998. Social capital and community building: Part one . National Civic Review87 (3): 253-271 .
49.
Winnick, Louis. 1966. Place prosperity vs. people prosperity: Welfare considerations in the geographic redistributions of economic activity. UCLA Real Estate Research Program, pp. 273-283.
