urban development revisited: the role of neighborhood needs and local participation in urban...

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Urban DevelopmentRevisited: The Role ofNeighborhood Needs andLocal Participation inUrban RevitalizationSabine U. O'Hara aa Green Mountain CollegePublished online: 05 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Sabine U. O'Hara (2001) Urban DevelopmentRevisited: The Role of Neighborhood Needs and Local Participationin Urban Revitalization, Review of Social Economy, 59:1, 23-43, DOI:10.1080/00346760110036265

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Urban Development Revisited: The Role ofNeighborhood Needs and Local Participation

in Urban Revitalization

Sabine U. O’HaraGreen Mountain College

[email protected]

Abstract Traditional models of economic development such as economic baseand urban revitalization models have been found wanting. Both models rely onexpert-based assessments of local development needs. More recent approaches callfor a stronger focus on local development needs and resident skills as the basis fordesigning development strategies. One such neighborhood-based approach todevelopment is presented in this paper. Its initial step was a survey of 444 house-holds representing 1398 residents conducted in the Hamilton Hill and Vale neigh-borhoods of Schenectady, New York a ‘downsized’ community of about 65,000residents in the Capital District of New York State. Survey results show a strongneed for recreation, childcare, a grocery store, care for the elderly and home repairs.Residents’ self-assessed job skills and interests appear to be well suited to meetthese needs. Yet despite these promising results, barriers to neighborhood-baseddevelopment persist. These barriers reiterate the long history of isolation prevalentin US inner city neighborhoods. Two issues are particularly characteristic of thebarriers that continue to keep urban neighborhoods isolated from their larger con-text. They are: (1) a lack of effective communication between local residents anddecision makers; and (2) a lack of valuation systems that properly assess the valueof social and environmental context and their contributions to local development.

Keywords: neighborhood-based urban development, job creation, needs assess-ment, social context

INTRODUCTION

Urban and regional development issues pose challenges to mainstream economictheory and methods like few other subject areas in economics. While the currentmacroeconomic picture of the U.S. economy shows encouraging signs of steadygrowth, a twenty-year low in unemployment rates and a rising economic tide

REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY, VOL. LIX, NO. 1, MARCH 2001

Review of Social EconomyISSN 0034-6764 print/ISSN 1470-1162 online © 2001 The Association for Social Economics

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journalsDOI: 10.1080/00346760110036265

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despite Asia and Latin America crises, the regional and local picture is ambiguous.Some regions thrive, while other are “downsized”; some invest in new infor-mation technology infrastructure, while others are crushed by the rising costs ofmaintaining and upgrading an outdated and decaying infrastructure. Particularlythe old industrial Northeast of the United States continues to feel the effectsof a shrinking manufacturing sector, the out-migration of jobs and residents, adeclining tax base, and polluted industrial “brown � elds”.

These ambiguities have challenged traditional models of regional and urbaneconomic development as well as the methodologies commonly applied. Newermodels have particularly challenged the exclusive focus on economic processesand indicators to the neglect of the context-speci� c social, cultural and environ-mental factors of development. Yet a context-speci� c approach to developmentcalls, not only for expanded measures to evaluate development initiatives andoutcomes, but also for an expanded notion of expertise. Traditional models’reliance on “credentialed expertise” is not enough to take adequate account of theimpacts and relative importance of broader development measures. Instead, theinclusion of the neglected “local expertise” of residents and users of urban orregional space becomes imperative. Both issues are familiar to social economistswho have long been engaged in a more context-oriented approach to economicanalysis and—to a lesser degree—in developing participatory research modelsthat seek to engage local expertise.

This paper presents the results of a study which took a decidedly participatoryapproach to analyzing the development potential and barriers to urban develop-ment in the city of Schenectady, an old industrial city of 65,000 in North EasternNew York. The core of the study is a survey of the needs and skills of urbanhouseholds in two inner city neighborhoods. The survey results illustrate existingdevelopment barriers, which need to be addressed, in order for, even well mean-ing, models of urban development to succeed.

MODELS OF URBAN AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The majority of economic development efforts has been inspired by the so-calledbase model of development. According to this model the key to a region’s develop-ment lies in its ability to attract a core of base industries that can generate export-able goods and services. The underlying rationale of this model is that: (1) asexports increase revenue streams grow; which (2) leads to an increased number ofjobs and thus income to the region; (3) an increase in demand for consumer goodsand services; and (4) an increase in service and retail sector jobs meeting theadded consumer demand. The result is a multiplier effect to the region’s economy.

Consistent with this model of development are development strategies that

REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY

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seek to support a region’s economic base sectors or attract new base industries.Common incentive packages have relied heavily on cost-related measures liketax breaks, lax environmental regulations, and low wages to attract or retainbusinesses. The state of Alabama, for example, was successful in attractingMercedes Benz, in exchange for a $250 million incentive package (Farrell 1996)and General Motors received $144 million in state and local tax breaks inexchange for their decision to locate near Nashville, Tennessee (Bartik 1991).The operative assumptions behind such attractive development incentives goback to location theories which emphasize economic factors, like transportationcosts, labor, land, and energy costs, and market considerations as the driving forcebehind business location and expansion decisions (Weber 1909; Hoover 1948).

Despite such theoretical underpinnings, the base model of development andits concomitant incentive strategies have had limited success. Even proponents ofthe base model of economic development concede that export oriented baseindustries may stimulate initial economic growth, but sustained growth can onlybe achieved if non-base activities are developed (Perloff and Wingo 1968; Krikelas1992). Critics argue that reliance on base industries will actually retard a region’seconomic development and create a fragile local economy (Jacobs 1984). Someof the reasons for this discouraging assessment are that multiplier effects appearto be low, especially in cash-strapped, low-income areas, where capital accumu-lation is limited, and where the real or perceived risks of doing business are high.Many export-oriented industries have also become more mobile and more global.Multiplier effects are, therefore, dispersed, reducing some region’s economies tomere assembly stations, with little or no bene� t to the regional labor force orsecondary businesses. By competing for footloose businesses through more andmore extensive incentives, regions have also bid each other down, and out ofmuch needed public revenue streams that could have improved public serviceslike education or infrastructure (Bartik 1996).

In addition, a growing number of studies suggest that not only the theory, butalso its supporting methodologies are � awed. Purely economic considerationslike production or transportation costs appear to be losing in importance when itcomes to business location and retention, while quality of life-related factorsseems to gain in importance (Blair and Premus 1987; Decker Economics Asso-ciates 1995). This seems to be particularly true for knowledge-based sectors likesoftware design and � nancial consulting (Rasker and Kloepfer 1992; Birch et al.1995).

The realization that current mainstream economics provides a woefully inade-quate theoretical framework for explaining regional development patterns or forproviding insights into promising development instruments is hardly new. Thelocation theorist, Loesch, commented more than forty years ago:

URBAN DEVELOPMENT REVISITED

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The mathematical determination of the optimum transport point, for example, isin� nitely more impressive as a solution of the location problem but also incom-parably less accurate than the statement that an entrepreneur, all things considered,will establish his enterprise at a place that he likes best.

(Losch 1943: 244)

An alternative model of economic development that appears to be more consistentwith a quality-oriented approach to development are beauti� cation and revitaliz-ation efforts. These strategies have played a particularly important role in theurban revitalization efforts of the 1970s. The rationale behind this approach todevelopment might be summarized as “commerce follows customers.” As urbanand rural centers improve their appeal, a region’s ability to attract and retain resi-dents may improve. This in turn stimulates consumer demand (Harrison 1974;Spratlen 1991), attracts a more quali� ed work force, and thus improves a region’scommercial potential and appeal as businesses location.

Empirical studies appear to support this rationale. An analysis of the relation-ship between migration patterns and social and economic conditions in � fty-onemetropolitan areas in the U.S.A., for example, found that improving the quality oflife in central cities helps retain a region’s labor pool (Adams and Fleeter 1997).Quality of life factors also appear to in� uence people’s location decisions (Longand DeAre 1980; Deavers 1989) to the point of accepting some decline in incomein exchange for improvements in the quality of life (Blomquist et al. 1988;Rudzitis and Johanson 1989). Beauti� cation strategies thus seem to acknowledgethe signi� cance of both economic and non-economic factors such as attractivehousing, neighborhood characteristics, recreational and cultural amenities, re-location costs, and speci� c information about employment possibilities (Mueller1982; Shahidsaless et al. 1983; Duffy 1994).

Yet beauti� cation efforts, too, have had their share of problems. Many havetaken a cookie-cutter approach to redevelopment: one mall, one conventioncenter, and one parking garage � ts all. Rarely were a community’s speci� c con-ditions or local residents’ needs or skills taken into account, as part of thedevelopment agenda. The results have often been higher costs than bene� ts, asdevelopment projects have added to the under-utilization of space, to plummetingreal estate markets, to an erosion of historically grown social networks, trust andcommunity identity.

Both the base model and the beauti� cation models perpetuate a concept ofdevelopment, that views economic activity as generally unconstrained and un-related to a region’s speci� c social, cultural, and environmental context. The basemodel reduces residents, workers, environmental assets and space to mere inputfunctions of production and determinants of revenue streams that are substitutableand displacable. Beauti� cation strategies reduce a workforce, consumers and


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residents to an idealized prototype, generally patterned after the suburban main-stream. The failure of standard development strategies can, therefore, be viewedas the result of a persistent neglect of the context factors of development. Fordevelopment strategies to be successful, context speci� c social, demographic,cultural or environmental factors must become the focus of development efforts(Wilson 1985; Power 1996; O’Hara 1998). According to Power four types of con-texts must inform the process of identifying successful development strategies.He writes:

The real economic base of a local area consists of all those things that make it anattractive place to live, work or do business. That means the economic base includesthe quality of the natural environment, the richness of the local culture, the securityand stability of the community, the quality of public services and the public-worksinfrastructure, and the quality of the workforce. . . . Protecting the natural, cultural,and human-made environment is most certainly productive economic activity. Itcannot be dismissed as noneconomic or antieconomic.

(Power 1996: 134)

A positive commercial climate is important particularly to attracting largebusinesses, but so are local amenities, supportive communities, aesthetic livingconditions, and the institutional structures that support them. Neglecting non-commercial factors is likely to lead to development initiatives that diminish notonly a community’s social, cultural, and natural environment, but its businessenvironment as well. Yet given the challenging task of identifying measureswhich re� ect the economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts ofdevelopment raises two important questions, namely, how does one evaluate thecomplex effects of development and who evaluates?

WHAT REALLY DRIVES URBAN DEVELOPMENT?

The task of identifying development options that improve welfare and ofevaluating their success has traditionally focused on economic impacts andeconomic indicators. This limited approach has its parallels on the national andinternational level where successful development has been measured in GDPgrowth or growth of GDP per capita. The disappointment with GDP or GDP percapita as a “general measure of development” became increasingly pronounced inthe late 1960s. An alternative approach, the so-called “social indicator approach”,advocated the need to view development as a multidimensional process (Noll1996; Kallmann 1997). “An appropriate measure for such a process shouldtherefore incorporate a wide range of social and economic indicators re� ectingvarious aspects of society.” (Kallmann 1997: 5). The social indicator approachcalled for two main changes: (1) Development should be tracked by a range of


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monitored phenomena re� ective of broader “quality of life” impacts, howeverde� ned; and (2) Development measures should focus on “output” indicatorsrather than “input” indicators assumed to contribute to positive outcomes. Socialindicators were thus de� ned as:

. . . A statistic of direct normative interest which facilitates concise, comprehensiveand balanced judgments about the condition of major aspects of a society. It is in allcases a direct measure of welfare. It is subject to the interpretation that, if it changesin the ‘right’ direction, while other things remain equal, things have improved.

(United Nations Development Programme 1994)

The social indicator movement developed along two distinct paths: the objectiveindicator approach and the subjective indicator approach (Vogel 1989). The sub-jective approach, also referred to as “happiness research”, relies on individuals’subjective assessments of their Quality of Life or satisfaction. Such subjectiveinformation is generally solicited through surveys or interviews. The theoreticalroots of this approach lie in Comparison Theory which states that quality of lifeissues cannot simply be addressed through common sets of objective indicators,since people make judgments about their satisfaction level based on comparisonsto others’ income level, social status, and other life circumstance (Easterlin 1974;Campbell et al. 1976). The objective indicator approach relies on a wide rangeof statistical measures providing often detailed information about the status ofeconomic, social, and political conditions (Russett et al. 1964; US Department ofCommerce 1973; Rossi and Gilmartin 1980). Table 1 offers a list of indicatorcategories and their respective measures.

The dif� culties of selecting objective indicators of development success orfailure are well known. What indicators should be used to re� ect the qualitativechanges economic development precipitates in the social, cultural and environ-mental context systems of development? Whose needs are determinative inselecting a set of objective indicators or in evaluating their relative importance?How can an appropriate distinction be made between actual changes in objectiveindicators and the subjective perceptions of change of the affected populations?Any selection of “objective” indicators by credentialed experts ignores indi-viduals’ or social group’s speci� c needs options and perceptions and may, infact, reiterate existing cultural, class and gender biases (O’Hara 1999). At thesame time, subjective indicators may be re� ective of biases caused by lowexpectations or low self-esteem of the surveyed population (Sen 1992, 1993).1

1 The term option rather than choice is used to connote the path dependent nature of what Sen(1993) call “agency-freedom ” and “well-being freedom”. Freedom is not limited to an active notionof choice but includes circumstances, including Dryzek’s “ecological circumstances” (1987: 33).


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Much of the current “livable cities” and “sustainable communities” movementhas taken its cue from the objective indicator wing of the social indicator move-ment (Waddell 1995). Yet at the local level, a subjective dimension to the selec-tion process of objective indicators has often been added. This has taken the formof soliciting input from local residents and stakeholder groups on the selectionof indicator categories or development options through Planning Cells, CitizenJuries, Focus Groups or other participatory processes (Renn et al. 1995). Sub-jective survey and interview-based approaches also remain important. Theseapproaches emphasize the need to include the neglected voices of marginalizedpopulations, local expertise and the perspectives of those most affected by thedevelopment choices made. Other studies have sought to link objective and sub-jective indicators by weighting objective indicators based on speci� c physical,social and economic characteristics of human well-being as de� ned by localcommunities themselves. Rogerson et al., for example, derived local rankings

Table 1: Selected Categories of Objective Social Indicators

Indicator Category Speci� c Objective Indicators (Selected)

Demographics/Human Resources

Total PopulationWorking Age Population as a % of Total PopulationPercentage of Population in Cities Over 50,000Female Wage Earners as a % of total Wage Earners

Government/Defense

Government Expenditures as a % of GDPDefense Expenditures as a % of GDPVotes in National Election as a % of Voting PopulationDeaths from Domestic Group Violence per 100,000

Economics/Wealth GDP per CapitaPrivate Consumption as a % of GDPNonagricultural employment as a % of Working

PopulationIncome Distribution After Taxes (Gini Index)

Health Life ExpectancyInfant Mortality RatesPhysicians per 100,000 of PopulationHospital Beds per 100,000 of Population

Education Literacy of the Population Age 15 and overPrimary/Secondary School students as a % of

5–18-year-oldsStudents enrolled in Higher Education per 100,000Women in Higher Education per 100,000


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from an opinion survey, which asked urban residents “what elements of the urbanenvironment were important to their quality of life” (1989: 1658).

One reason for moving toward a greater emphasis on local perceptions ofdevelopment needs is that development objectives and implementation strategiesde� ned solely by credentialed experts, rather than in collaboration with localexperts, perpetuate the valuation biases of experts and the disciplines they repre-sent. Moreover, such exclusion limits the information available to decision-makers. Despite valid reservations about self-assessed resident information,expert-based assessments are in danger of veiling context speci� c, local infor-mation and of underestimating the invaluable role local expertise can play inidentifying a region’s or community’s development potential. Excluding localresidents or stakeholders from the process of identifying and evaluating develop-ment options, is thus likely to narrow a region’s potential. In addition, exclusionmay undermine human potential and initiative, as residents are isolated fromthe decisions, which affect their own lives and livelihood. As a result, citizeninvolvement, community identity and trust are eroded. Power writes:

There is no point in talking about how to encourage economic development until weknow just what we are trying to achieve. What is it that we are not getting from thelocal economy that we wish we were getting and that the local economy canprovide? Those goals should be stated in noneconomic terms without reference tohow they are to be achieved. They should focus on what it is that people want ratherthan on some abstract description of the economy.

(1996: 181–182)

Yet despite the growing realization that qualitative information about a region’ssocial, cultural and environmental conditions is not simply an addendum toeconomic development, but central to it, and despite the acknowledgment, thatlocal participation is essential to successful development and revitalization efforts,many barriers remain. This is particularly true in low-income urban areas, whereresidents are perceived as the (more or less deserving) recipients of welfare andcharity, and seldom as knowledgeable experts on local economic, social, culturaland environmental conditions (Halpern 1995). To overcome such barriers,methodological biases, as well as social biases, must be addressed. This includesthe recognition that it is essential to start with the needs and skills of local resi-dents, rather than with a notion of development that leaves the lives of those mostaffected, and most in need of improvements in their quality of life, unconsidered.

LEARNING FROM LOCAL PARTICIPATION

Inner cities generally face the most serious challenges in implementing successfuldevelopment and revitalization efforts. Despite the considerable problems of large


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metropolitan cities, this may be particularly true for mid-size cities, which lackthe cultural attractions and diversity characteristic of large cities, but must copewith similar problems of urban � ight and urban decline as their larger peers.Recent work on urban development stresses the need for cities, no matter whatsize, to avoid large, prestigious development projects reminiscent of the “beauti-� cation model” of development and to focus instead on improving their citizens’quality of life (Gratz 1989, 1998; Kunstler 1996). Such development efforts muststart by identifying the needs of residents and users of urban space, rather thantaking the needs of distant potential users or a generic set of needs as their startingpoint. At the same time, a focus on needs alone can easily lead to a standardapproach to development. Urban communities share many of their needs forhuman services, transportation and higher quality housing. An assessment of acommunity’s speci� c assets and skills can form an important basis for identifyingmore targeted development projects, that can be implemented by local popu-lations, rather than relying on imports of skills and/or services.

This orientation on residents’ needs and skills as the starting point for identi-fying development potentials was the basis for a household survey conducted intwo inner city neighborhoods in Schenectady, New York. Schenectady is a cityof about 65,000 residents in the Eastern Part of New York State, about two and ahalf hours north of New York City. The two neighborhoods surveyed are notgenerally the focus of urban development efforts. They are adjacent to the city’scentral downtown district and are more often considered an impediment todevelopment than a starting point for development efforts. Both neighborhoodsbear the, at least partially anecdotal, characteristics of urban problem areas: lowhousehold incomes, high unemployment, high crime (see Table 2 for a summaryof income and employment data for the census tracts located within the surveyarea). Both neighborhoods also offer the potential for improving negative per-ceptions of the city itself, since such perceptions often constitute barriers to urbandevelopment and revitalization efforts.

The city of Schenectady faces many of the challenges typical for the aging

Table 2: Unemployment Rate and Median Income in the Survey Area (1990Census data)

Census Tract Unemployment RateMedian

Household IncomeMedian

Family Income

208 5.3% $21,387 $22,337209 14.1% $17,180 $17,000210.2 15.0% $8,618 $15,074


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manufacturing centers of the Northeastern United States. Schenectady was theoriginal home of Thomas Edison’s renowned Edison Machine Works (founded in1886 and later renamed General Electric). By the 1940s the city had becomea booming, one-company town, with 45,000 highly skilled employees workingin research, development and manufacturing. Since the late 1950s this sizeablework force has dwindled to today’s total of less than 6,000 employees. Visibleevidence of this decline are empty downtown store fronts, a weak real estate mar-ket, and miles of under-utilized and abandoned industrial sites within minutes ofthe Mohawk river and the once thriving down-town area.

The household survey conducted in Schenectady’s Hamilton Hill and Valeneighborhoods was decidedly participatory, involving local residents and com-munity organizations at every level. The survey’s lead sponsor was a local citizensgroup, the Schenectady Economic Initiative (SEI), concerned with developingemployment opportunities for urban residents. SEI sought input from and co-operated with various other local citizen organizations to clarify the survey focus,identify an appropriate survey tool, design and carry out the survey. Surveyquestions focused on neighborhood needs and residents’ skills to service suchmarkets, as a way to meet both service and employment needs (O’Hara 1997a).The survey tool was an interview-style, door-to-door survey and covered 444households representing 1,398 residents or roughly 30 percent of the total residentpopulation in the surveyed area. Almost eighty volunteers from neighborhoodchurches, civic organizations, and local colleges served as interviewers. Allinterviewers attended at least one training event, which also served as pilot studyto solicit feedback on the survey tool.

To achieve a relatively even sample distribution across the varying character-istics of the survey area, the area was further divided into seven subdistricts, eachcharacterized by a relatively uniform building stock of commercial, multifamily,duplex, or single family homes. Each subdistrict comprised a nine- to twelve-block area. Interviewers were assigned to one or more streets within a subdistrictand were asked to interview a random sample of four to six households withintheir assigned area. Alternative arrangements were made for apartment buildingsand less densely populated commercial neighborhoods. This ensured a randomsample of households while providing an even spatial distribution to re� ectvarying zoning characteristics within the survey area.

Household size varied from single-person households (17.8 percent) to largemulti-generational households with nine or more household members (1.6 per-cent). The mean household size of the 444 households surveyed was 3.15 personswith a median household size of three. Grouped according to household type, thedata showed 18.2 percent of the surveyed population living in single-person


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households, 27.5 percent in households with multiple adults, and only 6.8 percentin senior households (65 or older), with noticeable differences in household typeacross the survey area’s seven subdistricts (see Table 3).2

Two questions addressed residents’ needs. The � rst one asked respondents tolist the three services most needed in their neighborhood. Responses to this openquestion mentioned most frequently the need for a grocery store (24.2 percent ofall respondents). Other top choices (in order of votes cast) included recreationalactivities for children and youth, community improvements such as clean-upefforts, renovating dilapidated and boarded-up buildings, cleaning up streets, andcreating green space and playgrounds. Surprisingly, jobs and job creation, theneed for an employment agency or other employment related services were rarelymentioned (less than 2 percent). Table 4 lists the ten most frequently mentionedneighborhood needs respondents identi� ed for their neighborhood. Many otherswere mentioned with a frequency of one to four responses.3

A second question asked respondents to rank a list of sixteen services, whichpilot group participants had con� rmed as particularly relevant neighborhoodneeds, on a scale of “very important”, “important”, “not important”, “alreadythere”, “needs improvement”. Responses to this second question revealed“recreation” as the category most frequently ranked as “most important”, fol-lowed by a grocery store, child care and care for the elderly. Differences betweenrespondents’ spontaneous, self-assessed needs and those selected from a list ofsuggested items are not uncommon.4 Open questions tend to solicit responsesthat re� ect a community’s public discourse or media opinion. In the case ofSchenectady’s inner city neighborhoods the most frequently mentioned need hadbeen a grocery store and increased policing. In contrast, “recreation”, “child care”and care for the elderly were rarely mentioned in the pilot groups or the broaderpublic discourse. The frequency with which respondents ranked these services as“very important” came, therefore, as a surprise. Fifth highest on the list of “veryimportant” needs are home repairs. Interviewers’ comments indicate that thiscategory does not simply imply a need for repair services, but refers moregenerally to the need for improvements in the neighborhood’s appearance. Table5 lists the top ten responses ranked as “most important” and “important”.

2 The label “families” refers to households with children under the age of 17 with at least oneadult between the ages of 26 and 64. “Young families” refers to households with children headed byone or more adults aged 17 to 25. “Multi generational” refers to households with members under 17,between 17 and 64, and over 65.

3 One-third of respondents listed only one pressing need, rather than the suggested three.4 Both the political science literature on opinion polling and the literature on quality of life sur-

veys report similar differences between open and choice questions (see Scheuch 1994).


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Tabl

e 3:

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ld T

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Acr

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the

Surv

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istr

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ouse

hold

Typ

e#

surv

.%

*#

surv

.%

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surv

.%

*#

surv

.%

*#

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.%

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.%

*#

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ngle

s16

19.7

1721

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98

9.9

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.23

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1415

.212

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.018

19.6

77.

616

17.4

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651

3.3

413

.32

6.7

826

.74

13.3

310

.08

26.7

youn

g fa

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es4

10.5

410

.54

10.5

1128

.95

13.2

718

.43

7.9

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3116

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2010

.431

16.1

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.02

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.00

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330

.0

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tage

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d ty

pe


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The services most frequently labeled as “needs improvement” are trans-portation related: taxis with 13.6 percent, bus services with 10.5 percent. Giventhe lower number of overall responses, the percentage mentions of bus and taxiservices were comparable to those of “recreation” and “grocery store” mentionedin the “very important” category. This need for improved transportation is con-� rmed by the fact that 162 or 37 percent of the households surveyed reportedhaving no car, and only 2 percent reported having more than one car per house-hold. This � nding reiterates the need for development efforts, which focus on

Table 4: Ten Neighborhood Services Most Wanted

Service needed # of votes percentage

grocery store 163 24.2recreation for child./youth 104 15.4community improvement 73 10.8safety/policing 54 8.0theater/club/restaur/lounge 51 7.6day care 36 5.3laundromats/dry cleaner 22 3.3department store 18 2.7free education clinic 18 2.7employment agency 12 1.8

Table 5: Ten Neighborhood Services Most Often Identi� ed as “Very Important”

Service needed very important important# ofvotes

% ofvotes*

% ofvotes**

# ofvotes

% ofvotes*

% ofvotes**

recreation 287 64.7 13.4 85 19.1 5.5grocery 228 51.4 10.7 61 13.7 4.0child care 212 47.7 9.9 83 18.7 5.4elder care 178 40.1 8.3 106 23.9 6.9home repairs 174 39.2 8.1 113 25.5 7.4counseling 174 39.2 8.1 111 25.0 7.2legal services 166 37.4 7.8 107 24.1 7.0drug store 128 28.8 6.0 76 17.1 4.9appliance repair 94 21.2 4.4 133 30.0 8.7bus 90 20.3 4.2 60 13.5 3.9

* percentage of all votes per service category** percentage of all votes in category “very important” or “important” including thosefor “other”.


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local needs and skills and pursue relevant substitution strategies by offering localservices and local employment opportunities. Of the 162 respondents whoreported having “no car”, 61.8 percent reported no employment (25.4 percentreport full-time employment) compared to 38.2 percent of those who own a car(74.1 percent report full-time employment). In contrast, the effect of transporta-tion on household needs is less pronounced. Rankings in all needs categories aresomewhat higher among households, which do not own a car, yet the differencesbetween car-owning households and those without car are generally small. Anexception is the greater need for a grocery store, drug store and transportationrelated services among households without a car. This con� rms the potential fordeveloping services to meet household needs in urban neighborhoods, evenamong households with a higher degree of mobility.

Overall, these results indicate a strong need for recreation, human services,and neighborhood improvements. All three needs categories connote quality oflife-related issues, rather than purely economic development issues. Respondentsappeared to associate “recreation” with the need for amenities like neighbor-hood parks and playgrounds, and for programs to “get teenagers off the street.”Similarly, the category “neighborhood improvements” was associated with theneed for green space as well as with rehabilitating empty and unsafe buildings.

The surveyed populations’ skill level appears to be surprisingly high with40 percent of respondents indicating a high school diploma or GED, 13 percentindicating at least some college education, and almost 10 percent reporting acollege degree. These results, however, do not re� ect the total resident popu-lation’s education level, since respondents were asked to indicate the highesteducation level represented in their household.

Respondents’ self-assessed work skills and desired work showed some promis-ing overlap with the identi� ed neighborhood needs. Human services related skillslike “dealing with people”, “home care”, and “recreational/sports” were most fre-quently selected in response to the question “what kinds of things do you dowell”. This is also re� ected in respondents’ desired employment with 18 percent(243 responses) indicating an interest in child care/education related employment,12 percent (168 responses) interested in clerical/computer related work, 8 percent(105 responses) in food and food services, 7 percent (99 responses) in health carerelated work, and 6 percent (74 responses) in construction and rehabilitation.Remarkably high is the interest in self-employment. 10 percent of the respondentsmentioned “self-employment” as a desired employment change, making this thefourth most frequently mentioned category of desired improvements in their worksituation. 15.6 percent of the respondents also indicated that they or their familyhad owned a business at some time.


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OVERCOMING DEVELOPMENT BARRIERS

Despite the promising match between neighborhood needs and skills in the sur-veyed inner city area, considerable development barriers remain. Two main issuesappear to be: (1) the lack of effective communication between local residents anddecision makers; and (2) the lack of valuation systems that properly assess the valueof the social and environmental context and its contributions to local development.

The � rst barrier re� ects long-standing attitudes toward traditionally immi-grant, urban populations. Established political and decision processes rarely takethe perceptions of urban populations into consideration. Instead, urban residents,particularly those living in low income, racially mixed inner city neighborhoodsare viewed as needing to be rehabilitated and changed so as to adopt the values andperceptions of the (suburban) U.S. mainstream. One of the legacies of this attitudecan be seen in the fact that volunteer organizations, urban agencies or churchesprovide the bulk of human services in urban neighborhoods. These organizationsunwittingly compete with neighborhood based private sector businesses thatcould offer employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for local residents,whose skills and interests are well suited to provide these services. The service-oriented volunteer—and non-governmental sector characteristic of U.S. civilsociety is, therefore, not unambiguously positive. Survey results illustrate thisdilemma as needs in human services and home repairs are met by charitable andnon-for pro� t organizations rather than private sector businesses. In addition, thestrong presence of civic organizations in U.S. inner cities is evidence of an exodusin public and private sector support. In fact, the emphasis on private sector,neighborhood development has often been used to legitimise the withdrawal ofpublic funds and public support from urban neighborhoods. This raises seriousquestions about the ability of urban neighborhood businesses to survive withoutlinks to external markets and support systems. To move from identifying neigh-borhood needs and skills to developing neighborhood based employment oppor-tunities requires, therefore, more than the technical support necessary to advanceresidents’ management, business planning and � nancial skills. It requires theintentional re-linking of urban centers to their larger context.

The lack of concern for public transportation and the automobile-focus ofmany urban development initiatives are further evidence of the rehabilitationattitude toward urban populations. Transportation has long been identi� ed as adevelopment barrier to urban neighborhoods. Dependence on private automobilesnot only limits urban populations’ access to consumer and labor markets, but alsoaffects their health and quality of life: No transportation, no jobs, no income, nopurchasing power, still fewer jobs—more automobiles, more quick access roads,more pollution and traf� c congestion, more loss of aesthetic quality—so go


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the spirals of urban downturn. The surveyed neighborhoods are no exception.The persistent push toward green � eld development rather than the re-use ofdeveloped spaces close to urban centers5 thus re� ects more than a move to greenerpastures, modernized infrastructure, and a higher quality environment. Theyreveal an underlying attitude of isolationism: rather than improving the quality oflife for urban neighborhoods, successful development implies providing residentsand businesses with the opportunity to move up the social ladder and out to thesuburbs. Lower class urban residents (like the immigrants of old) are meanwhilesegregated in areas that merely deserve society’s charity, rather than seriousdevelopment efforts. Conscious or not, this isolation strategy has been supportedby development initiatives that view increased prosperity as synonymous tobecoming suburban.6 Reversing this trend requires more than improved trans-portation systems out to the suburbs. It demands the conscious support of urbanareas to retain and attract residents as well as businesses, rather than promotingtheir exodus. This poses a serious con� ict between the development interestsof urban communities and decision-makers representing the interest of theirsuburban neighbors.

Secondly, barriers to urban neighborhood development must be viewed withinthe larger context of evaluating success and failure of economic developmentinitiatives. The almost exclusive focus on market-based success measures haveled not only to the neglect of social and environmental indicators in assessingdevelopment strategies, but also to a distorted de� nition of economic successitself (O’Hara 1997b). The bene� ts of a local community’s social stability, on theother hand, are undeniable. Trust, good neighborly relations, and active citizeninvolvement affect a community’s quality of life, as well as the quality of itsbusiness climate (Putnam 1993; Fukyama 1995). Such social contributions havetraditionally been provided in private households and civic organization. It is,therefore, deceptively easy to neglect them when calculating the (market) costsand bene� ts of economic development strategies. Instead of valuing the un-accounted for contributions provided in households and community organiz-ations, common notions of economic success are associated with increasedpro� ts, tax revenues, and wage earning jobs. The demands of an increasinglycompetitive market economy, however, require time and energy, which crowd outthe time necessary to sustain non-market caretaking, householding, and social

5 The term green � eld development refers to the development of pristine, previously un-developed land.

6 For a discussion of the concept of ‘place prosperity versus people prosperity’ see for exampleBolton (1992), who argues that U.S. social policy has promoted people prosperity to the neglect ofdevelopment initiatives which focus on place, i.e. a geographical region or urban area.


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networking activities. The surveyed neighborhoods re� ect the inevitable trade-offs between market and non-market contributions: a growing need for recreation,childcare, care for the elderly. The inability of established economic accountingsystems to properly account for valuable and needed non-market contributions isknown both on the macro and the micro level. On the macro-level critics call fora revision of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the primary indicator ofeconomic performance (Daly and Cobb 1989; Cobb et al. 1995). On the microlevel, a growing list of quality of life indicators which rank communities orregions according to selected health, safety, educational and environmentalcriteria, points to the growing interest in information not captured in employment� gures, wage levels or cost of living indices (Liu 1976; Rosen 1979; Blomquistet al. 1988).

Simply to decry the loss of traditional models of civic involvement, however,would be missing the point. The point is not to go back to traditional models ofcivil society, but to include valuable subsistence services in economic valuationand accounting systems. Valuing the contributions of local residents to their ownneighborhoods, and acknowledging them as valuable to society at large, impliesthat those who provide them are rewarded for their work, and are no longerdependent on charitable hand-outs or public support. Such a re-evaluation ofmarket labor and subsistence work is an issue that must be addressed beyondurban neighborhoods alone. It requires a shift in attitude from viewing subsistencecontributions as woman’s or nature’s responsibility, or as the charitable con-tribution of those who can afford to be charitable, to recognizing them instead asessential contributions to society and economy alike. Underemployment, waste,social disparity and resource depletion all point to the fact that modern societiescannot assume that all their citizens can continue to base their livelihood ontraditional forms of employment. Instead, alternative models of compensation arecalled for, that recognize that the external bene� ts of community work and publicservice may far outweigh their costs, while the external costs of production anddistribution activities may increasingly outweigh their bene� ts (Rifkin 1995).Thus many of the issues addressed in the social indicator movement of the 1970sare revisited in today’s development debate, albeit with the added awarenessof the close links between local participation and the selection of indicatorsconsulted to assess development success or failure.

CONCLUSION

Many cities, particularly in the Northeastern United States, have suffered fromthe urban � ight of businesses, residents and government services. Commondevelopment strategies which seek to attract businesses to such ‘downsized’


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communities have had limited success. Even when development efforts havesucceeded in attracting outside investors, they often do not have the hoped forstimulating effect on a community’s economy. Alternative development strategiesseek to build on existing and potential markets in the local community itself.Apart from offering opportunities for job creation and development that build onlocal needs and skills, neighborhood-based development initiatives may also bemore likely to integrate a resident work force.

A survey of 444 households in Schenectady’s Hamilton Hill and Vale neigh-borhoods reveals recreation, childcare, a grocery store, care for the elderly andhome repairs as the neighborhood needs most frequently mentioned as “veryimportant”. Residents’ self assessed skills and interests appear to be suited tomeet some of the indicated needs. Especially high is the interest in human servicejobs like childcare and health care, but also in technical, computer related workand food preparation.

Yet given the limited market size and revenue potential in the surveyedneighborhoods, there are limits to a neighborhood-based approach to develop-ment. Instead, overall development strategies must become more intentionalabout linking isolated urban neighborhoods to their context. Such linkages include:(1) improved communication and transportation within urban areas and transportroutes intent on linking cities to their surrounding areas; and (2) revised valuationconcepts that acknowledge the social costs of undermining the subsistencework traditionally provided in households, communities and the environment.Development that simply replaces public sector or subsistence support throughprivate sector development merely substitutes existing services, rather than offer-ing qualitative improvements. The call for a shift from urban dependency to self-determination and initiative must, therefore, be more than replacing one type ofurban isolation by another. It must be intentional in linking urban initiatives to acommitted network of civic organizations, governments, and private enterprises.

A participatory household survey, like the one described here, does, therefore,not only provide needed information about potential neighborhood markets.It also provides a basis for collaboration within the community. Designed andconducted in a highly participatory manner, the approach acknowledges the factthat resident participation is essential to neighborhood-based development. Localresidents are best aware of their neighborhood’s needs and potential. They are alsobest able to identify unique strengths and distinguishing characteristics, whichcan tie small neighborhood units into a larger development plan, without under-mining local initiative and identity. Beyond its local application, the developmentapproach outlined in this paper provides a micro-example of the need to linknot only development to its context, but also to link “expert” knowledge to theindispensable competencies of local people.


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My sincere thanks to the many people who supported this work: the communityvolunteers involved in planning and carrying out the data collection work onwhich this study is based; David Levinger, Thomas Howell, and Stan Tangeman,students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who gave generously of their time tohelp code and enter data; the residents of the Hamilton Hill and Vale neigh-borhoods in Schenectady, New York, who opened their homes to us and trustedin our willingness to learn from and with them. Remaining errors and mis-interpretations are solely my responsibility.

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urban development revisited: the role of neighborhood needs and local participation in urban...

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