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6. Building the Foundation for Community-based Development
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CHAPTER6 Building the Foundation for Community-based Development I think . they were very aware at that point in time where sort of the opposition battle was won, and they were now being told by everybody that· ·you guys are so goddamn smart, you do it"-that sort of thing. And, I think, by and large they were very much aware they had to change everything. They had to go from an exciting intellectual exercise of being in opposition and findmg good reasons why the project shouldn't go ahead and all that analysis and grass-roots politics; to not only having a dream about how the neighborhood should function but then learning how to be a production force, to literally go out and do it-be the producer of the housing. -Dick Brustad interView, 1991 One of the problems with success IS It'S always a lot of work. -Tim Mungavan at September 1989 PAC meetmg rrE STRUGGLE against the New Town in Town was over. A disorganized group of hippies believing everything was lost had become an organized group of activists believing anything was possible . The seemingly impenetrable growth coalition that was to level their neighborhood had been shattered, creating an urban redevelopment policy vacuum in the local political opportunity structure. Suddenly, how to plan urban redevelopment, what kind of urban redevelopment to plan, and where to plan it were open to question throughout perhaps all levels of the city bureaucracy, except for the Planning Department, which stuck tenaciously to top-down, capitalconscious planning models. In 1980 the neighborhood movement began to move toward demoCopyrighted Material 141 cratic, community-based redevelopment. And residents were in an enviable position to begin that redevelopment. The 1980 settlement agreement provided enormous resources. Not only would the city be able to purchase the land for 20 percent of its cost, but the development that had been completed would create an increase in tax payments-a "tax increment"-that would be channeled back into the neighborhood. In return, the residents agreed to give up the Seven Corners section of the neighborhood for a hotel, parking ramp, and high-density housing. Before the neighborhood activists could make full use of those resources , however, they would have to do battle with opponents inside and outside the neighborhood. They had to transform their community movement from one whose solidarity was based on opposition and confrontation to one that had to build solidarity out of suddenly diverse interests and enlist the cooperation and support of former targets. Organizing against a mutual threat is easier than organizing a diversity of interests that may have contradictory self-interests (N. Fainstein and S. Fainstein, 1974; Saltman, 1990). This transition from neighborhood defense goals to neighborhood development goals made even the relatively minor differences among activists on the West Bank seem, at times, impossibly incompatible. And the need for resources to accomplish democratic, community-based development necessitated alliances with capital and the local state which were seen as at best distasteful and at worst corrupt. Thus, the twin problems associated with moving from neighborhood defense to neighborhood development were new internal dissension and altered external relations. Internal dissension can tear a movement apart and is especially dangerous when there is no longer a clear common threat. Although all residents agreed on the undesirability of Cedar-Riverside Associates and its New Town in Town plan, they could not easily agree on the direction redevelopment should take. Much of the effort in the early 1980s was devoted to resolving difficult conflicts in the neighborhood over both the process and the product of neighborhood redevelopment. And while residents were working toward a fragile consensus within the neighborhood, they were painfully aware of the need for establishing a strong political foothold at City Hall. Activists struggled over how to maintain that foothold and still preserve community autonomy. During these early years of neighborhood-based development, residents succeeded in isolating their antagonists within the neighborhood and gained far more than a foothold downtown, helping to estab142 Copyrighted Material Chapter 6 [18.207.104.87] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:51 GMT) lish a new neighborhood-focused governing regime at City Hall that would channel enviable resources to the neighborhood throughout the 1980s. In this chapter I describe the struggle to build a neighborhood consensus around development planning and establish a supportive governing regime downtown. Prelude to Community-based Development As usual in Cedar-Riverside, nothing came easy. Beginning redevelopment was not as simple as creating a...