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5 Revitalizing Urban Communities through a New Approach to Computer Mapping
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Much like the transformation of rural villages after World War II and the reconstruction of settlements after catastrophes (Oliver-Smith, chapter 3 of this volume), the processes of globalization have dramatically changed the community life of urban neighborhoods. Assumed to be relatively stable by virtue of ethnicity, income, religion, kinship, or other social bonds, urban neighborhoods have undergone assault by the ecological processes engendering decentralization of American cities, global industrial restructuring, public and private policies favoring suburban development, and disinvestment associated with racism and classism (Macionis and Parrillo 2003). The resources needed for viable urban neighborhoods have systematically diminished with the growth of suburbs and urban fringe settlements through hidden subsidies and job relocation. The literature on the restructuring of urban space has become synonymous with ethnographies of marginalization and displacement, homelessness, social injustice, and the hopelessness of inner-city residents (Sanjek 1990; Low 1996). Only descriptions of downtown revitalization via gentrification and gated residencies seem to offer counter-images of urban space (Low 1999). 101 5 Revitalizing Urban Communities through a New Approach to Computer Mapping Stanley E. Hyland and Michelle Owens 101 Outside responses to inner-city development via government, private sector, and nonprofit initiatives have been largely top-down, driven by definition of needs and administered through powerful intermediate agencies and institutions. Whether in health, housing, job training, or social service programs, top-down responses parallel those described in catastrophic relocation projects (Oliver-Smith, chapter 3 of this volume). Their ineffectiveness to produce viable neighborhoods has been documented by social scientists and residents in terms of lack of citizen participation and grassroots empowerment (Gans 1962b; Greer 1965; Edelman 2001; Greenbaum 2002). Components of this growing literature include discussions of communitybased assets, civic/community infrastructure, healthy neighborhoods, and the social capital of the inner-city residents attempting to rebuild their neighborhoods (Kretzmann and McKnight 1993; Putnam 2000; Saegert, Thompson, and Warren, eds., 2001). This literature, including Kemper and Adkins’ chapter 4 and Schensul’s chapter 8 of this book, has challenged the more top-down development approaches. Interestingly, anthropologists’ ethnographic descriptions of social networks and community-based adaptations in their studies of both rural villages and urban neighborhoods share similarities with this literature . Writing in the 1970s about the future survival of local communities , Gallaher and Padfield (1980) stated that all associational forms share what we believe to be the most basic of all purposes— group survival, through the development of collective solutions to problems. This common purpose defines a community. Gallaher and Padfield (1980) raise several critical issues for anthropological research today. The first is an understanding of the internal processes associated with community disintegration, the individual and group values and behaviors that are detrimental to community-building efforts. The second is an understanding of the intervention (change) approaches to both the internal and external processes that contribute to the dissolution of local communities. These issues are as germane today as they were thirty years ago. Researchers in inner-city neighborhoods, particularly US public-housing developments, have produced an overwhelming literature on crime, substance abuse, gang activity, and violence (Popkin et al. 2000; Venkatesh 2000). Popkin and others (2000:6) note that the kind of vioStanley E. Hyland and Michelle Owens 102 [184.72.135.210] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:30 GMT) lence occurring in Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) high-rise developments is incomprehensible to most Americans. They list a few of the stories that made the news during an especially violent fourmonth period, between January 1 and April 30 of 1997: • A nine-year-old girl (labeled “Girl X” by the media) was kidnapped , sexually assaulted, poisoned, and left for dead in Cabrini-Green (Chicago Tribune, January 10, 1997). • CHA police and drug dealers in Cabrini-Green engaged in a shoot-out ending with the police firing into an occupied building (Chicago Tribune, March 5, 1997). • The head of the Chicago public schools announced a plan to transport children from an elementary school in Cabrini-Green to another location to escape constant gunfire (Chicago Tribune, April 12, 1997). • A thirty-one-year-old man was killed in the Henry Horner Homes in a gang-related shooting (Chicago Tribune, April 14, 1997). • A five-year-old boy was sexually assaulted by six ten-year-olds in a community center in the Robert Taylor Homes (Chicago Tribune, April 21 and April 23, 1997). The neighborhoods around CHA’s developments have few services or stores and even fewer jobs...