Building Civic Capacity in Urban Neighborhoods: An Empirically Grounded Anatomy

ABSTRACT:

While community building and organizing initiatives aimed at improving marginalized communities have proliferated in recent decades, controversies have arisen as to their efficacy. A divide has emerged between community builders, who emphasize bonding and bridging social capital, and community organizers who work with disenfranchised communities to make demands on the existing power structure though confrontational actions. Drawing on four case studies this article examines the differences and similarities of the two approaches in practice. Based on an extensive review of the literature and interviews with U.S. community builders and organizers, this article presents a heuristic model of community building and organizing activities and their ability to bring about change, including increased external social capital, ability to confront the power structure, and engagement with the political process. Case study examples of consensus and confrontational approaches and of intentional and unintentional approaches to community building are presented and compared. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Notes

1 A longer, early version of this article includes seven case studies and is available on the Aspen Institute Roundtable for Community Change website http://www.aspeninstitute.org/AspenInstitute/files/ccLibraryFiles/FILENAME/000000001400/CommunityBuildingCivicCapacity.pdf.

2 Fraser et al. (2003) state that many of the powerful “stakeholders” in community-building efforts are in fact not local, but may be global corporations considering operating in the local community being “built.” They argue that poorer and less powerful constituents should therefore be able to contest the production of urban spaces without having to meet the test of land ownership or identity with place. Collective ownership schemes involving new development with stakeholders from outside the community might be one vehicle to facilitate this involvement in place making.

3 In the larger article, the case study of the Bronx CC 9 coalition revealed multiple layers of community building and community organizing, which included contributions of ACORN’s power-oriented model, of faith-based CBOs’ community building and developmentally oriented organizing models, and participation of limited equity cooperative’s leaders who were extending their civic skills into broader arenas. http://www.aspeninstitute.org/AspenInstitute/files/ccLibraryFiles/FILENAME/000000001400/CommunityBuildingCivicCapacity.pdf.