Restoring America's Neighborhoods: How Local People Make a Difference / Edition 1

by Michael R. Greenberg

Overview

What does it take to mobilize a grass-roots force dedicated to bringing new life into a decaying neighborhood? Can any one person or group successfully halt physical deterioration, drug-related crime, or the encroachment of clusters of factories, highways, and other noxious land uses? Michael Greenberg demonstrates in this book that it can and has been done against all odds.

Restoring America's Neighborhoods profiles twenty-four such cases from across the United States. It tells the story of people determined to make the blighted, crime-ridden urban enclaves in which they live and work a better place for everybody. These are people from many different walks of life: ministers working to bring jobs to their communities; city planners and federal employees trying to relocated residents of potential disaster areas; and locals taking matters into their own hands to create a healthier, more pleasing living environment for their children. Greenberg's is a heartening account of courage and unwavering resolve as well as of hope that individuals can make a difference, that violent criminals and uncaring bureaucrats need not carry the day. He calls them "streetfighters," a fitting tribute to their efforts to take back their neighborhoods, block by block and street by street.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813527123
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	09/01/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	1110L (what's this?)

About the Author

Michael R. Greenberg is a professor of urban studies at the Rutgers University Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, and the director of the Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment.

Read an Excerpt

What does it take to mobilize a grass-roots force dedicated to bringing new life to a decaying neighborhood? Can any one person or group successfully halt physical deterioration, drug-related crime, or the encroachment of clusters of factories, highways, and other noxious land uses? Michael Greenberg demonstrates in this book that it can and has been done against all odds.

Restoring America's Neighborhoods profiles twenty-four such cases from across the United States. It tells the story of people determined to make the blighted crime-ridden urban enclaves in which they live and work a better place for everybody. These are people from many different walks of life: ministers working to bring jobs to their communities; city planners and federal employees trying to relocate residents of potential disaster areas; and locals taking matters into their own hands to create a healthier, more pleasing living environment for their children. Greenberg's is a heartening account of courage and unwavering resolve as well as of hope that individuals can make a difference, that violent criminals and uncaring bureaucrats need not carry the day. He calls them 'street fighters,' a fitting tribute to their efforts to take back their neighborhoods, block by block and street by street.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Neighborhood Quality and Street Fighters
2 Life from Death: Public Housing in Chester
3 Joseph Garlic: Planting Seeds of Hope in Elizabethport
4 Neah Bay: Forward to the Past
5 Ground Zero: Concerned Citizens Fight Against Massive Poison Machines
6 Detroit's Arson Squad: Taking Back Neighborhoods from Fire
7 Coping with and Preventing Disasters: The Federal Emergency Management Agency
8 Planning for Love of Justice
9 A Vision of Environmental Justice and Sustainable Neighborhoods
Epilogue
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

As Michael Greenberg shows in this book, the troubling stories of urban decay, drug abuse, and poverty in America's cities are sometimes tempered by local people taking matters into their own hands in the fight against indifference and neglect. Greenberg calls these people 'street fighters,' and this book is a well-deserved tribute to their efforts. Informed by trenchant thinking and incisive writing, here is a timely resource for scholars, policy makers, and the general public alike. 

U.S. Senate (D-NJ) - Robert Torricelli