Syllabus for UP 378, Spring 2001

Instructor: Teaching Assistant:

Janni Sorensen Sagar Prasai

E-mail: jsorense@uiuc.edu E-mail: prasai@students.uiuc.edu

Office: 322 Noble Hall Office: 322 Noble Hall

Office Hours: Monday & Tuesday 10 -12 pm Office Hours: Monday 2-4 pm

Phone: 265 0202 Phone: 265 0202

Course Description:

More than 2,000 community development corporations have been established in the United States since 1965. These community-based organizations have played an increasingly important role in expanding the supply of jobs, affordable housing and social services in many low-income urban communities. Supported by local religious organizations, financial institutions, regional foundations and municipal governments, community development corporations have emerged as the primary organizational vehicles for neighborhood stabilization and community revitalization in many U.S. cities. The increasingly important role, which these non-profit organizations play in, the urban development plans of municipal government have served to transform community planning into one of the fastest growing specializations within the urban planning profession.

UP 378 Community Development Workshop introduces students to the community development practice, from an empowerment planning perspective, by offering participants the opportunity to collaborate with East St. Louis residents in the completion of a comprehensive redevelopment plan for a severely distressed neighborhood. Workshop students will cooperate with leaders of East St. Louis's Lansdowne Neighborhood Steering Committee in designing a five-year revitalization plan for their community. Workshop participants will be introduced to core theories and methods of neighborhood planning; will formulate a research design and scope of services to investigate existing conditions; will collect and analyze data needed to devise effective solutions to local problems that build on available community assets; and will produce planning documents local leaders can use to guide their future revitalization efforts.

Course Objectives:

UP 378 Community Development Workshop has been designed to assist students in achieving the following educational objectives:

1.) Expose students to critical economic, social, environmental, and political problems confronting residents of our state's most distressed urban neighborhoods;

2.) Introduce students to the principles and practice of contemporary community development from an empowerment planning perspective;

3.) Enhancing the community development knowledge and skills of participating students through active involvement in the design, implementation and evaluation of a challenging neighborhood planning project for an actual partner;

4.) Offer planning students the opportunity to gain experience working in teams to solve important urban problems undermining the quality of urban life;

5.) Engage students in an ongoing dialogue regarding how local, state, and federal urban policies can be changed to further enhance the organizational capacity of community-based development organizations serving distressed urban communities, such as East St. Louis.

Course Structure:

UP 378 will meet on Fridays from 9-11:50 am and from 1-3:50 pm. Morning classes will feature lectures on assigned syllabus topics, student presentations and class discussions of readings. Afternoon classes will involve workshop students in project planning, survey design, data collection/entry and policy analysis activities related to the comprehensive planning process. Afternoons will often be interdisciplinary working with students from Arch 372 and LA 338. Student will be required to do oral presentations on their assigned reading for the LA and Arch students. Frequent field trips to East St. Louis will be required for all workshop participants. There will be two different kinds of trips to East St. Louis. Outreach Weekends will typically begin on Friday mornings at 7 am and will conclude on Saturday evenings before 9 pm. Trips to participate in neighborhood organizations monthly meetings will typically begin on 2 pm on the third Tuesday of the month and we should be back on campus at approximately 11 pm. The College of Fine and Applied Arts’ East St. Louis Action Research Project will fund all travel, food and lodging expenses necessitated by these trips.

Course Requirements:

1. Regular attendance and active participation in each workshop class.

2. Timely completion of all assigned readings and preparation for classroom discussion of these items, including presentations for LA and ARCH students.

3. Active participation in all East St. Louis fieldwork activities and community meetings.

4. Written contribution to the Lansdowne Neighborhood Improvement Plan, including drafts posted to the course web-board

(http://webboard.scale.uiuc.edu:8080/~101 ).

5. Effective oral presentation of the plan before a mixed audience of peers, faculty, community residents and municipal officials.

6. A web page must be created by the group and the final plan as well as a process description must be published there

Course Grading:

1. Workshop attendance and participation 20%

2. Written assignments and presentations on assigned readings 20%

3. Contribution to East St. Louis fieldwork efforts including quality of oral presentations 20%

4. Quality of written contributions to Lansdowne Plan 30%

5. Quality of web page 10%

Course Texts:

Course packet with readings is available in the DURP mailroom.

Digital Planning Resources:

UIUC's East St. Louis Action Research Project maintains an impressive web site with a wealth of information regarding East St. Louis and its people. You should take full advantage of the resources available through this site by visiting:

http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/

The ABCD institute: http://www.nwu.edu/IPR/abcd.html

Another good source of information is the COMM-Org web site. You might consider signing on to their list serve. http://comm-org.utoledo.edu/index.html

The Urban Institute is a good source of information: http://www.urban.org/

For information on Participatory Action Research try visiting the Cornell based PAR-net:

http://www.PARnet.org/home.cfm

McAuley Institute is a national, nonprofit housing organization founded by the Sisters of Mercy. McAuley provides state-of-the-art technical assistance and financial resources to grassroots organizations that work to expand housing and economic opportunities for low-income women and their families. http://www.bhconline.org/mcauley/index.htm

HomeSight is an annotated and rated resource guide of housing agencies, projects, policies, designs, and publications available on the Internet. http://HomeSight.org/

The Planners Network is an association of professionals, activists, academics, and students involved in physical, social, economic and environmental planning in urban and rural areas, who promote fundamental change in our political and economic system. http://plannersnetwork.org/

National Low-Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC): http://www.nlihc.org/index.htm

The Brookings institute’s Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy studies: http://www.brookings.edu/es/urban/urban.htm

Course Schedule:

Week/ Assignment	Readings (morning activities)	Progress on Plan (afternoon activities). Written material due the following Monday.
Week 1 (01.19)	Readings: -Hopkins, Lewis D. “The logic of making plans for Urban Development. DRAFT, chapter 1,2 -Jones, Bernie. 1990. Neighborhood Planning: A Guide for Citizens and Planners. Bigtown: Planners Press, American Planning Association. P. 1-38 -1992 Lansdowne Plan Alta Sita Plan Part I; online at http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/ntac/altasita/plan-nov99/index.html Activities: Introduction to class. Establish groups 1 & 2 Why make a Neighborhood plan Lecture on ESLARP and East St. Louis Tools used in creating the plan Present examples of data analysis from plans from previous semester (Alta Sita)!	Interdisciplinary group: Gerry Kessler will present 1992 Lansdowne Plan at 1:30 pm in Plym. Auditorium · Establish Lay-out for planning document Create outreach material: · Letter to neighborhood organization, · Press release, · Pulpit announcement, · Flyer for distributing in the neighborhood
Week 2 (01.26)	Americas Urban Poverty: -Wilson, William Julius. 1996, "From Institutional to Jobless Ghettos" and "Societal Changes and Vulnerable Neighborhoods," in When Work Disappears: The Work of the New Urban Poor. New York: Alfred A.Knopf, pp. 3-50. -Keating and Krumholz, “Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods”, SAGE Publications, 1999 Chapter 1,2,5,7,12 -Bates Timothy, “Political economy of Urban Poverty in the 21^st century” The review of Black Political economy, V. 24, 2/3, 1996. Pages 111-122	Interdisciplinary Group: 1:30-2:30 student presentations on Urban poverty Plym. Auditorium, Tutorial on web publishing, Training for NCS in TBH room 227 1. Prepare SWOT and Cognitive mapping exercise 2. Prepare survey instrument for residential interviews
Week 3 (02.02) ESL trip 1	Complete the following readings prior to trip and turn in a reflection paper on these and Week 2’s readings in the morning before we leave (2-3 double spaced pages): - http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/ -Keating and Krumholz, “Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods”, chapter 8, -Reardon, Kenneth M. 1998. "Enhancing the Capacity of Community-Based Organizations in East St. Louis," in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, 17:323-333. -Reardon, Kenneth M. 1998. “Back from the Brink”	In ESL: Tour of City, residential survey, complete Neighborhood Condition Survey Arrange for meeting/dinner or lunch with Lansdowne residents.

Week/ Assignment	Readings (morning activities)	Progress on Plan (afternoon activities). Written material due the following Monday.
Week 4 (02.09)	Empowerment Planning & PAR -Reardon, Kenneth M. 1996. Community development in low-income minority neighborhood: a case for empowerment planning. -Davidoff, Paul, “Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning” In Readings in planning theory, p.305-322. -Park, Peter “The discovery of Participatory research…”. American Sociologist, Winter 1992, Volume 23, # 4, p.29 -"Introduction to Action Research" by Greenwood & Levin, chapter ** Census tutorial in doc. Library at 11 am.	Presentation by professor Bob Selby on the Emerson Park neighborhood Interdisciplinary: UP Student presentation on PAR and Empowerment Analyzing residential survey Collect and Analyze census data All: start preparing presentation of all data collected (What we think we know about your neighborhood)
Week 5 (02.16)	Approaches to Economic Development I -Chapters 3,4,12 in Blair/Reese“ Approaches to Economic Development, readings from Economic Development Quarterly”, SAGE Publications, 1998. -Halpern, Robert, “Rebuilding the Inner City” Columbia University Press 1995, pages 127-217	Interdisciplinary: UP Student presentation on Economic development (Plym) 2:30 GIS tutorial (Deanna and Yoon), TBH 227 1. Complete residential survey analysis 2. Analyze data from Neighborhood Condition Survey, create maps Feedback on first draft from last week. Turn in final draft on Monday
Tuesday Feb. 20^th	First Neighborhood meeting: Present all data collected for residents to give us feedback. Cognitive mapping and SWOT exercise.
Week 6 (02.23)	Program Development Examples of previous plans online http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/ntac/altasita/plan-nov99/part2.html and http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/ntac/emerson/plan99/index.html chapter 3-8	Analyze results of neighborhood meeting. Turn in on Monday Prepare agenda, outreach material, handouts for second neighborhood meeting. Due Monday.
Week 7 (03.02)	Approaches to Economic Development II -Chapters 2,17,19 in Blair/Reese -Thomas, June Manning and Reynard N. Blake, Jr. 1996. "Faith-Based Community Development and the African American Community," in Revitalizing Urban Neighborhoods, edited by W. Dennis Keating, Norman Krumholz and Philip Star. Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, pp. 131-147.	Interdisciplinary: UP Student presentation on Economic development, (Plym) Library/internet search on topics residents expressed interest in at the first meeting in groups of two students. Each student must turn in an annotated bibliography of 5-10 articles/books/websites on Monday.
Week 8 (03.09)	Ideology and public policy -Hays, R. Allen, “The Federal government and Urban Housing”, Chapter 1,2, 9 -Mollenkopf, John, “How to study Urban Political Power, P. 219-229 in The City reader, edited by LeGates & Stout, Routledge, second edition, 2000.	Interdisciplinary: UP Student presentation on Ideology and public policy (Plym) Prepare presentations on topics researched last week for second neighborhood meeting. Turn in Monday 19^th at 9 am.

Week/ Assignment	Readings (morning activities)		Progress on Plan (afternoon activities). Written material due the following Monday.
Week 9 (03.16)	Spring break, No class Monday after break, paper on a topic from the last five weeks of readings due (3-4p.)
Tuesday March 20^th	Second Neighborhood meeting: Present all data collected and analyzed for residents. Student presentation of topics. Prioritize program topics for plan. Design Charette
Week 10 (03.23)	All day work on: Analyze results of second neighborhood meeting. Preparations and outreach for Neighborhood Summit.
Week 11 (03.30)	ESL trip 2: Neighborhood summit
Week 12 (04.06)	Gender in Community development -Chapters 3, 5 in Urban Affairs annual review 42, SAGE publications 1995 -Chapter 20 In “Readings in planning theory” -Eichler, Margrit “Change of Plans, towards a non-sexist sustainable city”, Garamond Press 1995, pages: 1-25, 51-71, 131-157	Interdisciplinary: UP Student presentation on Gender in com. dev. (Plym) 1. Analyze results of Neighborhood summit. Compile all data analyzed to date into one data analysis conclusion.
Week 13 (04.13)	Race in Community development -Darden, Duleep, Galster “Civil Rights In Metropolitan America” (1992), Journal of Urban Affairs, V. 14, #3/4, pages 469-496 -W.E.B. Du Bois (1899), “The Negro Problems of Philadelphia”, p. 56-63 in The City reader, edited by LeGates & Stout, Routledge, second edition, 2000. -Conley, Dalton “Being Black, Living in the Red, University of California Press, 1999 Chapters 1-3 -Crenshaw, Kimberly, “Race, Reform and Retrenchment” in Critical Race Theory edited by Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller and Thomas. P. 103-122	Interdisciplinary: UP Student presentation on Race in com. Dev (Plym) Form new groups to work on developing programs for the plan based on neighborhood summit and all data collected. Start working in these groups on presentations for next neighborhood meeting
April 17^th	Neighborhood meeting with student presentations and resident feedback on programs
Week 14 (04.20)	Work in groups all day to complete programs for the plan. Turn in a draft on Monday.
Week 15 (04.27)	Group presentations of programs	Work together to get all material published on the web
Week 16	No class, examinations begin
Week 17 (05.11)	Final plan must be available on the group web site and individual contributions must be turned in.
May 15^th	Group of volunteers will present the final plan to residents at monthly meeting

Sign-Up for Student Presentations on Friday Afternoons:

Date/topic	Names (2 Students pr. Topic)
01.26/ America’s Urban Poverty
02.09/ Empowerment Planning & PAR
02.16/ Approaches to Economic development I
03.02/ Approaches to Economic development II
03.09/ Ideology and public policy
04.06/ Gender in Community Development
04.13/ Race in Community Development