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Urban Policy and Poverty
At the March 10 policy briefing on
“Community Change in Chicago: How
is the Landscape Shifting?” IPR faculty,
political scientist Wesley G. Skogan,
and sociologists Mary Pattillo and Juan
Onésimo Sandoval, examined trends
in housing, crime, and neighborhood
diversity (for more information see p. 4).
Sociologist Juan Onésimo Sandoval is
currently at work on a book manuscript
titled “The Social Order of the American
Metropolis: How Race and Class
Have Restructured America’s Colorful
Colorline.” It will trace patterns of racial
and economic segregation prevalent in
American cities.
Sandoval continues to investigate the
extent of ethnic and economic diversity
in Asian and Latino populations. He has
examined pan-Latino identity formation
and the diversity of pan-ethnic Latino
enclaves in the U.S., and he conducted a
comparative study of pan-ethnic Latino
and Asian neighborhoods. He shows that
pan-Asian enclaves tend to represent
a very diverse pan-Asian population
while Latino enclaves tend to be more
homogeneous.
Sandoval also explored inequality in
neighborhood incomes for Chicago from
1980 to 2000. While income disparities
have declined in predominantly white
neighborhoods, he found they are on
the rise in black neighborhoods; racially
integrated neighborhoods display a higher
degree of income inequality; and income
disparity is greater in urban centers than
in the suburbs for all racial groups.
Community Development
From the poorest neighborhoods in
Chicago to far-flung communities in
Ireland, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, the Asset-
Based Community Development (ABCD)
Institute is teaching residents how to find
and use local resources to rejuvenate their
economies, strengthen public and private
investments in community, and ultimately
rebuild civil society. ABCD is co-directed
by John McKnight and John Kretzmann.
In Ethiopia, ABCD has been working
with Oxfam Canada and the Coady
International Institute on a three-year
project that covers a variety of activities
such as establishing women’s credit circles
and rebuilding roads and wells for several
villages. In Rwanda, the institute has
partnered with religious organizations
in Kigali on community
development projects
for building roads and
creating jobs. Residents
of the isolated Rwandan
city of Mumbai decided
to build a health clinic
after reviewing their
community assets.
In Ireland, ABCD has
Juan Onésimo Sandoval describes
been involved in a Dublin changing patterns of segregation
Docklands development
and diversity in Chicago.
project. The Docklands
is a former dock area on the city’s east
side. The project aims to develop this
formerly depressed industrial area by
2012 into a sustainable example of innercity
regeneration, with affordable housing,
schools, and places to work and socialize.
The institute is helping to ensure that the
established working-class residents are
not pushed aside during the revitalization
process.
ABCD worked with the Chicago Police
Department to train 1,200 neighborhood
representatives through the Community
Policing Leadership Development
Institute on neighborhood safety projects.
Nationally, the institute has designed
and helped to deliver community
development training to thousands of
AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and VISTA
leaders and volunteers.
J. Reblando
www.northwestern.edu/ipr 35