Sep/Oct 1995
Issue #83
Community Building and Neighborhood Change
This issue features the work of John Kretzmann and John McKnight, authors of Community Building from the Inside Out. In distressed communities across the United States, savvy organizers and leaders are rediscovering ancient wisdom about what builds strong communities, and then developing new ways to fit that wisdom to the late 20th-century reality that help from outside is evaporating. Residents are resisting the idea that they are communities of need, empty of resources. They have assets, they say, that can be harnessed to transform their neighborhoods. And serious community builders have no choice but to turn the communities themselves to rediscover and mobilize the strengths, capacities, and assets within those communities. Also, a profile of Greyston Bakery in the Bronx, an enterprise grounded in Zen Buddhism. Greyston is guided by the belief – shared by CDCs to varying degrees – that everything is interconnected, and society cannot afford to ignore its rejected parts, including the post-industrial urban landscape of abandoned steel and concrete that has stigmatized southwest Yonkers.
Community Building: Hope and Caution
Moving beyond bricks and mortar, community development corporations are taking on more diverse and comprehensive roles in redeveloping their communities. Are CDCs up to the challenge? Do they have the […]
The Future of American Communities
The call for community-based organizations (CBOs) to perform extensive community rebuilding is connected to larger changes in national attitudes. These changes include an increased frustration with the erosion of community, […]
Community Baking at the Greyston Foundation
The Greyston Foundation blends personal transformation, entrepreneurship, and Zen Buddhist philosophy. They use a bakery to provide jobs to the homeless.
Transforming Communities
Over the past few years, many independent, housing focused CDCs have undergone a metamorphosis into broad-based groups or collaboratives. This change is driven from two directions: from without as more […]