The Government Next Door

The Government Next Door PDF

Author: Luigi Tomba

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2014-08-21

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0801455197

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Chinese residential communities are places of intense governing and an arena of active political engagement between state and society. In The Government Next Door, Luigi Tomba investigates how the goals of a government consolidated in a distant authority materialize in citizens’ everyday lives. Chinese neighborhoods reveal much about the changing nature of governing practices in the country. Government action is driven by the need to preserve social and political stability, but such priorities must adapt to the progressive privatization of urban residential space and an increasingly complex set of societal forces. Tomba’s vivid ethnographic accounts of neighborhood life and politics in Beijing, Shenyang, and Chengdu depict how such local "translation" of government priorities takes place. Tomba reveals how different clusters of residential space are governed more or less intensely depending on the residents’ social status; how disgruntled communities with high unemployment are still managed with the pastoral strategies typical of the socialist tradition, while high-income neighbors are allowed greater autonomy in exchange for a greater concern for social order. Conflicts are contained by the gated structures of the neighborhoods to prevent systemic challenges to the government, and middle-class lifestyles have become exemplars of a new, responsible form of citizenship. At times of conflict and in daily interactions, the penetration of the state discourse about social stability becomes clear.

Nonprofit Neighborhoods

Nonprofit Neighborhoods PDF

Author: Claire Dunning

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-06-23

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0226819892

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An exploration of how and why American city governments delegated the responsibility for solving urban inequality to the nonprofit sector. American cities are rife with nonprofit organizations that provide services ranging from arts to parks, and health to housing. These organizations have become so ubiquitous, it can be difficult to envision a time when they were fewer, smaller, and more limited in their roles. Turning back the clock, however, uncovers both an eye-opening story of how the nonprofit sector became such a dominant force in American society, as well as a troubling one of why this growth occurred alongside persistent poverty and widening inequality. Claire Dunning's book connects these two stories in histories of race, democracy, and capitalism, revealing an underexplored transformation in urban governance: how the federal government funded and deputized nonprofits to help individuals in need, and in so doing avoided addressing the structural inequities that necessitated such action in the first place. ​Nonprofit Neighborhoods begins in the decades after World War II, when a mix of suburbanization, segregation, and deindustrialization spelled disaster for urban areas and inaugurated a new era of policymaking that aimed to solve public problems with private solutions. From deep archival research, Dunning introduces readers to the activists, corporate executives, and politicians who advocated addressing poverty and racial exclusion through local organizations, while also raising provocative questions about the politics and possibilities of social change. The lessons of Nonprofit Neighborhoods exceed the municipal bounds of Boston, where much of the story unfolds, providing a timely history of the shift from urban crisis to urban renaissance for anyone concerned about American inequality--past, present, or future.

Private Neighborhoods and the Transformation of Local Government

Private Neighborhoods and the Transformation of Local Government PDF

Author: Robert Henry Nelson

Publisher: The Urban Insitute

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 9780877667513

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From 1980 to 2000, half the new housing in the United States was built in a development project governed by a neighborhood association. More than 50 million Americans now live in these associations. In Private Neighborhoods and the Transformation of Local Government, Robert Nelson reviews the history of neighborhood associations, explains their recent explosive growth, and speculates on their future role in American society. Unlike many previous studies, Nelson takes on the whole a positive view. Neighborhood associations are providing the neighborhood environment controls desired by the residents, high quality common services, and a stronger sense of neighborhood community. Identifying significant operating problems, Nelson proposes new options for improving the future governance of neighborhood associations.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America PDF

Author: Richard Rothstein

Publisher: Liveright Publishing

Published: 2017-05-02

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1631492861

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New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice Selection One of Bill Gates’ “Amazing Books” of the Year One of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction An NPR Best Book of the Year Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction Gold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfiction) Finalist • Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Finalist • Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review). Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer), The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.

Neighborhood Government

Neighborhood Government PDF

Author: Milton Kotler

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 9780739109915

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At a time of intense urban civil unrest in the United States, this classic text by Milton Kotler was the first to forcefully demonstrate how governance on the neighborhood level could allow Americans to regain liberty and the right to govern their own lives. Kotler's original project showed how towns--once independent but then later annexed by adjacent cities--became exploited by centralized downtown power. As relevant today as it was when originally published in 1969, Neighborhood Government continues to speak to American cities whose faces have been radically changed by immigration, urban sprawl, and communities fractured by pervasive economic and racial inequality. With a new critical foreword by Terry L. Cooper that places the text within contemporary debates and a new foreword and afterword from the author, Neighborhood Government continues to be a vital work for anyone interested in the economic, social, and political health of American cities and the continuing struggle to increase community investment and control.

A Nation of Neighborhoods

A Nation of Neighborhoods PDF

Author: Benjamin Looker

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-10-22

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 022629031X

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Benjamin Looker investigates the cultural, social, and economic complexities of the idea of “neighborhood” in postwar America. In the face of urban decline, competing visions of the city neighborhood's significance and purpose became proxies for broader debates over the meaning and limits of American democracy. Looker examines radically different neighborhood visions—by urban artists, critics, writers, and activists—to show how sociological debates over what neighborhood values resonated in art, political discourse, and popular culture. The neighborhood-—both the epitome of urban life and, in its insularity, an escape from it—was where twentieth-century urban Americans worked out solutions to tensions between atomization or overcrowding, harsh segregation or stifling statism, ethnic assimilation or cultural fragmentation.

Neighborhood Defenders

Neighborhood Defenders PDF

Author: Katherine Levine Einstein

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-12-05

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1108477275

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Public participation in the housing permitting process empowers unrepresentative and privileged groups who participate in local politics to restrict the supply of housing.

Neighborhood Futures

Neighborhood Futures PDF

Author: George W. Liebmann

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1351308866

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Two conflicting developments have recently characterized civic life in the United States. The first, the centralization of formal agencies of government, too often leads to diminishing political liberties and tyranny. The second, which is characterized by a greater amount of civic participation and individual self-actualization, is the formation of a whole new layer of sublocal institutions, both public and private. These include residential community and condominium associations; property owner-based business improvement districts in nearly all major cities; neighborhood improvement districts in large cities; and even self-governing public schools. Neighborhood Futures is a realistic exploration of how, for a society to move forward and improve, its citizens must exercise the power to act creatively, and feel they are both competent and responsible individuals. Supporting his ideas with the Dutch innovation of the woonerf, or neighborhood street government, Liebmann follows through by discussing other foreign models of civic life forms and illustrating how they have resulted in resident satisfaction. George W. Liebmann is a partner of Liebmann & Shively, P.A., a Baltimore law firm that specializes in local government and education law. In addition to having served as a top aide to one of Maryland's governors, he is a former faculty associate of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and is the author of Little Platoons and The Gallows in the Grove.