A City Within a City

About this book

This dissertation examines the idea of community development in the last four decades of the twentieth century through the example of the Harlem neighborhood of New York City and, in doing so, explains the broader transformation of the American city in these decades. Frustration with top-down urban redevelopment and the rise of Black Power brought new demands to Harlem, as citizens insisted on the need for "community control" over their built environment. In attempting to bring this goal to life, Harlemites created new community-based organizations that promised to realize a radically inclusive, cooperative ideal of a neighborhood built by and for the benefit of its predominantly low-income, African-American residents. For several reasons, including continued reliance on the public sector, dominant leaders, changing sociological understandings of poverty, and the intransigence of activists, however, such organizations came to advance a narrower approach in Harlem in succeeding years. By the 1980s, they pursued a moderate vision of Harlem's future, prioritizing commercial projects instead of development that served residents' many needs, emphasizing economic integration, and eschewing goals of broad structural change.