"Finally a book that contextualizes community and neighborhood development and planning in a progressive but realist fashion. Peterman provides community and neighborhood planners with preassessment criteria and a methodological tool-kit to help ensure future success. This book is invaluable to neighborhood and community development planning courses and will provide a useful adjunct to social planning and social work courses." --Mickey Lauria, University of New Orleans "Bill Peterman has written a passionate treatise on neighborhood planning tempered by more than 20 years of front line experience. The result is a powerful praxis that can guide planners, community activists, and theoreticians who are concerned with making community-building a reality." --Barbara Ferman, Professor of Political Science, Temple University "Bill Peterman′s critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of America′s expanding community development movement should be required reading for all community activists, urban planners, policy analysts and municipal officials! Peterman′s rich insights and thoughtful recommendations regarding how community-based planning and development can lead to a broader popular movement for greater social equality deserve the immediate attention of all those concerned about the future of U. S. cities." --Kenneth M. Reardon, Associate Professor in Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign " Bill Peterman offers important insights from his long experience in Chicago on neighborhood planning and community-based development. His case studies offer very useful lessons on success and failure. This is a valuable addition to the literature on urban neighborhoods." --W. Dennis Keating Professor and Associate Dean College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University This book explores the promise and limits of bottom-up, grass-roots strategies of community organizing, development, and planning as blueprints for successful revitalization and maintenance of urban neighborhoods. Peterman proposes conditions that need to be met for bottom-up strategies to succeed. Successful neighborhood development depends not only on local actions, but also on the ability of local groups to marshal resources and political will at levels above that of the neighborhood itself. While he supports community-based initiatives, he argues that there are limits to what can be accomplished exclusively at the grass-roots level, where most efforts fail. Neighborhood Planning and Community-Based Development should be of special interest to individuals who are directly involved in neighborhood planning and development activities. With case studies that include the issues of gentrification, public housing, government-sponsored development of sports facilities, housing management control and racial diversity, the book takes a look at accomplishing successful neighborhood-based planning and development.

Social and Community Development Practice makes a persuasive case for employing a social development approach to community development practice at local and village levels. Towards this end, the book offers a conceptual clarity of social and community development (SCD) by adding new dimensions. It also shows the significance of social policy education for social and community development workers and the need for expanding community development practice from local levels to international levels. The author argues that the social work profession itself needs to quickly reorganize and strengthen. It needs to consider alternative modes of preparing social workers and community organizers who can reach out at local levels. The profession also needs to develop indigenous ethical standards for SCD practice. The author’s deep reflections reveal the dire need to refocus on SCD practice to address major issues such as poverty and inequality plaguing vast populations around the world.

Beginning with the foundations of community development, An Introduction to Community Development offers a comprehensive and practical approach to planning for communities. Road-tested in the authors’ own teaching, and through the training they provide for practicing planners, it enables students to begin making connections between academic study and practical know-how from both private and public sector contexts. An Introduction to Community Development shows how planners can utilize local economic interests and integrate finance and marketing considerations into their strategy. Most importantly, the book is strongly focused on outcomes, encouraging students to ask: what is best practice when it comes to planning for communities, and how do we accurately measure the results of planning practice? This newly revised and updated edition includes: increased coverage of sustainability issues, discussion of localism and its relation to community development, quality of life, community well-being and public health considerations, and content on local food systems. Each chapter provides a range of reading materials for the student, supplemented with text boxes, a chapter outline, keywords, and reference lists, and new skills based exercises at the end of each chapter to help students turn their learning into action, making this the most user-friendly text for community development now available.

A comprehensive approach focused on sustainable change Asset Building and Community Development, Fourth Edition examines the promise and limits of community development by showing students and practitioners how asset-based developments can improve the sustainability and quality of life. Authors Gary Paul Green and Anna Haines provide an engaging, thought-provoking, and comprehensive approach to asset building by focusing on the role of different forms of community capital in the development process. Updated throughout, this edition explores how communities are building on their key assets—physical, human, social, financial, environmental, political, and cultural capital— to generate positive change. With a focus on community outcomes, the authors illustrate how development controlled by community-based organizations provides a better match between assets and the needs of the community.

Examines the relationship of civic discourse to built environments through a case study of the Cabrini Green urban revitalization project in Chicago.

Architecture for the Poor describes Hassan Fathy's plan for building the village of New Gourna, near Luxor, Egypt, without the use of more modern and expensive materials such as steel and concrete. Using mud bricks, the native technique that Fathy learned in Nubia, and such traditional Egyptian architectural designs as enclosed courtyards and vaulted roofing, Fathy worked with the villagers to tailor his designs to their needs. He taught them how to work with the bricks, supervised the erection of the buildings, and encouraged the revival of such ancient crafts as claustra (lattice designs in the mudwork) to adorn the buildings.