A Comparative Case Study -Executive Summary

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Communities across the nation, both rural and urban, are currently facing a daunting variety of political, economic, financial and social problems. Today, cities and towns ?? struggle to maintain adequate revenues while straining to provide social services such as education, welfare, affordable housing and safety, trying to remain fiscally solvent in an era of decreasing federal support and state budget crisis. Long-term planning for the future is often sacrificed to short-term policies to help meet immediate needs. Meanwhile, despite some limited successes in attempting to address these issues, many of the problems have evolved or remained persistent.

But during the last two decades, a new grassroots community-based development movement has emerged to try and help solve these problems from a bottom-up perspective. This growing movement has taken many forms, from traditional non-profit organizations to active community-based advocacy groups. This paper is the story of four such organizations located in different communities in New York State : Better Housing for Tompkins County Inc., the Northside segment of Ithaca 's Neighborhood-Based Planning Initiative, the Rochester NorthEast Neighborhood Alliance , and the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition . While each of these community-based organizations operates in a different environment with different prevailing socioeconomic conditions, demographics and salient problems, they all share important characteristics in both structure and goals.

All four groups are focused on their local communities' specific conditions, needs, and goals, and attempt to form broad community-based coalitions through which to achieve positive change. This approach is based on looking for information and solutions to community problems not through federal agencies or external scholarly experts, but to residents of the communities themselves. How, why and by whom will be addressed in the following sections, but what is important to say by way of introduction is that these four groups all represent important examples of ways in which both rural and urban communities around the nation can come together around important issues and help fashion a better future. They each have important and positive lessons to teach those interested in empowering and enabling communities to help create change, and in the process begin to address many of the myriad problems they now currently face.

In considering the examples of the four organizations examined above, several important uniting themes emerge as to the operational structure and conceptual goals common to groups involved in community-based organizing, planning and development. These common themes involve the three main areas of activity: structure, goals and methods.

Each of the four organizations studied has a hierarchical yet flexible structure that attempts to delegate decision-making power and authority to those with the appropriate knowledge and skills to address the issue in question. In this common approach we see the determination to help empower individual people and local groups make the decisions that will affect their futures.

Each of the four organizations studied helps to, in their own ways, create a more cohesive, capable, educated, and empowered community. This is achieved not only through concrete physical developments but also through the intangible benefits that going through such a process results in, such as the creation of community leadership, citizen participation and dedicated, motivated and involved residents

This is a ?bottom-up? approach to community-based organization, advocacy and planning. Each group has realized that the impetus for creating positive change in a neighborhood or community cannot come from externally imposed authority from above, but to be successful must emerge from the knowledge, dedication, commitment and involvement of those local residents and citizens who have the most intimate and complete knowledge of their own communities, and thus the greatest capability and the most interest in planning for and successfully implementing positive change. Though their specific approaches and courses of action might differ according to the local environment or circumstances, each organization studied here has realized this basic concept and sought to support its actualization through their activities.

As the 21 st century begins in earnest, the cities, towns and communities of the United States still face many challenges and problems to overcome. But as these four stories show, there is ample hope. For when organizations can harness the power inherent in communities themselves, the possibilities are almost endless.

Jonathan Shadmon , is an undergraduate student majoring in Urban and Regional Studies in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. He is interested in regional and urban planning and community development issues. This paper was written under the supervision and guidance of Rod Howe, Associate Director of the Community and Rural Development Institute at Cornell University, and Ken Reardon, Associate Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning, College of Architecture, Art and Planning, Cornell University. The author wishes to give sincere thanks to Stacey Crawford, Executive Director of Better Housing for Tompkins County Inc, for providing much useful materials and information for that section of the paper.