Are We Still Going Through the Empty Ritual of Participation? Inner-City Residents’ and Other Grassroots Stakeholders’ Perceptions of Public Input and Neighborhood Revitalization

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Mark Silverman ◽  
Henry Louis Taylor ◽  
Li Yin ◽  
Camden Miller ◽  
Pascal Buggs
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Inner City ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Neighborhood Change ◽  
Standpoint Theory ◽  
Neighborhood Revitalization ◽  
Negative Externalities ◽  
Public Input ◽  
Planning Processes

This article revisits Arnstein’s “ladder of citizen participation” focusing on inner-city residents’ perceptions of public input in neighborhood revitalization projects. It draws from data collected in Buffalo, New York for a larger project that aimed to address negative externalities caused by neighborhood change. Data were collected using focus groups in neighborhoods in the early stages of revitalization. Nine focus groups took place across three neighborhoods experiencing encroachment from hospitals and universities. Data analysis was guided by standpoint theory, which focuses on amplifying the voices of groups traditionally disenfranchised from planning processes. The findings suggest that the shortcomings of public input identified by Arnstein a half century ago remain problematic. Residents continue to perceive limited access to urban planning processes and believe outcomes do not prioritize their interests. This is particularly problematic in minority, working-class neighborhoods when institutionally driven development occurs. Recommendations emphasize enhancing planners’ fidelity to strategies that expand citizen control.

Place making as a form of place taking

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 566-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Mark Silverman ◽  
Henry Louis Taylor Jr ◽  
Li Yin ◽  
Camden Miller ◽  
Pascal Buggs
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Standpoint Theory ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Negative Externalities ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Anchor Institutions ◽  
Perceived Effects ◽  
University Expansion

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine perceptions of institutional encroachment and community responses to it. Specifically, it focuses on residents’ perceived effects of hospital and university expansion and the role of place making on gentrification in core city neighborhoods. This study offers insights into the processes driving neighborhood displacement and the prospects for grassroots efforts to curb it. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected through focus groups with residents and other stakeholders in working class, minority neighborhoods which were identified as being in the early stages of gentrification. Nine focus groups were held across three neighborhoods experiencing institutional encroachment. The analysis was guided by standpoint theory, which focuses on amplifying the voices of groups traditionally disenfranchized from urban planning and policy processes. Findings The findings suggest that residents perceived institutional encroachment as relatively unabated and unresponsive to grassroots concerns. This led to heightened concerns about residential displacement and concomitant changes in the neighborhoods’ built and social environments. Experiences with encroachment also increased residents’ calls for greater grassroots control of development. Originality/value This analysis illuminates how gentrification and displacement results from both physical redevelopment activities of anchor institutions and their decisions related to place making. The conclusions highlight the importance of empowering disenfranchized groups in the place-making process to minimize negative externalities at the neighborhood level.

Clinical Characteristics and Predictors of Mortality in African Americans with COVID-19 from an Inner-City Community Hospital in New York

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vijay Gayam ◽  
Muchi Ditah Chobufo ◽  
Mohamed A. Merghani ◽  
Shristi Lamichanne ◽  
Pavani Reddy Garlapati ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Inner City ◽  
Clinical Characteristics ◽  
Community Hospital ◽  
Predictors Of Mortality ◽  
City Community

scholarly journals Council Press Offices as Sources of Political Information: Between Journalism for Accountability and Propaganda

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Vanessa Rodríguez-Breijo ◽  
Núria Simelio ◽  
Pedro Molina-Rodríguez-Navas
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Selection Of

This study uses a qualitative approach to examine what political and technical leaders of municipalities understand transparency and public information to mean, and what role they believe the different subjects involved (government, opposition, and the public) should have. The websites of 605 Spanish councils with more than 100,000 inhabitants were analysed and three focus groups were held with political and technical leaders from a selection of sample councils. The results show that the technical and political leaders of the councils do not have a clear awareness of their function of management accountability or of the need to apply journalistic criteria to the information they publish, defending with nuances the use of propaganda criteria to focus on the actions of the local government, its information, the lack of space dedicated to public debate and the opposition’s actions. In relation to accountability and citizen participation, they have a negative view of citizens, who they describe as being disengaged. However, they emphasize that internally it is essential to continue improving in terms of the culture of transparency and the public information they provide citizens.

Lifeblood of the Parish

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Neighborhood Change ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Manual Labor ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Material Religion

Each year the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, celebrates its annual Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola. The crowning event is the Dance of the Giglio, a devotional spectacle of strength and struggle in which men lift a four-ton, seventy-foot tower through the streets. This ethnographic study delves into this masculine world of devotion and the religious lives of lay Catholic men. It explores contemporary men’s devotion to the saints and the Catholic parish as an enduring venue for the pursuit of manhood and masculinity amid gentrification and neighborhood change in New York City. It explores the way laymen imagine themselves and their labor as high stakes, the very work of keeping their parish alive. In this Brooklyn church men, money, and devotion are intertwined. In the backstage spaces of the parish men enact their devotion through craft, manual labor, and fundraising. A rich exploration of embodiment and material religion, this book examines how men come to be part of religious community through material culture: costumes, clothing, objects, and tattoos. It argues that devotion is as much about skills, the body, and relationships between men as it is about belief.

Critique of the Citizen Participation Movement in Education

1977 ◽  
Vol 159 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Gittell
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
York City ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Community Control ◽  
Bargaining Process ◽  
School Budgets ◽  
Adequate Provision

The demand for community participation in education has resulted in many school systems adopting some form of decentralization. In many cases, this “participation” has been illusory. The decentralization which occurred did not result in increased decision making power being allocated to the community, but rather in merely physically decentralizing the existing school bureaucracy. The current situation in New York City provides a number of insights into what can be expected as school budgets are cut as a result of fewer resources and decreases in school enrollments. The community school boards, which had no input into the collective bargaining process, are now pitted against the professional educational establishment — the Board of Education and the United Federation of Teachers. Both in New York City and elsewhere, those who control the school bureaucracy have excluded the community from playing a significant role in the policy-making process. The governance structure of American education must be changed so that the community will have greater control over its educational institutions. Properly instituted, community control is an instrument of social change. If adequate provision is made for the technical resources to carry out this new role, citizen participation has the potential for providing new insights into our concepts of professionalism and our general theories of educational expertise.

HIV Education for Teens and Preteens in a High-Seroprevalence Inner-City Neighborhood

1997 ◽  
Vol 78 (6) ◽  
pp. 579-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice J. Krauss
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Inner City ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Hiv Education ◽  
High Seroprevalence ◽  
Hiv Epidemic ◽  
Open Discussion ◽  
Transmission Prevention ◽  
Group Interviews

In several New York City neighborhoods more than 1 in 10 adults and adolescents are infected with HIV. Children in these neighborhoods are exposed both directly and indirectly to the effects of the HIV epidemic. Exploratory group interviews were conducted to discover the HIV-related concerns of adolescent and pread-olescent girls and boys living in a high-sero-prevalence neighborhood and to specify the context within which children experienced those concerns. Results indicated that explanations about HIV focusing only on transmission and transmission prevention, whether in educational or family settings, may ignore compelling concerns of youth. Both risk of HIV and loss of neighbors and relatives to HIV permeate daily life but in a way that prevents open discussion. Children are eager to talk about social and personal issues regarding HIV.

The Family of Goals-Achievement Matrix Methods: Respectable Enough for Citizen Participation in Planning?

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 1151-1161 ◽  
Author(s):  
T Sager
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Production Model ◽  
Spatial Equilibrium ◽  
Land Rent ◽  
Matrix Methods ◽  
Differential Fertility ◽  
The Family ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
A New Technique ◽  
Evaluation Techniques

This article examines the problems of location and land rent within the framework of a linear and multisector production model in a radioconcentric space. In the case of a single product, the order of the differential fertility and location rent is examined. This order is neither given nor natural, but depends especially on the distribution. Formulating a spatial equilibrium with n goods where several qualities of soil exist raises a number of difficulties. When several techniques are used to manufacture a product then it is shown how different techniques are located in relation to the centre according to prices and the distribution variables. The manner in which a new technique is introduced and spreads in space is also examined. The predominant method used for evaluation in British structure planning compares strategies in terms of their achievement of particular criteria derived from community objectives. A recent survey shows that of the traditional evaluation techniques only modified goals-achievement matrix (GAM) methods are widely used in structure planning. This approach is also applied to local and project oriented planning processes where citizen participation seems even more necessary. The goals-achievement matrix was not presented by its originator—M Hill—as an entirely unambiguous method. It can be interpreted as a set of significantly diverging variants which are used here for three purposes: to show that economists' critique of GAM is too general, to clarify the connections between GAM and other well-known evaluation methods, and to discuss how GAM could best be structured for use in local participatory planning.

SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence Among Healthcare Workers by Job Function and Work Location in a New York Inner-City Hospital

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Murli U Purswani ◽  
Jessica Bucciarelli ◽  
Jose Tiburcio ◽  
Shamuel M Yagudayev ◽  
Georgia H Connell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Department ◽  
New York ◽  
Inner City ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Administrative Staff ◽  
City Hospital ◽  
Antibody Testing ◽  
Pharmacy Staff ◽  
Work Location ◽  
Job Function

OBJECTIVE: To describe the seroprevalence and risk for SARS-CoV-2 among healthcare workers (HCWs) by job function and work location following the pandemic’s first wave in New York City (NYC). METHODS: A cross-sectional study conducted between May 18 and June 26, 2020, during which HCWs at a large inner-city teaching hospital in NYC received voluntary antibody testing. The main outcome was presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies indicating previous infection. Seroprevalence and adjusted odds ratios (aORs) for seropositivity by type and location of work were calculated using logistic regression analyses. RESULTS: Of 2,749 HCWs tested, 831 tested positive, yielding a crude seroprevalence of 30.2% (95% CI, 29%-32%). Seroprevalence ranged from 11.1% for pharmacy staff to 44.0% for nonclinical HCWs comprised of patient transporters and housekeeping and security staff, with 37.5% for nurses and 20.9% for administrative staff. Compared to administrative staff, aORs (95% CIs) for seropositivity were 2.54 (1.64-3.94) for nurses; 2.51 (1.42-4.43) for nonclinical HCWs; between 1.70 and 1.83 for allied HCWs such as patient care technicians, social workers, registration clerks and therapists; and 0.80 (0.50-1.29) for physicians. Compared to office locations, aORs for the emergency department and inpatient units were 2.27 (1.53-3.37) and 1.48 (1.14-1.92), respectively. CONCLUSION: One-third of hospital-based HCWs were seropositive for SARS-CoV-2 by the end of the first wave in NYC. Seroprevalence differed by job function and work location, with the highest estimated risk for nurses and the emergency department, respectively. These findings support current nationwide policy prioritizing HCWs for receipt of newly authorized COVID-19 vaccines.

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