What do people need to learn to engage actively in social action for neighbourhood improvement or development? How important is emergent learning relative to planned learning in this context? Where does first-person knowledge fit into the body of knowledge required for success in bringing about change for the better in neighbourhoods through…

Mixed-income initiatives provide critical investments in neighborhoods, including investments to improve schools, and provide case management and family support services to low-income families. The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) is one of the largest and most comprehensive mixed-income neighborhood redevelopment initiatives to date;…

In this article we take a closer look at a developing university-community engagement project being undertaken between California State University, Fresno, and the City of Fresno. A history of the project is provided, along with a review of the relevant literature and a summary of what pieces of the puzzle we feel should be in place for a…

Free to Grow: Head Start Partnerships to Promote Substance-free Communities (FTG) was a national initiative in which local Head Start (HS) agencies, in partnership with other community organizations, implemented a mix of evidence-based family-strengthening and community-strengthening strategies. The evaluation of FTG used a quasi-experimental…

Distressed urban neighborhoods face challenges on multiple fronts, but most efforts to confront these problems work in isolation of one another. The New Communities Program (NCP) is an exception, helping selected Chicago neighborhoods develop partnerships to address challenges involving employment, education, housing, and safety in a…

This dissertation presents new evidence on neighborhood transition and its impact on housing markets using a novel micro-level dataset on housing transactions. It focuses on three issues: the neighborhood effect, housing discrimination, and stable integration. The first essay examines the relationship between increased minority composition and…

Often in green communities, homeowner understanding is left out of the project. We evaluated the impact of a new environmental education program installed in a green community, Town of Harmony, Florida. Consisting of educational kiosks, website, and brochure, we evaluated whether Harmony residents' environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors…