As more colleges and universities commit to a public mission, it is critical that our work as anchor institutions have a sustainable and positive impact, and that we collaborate fully with the diverse voices and expertise beyond our campuses--the most valuable assets of our multicultural cities. Taking Syracuse, New York, as a microcosm, the…

This article discusses how local history can be used by teachers to help develop historical thinking skills such as source analysis, the collection of data, and the creation of historical arguments. Using New York City as a case study, this article argues that urban spaces and local communities provide historical evidence that can be read and…

The inauguration of a new president is a typically a time of great hope, and this year is certainly no exception. But the advent of the Obama administration offers residents of New York and other city-dwellers special grounds for optimism: that the period of years, if not decades, when the federal government all but turned its back on the needs of…

This article describes how two African American young adults engage in learning and activism in their Harlem community through employment of art forms. Observations on the reversal of learning--from adults to young people in classrooms and young people to adults in the community--are critiqued.

Article describes the results of an urban renewal program. (Author/MM)

The problem here was to create, on 4.5 acres of Lower Manhattan, a junior college to meet the needs of 11,000 full- and part-time students and the urban community. In 1968, educators, business leaders, politicians, architects, urban planners, et al. attended six seminars. The following were considered the most important aspects of the total…

In the late 1990s the Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis was dangerous and crumbling, prompting "The New York Times" to dub the city "Murderapolis." As Minneapolis' largest neighborhood in size and population, and Minnesota's most culturally diverse community, the Phillips neighborhood became a negative symbol of urban blight…

New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Yonkers share many qualities of cities in the Northeast including blighted neighborhoods, deserted factories, heavy municipal debt, shrinking constitutional taxing and borrowing limits, reductions in services, an aging housing market, substantial unemployment, and financially dependent school…

The priorities of eight program areas of the Community Service Society (CSS) for the 1976 New York State Legislature are enumerated in this report. The activities of the 1975 legislature are also briefly summarized and all the bills on which CSS took a position are indexed for each area addressed. The eight program areas as well as some of the…

Poverty, violence, illegal drugs, and despair dominate the lives of many inner-city children, most of whom are Black and Hispanic. To reverse the social and economic decline of poor neighborhoods in major metropolitan areas, the State of New York has embraced an agenda, outlined here, for rebuilding high-need inner-city communities. (Author/BJV)