IMMIGRATION, ETHNICITY AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD AGENDA URBANIZATION IN AMERICA

JOHN KROMKOWSKI

The prospect of learning from the past has become especially attractive in an era of conservative critique. The political invocation of traditional values such as work, family, neighborhood and entrepreneurialism fill public discourse.¹ Conservatives point to the success of European immigrants in America and the contemporary celebration of the Statue of Liberty seems to enshrine the productive and enlivening elan of an earlier era of immigrant social formation and urban economic development.

The line between image and reality of immigration, ethnicity and urbanization needs to be drawn. No doubt much can be learned from traditional practices. But the process of learning from human experience begins with the honest-to-memory recollection of experience and ongoing analysis of human phenomena especially social inventions which shape the various dimensions of sociality, economy and polity that constitute our worlds of meaning and action. Honest-to-memory recollection and radical phenomenology are especially relevant for such relatively under-analyzed fields as the history of immigration and urban economic development. Moreover, the mere selection of desirable values--work, family, neighborhood, enterprise--and the announcement of their merit and efficacy runs the risk of inviting ideological counter-selections and counter-incantations based in other historical preferences and findings. The upshot of such debates is the generally distrust of learning from the historical and experiential and the subsequent search for innovative `ahistorical' recipes and a priori therapies for persistent conflictual issues of urban life in America such as: immigration, ethnicity and the decline and developmment in urban neighborhoods' economies.

At bottom the cultural conflict in a multi-ethnic society and economic crisis of urban development are not resolved by historical claims and ideologies supported by selective historical evidence. The resolution of conflict and the recovery of civility and economic well-being in a multi-ethnic and mobile urban society are the ongoing tasks of our era as they were in earlier circumstances. Then as now formative and guiding forces of experience teach profound lessons. What one learns and values at the first intersection of the personal in one's family and of the public in one's neighborhood shapes one's judgment and action in the urban arena of culture and economy that constitute the urbanized settlements in which larger and larger numbers of the American people live.

Periods of change often produce a conflict but more importantly they force us to define the commonweal we share. But groundless expectations for the future based in ideological images of the past eclipse honest-to-experience representations of reality

which ought to inform and guide us.

Thus the argument begins: the neighborhood is the building block of a city and the neighborhood experience of immigrants are a source of civility and a model of economic development which are significant to contemporary urban well-being. In the American experience, the small scale settlement--the neighborhood--not only mediated the passage of immigrants, toward becoming ethnics, citizens, producers and consumers, as importantly, it mediated the person from family into the public world of common culture, politics and economics. Through such interaction and relationship a society fashions bonds of association and exchange. The neighborhood is the initial locus of an interesting set of intersections which may be fruitfully named the public, private and community sectors of the American reality. Thus the neighborhood is a social invention whose capacity for economic and cultural well-being appears to be pivotal for social formation, economic well-being and political development.

Contemporary urban neighborhoods exist in uneasy tension with large-scale governmental, cultural and economic institutions. The agenda proposed for urban neighborhoods and the endorsement of American social formation influenced by immigration and ethnicity does not invoke either of these sources as merely symbolic or as romantic political totems. The neighborhood agenda emerges from experiential analysis of the relation of immigration and ethnicity to the moral universe of exchange of goods and services. Such experiences informed by pragmatic common sense suggest the ground from which preference for the neighborhood can be determined without the sleight of hand employed by either romantic nostalgia or destructive progressism.

Feldstein and Costello, editors of The Ordeal of Assimilation, point to certain neglected aspects of social and economic practices of the early 20th Century and argue against romantics who concentrate on the success stories and magnificent contributions made by the newcomers to American life. According to Feldstein and Costello understanding the foreign-born's plight in America reveals ways in which these aliens have been affected by their new environment.

Immigration to America included experiences in `uprooting' themselves from their native lands, making the arduous journey to America, trying to establish roots here, facing discrimination and privation, and attempting to adjust to a culture which was totally alien to the one they had left. They faced the threat and difficulty of detention or rejection at the port of debarkation, entrapment by unscrupulous shipping and boardinghouse agents, finding decent lodgings and employment and adjusting to a very unfamiliar life-style.²

During economic booms jobs in America were plentiful. Native-born Americans and immigrants from Northern and Western Europe were moving along the occupational scale and were no longer available to fill menial positions. Feldstein and Costello and others report that that Eastern and Southern Europeannewcomers generally lived in the worst urban tenements and were exposed to the ravages of periodic epidemics. They were exploited by absentee slumlords and ruthless employers. The immigrant workingmen often toiled long hours and at very low wages, and many through no fault of their own, were the victims of serious industrial accidents.

Upon arrival in the United States, immigrants usually came under pressure to become "American," to conform to the actions, values and beliefs of the Anglo community. The pressure frequently caused the newcomers some uncertainty about the values and sense of community which they could develop in their new situation. Feldstein and Costello confirm the findings of many social historians:

The aliens also were constantly under pressure to strip themselves of all aspects of their Old World backgrounds, Furthermore, the advocates of Americanization sought to divest them of their ethnic characteristics and have these new citizens of the republic adopt the customs and language of the predominant culture. While being discriminated against, the foreign-born found themselves in the paradoxical position of being forced to become part of the homogenized mass which was victimizing them.³

While such influences were strong, closer-grain analysis of ethnicity and the American regime suggest an angle of vision which runs obliquely to, if not counter to, the lines of argument of that focus upon the victimization of immigrants by the Anglo culture and the capitalist system. However, the success of immigrants in America cannot be denied. Closer attention to the diversity of culture and history that characterized Southern and Eastern European ethnic groups reflects their job experience after arrival in the United States. Some immigrants, such as the Armenians, were far more interested in entrepreneurial opportunities than others such as the Bulgarians who looked to employment in industry to make their living.⁴ Certain groups such as the Greeks were attracted to service jobs, while others such the Poles were employed primarily in heavy industries as miners or steelmakers.⁵ From 1890-1950 the occupational mobility rates of immigrants and their children also varied from group to group; for example, 43 percent of second generation Romanians moved into white-collar occupations, but only 16 percent of second generation Slovaks did the same.⁶

Certain aspects of the immigrant experience, however, were

shared by almost all groups. All began at the bottom of American society; they endured difficult social and economic conditions, often for several generations; the rate of occupational mobility for most of them was low until relatively recently; and they were victims of social and economic discrimination at the hands of their fellow Americans.⁷ The Kerner Commission Report summed up the experience of Southern and Eastern European immigrants in the course of its analysis of the problems of American cities in the 1960s. Eastern and Southern European ethnics,

who came to America from rural backgrounds, as Negroes did, are only now, after three generations, in the final stages of escaping from poverty. Until the last 10 years or so, most of these were employed in blue-collar jobs, and only a small proportion of their children were able or willing to attend college. In other words, only the third and in many cases the fourth generation has been able to achieve the kind of middle-class income and status that allows it to send its children to college. Because of favorable economic and political conditions, these ethnic groups were able to escape from lower-class status to working class and lower middle-class status, but it has taken them three generations.⁸

Historical and local factors must be examined even more closely. The conditions under which the immigrants worked and lived remained difficult and marginal for the first two or three generations. The conditions in immigrant neighborhoods such as Manhattan's Mulberry Street or Chicago's Noble Street, rivaled in congestion and unhealthiness those of any urban slum in the world.⁹ Chicago housing inspectors for 1900, 1910 and 1920 concluded that living conditions in the worse quarters of Calcutta or Tokyo were more favorable than in the Polish neighborhoods of the city.¹⁰ As late as 1940, the infant mortality and tuberculosis death rates in Slavic and Italian immigrant districts were the highest or among the highest in the cities in which they lived.¹¹ In a city such as Detroit, the 1940 census showed that more than half the housing in immigrant areas was classified as substandard.¹² Working conditions were equally difficult and dangerous. The United States in the early part of the twentieth century had one of the worst industrial safety records among industrialized countries, and Eastern and Southern European immigrants who worked at the least desirable and most dangerous jobs suffered a disproportionate amount of the casualties.¹³ For example, at the South Chicago mill of Illinois Steel for the five-year reporting period between 1906 and 1910 one out of every four immigrant workers was injured or killed each year. The victims numbered more than 3,000 men over the five-year period.¹⁴

The low occupational and social status of Southern and Eastern European immigrants was matched by equally low wages. For the years 1908 through 1910 the Commissioner General of Immigration reported that 58.2 percent of foreign-born Bulgarian, Greek, Croatian, Italian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Magyar, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Ruthenian, Serbian, Slovak, Syrian or Turkish males earned on the average less than $400 per year, while only 15.2 percent of the foreign-born who were Dutch, English, Irish, Norwegian, Scotch, Swedish and Welsh earned less than $400 per year.¹⁵

Their low status is reflected in the fact that in many industries they earned less and held less skilled and prestigious jobs than the small number of obviously disadvantaged Black Americans in Northern cities with whom they worked.¹⁶ Only during World War I did Eastern and Southern Europeans definitely begin to pass Black Americans in their occupational and economic status.¹⁷ That advantage came just as large numbers of Blacks from the South began to migrate North to fill the growing demand for labor caused by the wartime suspension of immigration, and hence to replace gradually the Southern and Eastern Europeans at the bottom of the society. The presence of a new group may have served to push Americans of Southern and Eastern European ancestry a step or two up the ladder of occupational status as they themselves had boosted native white Americans and immigrants from Northwestern Europe a generation before.¹⁸

Thus, for several generations Eastern and Southern Europeans provided a major pool of cheap labor for the mines, mills and factories of America. As a result "many millions lived in abject poverty in the densely packed slums. They were also too often without the most simple comforts and conveniences which their own labor made possible for others. They struggled merely to maintain their families above the level of actual hunger and want."¹⁹

The rate and patterns of occupational mobility for Southern and Eastern European ethnic groups varied considerably. Certain groups such as the Romanians showed a surprising mobility and interest in education and a significant segment of second generation Romanians in the inter-war period moved into middle class occupations.²⁰ On the whole, however, the rate of mobility for most Americans of Southern and Eastern European ancestry was slow and gradual before the 1960s. It is interesting to note that in many cases second generation males of some of those groups showed a decline in status in relationship to the status achieved by their fathers.²¹ This was especially true if the fathers had attained a precarious hold on a middle-class position. In his Cleveland study, Josef Barton notes, for example, that "Italian fathers who gained middle-class status . . . consistently failed to pass their status on to their children. As a result, the second generation started out the thirties with no better chances than those with which immigrants had begun."²²

These conclusions are supported in general by Stephen Thernstrom's mobility study of the population of Boston, The Other Bostonians. Perhaps the most careful and extensive historical mobility study ever done, it covers the period between 1880 and 1970. Several of the findings are worth noting. First Thernstrom observes that the Great Depression had a particularly stunting effect on the occupational mobility of the cohort of men born during the first decade of the century who were beginning work at low-skilled occupations in the 1930s.²³ Northern cities in 1900 contained immigrant populations with high birth rates and a disproportionate concentration in the laboring classes.²⁴ It is clear that this disadvantage fell with heaviest consequences on many second generation Southern and Eastern European ethnics and retarded their upward mobility for life. Secondly, he concludes that there are sharp ethnic differences in economic opportunity. Immigrants consistently fared less well than natives in occupational competition, and the children of the immigrants were "distinctively less successful than men of old native stock."²⁵ He concludes that even though immigration restriction in the 1920s caused these differentials to blur, "half a century later they remain visible to some degree still."²⁶ Finally, Thernstrom found that there were variations in mobility rates between immigrants, second generation men and Yankees. Certain groups such as English and the Jews "found their way into higher occupational strata with exceptional speed" while Catholic ethnic groups such as those from Southern and Eastern Europe "moved ahead economically only sluggishly and erratically."²⁷

It appears that although by the middle of the twentieth century most Southern and Eastern European ethnic groups had established themselves solidly in the working class and had built stable and orderly communities, they had not yet moved in significant numbers into middle-class occupations.²⁸ Martin Mager's study of Detroit's elite graphically bears out that findings for one city. He concludes:

What is most striking is that by the mid-twentieth century Southern and Eastern Europeans still did not appear among the business, financial and industrial leadership of Detroit, in spite of the fact that two and in some cases three generations had passed.²⁹

The explanations of the "slow and erratic" mobility of most Southern and Eastern European groups have revolved around a series of cultural factors. Observers have pointed to the obvious lack of skills useful in an industrial society, strong initial interest in returning to their European homes after a few years of work in America, poor educational preparation, inability to speak English and low social status as hindering the advancement of immigrants. These disadvantages carried over to their children.³⁰ In addition, particular features of their religious background and/or their rural or national cultures were often cited.³¹ Some scholars using a Neo-Weberian analysis argued that Catholicism in general and the particular Catholic orientation and upbringing of the immigrants produced a worldview that placed less emphasis on worldly success and higher education than did Protestantism.³² Others pointed to the relative importance of community rather than individualism, and of the accumulation of capital to purchase land and homes rather than to engage in entrepreneurial activity, as the product of value systems and mobility strategies characteristic of rural societies. These strategies were seen, at a number of points, as antagonistic to urban, secular or "modern" value systems.³³

The value of these factors as sufficient and necessary explanations have been challenged. For example, Miriam Cohen has recently argued that the attitudes of Southern and Eastern European ethnic groups toward education was shaped not by deep-seated cultural factors, but by demographic and economic circumstances and the structural features of the job market.³⁴ She shows that when circumstances changed and the possibility of securing work and advancement as a result of education was perceived by Americans of Southern and Eastern European ancestry, they responded accordingly.³⁵ Cohen concludes that

parental attitudes about education changed not because attitudes about females, males or children in general changed but because these parents had to adapt to changing social circumstances in an effort to do what they had always done - to prepare their children with the proper skills so that they would survive, even succeed as adults.³⁶

The rather significant leap in income, education and middleclass status in recent years for Americans of Southern and Eastern European ancestry--a phenomenon Andrew Greeley called "the Ethnic Miracle"³⁷--also raises questions about the success of the cultural interpretation fully to explain their mobility patterns. Steven Steinberg's recent study, The Ethnic Myth, has argued that the establishment of strong ethnic communities and a stable working-class life pattern created the economic and cultural base from which third and fourth generations could move up economically once they perceived that barriers to mobility such as discrimination had begun to fall.³⁸ Steinberg, in fact, points out that the cultural and economic base from which Eastern and Southern European ethnics have begun to move into professional occupations and academic life is much more narrow and precarious than that which afforded Jews the opportunity to make a similar move a generation before.³⁹ The children of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who moved into academic life so successfully, came overwhelmingly out of the merchant and small shopkeeper class, not out of the Jewish working class. Catholic ethnics appear to be making their move primarily out of a working-class base.⁴⁰ These explanations of the "Ethnic Miracle" would strongly suggest that their mobility was not the result of rejection of the cultural background of the ethnic community and its values but rather of building upon them.

During every major economic crisis since the 1880s, immigrants have become a target for complaints and frustrations. Such conflict, which even occurs between established ethnics and new immigrants of the same nationality, does more than reduce production and services: it destroys civic confidence and damages the moral universe of victims and victimizers. Group-based oppression and discrimination based on national origin in America have been ignored and neglected dimensions of our moral order. Economic, social and cultural conflicts that exist beneath the surface of passive civility explode during crises. Times of limited resources provoke competition for access to the sources of power that are presumed as remedies. Because explosions are rare in a society of abundance and well-orchestrated diversions, some recommend no moral therapy. Put simply: if its not broke, don't fix it. This argument, however, discounts the importance of developing social consensus and dismisses approaches to cultural justice and the classical sense of civitas anchored in the experiences of lived cultural communities.

Sporadic reports of group violence and the demographics of immigration indicate that America is beginning a new round of population and cultural change. The number of Asian and South American immigrants has increased. The U.S. Census counted over 14 million foreign-born persons in 1980. In 1970 the Census revealed 9.6 million foreign-born persons. Yet Afro-Americans are isolated in urban areas and the expectation of an integrated society seems further off today than two decades ago. Such social indicators may induce fear and hatred. The challenge for leadership, however, is to channel the fresh and vital social energy of a new generation into attitudes, policies and programs which reflect the convergent hopes for fairness, dignity and respect for all persons.

Before this society yields to internal disintegration which may prompt extraordinary and tyrannical corporate and governmental remedies, we need to address the task of enabling Americans to understand the non-governmental, `natural', `organic', neighborhood based, community character of civil society in America. What I propose is a new agenda and action thrust to understand, to protect and to encourage community-based institutions which create a sense of human scale, cultural grounding for personal efficacy and common citizenship. There is good historical-cultural evidence for the claim that community-based institutions have created wholesome and helpful bonds between persons as well as between people and large scale governmental and corporate institutions.

Careful attention to what is left of the community-based reality in America may enable us to understand the forces leading to group conflicts and to seek new approaches to achieving liberty and justice. Without a new vision of civility, the rights of persons will become only forced behavior. Resources that can be bargained and accommodated can obviously be lost.

It is time to recall that civility and civil rights are not merely the products of inspired speech and law. They spring from the best and most generous impulses in human society and culture and are created by living in communities. It appears then that to establish justice means to awaken America to an understanding of its complexity, its pluralism and the importance of small-scale community-based institutions. That is the agenda for the renewal and recovery of solidarity in the pursuit of justice.

In 1904 G.K. Chesterton published his first novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill. It was a curious and prophetic book set in 1984 about a young leader of the Notting Hill neighborhood of London who leads his people in defense of the neighborhood against a proposed highway that would cut it apart. Chesterton had a great love for particular places and, though a man of universal vision, his essay proclaimed that, "Empires wax and wane and never provide the kind of local democratic loyalty that men need."

Chesterton loved those particular places. "There stood a row of shops. At one end was a public house . . . somewhere a church . . . there was a grocer's . . . a second hand bookstore . . . an old curiosity shop . . . shops supplying a11 the spiritual and bodily needs of men." By the turn of the century he came to understand that his "progressive" friends wanted to destroy the Notting Hill's of the world in the name of modernity and human advancement. At that point Chesterton discovered that he opposed these planners and idealists--as he said, "I drew my sword in defense of Notting Hill."

In the eighty years since Chesterton drew his rhetorical sword, the warning bells his art and insight sounded now resonate in the life and experience of neighborhood people. The neighborhood has not fared well in the United States. In fact, at the very time he was writing, the Progressive movement was readying its attack on ward government and neighborhood representation in city government in many American cities. As a result by 1920, in cities such as Detroit and Pittsburgh, the ward organization and the patronage system that supported it were replaced by city councils elected at large and by an extended civil service. The local political machine associated with bosses and immigrant and working-class politics disappeared in favor of a new, city-wide, middle-class machine based on educational qualifications, civic clubs, trade associations, men's groups associated with prestigious mainline Protestant churches and blue ribbon commissions. Even in cities that were not "reformed," the increasing centralization and professionalization of city administration and services diminished the role of local and ethnic institutions.

After the Second World War, the infusion into the cities of state and federal monies with their accompanying guidelines covering highway building, welfare and educational policy, industrial development and urban renewal destroyed local autonomy and initiative and completed the ruin of many neighborhoods. The growth of new suburban areas, fostered by some of the same politics, lured away many of the younger and more upwardly mobile of the neighborhood people. With the decline of the neighborhoods came the decline of the churches, schools, ethnic organizations, political clubs, shopping strips and entertainment centers that had tied them together and given them distinct identities. As a result, by the sixties many urban areas had been neglected, bull-dozed, `redlined' and paved over into highways.

In addition to growing powerlessness and deterioration, neighborhoods faced demographic changes that altered their ethnic and racial composition, culture and social cohesion. This sometimes brought on and exacerbated conflict and competition for control of housing and local institutions. Moreover, racial and ethnic succession in urban neighborhoods was often poorly understood, misinterpreted and exaggerated by media and national leaders. Though neighborhood weakness still abounds, the struggle in defense of neighborhoods foreshadowed by Chesterton has begun and the defense of neighborhoods based on honest-to experience analyses has yielded judgments and actions that are fueled by Chesterton's moral sensibility Yet, unlike his artful world of imagination, the praxis of contemporary defender of neighborhood is rewriting the agenda for uban life in the decades to come.

The neighborhood experiences of the 1970s indicates that there is a definable process of urban decay in American neighborhoods. And commercial disinvestment is a crucial component of this decay. The damage done to local, national and urban economies is severe. However, neighborhood revitalization which began as an art is now emerging as a science. Because commercial disinvestment is a key feature of decay, commercial revitalization is an indispensable part of the general revitalization. Neighborhood commercial revitalization can succeed under the right conditions and provided the appropriate development experiences are transferred to, and applied by, the private, public and community sectors of America.

The pattern of urban decline is well known and documented. Something like the following happens. When an older residential neighborhood begins to experience signs of distress, its commercial strip of retail and light manufacturing, although affected, still functions and provides jobs and services to the residents. However, a crucial stage is soon reached as the older population begins to die off or move out.

Signs of decay occur. The commercial strip, which is one--in some cases the only--source of capital accumulation for the neighborhood economy, begins to deteriorate as businesses begin to close or move out. Government sponsored urban renewal may occur, destroying residential and commercial building without replacing them. A local employer may move out due to the structural differences in taxes created by the federal system. Banks and insurance companies begin to reassess their risk in the area, perhaps denying insurance and access to capital at any price. The municipal government may begin to limit city services due to the decreased political clout of the area. The most affluent move out, commercial and residential closings accelerate, the area becomes less and less attractive and the speed of decay accelerates.

The cycle of decay does not usually limit its effect to the initial neighborhood. If left unchecked, the negative conditions begin to spill into adjoining neighborhoods; severe dislocations and distortions are introduced into the economy as jobs move out and workers follow. Many of the newly unemployed, especially those from lower income families, however, simply can't move in order to follow the jobs. Valuable existing facilities (commercial, industrial, and residential) are abandoned or underutilized, and replaced with costly new facilities in a more desirable location. The classic liberal responses of government subsidies usually does little for the neighborhoods affected while further compounding inflation. As the government is forced into the political position of allocating a greater share of economic resources, the ability of the market to achieve efficiency and productivity is hampered.

The process can continue until the city and ultimately the nation find themselves in the now too frequent predicament of having unlivable neighborhoods with a large unemployed population. Without any agencies for internal capital formation, this population is dependent upon outside sources for permanent subsidies to maintain even subsistence levels. Usually the main government assistance comes in the form of costly ongoing subsidies such as welfare, food stamps, public health and temporary job programs.

To the extent that government tries to create permanent jobs, it has tended to concentrate on large-scale industrial projects through the Economic Development Administration or highly visible showcases in central business districts through HUD's Urban Development Action Grants. These have only marginal impact on the neighborhoods. It is well known that over 80% of net jobs created in this country in the last ten years came from the small business sector which is the keystone to neighborhood commerce. This fact suggests that neighborhood commercial revitalization is a prime development arena as well as a key to neighborhood salvage.

The success or failure of community and economic development activities throughout the cities and communities of the U.S. depends largely upon very localized characteristics, dynamics and developments. Federal agencies, state and local governments can provide various incentives and supportive programs, but they cannot supply directly the most critical need nor can they alone implement community and economic development ventures and processes. These public sector actors can, however, recognize needs and design programs which eliminate bottlenecks and promote the development of those factors which produce successful development.

The factors which ensure the steady increase in potential production and consumption, as well as participation and ownership in a given community, form a complex equation. Community and economic development depend on a host of interacting processes: entrepreneurial activity, the actual basis of all production, the availability of productive processes and resources, the accessible level of technique, social institutions and attitudes, capital, and sufficient population and level of consumption. The saliency of these various contextual factors shift from time to time, and their relationships to each other change. Some of the factors are of course external and beyond the influence of a community. But, experienced neighborhood analysts and proven practitioners of neighborhood revitalization have fashioned an understanding of this complex process. They can help discern what is meaningful, effective and needed to develop a community and to promote its full economic potential.

In addition to a correct analysis of economic and market factors, it is now more than obvious that the full use of community resources, in all their variety, are important to any particular local economic development endeavor. The non-participation of any sector public, private or community puts a venture at extreme risk. Citizens groups, private businesses and other institutions can either oppose change and stifle development or be the primary impetus for development and improvement. Frequently, the difference between the adoption of one or another posture is determined by a group's self-interest and its understanding of its ability to share in the development.

It is clear then that the process by which a neighborhood economic development program is carried out requires this process of cooperative interaction. The public sector, primarily municipal government, must create the proper environment in order for business to operate effectively. The private sector, principally business people and financial institutions who indicate a desire to remain and invest in the neighborhood, must take a central position in the actual process of business development. Organized community groups must actively participate in the planning and implementation of the revitalization program, provide broad-based citizen support, relate the economic development program to the overall neighborhood revitalization process, and mediate between conflicting interests when and if the occasion arises. The three sectors should be jointly involved from the outset. The following narrative model includes a description of the public, the private and the community sectors each, and the role each must play in an effective economic revitalization program.

Public Sector

The primary responsibility of the public sector is the delivery of various types of services and actions which are essential to a healthy community environment. In many cases, adequate delivery by the public sector can be a sufficient trigger for considerable private investment in the neighborhood. Provision of certain services and/or public actions by the municipality can spell the difference between the feasibility and non-feasibility of development projects. A partial listing of those necessary services and actions include:

- Police/security

- Parking

- Sanitation and neighborhood appearance

- Transportation facilities

- Code enforcement

- Other public actions--zoning, taxing, etc.

Adequate lines of communication should be established between public agencies and the private sector. Also because they are composed of, and represent, the interests of the residents of the area (who are the electorate), the community leadership must also play a vital role in this communication process.

Private Sector

In the context of the revitalization process, the private sector generally is made up of the local business and financial community. In any economic development program, this sector must carry the bulk of the development activity. The existence of a strong local merchants' association is often a precondition for an effective program. The members of such associations should be expected to contribute to the support of their organizations by both financial involvement and the contribution of in-kind services.

Experience has shown that business development must involve all or most of the following aspects of the neighborhood economy. A neighborhood commercial revitalization program, as carried out by a local public/private partnership, must be able to deliver services in all the following areas.

Improving the Competitiveness of the Existing Merchants. Local merchants forced to compete with regional shopping centers, generally are unable to do so effectively. By forming and working through active merchants' associations patterned along the lines of those regional shopping centers, merchants can upgrade the physical appearance of their stores and the quality of merchandise, increase the scale of operations, promote the neighborhood as an interesting and convenient place to shop, institute building and equipment maintenance programs, and achieve cooperation in other programs of mutual benefit.

Providing Basic Commercial Services Lacking in the Neighborhood. Most old urban neighborhoods are under-serviced in terms of availability of basic goods and services. Treating the neighborhood essentially as a shopping center or district provides a way to analyze demand patterns, identify opportunities for new commercial activities, locate potential entrepreneurs, and assist in packaging and developing new business enterprises such as supermarkets, drug stores, junior department stores, hardware stores, etc.

Quality of Life Elements. A viable neighborhood economy should have interesting and entertaining commercial establishments such as restaurants, boutiques, and other shops, drawing heavily on the ethnic or cultural foundations in the neighborhood. These quality of life elements enhance life in the neighborhood and also attract customers from outside the neighborhood.

Involvement of Financial Institutions in the Local Economy. The local banks must play a central role in the revitalization process by providing loans to the merchants and property owners for rehabilitation and physical improvement. In most cases, banks are far more receptive to loan applications if they are properly packaged and part of a larger revitalization effort. For this reason, a local development organization should assist in individual business packaging and should help structure an overall development program. Its participation in establishing effective lines of communication between the financial institutions and the overall development effort can help assure an ongoing and mutually beneficial working relationship between the financial institutions and the local business community.

Upgrading the Employment Base in the Community. Except in very rare cases, the revitalization process will be severely limited if there is no expansion of the job base provided by the industrial sector. The city's overall economic development entity and community-based organizations should develop an active program to retain what industry is already in the neighborhood and to attract new industry by acquisition and relocation. In most cases, light assembly-type plants providing 50-70 jobs each are ideal for urban neighborhoods because they generally are nonpolluting and relatively labor intensive.

Community Sector

While the bulk of revitalization activity will come from the private sector, there are several aspects of the revitalization process in which community development organizations play a critical role. As part of their involvement in the planning process, community organizations must see that the economic revitalization program relates to, and supports, the overall neighborhood development program, especially as it pertains to land and physical development (e.g., housing) as well as to stability and neighborhood cohesion. Areas in which the community development organizations might be involved include the following.

Property maintenance. Just as maintenance of commercial property is critical to the success of a commercial revitalization program, overall neighborhood revitalization requires physical maintenance and improvement programs for residential property. By working with homeowners, the development organization can assist in arranging for property improvement loans through local banks and savings and loan associations. The confidence generated on the part of lending institutions toward the economic revitalization program should be transferable into other areas of a neighborhood revitalization program, including housing and home improvement programs. Certainly the lines of communication and working relationship established by the development organization between the financial institutions and the community should result in a closer partnership in these areas.

Development of Land and Physical Resources. Neighborhood revitalization cannot occur without reference to the land and physical resource needs of the area. These needs include living and working space (housing and building construction and rehabilitation), social services (e.g., medical and educational facilities), and recreational opportunities (places of entertainment, sport and relaxation). In each of these areas there are obvious opportunities which a community development organization can help identify and package. Keep in mind that local ownership or oversight of these resources is a primary goal and requirement for neighborhood stabilization.

Local Ownership of Commercial Real Estate. To allow for greater local participation in neighborhood land use, programs can be developed to increase the local ownership of commercial and industrial real estate. The development organization can assist in the development of investment syndicates, organize property management companies, and recommend methods for improving the attractiveness and marketability of the commercial locations. It is also felt that broad-based community ownership of commercial real estate could improve the quality of maintenance and reduce vandalism.

However, these strategies and techniques regularly are neglected by economic planners. Moreover, the impact of investments which improve the capacity of community-based economic development are not factored into traditional approaches to unemployment, joblessness and poverty. New, yet tested, opportunity-creating approaches are needed to promote community development as an alternative to welfare dependency. Research and demonstration projects in neighborhoods which are successfully revitalizing their commercial strips suggest the validity of the following neighborhood economic revitalization (NER) approach. This approach replicates ordinary entrepreneurial processes which take into account different variables in each neighborhood. It is structured around ordinary entrepreneurial processes so that performance can be measured by profit and loss and assessed by community satisfaction.

A Neighborhood Economic Revitalization Approach

There are four major steps in such an approach: 1) identification and capacity building; 2) development; 3) implementation; and 4) wrap-up. These steps parallel those a private developer/entrepreneur would take to revitalize a commercial strip.

1. Step one begins by focusing on a troubled but still robust neighborhood which includes a neighborhood commercial area. The neighborhood residents and their institutions, along with local businesses, financial organizations and city officials are organized to shape their future through the initiatives of energized local leaders. Local leaders often are assisted by small seed grants and professional neighborhood organizers. They begin a process of meeting local needs, addressing unfairness in public and private allocation of resources, and developing neighborhood confidence. At this point, a rudimentary plan of action is clear and a series of development sites and possibilities are proposed.

2. In step two, the development process, the leaders contract for a market analysis of the existing area, hire an architect or engineer to review the physical plans and environment, expand the staff organization if necessary, and coordinate funding allocations and availability. They also work with a planner, the city, businessmen and residents to draw up a plan for their area. Step three involves implementing the plan. The final step, wrap-up, includes grand opening ceremonies and management of the commercial operation.

The revitalization of an inner city commercial strip involves the same public and private sectors which led to its decline in the first place. The major task is revitalizing the spirit of these forces to bring about a concerted, comprehensive program for the total rehabilitation of the social, economic and physical environment.

The selection criteria used in the identification process are comparable to the ordinary entrepreneur's identification of a suitable market place. The economic revitalization of a community depends on the existence of a host of preconditions which ensure the profitable rebuilding. Profits must be measured not merely in cash flow balances of the merchants or cost benefits to city coffers, but also in the sense of place, dignity and freedom from fear of the inhabitants of the neighborhood. Initial and ongoing processes of community organizing and empowerment, leadership training and recruitment, as well as fashioning indigenous institutions to meet the challenges of rebuilding community cohesion, are needed to achieve optimum improvement.

Commercial revitalization will be most successful in an area where other programs for housing, crime control, jobs and health care exist. The ills of a ten to twenty year period of disinvestment cannot be cured piecemeal or quickly, even if all the people will it to happen. The pump can be primed with grant/subsidy dollars, but the successful operating cash flow mechanism for restoration of a neighborhood's life blood requires more dollars than it is politically possible to extract from the coffers of government. With an organized community, a series of coordinated programs and an active publicity campaign for communication between all sectors, the approach can operate successfully in the overall fabric for neighborhood economic revitalization.

The neighborhood economic revitalization approach will operate with few government controls or reviews, but it requires capital input at several points to ensure the successful capture of conventional funds. A careful balance, therefore, must be maintained between effective public control mechanisms and the allocation of limited public resources. It will take hard surveys and human energy for organizing groups into productive contributors in order to rebuild neighborhoods, cities and the nation; it is, therefore, important that local government be a sensitive, helping partner rather than a bureaucratic obstacle. Although it requires only a small amount of seed funds to begin the process, an astute organizer is needed to entice the initial capital investment which, in turn, is used to leverage other investments of capital. There are a number of sources of capital and matching capital funds, i.e. public and private sector funds, foundation funds, etc. An organization can afford to call in technical assistance to further its efforts at banding the neighborhood together, identifying revitalization processes and determining goals and objectives as some of these capital sources are identified and become available.

As a tool for the reversal of disinvestment in neighborhoods, the revitalization approach includes almost all applicable steps or activities necessary to affect reinvestment. It has taken at least ten to twelve years for neighborhood organizations in the inner city to coalesce, to identify themselves and their needs, and to learn the processes of reinvestment. This approach is an outgrowth of these decade-long efforts. Continued efforts of the sort and the consequent successful rebirth of inner cities for all peoples who live and work there can be accomplished during the next two decades.

Conventional approaches to development could be operational in inner city sites if redlining by bankers and insurance companies were not a counterproductive factor. The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the Community Reinvestment Act as well as some features of the tax code are rudimentary incentives for recapitalizing jobless and poor areas. The perceptions of large-scale financial institutions should be refocused so that dependency and decline may be abated. Building or restoring the participation of banks, insurance companies and other investing institutions as trusting partners is thus a key factor in this approach. The political machinery and bureaucratic process should also be refocused so that the faith of all the parties concerned and affected by the process of revitalization can be restored. Most successful efforts towards revitalization are achieved by joint efforts of community residents and merchants acting in concert with public agencies and public and private source of investment capital.

An important difference between this and conventional approaches is the nature of the "entrepreneur." From one decisive, profit-motivated individual this approach goes to a tripartite group of various vested (and often conflicting) interests. Whereas the conventional entrepreneur works almost singlehandedly and with single purpose of mind, in the neighborhood approach the entrepreneurial team must relate to a host of negative influences and obstructions. This challenges the simple-minded notion of the individualistic entrepreneurship which neglects the effects of positive and negative external factors and fails to see that the neighborhood is a micro-market and economic multiplier. In point of fact the use of the neighborhood approach has begun the reexamination of conventional wisdom and market trends.

Reinvestment in urban neighborhoods by ordinary entrepreneurial interests will probably accelerate. However, this action for justice through development is not an automatic mechanism. It must be catalyzed and assisted by public, private and community resources. These must be targeted toward local projects that increase the flow of reinvestment and market activity in neighborhoods and encourage the development of viable establishments which will increase the range and quality of goods and services available to the community.

Projects could accomplish such goals through various program components that:

- lend support to potential businesses that will employ neighborhood residents

- encourage an increase of local ownership and involvement in new businesses

- aid in making the commercial corridors more competitive with outside markets by supporting physical development programs that will improve the appearance of and help stabilize the district

- support the establishment of a strong and active business association to organize cooperative advertising and promotional events

- encourage the involvement of community residents supporting and developing the direction and programs of the project.

Thus the process and the project of neighborhood revitalization includes more than invocation of wholesome values and symbols. The celebrated recover of squandered practices is mostly imagery. In most respects neighborhood revitalization is a complex contemporary artifice--a contemporary social economic invention. The measures of success proposed in this agenda are articulated and exercised by the persons involved. That the large-scale mechanism of cultural, economic and social formation ought to be attentive to the presence of the social fabric that constitutes the lived experience of urban neighborhoods is as important today as it was in the early 20th Century. The record of that era is as uneven as it is today. The ongoing work of social and enonomic justice is a task for each generation and each period of immigration. Honest-to-experience recollection of the immigrant experience, ethnic social mobility and neighborhood decline are the pathway to normative and practical prescription about multi-cultural social formation and neighborhood development.

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D.C.

*Portions of this paper will be included in the forthcoming work by P. Kochanowski, J. Kromkowski and T. Radzilowski, Urban Ethnic Neighborhoods and the Occupational Status of Southern and Eastern European Americans (Washington, D.C.: NCUEA).

1. See John K. White, The New Politics of Old Values (Hanover, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 1988).

2. Stanley Feldstein and Lawrence Costello, editors, The Ordeal of Assimilation (New York: Anchor & Doubleday, 1974), p. XIX.

3. Ibid., p. XX.

4. On the occupational and regional distribution of Southern and Eastern European immigrants prior to World War I see Caroline Golab, Immigrant Destinations (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977), pp. 3-64.

5 Ibid.

6. Josef J. Barton, Peasants and Strangers: Italians, Rumanians and Slovaks in an American City 1890-1950 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 137-141.

7. Philip Taylor, The Distant Magnet: European Emigration to the U.S.A. (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1971). pp. 167-209.

8. "Comparing the Immigrant and Negro Experience," National Advisory Commission Report on Civil Disorders in the United States (Washington, D.C., 1968), p. 145.

9. J. Reis, How the Other Half Lives (New York, Sagamore Press, 1957).

10. The Chicago Homes Association reported an average of 339.8 tenants per acre and 2,716 families compressed into forty acres in which no building rose over four stories. The report concluded that the density of the "Polish Quarter was three times that of the most crowded portions of Tokyo, Calcutta and many other asiatic cities." One block contained 1,349 children. Tenement Conditions in Chicago: Report by the Investigating Committee of the City Homes Association (1901) quoted in J. Parot, "Ethnic Census Black Metropolis" Polish American Studies, XXIX (no. 1-2, 1972), 7-12. The situation in the early 1920's had not changed dramatically with 50,000 people living per square mile in squalid,disease-ridden neighborhoods in which less than 10% owned their own homes. Edith Abbott, The Tenements of Chicago 1908-1935 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936) Social workers and other observers often reported severe undernourishment and malnutrition in these areas well into the 1920's. For a report from Detroit, see City of Detroit, Annual Reports of the Departments of Public Welfare, 1922. On file, Benton Collection, Detroit Public Library. Helen Wendell, "Conditions in Hamtramck," Pipps Weekly, vol. 2 (Sept. 24, 1921).

11. For example, the infant mortality rates for Polish and other Eastern European neighborhoods in Detroit in 1940 ranged from 40 to 60 per 1,000 live births and the death rate from tuberculosis, a high of 70 per 100,000. City of Detroit, City Plan Commission, Master Plan Reports: The People of Detroit (Detroit, 1946), pp. 33-34.

12. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Housing Bulletin for Michigan Hamtramck Block Statistics (Washington, D.R.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942), pp. 5-8.

13. David Brody, Steel Workers in America: The Non-Union Era (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969). pp. 100-101.

14. Ibid.

15. Data summarized from a table abstracted from a report by the Commissioner General of Immigration in Peter Roberts, The New Immigration: A Study of Industrial and Social Life of Southeastern Europeans in America (New York: MacMillan, 1912), p. 366.

16. The Dillingham Commission on Immigration (1907-1911) reported that the average wages of Blacks in the industries surveyed were higher than immigrants in industries such as steel making or meat packing. Blacks held higher positions and earned more money. For example in 1909 in the meat packing industry the average daily wage was $2.35 for native Whites, $2.05 for Blacks and $1.79 for Poles and Lithuanians. See David Brody, The Butcher Workman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 85. On the steel industry see John Bodnar, "The Impact of the `new immigration' on the Black Worker," Labor History, vol. XVII, no. 2, (Spring, 1976), pp. 214-229. For a study that puts the overall wage for Southern and Eastern European Ethnics engaged in mining or manufacturing at the same level or a few cents a day higher than for Blacks. See Robert Higgs "Race, Skill and Earnings: American Immigrants in 1909" The Journal of Economic History, XXXI (1971), 424-426. The low status of Southern and Eastern European Ethnics is evidenced by that fact that Blacks, the most discriminated-against native American group, were not infrequently hired as armed guards to police Southern and Eastern European immigrants up to the end of World War I, often with resulting violence. For incidents that resulted in numbers dead and injured see T. Radzialowski, "Competition for Jobs and Racial Stereotypes: Poles and Blacks in Chicago" Polish American Studies, XXXIII (no. 2, 1976), pp. 5-18; and W. Tuttle, Race Riot 1919 (New York: Anthenium, 1974), p. 138.

17. Bodnar, "The Impact of the `New Immigration' on the Black Worker" concludes that Southern and Eastern European Ethnic workers passed Blacks in their occupational status and wages by 1915. The increase in their numbers also displaced a significant number of Blacks working in this and a number of other industries. On this also see David Katzman, Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University ol Illinois Press, 1973), pp. 116, 120. And Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (New York: Harpers, 1971), pp. 196-198. Mobility rates for some Eastern and Southern European groups remained at the same level as that of Blacks even after World War I. A new study of Pittsburgh concludes "as late as 1920, half of the Russian Poles and nearly three quarters of the German Poles and Southern Blacks had failed to move from the bottom of the occupational classes . . . Northern born Blacks and Italians, conversely, moved out of the lower skilled levels with increasing frequency each decade." John Bodnar, Roger Simon and Michael Weber, Lives of their Own: Blacks, Italians and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900-1960 (Urbana, I11.: University of Illinois Press, 1982).

18. On the "uplifting" effect of a new group of migrants on other workers see Theodore Hershberg, and others, "Occupation and Ethnicity in Five Nineteenth-Century Cities: A Collaborative Inquiry," Historical Methods Newsletter, VII (no. 3, 1974), 212-213. While the replacement of Southern and Eastern Europeans by Blacks at the bottom of the occupational scale may have had a significant impact on their mobility in some cities and some industries it is almost impossible to calculate and no detailed studies of this aspect of Black-Southern and Eastern European relations have been done. It is clear that such mobility would not have changed in any way the relative hierarchial ranking of any groups occupational status. Bodnar, Simon and Weber, Lives of their Own, have recently called into question the thesis of the uplifting effect. p. 141.

19. Foster Rhea Dulles, Labor in America: A History (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), pp. 170-182.

20. Barton, Peasants and Strangers, pp. 172-173.

21. Stanley Lieberson, Ethnic Patterns in American Cities (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963). pp. 170-182.

22. Barton, Peasants and Strangers, p. 172.

23. Stephen Thernstrom, The Older Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis 1880-1970 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 233.

24. U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census Sixteen Census of the Population, Special Reports, Differential Fertility 1940 and 1910 (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Printing Oifice, 1940). See tables 3 and 4 "Fertility for States and Large Cities."

25. Ibid., p. 250.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., pp. 250-251. Andrew Greeley argues that Thernstrom's findings on the Irish mobility rates may be true only for Boston and not for the Irish in the remainder of the country. A. Greeley, The Irish Americans (New York: Harper, 1981), p. 116.

28. Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1964). pp. 181-207, 322. Herbert Gans, Urban Villagers (New York: The Free Press, 1962). Paul Wrobel Our Way (Notre Dame, Ind., University of Notre Dame Press, 1979).

29. Martin Marger, "Ethnic Penetration of the Elite Structure of 1900-1950s Diss. Michigan State University, 1973, p. 190. Two other studies of Detroit during the mid-1960s point to the still largely working class character of Southern and Eastern European groups twenty years ago. John Leggett, Class, Race and Labor (New York: Oxford, 1973) showed a Polish and Slavic sample that was more than 60% working class and with unemployment rates 40% higher than the white male population of Northwest European origin. Edward Laumann in his classic study Bonds of Pluralism (New York: John Wiley, 1973) studied the status and occupational distribution of major Southern and Eastern European groups in relation to the high prestige groups in the city. Using the Duncan index of socio-economic status he calculated the status of the fifteen major groups in Detroit. The highest three were Jews (63.4). Anglo-Presbyterians (59.2) and German Presbyterian (58.0) Slavic Catholics were ninth (46.5), Italian Catholics, tenth (44.1) and Polish Catholics, thirteenth (39.6). The occupational data from his sample showed that in the 1960's in Detroit, Slavic Catholics with 60.5 percent in blue collar jobs, Italian Catholics with 56.4 percent and Polish Catholics with 67.3 percent in the same category. In the professions the representation of the three groups was 18.4 percent, 14.5 percent and 11.8 percent, respectively.

30. Taylor, Distant Magnet, pp. 167-209.

31. See, for example, the widely-quoted study by Gerhard Lenski, The Religious Factor: A Sociologist's Inquiry (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1963). See also Thomas O'Dea, The American Catholic Dilemma (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1959); H.C. Lehman and P.A. Witty "Scientific Eminence and Church Membership" Scientific Monthly, XXXIII (1933), 548550 and Kenneth Hardy "Social Origins of American Scientists and Scholars'' Science, 185 (1974) 497-506.

32. Lenski, The Religious Factor.

33. See, for example, U.S. Immigration Commission, The Children of Immigrants in School, vol. 4, Select Document 5074, 61st Congress, 2 cong. session, 1911; John Bodnar, "Immigration and Modernization: The Case of Slavic Peasants in Industrial America," Journal of Social History, X (1976), 44-71.

34. Miriam Cohen "Changing Education Strategies Among Immigrant Generations: New York Italians in Comparative Perspectives," Journal of Social History, XV (1981), 443-465.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid., p. 464.

37. Andrew Greeley, "The Ethnic Miracle," The Public Interest, 45 (1976), 20-36.

38. Steven Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth (New York: Antheneum, 1981), pp. 145-150.

39. Ibid., pp. 147-149.

40. Ibid. Steinberg's study calls into question the traditional argument that Jewish mobility was the product of a religious culture that stressed literacy and valued education. He argues that these factors should have worked regardless of class and occupation, if they were significant, but they did not according to his figures. The primary factors of Jewish mobility in his view were: greater skills than other Eastern and Southern Europeans especially in those industries such as the garment industry, about to expand rapidly; greater familiarity with urban life; inclination toward entrepeneurial activity which created a shopkeeper class with the resources to educate children for the professions; and no interest in returning with their earnings to Europe.

41. The classic study of nativism remains John Higham, Strangers in the Land (New York: Antheneum, 1973). See also Oscar Handlin, Race and Nationality in American Life (Garden City, New York: Doubleday-Anchor, 1957).

42. Higham, Strangers in the Land, pp. 68-105, 264-299. See also R.K. Murray, The Red Scare (Minneapolis, Minn.: The University of Minn. Press, 1955).

43. Barbara Miller Solomon, Ancestors and Immigrants (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp. 152-175, 195-210.

44. Ibid., p. 195.

42. W.P. Hartman, "The Nordic-Superior or Inferior," Scientific American, ( August, 1933), pp. 33-34.

43. G.M. Frederickson and D.K. Knobel, "The History of Prejudice and Discrimination," Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, pp. 840-847.

44. Michael Katz, Class, Bureaucracy and Schools: The Illusion of Educational Change in America (New York: Praeger, 1971).

45. Ibid.