The whole is generally greater than the sum of its parts. It is also true that all the parts of a whole are connected. Apply the dictum to fundamental parts of regions – neighborhoods. Stronger and healthier parts lift the whole to new heights. Conversely, weaker parts lower the value of the whole. There is a question somewhere in these thoughts about balance and management.

The challenge American communities face is how to grow without abandoning neighborhoods and the human potential left behind to navigate in an expanding sea of poverty. We have observed the deterioration of inner communities and older suburbs for decades. Policies and strategies have been implemented to treat symptoms without adequately understanding the causes or measuring the effects.

There is hope. Finding connections between quality place, innovation and brainpower results in neighborhoods where moving up does not mean moving out. Bruce Katz does his usual good work in capturing how we have gotten to our current condition of neighborhoods and sets forth a new vision in a Brookings paper, Neighborhoods of Choice and Connection: The Evolution of American Neighborhood Policy and What It Means for the United Kingdom.

Katz defines a new vision for neighborhoods of choice and connection:

“Neighborhoods of choice are communities in which people of lower incomes can both find a place to start and, as their incomes rise, a place to stay. They are also communities to which people of higher incomes can move, for their distinctiveness or amenities or location. This requires, first and foremost, an acceptance of economic integration as a goal of neighborhood and housing policy. It also requires a dynamic, market-driven notion of neighborhood change, rather than any “community control” vision dedicated to maintaining the status quo.”

“Neighborhoods of connection are communities which link families to opportunity, wherever that opportunity is located. This requires a new, profound, and sustained commitment to improving the “educational offer” in these communities and the cities in which they are largely located. It also requires a new, mature, and pragmatic vision of the changing “geography of opportunity,” particularly with regard to jobs and other housing choices.”

There are many examples of connections but perhaps the most important are neighborhood schools. Katz explains what research shows:

“Every school system has a direct impact on its neighborhoods. Schools affect housing markets… home values… success of marketing newly developed housing… the ability to retain residents in a particular school system or local community.”

Murphy Park redevelopment in St Louis focused on the neighborhood school, Jefferson Elementary, and achieved remarkable results for revitalizing the neighborhood and improving student performance. (Pages 16-19)

The following are excerpts from the paper that describe our current condition of deteriorating neighborhoods:

“In a suburban nation that treasures the “new,” these places stand out for their visible poverty and often-dilapidated, sometimes-vacant housing and commercial structures. Bearing the mark of a succession of government programs, these communities seem strangely out of place in this prosperous country—a grim reminder of the racial, ethnic, and class divisions that persist beneath celebrations of the American dream.”

“…search out the underlying causes of weakness or evil in the community, rather than …[remedy] their most superficial manifestations …” (Joseph Rowntree) A true rebirth of distressed areas will only occur if we make these places neighborhoods of choice for individuals and families with a broad range of incomes and neighborhoods of connection that are fully linked to metropolitan opportunities…this thesis fundamentally challenges neighborhood policies which, under the guise of “revitalizing communities,” reinforce patterns of concentrated poverty—the root cause of neighborhood distress. It also demands that neighborhood actions operate within the broader metropolitan “geography of opportunity” rather than the insular, fixed borders of deprived areas.”

“Since World War II, the decentralization of economic and residential life has been the dominant fact of metropolitan growth in the United States. In place after place, explosive sprawl where farmland once reigned has been matched by decline or slower growth in the central cities and older suburbs. In the largest metropolitan areas, the rate of population growth for suburbs was more than three times that of central cities—60.3 percent versus 17.2 percent— between 1970 and 2000.”

“As people went, so did jobs…the suburbs now dominate employment growth and are no longer just bedroom communities for workers commuting to traditional downtowns…. The result is that the American economy has essentially become an exit-ramp economy…a new spatial geography of work and opportunity has emerged in metropolitan America.”

“These unbalanced growth patterns…helped construct the metropolitan dividing lines that separate areas of wealth and opportunity from areas of poverty and distress.”

“These unbalanced growth patterns are also not inevitable. They are fundamentally shaped by a complicated mix of federal and state spending programs, tax expenditures, regulatory practices, and administrative policies. Federal and state policies, taken together, set “rules of the development game” that tend to facilitate the decentralization of the economy and the concentration of urban poverty.”

“Metropolitan areas with myriad small local governments sprawl more than those with larger units of local government... local governments compete with one another to gain desirable land uses (retail and other non-polluting business uses that yield high property or sales taxes while demanding few services) and to avoid less desirable ones (high density and affordable housing, which yields lower property taxes and demands more services, especially education).”

“…research has demonstrated that all children—middle-class, poor, black, white, Asian, and Latino—perform better in integrated, middle-class schools than in schools of concentrated poverty.”

“Beyond educational achievement, research shows that adults and teenagers who live in areas of concentrated poverty face real barriers to participation in the workplace. These barriers owe partly to the emergence of a “spatial mismatch” between inner-city residents and jobs associated with the decentralization of employment.”MHSM recently completed a plan to address spatial mismatch, Job Access – Transportation Plan

“The evidence is also mounting that living in high-poverty neighborhoods has negative health implications, partly owing to the stress of being poor and marginalized and partly owing to one’s life transpiring in a deprived environment of dilapidated housing and run-down neighborhoods.”


“…the federal government has—over the course of the past several decades—pursued three distinct sets of strategies to address the challenges of distressed communities and the families who live there.
The dominant strategy—which I will call the “improving the neighborhood” strategy— focuses on making urban communities quality places in which to live. This is a place-based strategy that … seeks to spark revitalization by improving the physical stock and commercial quality of the community. … neighborhood improvement strategies “confuse the linkages between the revitalization of a neighborhood and the alleviation of poverty.” … the neighborhood improvement field sorely needs consolidation and streamlining… metrics by which neighborhood improvement is assessed rarely take into account the broader goals of poverty alleviation and access to opportunity.
The second strategy—which I will call the “expanding opportunity” strategy—focuses on giving the individual residents of distressed neighborhoods greater access to quality jobs and good schools in the broader metropolis, wherever they may be. This is a people-based strategy that seeks, by either moving residents to areas of lower poverty or by linking them to employment and educational opportunity in the metropolitan area, to improve, first and foremost, family outcomes.
The final strategy—which I will call the “transforming the neighborhood” strategy—is the most recent and, in many respects, the most ambitious. It focuses on fundamentally altering the socio-economic mix of distressed neighborhoods and creating communities that are economically integrated and attractive to a broad range of households. This strategy has both place- and people-based components, and it works simultaneously to create neighborhoods of choice and to smooth low-income residents’ access to opportunity through housing mobility and services that support work…this new vision treats people and place policies as fundamentally intertwined and mutually reinforcing.”

Katz also suggests new neighborhood policies:

“First, neighborhoods and neighborhood policy need to be set within a metropolitan context

Second, broader national, state, and local policies need to align with the goals of neighborhood policy…fix the basics. …adopt smart growth policies… connect low-income families to employment opportunities and embrace policies that build income and reward work.

Third, neighborhood policy needs to embrace economic and demographic diversity in both cities and suburbs

Fourth, neighborhood policy needs a new mix of private- and community-sector action, in both cities and suburbs

Finally, neighborhood policy needs to be implemented in an integrated, accountable and sustainable fashion.”