Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood

by Peter Medoff, Holly Sklar

Using the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Boston's most impoverished neighborhood as a case stuudy, the authors show how effective organizing reinforces neighborhood leadership, encourages grassroots power and leads to successful public-private partnerships and comprehensive community development.--Prof. Norman Krumholz

Genres: History, Social Work, Urban Planning, Nonfiction, Social Justice, Cities, Unfinished

346 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Athena · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an in-depth account of Boston's Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, a classic community development and community organizing case study that more people should know about. DSNI was the first group by and for neighborhood residents to get a city to delegate eminent domain to it so it could purchase land collectively and develop it for community needs. That's huge!!

Streets of Hope is partly a blueprint for community organizers, city planners, and funders who want bottom-up social transformation but don't know how to avoid getting derailed on the way from point A to point Z, especially when wrangling with all the red tape of city politics. This isn't a magic formula for just any kind of organizing. The physical arena of action (the Dudley Street neighborhood) is clearly defined, all the main actors live in that area, and the story starts with the most essential kernel: a group of people with similar desires for change, the conviction that change can happen, and the will to work together to make it happen over many years.

This book is packed with lessons, including a clear critique of philanthropy and the nonprofit industrial complex before anyone was using that term. The authors underscore through many different testimonies and anecdotes how, in the words of one person, an organization based in the community is not the same as a community-based organization. Funders and public officials shouldn't support organizations just because they have a leader from the community they represent; they need to look at whether organizations are distributing power and skills throughout their community. There are tons of examples from DSNI's work, including a skills assessment and skills bank of/for neighborhood residents and a youth architecture and design club where youth brainstormed neighborhood problems and solutions, then learned architecture and planning skills as they designed and modeled a community center that would foster the solutions they dreamed up.

As a book, Streets of Hope is just OK. It suffers from the authors seeming to have too many different aims and expected audiences. In some sections the authors will delve into oral histories with so much detail that it's clear these sections are more for posterity than anything else -- to give a shout-out to specific individuals and agencies. Then there are sections where the authors will offer broad overviews of systemic inequity and discrimination that seem directed at, say, privileged college students who are just starting to learn these facts. The structure of the book isn't that skimmable; notable details are hiding here and there.

Nonetheless, I think anyone involved in community development should keep Streets of Hope on their shelves to refer to.

[kimberly]

super interesting, inspiring story. not so well written. worth it, though, i think.

[Tony Crispin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every day on the street I have children asking me, "Tony, do you have any good recommendations for a book about community organizing?" and I never really know what to say. I'd say most of the books in the urban planning field are largely technical or story compilations that don't quite lay out what community organizing is or why one should do it.
But this book actually hits the mark! It's as close up as a case study as one can hope for, as it's written by one of the past executive directors of the organization it's covering. It goes through the first ten years of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative's existence from formation to present actions. I like that, since it has 300 pages to work with, it doesn't have to summarize. There is great detail given down to the drama of particular campaigns and interpersonal issues. I really do love all the ideas laid out in here, from what community empowerment really means to how to get over some of the worst aspects of gentrification.
I see some other reviews critical of the writing style (they're saying it can be a little disorganized) but I didn't think it was a problem.
I kind of judge books by how much I engaged with them in the margins with notes and crap, and I have to say this one took me longer than it should have to finish just because I was writing so many notes. Overall, this book is pure fire and great for anyone looking to see how neighborhood organization is started and works (and not just the end result of "good urban planning").

[Ronnie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Streets of Hope details the Dudley neighborhood that lies between Roxbury and
Dorchester, two historic towns established before the American Revolution. The author argues that the region had been devastated by high unemployment rates, housing abandonment, urban displacement, and arson.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little dated but alright

[Nick Klagge · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was assigned for my grad school class on Community Equity and Asset Building (my favorite class of grad school to date). It details the founding and development of a grassroots group called the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) in a poor neighborhood of Boston in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The author is no impartial observer but was the organization's founding executive director. As my professor cautioned, it is a "book with a soundtrack", which is to say, it is overwhelmingly upbeat and enamored of the organization (though, to Medoff's credit, it focuses very little on his own actions). Thus, it was missing the sort of critical lens that would have given the book more depth. We never hear about problems or disputes within the organization, with the exception of a short vignette at the beginning which seems to serve only to set the stage for "how they figured out the right way to do things." All that said, however, it is a pretty detailed account of what seems to be an exceptional community organization, which among other things, was able to convince the City of Boston to delegate it the right of eminent domain in the neighborhood.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great look at how residents of the Dudley Street neighborhood in Roxbury challenged the typical top-down pattern of urban renewal and gentrification, instead rebuilding their community on their own terms. Nicely detailed and inspiring. If you live in and around Boston, read it - and then go visit!

[Davey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing like a successful case study of community organizing to restore your faith in humanity (and a well-research history of urban disinvestment; targeted, government sponsored ghettoization; and illegal dumping to dash said face against rocks of reason.

Kudos to the folks of Dudley Street. May all communities take the stand you took, and with a similar response from government.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very inspiring story about community organizing in Boston. It's a bit old, so it doesn't have the group's activities after 1993, but they did some amazing things, including getting the power of eminent domain from the city.

[Colette! · Rating 1 out of 5]

The case study is interesting and useful, and definitely a forerunner in its level of community participation, but holy crap! Will someone teach these authors about narrative? The book is very poorly written.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

dense and revealing.