Authors' Blog: The Homegrown Downtown: Redevelopment in Asheville, NC

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. When this article is available in OnlineFirst, a link will be included.

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Elizabeth Strom
http://spa.usf.edu/faculty/estrom/

Robert J. Kerstein
https://www.ut.edu/RobertKerstein/

You visit Asheville, NC, perhaps, for the lovely fall foliage along the Blue Ridge Parkway, or because you’ve read about North Carolina’s top tourist attraction, the Biltmore Estate.  But you quickly find that this city of 85,000 also has a growing arts district and a dynamic downtown whose galleries, restaurants and microbreweries have earned praise as a “best beer city”, “great food destination,” and even “coolest city”.  U.S. cities in all regions and of all sizes have been seeking ways to turn moribund downtowns into economically vibrant and culturally rich destinations; do Asheville’s political and economic leaders have the “secret sauce”? 

Author's Blog: Urban Governance and the American Political Development Approach

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. When this article is available in OnlineFirst, a link will be included.

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Jack Lucas

http://poli.ucalgary.ca/profiles/jack-lucas

Urban political authority is complicated. To explain who governs our cities, we first need to acknowledge that our answers will vary across time: a city that looks like a beacon of pluralism today may have been governed by a closed elite only a few decades ago. We also need to acknowledge that political authority varies across cities: take a snapshot of North American urban governance at any point in history and you will find a range of political institutions, embodying widely varying authority structures, in different cities across the continent. Even within our cities, political authority varies across policy domains; authority structures in education, for instance, might look very different from those in policing or public works.

Authors' Blog: What Happened in Sandtown-Winchester? Understanding the Impacts of a Comprehensive Community Initiative

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. When this article is available in OnlineFirst, a link will be included.

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Peter Rosenblatt
http://www.luc.edu/sociology/faculty/peterrosenblattphd.shtml

Stefanie A. Deluca
http://soc.jhu.edu/directory/stefanie-a-deluca/

The death of Freddie Gray in April 2015 sparked unrest in Baltimore and drew international attention to issues of race, police brutality and urban poverty. Efforts to understand what happened have led some to look at Sandtown-Winchester, the poor and segregated neighborhood where Freddie Gray lived.  Two decades ago, Sandtown was the site of one of the largest community development efforts in U.S. history. Our article examines the long-term impacts of the Sandtown-Winchester Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), which marshalled more than $130 million in public and private funding, and worked with residents to improve housing, employment, and educational opportunities in the neighborhood.

Authors' Blog: Urban social problems and marginalized populations in post-socialist transition societies: Perceptions of the city centre of Prague, the Czech Republic

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. When this article is available in OnlineFirst, a link will be included.

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Jana Temelová
http://urrlab.cz/en/profile/jana-temelova

Jana Jíchová
http://urrlab.cz/en/profile/jana-jichova

Lucie Pospíšilová
http://urrlab.cz/en/profile/lucie-pospisilova

Nina Dvořáková
http://urrlab.cz/en/profile/nina-dvorakova

Urban social problems and marginalized populations in post-socialist transition societies: Perceptions of the city centre of Prague, the Czechia

The study of social problems and marginalization in urban space has a long tradition in Western scholarly research. However there have been far fewer studies of these issues in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Moreover most authors use only statistical data to examine them. Thus we have decided to offer a perspective on the perception of social problems and marginalization in post-socialist urban societies. Using Prague city centre as a case study, we showed how social problems are perceived, interpreted, localized and dealt with by key actors in the city’s social development.

Author's Blog: The migration-development nexus in local immigration policy: Baltimore City and beyond

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. When this article is available in OnlineFirst, a link will be included.

*****

Felipe A. Filomeno

http://globalstudies.umbc.edu/core-faculty/#felipe

Challenging the plenary power of national governments over immigration, local governments have increasingly engaged in the control of immigration and in the integration of immigrants in host communities. Because most immigrants live in urban areas, local immigration policies are an important piece of the governance of international migration. They can affect international migration flows, the implementation of national immigration policies, and immigrants’ access to employment, housing and public services. In “The migration-development nexus in local immigration policy: Baltimore City and the Hispanic diaspora”, I offer a theory of local immigration policy that emphasizes the developmental efforts of local governments and immigrant communities.

Author's Blog: Ignorance Is Bliss: Information Sources and Attitudes about School Choices in New Orleans

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. This article is available in OnlineFirst.

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J. Celeste Lay
www.jcelestelay.com.

In the last 20 years, school choice options have proliferated in many cities and states. No city exemplifies this move to school choice more than New Orleans. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, school reformers dismantled the low-performing school district and replaced it primarily with autonomous charter schools. As of 2014, over 90% of its public school students were in a charter school – the highest proportion for a major city in the nation. In New Orleans, there are no default neighborhood schools, meaning that parents must apply for admission and select a school for their children.

In this system, the information needs are high so that parents can understand the range of options and how to effectively express their preferences in a new and ever-changing choice process. This paper examines not only which sources of information parents are most reliant on, but also whether those who rely on more objective sources are more satisfied with their choices and more likely to enroll their children in higher performing schools than those who rely on sources with inherent biases

Author's Blog: A Strategic Framework for Building Civic Capacity

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. This article is available in OnlineFirst. 

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Stephen Page, Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Washington

Wicked Problems and Civic Capacity

Cities today face various wicked problems that prompt fundamental disagreements and distrust within the body politic (Rittel and Weber 1973).  Land use, transportation, housing, education, and other complex issues confound policy makers’ abilities to agree on the contours of problems, much less devise and implement effective solutions that satisfy citizens.

Author's Blog: Neighborhood Revitalization and the Anchor Institution: Assessing the Impact of the University of Pennsylvania's West Philadelphia Initiatives on University City

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. This article is available in OnlineFirst. The abstract and article are available to download for free until October 25, 2015. 

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Meagan Ehlenz
https://geoplan.asu.edu/people/meagan-ehlenz

Early Friday morning, January 18, 2013, adults began forming a line outside the Penn Alexander School (PAS) in Philadelphia’s University City neighborhood. By nightfall, more than seventy people had literally set up camp with tents and sleeping bags extending down the block to guard against the twenty-nine degree (F) chill. While this scene may be familiar to concertgoers or video gamers the night before a big release, the inhabitants of this encampment were different. They were all parents of 4 year olds with a single goal: to enroll their children in kindergarten when class registration opened on January 22^nd, four days later.

When PAS opened its doors in 2001, few anticipated the implications of its first-come, first-serve enrollment policy. The Penn-sponsored public school had been conceived in 1998 at a time when West Philadelphia was plagued by crime, families were fleeing the neighborhood, and the public school system was in disarray. In response and conjunction with neighborhood associations, the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) had fostered a relationship with the Philadelphia School District to establish a neighborhood elementary school. The university donated the land for the K-8 facility and invested substantial resources into its construction and operations. These investments were a key component of Penn’s broader neighborhood revitalization strategy, the West Philadelphia Initiatives (WPI), which aimed to stabilize neighborhood conditions, improve property values, and attract and retain residents.