What A National Commission on Neighborhoods Could Do

This paper addresses the problems to be faced by a national commission on neighborhoods. Legislation to create such a study group was introduced during the past year, in conjunction with renewed interest in neighborhood conservation and revitalization. However, there have been many earlier study groups that have already made most of the recommendations which might be expected from a new effort. The work of a new commission should therefore focus on the ways in which the study group conducts its activities. For instance, a new commission should explicitly assess existing programs (with a view toward reducing some of the less efficient or contradictory ones), should broaden its attempts to solicit the views of residents, should conduct advocate inquiries in addition to research analyses, should focus on the organizational problems of implementing any new recommendations, and should help neighborhoods to develop simple techniques for monitoring neighborhood change. This paper also points out some of the critical issues that any new study group must face, including the problem that the prime candidates for neighborhood preservation are not likely to be poverty neighborhoods. Therefore, neighborhood revitalization policies cannot easily serve both middle‐ and low‐income constituents.