The seventies: the world turned upside down

This chapter’s first theme is the rise of modern neighborhood-based community development, the postwar rise of community development and the development of its primary EDO, the Community Development Corporation (CDC). During the 1960s and 1970s several distinct CD “wings†emerged. Despite an early push by the federal government, a “black capitalism†wing succumbed to the dominant form of CD found in black-majority neighborhoods: community economic development. Using techniques developed in Back of the Stockyards, an Alinsky Industrial Area Foundation organized ethnic and race-based movements in cities across the nation. The most famous, from Chicago of course, was the National People’s Action. A neo-Alinsky movement, ACORN, used Alinsky tactics and strategies to organize a national movement for social change. Other wings included housing-based neighborhood revitalization (NHS), community-based neighborhood revitalization, foundation-neighborhood revitalization and Privatist-leaning community development such as CDFI and South Shore Bank. While CD prospered, Big Cities imploded, taking Big City hegemony down with it. Several Big Cities went into bankruptcy, and nearly all were severely stressed fiscally. Public, federal government and Policy World despair was considerable, with many giving up hope of ever saving the broken former Big City. As the seventies wore on a “Perfect Storm of Economic Development†transpired. An out-and-out Second War Between the States broke out mid-decade. Fought mostly in Washington, former Big City states organized to fight against southern economic development aggression. The South also organized as well, and both sides began to compete for jobs and control of the federal government. Finally, the confusing rise and decline of sectors, the shift to a service sector economy away from manufacturing, the onslaught of foreign competition and the arrival of foreign investment in the United States dramatically affected the jurisdictional bases of many American cities. The incredible rise of Route 128 and the Silicon Valley raised hopes in the promise of new growth.