Neighborhood revitalization and the practice of evaluation in the United States: Developing a margin research perspective

The dominant framework of neighborhood revitalization in the United States that emerged in the 1990s is the comprehensive community-building approach based on a “theory of change” model. This framework posits that to improve neighborhoods and the quality of life of residents, programmatic efforts are needed that are “resident-driven ” and holistic in their focus. While these types of initiatives flourish, neighborhood revitalization often results in the displacement of low-income families and marginal return for existing residents. Why this occurs in the context of initiatives pur-porting to aid existing residents is underexamined in the evaluation literature. We argue that researchers engaged in documentation and evaluation of revitalization initiatives need a broader framework to examine heretofore marginalized issues. We use a “margin research” methodology to demonstrate how this alternative form provides a more expansive representation of revitalization activities and out-comes. Metropolitan areas in the United States have undergone a well-documented process of economic and social restructuring since the 1950s, characterized by out-migration of the middle class to suburbs, the segre-gation of low-income (primarily minority group) populations into inner-city neighborhoods (Gottdiener and Hutchinson, 2000; Jargowsky, 1996), and severe poverty, manifested in the decay of the inner-city infrastruc-ture and the lack of opportunities for inner-city residents to improve their living conditions (Wilson, 1987, 1996). Contemporary shifts in pub-lic policies to address these issues include the “devolution ” of decision-making power from the federal to local level, an emphasis on “grassroots” neighborhood planning, and the belief that holistic or comprehensiv