PLANNING FOR COMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE NEAR NORTH SIDE OF CHICAGO;

This thesis is a study for the Robert E. Brooker Center of the YMCA of Metro-politan Chicago. It addresses the question, what are the important place re-lated characteristics and interactions that inform choices about how the YMCA should proceed in organizing for community economic development in the area.The place related analysis is used as a basis to explore the question, whatis community economic development and what sorts of community economic de-velopment objectives and strategies should be employed to impact the situa-tion. In this case, the place is the Near North Side of Chicago, an inner city community that contains both the wealthiest and the poorest residents in the city. A substantial, but declining manufacturing base and a healthy non-manufacturing base exist in different parts of the area. The Near North Side is an area of extremes and contrasts and surfaces all of the possibili-ties and contradictions inherent to community economic development. A threepart approach to community economic development is advocated on the basis of this situation. It includes addressing the manufacturers ' needs to achieve the objective of economic growth, the low income residents ' needs to pro-mote the objective of redistributing economic benefits, and the place needs to stabilize the functional interactions between the various sub-nlaces in th