New and Noted

By Robert O. Zdenek

Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City, by Robert Gottlieb. The MIT Press, 2007, 340 pp. $24.95 (paperback).

When I was growing up in Los Angeles in the 1960s, there was an entertainment industry adage: “If you could make it in New York or Los Angeles, you could make it anywhere.” That rings true for Robert Gottlieb’s new book, Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City. If positive social and economic changes can occur in the unlikely climate of highly diverse L.A., a city synonymous with concrete freeways, dams, and the attempt to dominate nature—a place wrestling with growing economic and social inequality and stratification—there’s hope for the rest of us.

Robert Gottlieb is a long-time activist, professor of urban and environmental policy, and director of an environmental-policy institute at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He combines an audacious mix of strategies to suggest that community activism can succeed in working across social, racial, and economic divides. Despite increased globalization pressures that more often divide than unite, Gottlieb paints a picture of how immigrants, citizens, activists, organizations, and networks have coalesced to improve the quality and sustainability of the Los Angeles River; develop alternative transportation strategies; create farmers markets and urban gardens; and broaden economic opportunities. He posits that this combination of environment, community development, and social-change initiatives will lead to a more sustainable and livable environment.

One of Gottlieb’s more interesting concepts is “globalization from below,” which blends urban nature, community, and the right to the city for all occupants. He offers the example of the Thai Community Development Corporation (CDC), located in the East Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles. The CDC uses a fair-trade and community framework that imports and distributes jasmine rice grown by small farmers and collectives in northeast Thailand to Thai restaurants and stores in Los Angeles. Built upon the idea that social and economic change can be effected across borders, this arrangement not only provides income to the Thai farmers, but also creates income and jobs in L.A. Readers of Bill McKibben’s recent book Deep Economy (see “In It Together,” by Bob Van Meter, Shelterforce, Winter 2007), will recognize that Gottlieb’s idea of urban community sustainability is at odds with McKibben’s stress on localism. Gottlieb acknowledges this tension, but argues that the strong cultural connections around food transcend borders and point the way to a more nuanced view about the complexities of the globalization debate.

Nevertheless, the book would have benefited from additional examples and strategies that community-based organizations, local leaders, and business enterprises are using in L.A. to pursue globalization from below.

Gottlieb reminds us that building sustainable initiatives in the current Los Angeles environment of economic, social, ethnic, and racial divisions is daunting work, but that over the past two decades new leaders, organizations, and communities have emerged, offering a more unified vision for promoting social and economic equity that emphasizes the need for livable wages, greater local control of the production process, and access to alternative transportation and greater public spaces.

For many years, Los Angeles has been a trend-setter for the rest of the country in both negative (low-wage jobs, sprawl, franchises, shopping malls) as well as positive (immigration, small-business formation, community coalitions) social and economic trends. Gottlieb draws an intriguing picture of a city grappling with diversity and sustainable community in the global era in ways that could be a harbinger of things to come throughout the country. It behooves community-development practitioners and stakeholders in community vitality to learn from L.A.’s challenges and successes.

The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America, by Katherine S. Newman and Victor Tan Chen. Beacon Press, 2007, 225 pp. $24.95 (cloth).

Community development is often defined by aggregate production numbers or funding sources. Those of us who do not work directly with low- and moderate-income individuals and families often miss sharing their inspirational stories and challenges and lose sight that community development is about transforming lives and communities.

Katherine S. Newman, a professor at Princeton University, and Victor Tan Chen, the founder of the online publication INTHEFRAY, followed nine working-poor families over the course of seven years in New York City (1995-2002) and shared their struggles, successes, and aspirations. This period coincided with the advent of welfare reform, strong regional economic growth in New York, and the revitalization, and, in some cases, the gentrification of neighborhoods in Brooklyn, the South Bronx, Queens, and northern Manhattan. While most of the adults in these families increased their income and economic stability during this period through working long hours, some of these gains were tenuous, and several slid back toward public assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). Several of the adults took advantage of educational opportunities at the community-college and university level.

Despite the families’ increased economic stability, Newman and Chen identify several formidable economic and social challenges faced by these families and others in their socioeconomic circumstances. A significant problem, and one that has been discussed extensively in the 2008 presidential campaign, is the lack of health insurance and the impact of illness among the families.

Another factor, which has gotten less attention, is the need for supervision and support for children. Those studied were often single parents who worked well over 50 hours a week and did not have the time or energy to help their children with homework, advocate for them at school, and supervise after-school hours. The net effect of less supervision and support is that children in these families are vulnerable to sliding back into poverty when they become adults, as a result of poor performance in school.

The authors discuss the importance of assets, often in the form of homeownership, as a cushion against sliding back into poverty and as a way to provide resources for their children’s education. But most of the families studied were not able to accumulate assets and were only one or two missed paychecks away from poverty.

The statistics are striking. Among the near-poor or “missing” class, 57 million Americans, including 21 million children, live just above the poverty level, with incomes between $20,000 and $35,000 (2000 census). With the exception of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and a few other government programs, most of these individuals and families do not benefit from public policies and government support. In the past, community-development resources were not typically targeted toward them, despite the growing number of near-poor in communities served by CDCs. Now, however, there is growing interest on the part of policymakers at the local and state level to develop and finance what is called “workforce housing” for families with moderate incomes that include the range of those studied in The Missing Class. During the past 10 years, CDC practitioners have begun developing mixed-income projects, which enable CDCs to foster economically mixed communities and to retain and attract diverse residents, including the working poor.

While the authors tell a vivid story of the near-poor families that they studied, the book would have benefited by more attention to the resources and policies that can help enhance present and future opportunities for such families. Although there was passing mention of the EITC, Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), workforce development and career ladders, and first-time homeownership initiatives through the federal HOME Investment Partnership Program and other public- and private-sector resources, the authors missed an opportunity to educate the public about how public-sector resources create opportunities and resources for the working poor.

Nevertheless, The Missing Class is a useful reminder that the vast majority of residents in low-income communities are motivated to increase their income and economic stability, despite the impediments they face. With the number of near-poor at 57 million and growing, it behooves policymakers and practitioners to focus on programs and tools to heighten the chances that these Americans can improve their place on the economic ladder.

Robert O. Zdenek is interim executive director of the National Housing Institute.

Published by the National Housing Institute