ABSTRACT
The effort to answer the question posed in the Preface-What can be done to improve America’s poorest urban neighborhoods?—could follow at least two logical research paths. The first approach would be deductive: A search of the literature could identify theoretical constructs regarding why some urban neighborhoods have problems and what might improve them, in hopes that deductive reasoning could then be used to apply the results to real neighborhoods. The second approach would be inductive, based on empirical knowledge: Cases of successful low income neighborhood revitalization could be studied in hopes of deriving a paradigm regarding why these problems developed and what might improve these areas. This research employs aspects of both approaches-however, for reasons explained in the following sections, the focus is on the inductive approach.
