ABSTRACT
The word 'recovery' stems from the Latin word recuperare which means to get back, to recuperate. It is often used in a medical connotation, to gain back one's health. The economic revival of downtown through the highly touted public-private partnership model at the Cities' Congress is far too limiting. Community development emerged out of the struggle for community in the 1940s, eclectically drawing upon the social sciences' theoretical and methodological contributions that would aid in understanding community and the processes of change, growth, and development. Large urban centers as we know them today are relatively new, as is the scholarship in attempting to understand urban living. The early urban community research suggests that urban neighbors were not likely to be close friends, relatives or co-workers. Community is an intentional human intellectual endeavor as well as an emotional instinctual need of our very being.
