ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes the potential benefits of nearby jobs on urban neighborhoods, the problem of persistent and growing unemployment in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods in Chicago, and the historical and present policy context for neighborhood economic development. It contains a review of the existing theoretical and empirical literature regarding spatial mismatch and other intraurban employment barriers, including economic and sociological research. The book considers implications of the findings for economic development policy and practice aimed at issues of unemployment and local working. Unemployment rates in many central cities increased dramatically during the 1970s, due only in part to higher national and regional unemployment. The origin of targeting development efforts to distressed urban neighborhoods or groups of neighborhoods did not reach any significant scale until after World War II.
