ABSTRACT
INVESTING IN COMMUNITIES TO IMPROVE RESIDENTS’ WELL-BEING: A BRIEF HISTORY In the United States, the history of community-based initiatives to improve poor urban neighborhoods and the lives of their residents dates to settlement houses of the late 19th century. In the 20th century, neighborhood-based efforts include the fight against juvenile delinquency in the 1950s, the War on Poverty in the 1960s, and the community development corporation movement of the last 30 years.1 Over this period, several themes have cycled in and out of the antipoverty field in policy discussions, programmatic trends, and related research. The themes are, perhaps, best expressed as efforts to find the right balance between perspectives that are in tension for ideological, political, technical, or financial reasons. They include the tensions between:
• People versus place: interventions designed to benefit particular groups of individuals who live in distressed neighborhoods versus interventions aimed at improving neighborhood conditions for all present and future residents.
