ABSTRACT
In recent years numerous explanations have been advanced for the emergence of widespread North American inner-city revitalization (Laska & Spain 1980, Holcomb & Beauregard 1981). These have ranged broadly, from factors such as the decision-making behavior of individual households, to the operations of seemingly immutable forces at the national or international levels. These competing theses emphasize on the one hand the autonomy of willed actions (human agency) and on the other the imperatives of demographic and economic structures. However, in this chapter, from a longitudinal perspective on two case studies, we are unwilling to separate the contributions of these two factors in neighborhood change, and instead emphasize their sometimes elusive overlap. The specific lineaments of revitalization in our two case studies arise from an evolving interplay of key individuals and interest groups, shifting finance and property markets, imperfectly orchestrated consumer demands, somewhat unpredictable electoral responses, and changing priorities and intervention strategies by government at different levels. In brief, our emphasis does stress the capacity of human agency to initiate significant urban change, but within a well defined context, alternately constraining and enabling.
