This award winning project seeks to realize in practice the social function model of neighborhood development. The ESNTP is a collaboration between the UB Center for Urban Studies and the Community Action Organization of Erie County. The problem is currently funded though a Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Outreach Partnership Grant.
The goal is turn the Fruit Belt and the Martin Luther King, Jr. neighborhoods into safe, clean, healthy, pedestrian, accessible, and thriving communities that are imbued with the values of participatory democracy, cosmopolitanism, reciprocity and social justice.
To realize this goal in practice, we pursue an outreach and action research strategy that involves residents and stakeholders in a collaborative, community driven process that integrates housing, educational, health, and economic development activities into a single, comprehensive initiative.
The project's goal is to provide the Fruit Belt and Martin Luther King, Jr. neighborhoods with technical and capacity building support, while simultaneously assisting them in the development of a social and institutional framework that strengthens their social functioning and that sustains their development.
The initiative centers on the implementation of a three pronged strategy. The first focus is on the development of a catalytic institution called the Community Wellness Center, which advocates for the community and functions as the administration of the Partnership. It is responsible for coordinating activities, building partnerships within and outside the community, and developing progressive linkages between government and the communities.
The second focus is on the development of programmatic activities in four interrelated areas (1) linking public school education (k-8th grade) to neighborhood development (2) housing rehabilitation and sustainable affordable housing development, (3) business training and commercial corridor development, and (4) promoting healthy eating and active living.
The third focus is on building interactive linkages to local government and to other neighborhoods in the metropolitan region. The role of local government is to support neighborhood development by facilitating community initiatives and providing funding to prime the developmental pump. The creation of positive interactive linkages with local government will not automatically happen. It will only occur through intentional effort. Likewise, it is not possible to completely transform the Fruit Belt and Martin Luther King, Jr. neighborhoods, while other communities languish in distress. Therefore, these communities must not only establish partnerships within in the community, but also they must build operational unity with other neighborhoods across the metropolis.
