SOC-481 Case Study Critical Reviews

SOC-481
Textbook Case Study Critical Reviews
Based on a careful reading of select “public sociology” case
studies provided in your course textbook, develop a 500-700-
word review and critique of the case study:
_____________________________________________________
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Case Study Critical Review 1
First, select Case Study 1.2, Case Study 4.1, OR Case Study 5.3
in the textbook.
Next, for this review (500-750 words), address the following
questions in your review of the selected case study. Cite three
to five scholarly sources to support your answers:
1. What was the social problem/issue the study and/or initiative
was intended to address? Do you think the project scope and
design was well suited to better understand and address the
issue? Explain.
2. Describe the grassroots nature of the case study/project. How
did the project come about? What were opportunities and/or
challenges experienced in various stages of the project? How
effectively did researchers address project opportunities and
challenges?
3. What did project planners do to create active connections
between stakeholders (i.e., those affected by—or those in a
position to influence—the identified community problem). In
your view, what were the strengths and/or limitations of the

approach taken to build active community connections between
stakeholders?
4. Briefly summarize lessons learnedby those involved with the
project. Provide an example of one lesson that could be directly
applied to your proposed action research project.
Case Study 1.2. The Differential Impact of Gentrification on
Communities of Color in ChicagoPhilip Nyden, Julie Davis, and
Emily Edlynn
The cycle of community reinvestment and displacement of low-
income residents is a process present in cities throughout the
United States, Europe, and other developed nations. It has been
well documented in numerous studies (Dreier, Mollenkopf, &
Swanstrom, 2001; Nelson, 1988; Palen & London, 1984; Schill
& Nathan, 1983; Smith & Williams, 1986). Also referred to as
gentrification and displacement, it has been the source of
considerable policy debate in Chicago at both community and
citywide levels.5 Displacement—particularly when it takes
place as communities are being revitalized—can move low-
income populations further away from the very housing,
educational, and employment opportunities that could
ameliorate the problems of past social and economic exclusion.
Because community reinvestment was often seen as increasing
racial and ethnic inequalities, the City of Chicago Commission
on Human Relations approached the Loyola University Chicago
Center for Urban Research and Learning to examine the impact
that gentrification has on different racial, ethnic, and economic
groups in Chicago. The commission routinely receives
complaints from residents and elected officials about increased
racial and ethnic tensions in some communities experiencing
reinvestment. Because many city development policies are

predicated on the assumption that com-munity investment is
always a positive, the commission felt a need to look at this
process more closely.5The use of the terms gentrification and
reinvestment can have different meanings to different people. In
a meeting with the staff of the Commission on Human Relations
early in the research process, we were advised to use the term
gentrification in our interview and focus group questions. Since
developers and those uncritical of the gentrification and
displacement cycle are more likely to use the term reinvestment,
it was felt that use of this term might be perceived as biased by
respondents. However, in the report itself we use the two terms
interchangeably. FOR THE USE OF GRAND CANYON
UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND FACULTY ONLY. NOT FOR
DISTRIBUTION, SALE, OR REPRINTING. ANY AND ALL
UNAUTHORIZED USE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
Copyright © 2012 by SAGE Publications, Inc. 78——Public
Sociology the Center for Urban Research and Learning the
Loyola University Chicago Center for Urban Research and
Learning is an innovative, nontraditional collaborative
university–community research center that only completes
research when community partners are involved in all or most
phases of the research. Described in more detail in Chapter 2,
CURL recognizes the need to combine the knowledge and
perspectives of both university and community partners.
Without these combined perspectives, we are typically missing
half of the picture in understanding issues facing local
communities. Exclusively discipline-driven research agendas do
not always hit the tar-get in providing information and insights
for current, pressing community issues. In working with
community partners, CURL has been able to both pull relevant
information from past discipline-driven research and add
information that is relevant to the community’s immediate
policy concerns. In the case of research on gentrification and
displacement, much has been written within the field. However,
the specific concerns of the Human Relations Commission
around current racial and class tensions have not been the focus

of the majority of this work. Moreover, unlike academics, who
are completing an end product that will be of interest to fellow
sociologists, community leaders are interested not only in the
information but how it might fit into policies and neighborhood-
level solutions. When community partners are involved in
shaping the research and typically participate as respondents in
focus groups, interviews, and surveys created by this
collaborative process, research “data” have policy ideas and
solutions imbedded in them. It is this natural link between
research and solutions that has characterized much of CURL’s
research. The Study6As is typical of CURL projects, we
enlisted a team of researchers that included faculty, graduate
students, undergraduates, and community partners. The primary
researchers included two sociologists (Nyden and Davis) and a
psychologist (Edlynn). Among the others involved in the
project— particularly helping in community-based interviews
and focus groups—were three undergraduate students
(psychology and sociology majors), three graduate students (two
sociology students and one community psychology 6The full
study (Nyden et al., 2006) is available on the Center for Urban
Research and Learning website:
http://luc.edu/curl/pdfs/HRC_Report.pdf.FOR THE USE OF
GRAND CANYON UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND FACULTY
ONLY. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, SALE, OR REPRINTING.
ANY AND ALL UNAUTHORIZED USE IS STRICTLY
PROHIBITED. Copyright © 2012 by SAG Case Studies 1
Equitable Community Development——79student), and a recent
sociology Ph.D. recipient who was working on fair housing
issues in Chicago. Because there was a need to establish
credibility and rapport in diverse communities, the diversity of
the team was also important. The team included African
American, Latino, Asian, and White Anglo members, which
bolstered credibility both with our primary partner—the Human
Relations Commission—and with interviewees during the
research itself .Although we provided a general demographic
picture of citywide gentrification and displacement trends, we

focused our report and interviews on two specific areas of
Chicago—the predominantly Latino West Town and Humboldt
Park community areas northwest of Chicago’s central business
district and the primarily low-income African American mid-
South Side comprised of four Chicago community areas: Grand
Boulevard, Douglas, Oakland, and Kenwood. Both of these
areas were identified by city officials and researchers as the
city’s current gentrification “hot spots” (Zielenbach, 2005). In
particular, the study measured perceptions of community leaders
about the impact of the gentrification process. We interviewed
or included in focus groups 68 business leaders, community-
based organization executive directors, social service agency
staff, religious leaders, and others who were familiar with daily
life in the two communities studied. These are people on the
“front line” of community activities; they are among the most
perceptive of social and economic changes in their
communities. They are also aware of how residents perceive,
interpret, and react to the changes that are going on around
them. Findings Gentrification and displacement in West
Town/Humboldt Park have taken on a distinctively Latino
versus non-Latino debate. Puerto Rican culture has defined the
neighborhoods since the in-migration of Puerto Ricans in the
1960s. Residents describe a block-by-block gentrification
process that they liken to removing their community piece by
piece: “I call it erosion because that Puerto Rican character, the
Latino character in this area is being eroded. There are huge,
huge, huge areas of Humboldt Park that are gone, that are lost
to us through gentrification. There are whole neighbor-hoods
here” (West Town community leader). The cohesiveness of the
Latino community is viewed as threatened. In the mid-South
communities, initiatives to preserve African American historical
institutions in Bronzeville have become a focus of community
lead-ers and economic development proposals. These are not
necessarily linked FOR THE USE OF GRAND CANYON

Copyright © 2012 by SAGE 80——Public Sociology to plans to
reduce residential displacement (which has already occurred)
but rather are connected to economic reinvestment that
preserves Chicago’s African American historical roots on the
South Side. Bronzeville emerged as one of the most visible
African American communities in the United States after the
Great Migration of African Americans from the South to
northern cities. Located 2 miles south of Chicago’s downtown,
Bronzeville served as a hotspot for African American arts,
culture, and society in the 1920s and later, claiming historical
figures such as Langston Hughes, Nat King Cole, Louis
Armstrong, and Lorraine Hansberry as residents (Diane Grams’s
case study in this same section discusses the use of
Bronzeville’s rich cultural his-tory in its current
redevelopment). Although the building of large, high-rise public
housing developments in the 1950s and 1960s provided more
afford-able housing in the area, the large number of buildings
and deterioration of tenant screening and management
ultimately contributed to economic decline in the broader
community. There were distinct differences between the
gentrification and displacement processes in the two
communities. In West Town/Humboldt Park those being
displaced were very much aware of those displacing them.
Current residents routinely saw the gentrifies moving into the
rehabbed or new houses as their neighbors left apartments
where they may have lived for more than 10 or 20 years.
Gentrifies were typically middle-class, White Anglos, while
those displaced were usually lower-income Latinos. In contrast,
the gentrification and displacement process in the mid-South
Side communities happened over a 30-plus-year period. It was
more of a depopulation, displacement, and then gentrification
process. The opening up of suburban housing opportunities for
middle-class African Americans after federal civil rights
legislation in the 1960s led to an exodus of middle-class
families who previously had few housing choices outside the

neighborhood because of persistent discriminatory practices in
exclusive White communities. In addition to this depopulation,
persistent racial segregation, lack of infrastructure investment
(e.g., schools, libraries, and streets), as well as deteriorating
housing quality and eventual teardowns of previously desirable
apartments and Greystone houses, caused the community to be
even less desirable and created a further exodus of working-
class African Americans and even some low-income families.
From the 1970s until the noticeable reinvestment after 2000,
absentee landowners sat on the vacant lots left after the
teardowns. In addition to this, after 2000, the Chicago Housing
Authority (CHA) systematically tore down scores of high-rise
buildings rep-resenting thousands of low-income housing units.
However, many of those units had been vacant for as many as
10 or 15 years before the buildings were demolished.
Ultimately, in the first decades of the 21st century, the FOR
THE USE OF GRAND CANYON UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
AND FACULTY ONLY. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, SALE,
OR REPRINTING. ANY AND ALL UNAUTHORIZED USE IS
STRICTLY PROHIBITED. Copyright © 2012 by SAGE Case
Studies 1 Equitable Community Development——81available
empty space, along with increased city infrastructure
investment, the transformation of CHA properties to mixed-
income developments, interest in creating an African American
historical district, and the booming real estate market combined
to open the doors to neighborhood redevelopment. Since 2000,
the gentrifies, mostly middle-class African Americans, typically
moved into new housing built on these long-vacant lots or into
substantially rehabbed Greystone’s that may have been vacant
for years. In this community most of the gentrifies and the
displaced were obscured from each other’s view by time. Those
displaced in the 1960s and 1970s were long gone before middle-
class gentrifies started moving in during the early 2000s. This
time gap eliminated the possibility of gentrified/displace
tensions. Also, since both the gentrifies and those displaced
years earlier were African American, race was not a point of

tension. If there was any tension, it revolved around social class
differences. Given these different histories of the two
communities, the gentrification process was viewed differently
by residents of both communities. In the African American mid-
South Side, it was seen as more of a positive process; many
considered the revitalization process as long overdue. Although
there were significant concerns over what was happening to
displaced low-income African American residents, the prospects
of a middle-class African American revitalization of the area’s
past heyday of Black culture was seen as a positive. In contrast,
in West Town/Humboldt Park, where the ethnic dividing lines
of Latino and Anglo were congruent with the visible
gentrifier/displaced dividing line, the revitalization process
produced stronger ethnic tensions and was perceived in a
negative light by many people living in the community. Our
report raised a number of other issues. In both communities, the
difficulties that communities face in countering outside forces
that are reshaping neighborhoods when there is little input from
current residents was apparent. In West Town/Humboldt Park,
developers converted affordable apartments into market-rate
condominiums. The process through which developers bought
up rental properties to convert into new condominiums was
largely done out of the sight of community residents. Even
community-based organizations struggled to get information on
housing sales and permit applications. When they did find out,
it was often too late to seek avenues to preserve buildings as
affordable rental properties. On the mid-South Side, both the
absentee landowners and the government represented forces
outside the local community’s reach. In the 1950s, construction
of massive numbers of high-rise public housing buildings by the
CHA on Chicago’s South Side not only reinforced Chicago’s
racial divide FOR THE USE OF GRAND CANYON
Copyright © 2012 by SAGE 82——Public Sociology but created

the concentrated poverty that ultimately set the stage for whole-
sale community deterioration. In the neighborhoods adjacent to
the CHA developments, absentee slum landlords profited from
inflated rents, buildings were not maintained and ultimately
were torn down, and outside land speculators bought up cheap
vacant lots and sat on them for years with the plan to make
money when the neighborhood came back (Hirsch, 1998). From
the perspective of local residents, community organizations, and
non-profit community development corporations, the current-
day revitalization was seen as a positive in some ways.
However, just as outside forces had helped to determine the
community’s fate more than 50 years before, similar outside
forces were directing the community’s comeback. Outcomes and
Impact of the Research Since the project was developed at the
request of, and in cooperation with, the City of Chicago
Commission on Human Relations, there was a built-in user of
the research from day one. Since the commission is called in to
mediate many neighborhood disputes, particularly those with
racist or ethnocentric overtones, the research added a social
class dimension to the commission’s understanding. Our close
study of Humboldt Park helped to shed light on Latino/White
non-Latino/African American tensions. This is particularly
salient in a city where there has been a very large increase in
the Latino population (a 38% increase from 1990 to 2000). The
study of the mid-South Side, while not seeing racial tensions,
did shed light on the social class dynamics and tensions within
the African American community. This is also of interest to city
policy makers who want to strengthen the presence of the
African American middle class in the city and stem the decades-
long flow from the city to suburbs. A month before the final
report was to be completed, there was a suggestion from the
mayor’s office that the report should not be released, given the
volatile nature of the gentrification debate. This was in itself an
indirect measure of both the impact of the study and political
divisions within the city administration. Ultimately discussions
between the commission and the mayor’s office turned back the

suggestion that the report be held back. When it was released in
January 2006, the report was immediately distributed to all of
Chicago’s aldermen, who were in the final stages of debate on
an inclusionary zoning ordinance. The ordinance would require
that a certain portion of units in new multifamily construction
be affordable in cases where the city had provided financial
support or zoning variances for the project. There had been a
multiyear battle by a coalition of community groups to pass this
ordinance, but Mayor Richard M. Daley had resisted FOR THE
USE OF GRAND CANYON UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND
FACULTY ONLY. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, SALE, OR
REPRINTING. ANY AND ALL UNAUTHORIZED USE IS
STRICTLY PROHIBITED. Copyright © 2012 by SAGE Case
Studies 1 Equitable Community Development——83passage of
an ordinance that would include a 25% set-aside for affordable
housing units. However, in the aldermanic elections that had
just taken place a few weeks earlier, it appeared that a veto-
proof city council majority sup-porting the higher set-aside
might be in place when the new city council was sworn in at the
end of the month. With a more aggressive council about to take
office, the mayor supported passage of an inclusionary zoning
ordinance with a 10% set-aside for affordable units in new
privately developed larger multi-unit buildings. Although our
report (and its linkage of gentrification/displacement issues to
racial and ethnic tensions) was only one of many in the
consideration of the ordinance, it made a small contribution to
the ultimate passage of the city’s first inclusionary zoning
ordinance late in January. CURL was proactive in making sure
the report got into the hands of a variety of community-based
organizations. Arranging media coverage of the report and
posting the full report on our webpage were two of the ways in
which information was distributed. CURL also made a number
of presentations to community organizations around the city,
particularly in the specific communities studied. The report
stimulated additional work with community partners, including
a block-by-block analysis of apartment-to- condominium

conversions in select neighborhoods. As with other CURL
projects, undergraduate and graduate students were actively
involved in the research and writing that went into the report.
They are listed as authors and researchers on the report. Perhaps
more important, they became increasingly aware of how the
research fit into ongoing com-munity efforts to bring about
equity in Chicago’s neighborhoods. Watching the politics of the
research—from the role of the commissioners in helping to
frame the research questions, to the hesitancy of the mayor’s
office in releasing the report, to the new city council
legislation—students recognized that they were among the
players in Chicago policy making. References Dreier, P.,
Mollenkopf, J., & Swanstrom, T. (2001). Place matters:
Metropolitics for the twenty-first century. Lawrence, KS:
University of Kansas Press. Hirsch, A. R. (1998). The making
of the second ghetto: Race and housing in Chicago 1940–1960.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Nelson, K. P. (1988).
Gentrification and distress cities: An assessment of trends in
intrametropolitan migration. Madison, WI: University of
Wisconsin Press.Nyden, P., Edlynn, E., & Davis, J. (2006). The
differential impact of gentrification on communities in Chicago.
Chicago, IL: Loyola University Chicago, Center for Urban
Research and Learning.Palen, J. J., & London, B. (1984).
Gentrification, displacement and neighborhood revitalization.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.FOR THE
USE OF GRAND CANYON UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND
FACULTY ONLY. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, SALE, OR
REPRINTING. ANY AND ALL UNAUTHORIZED USE IS
STRICTLY PROHIBITED. Copyright © 2012 by SAGE 84——
Public Sociology Schill, M. H., & Nathan, R. P. (1983).
Revitalizing America’s cities: Neighborhood reinvestment and
displacement. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Smith, N., & Williams, P. (Eds.). (1986). Gentrification of the
city. London, UK: Allen and Unwin. Zielenbach, S. (2005).
Understanding community change: A look at low-income
Chicago neighborhoods in the 1990s. Neighborhood change in

urban America (vol. 4, pp. 1–11). Washington, DC: Urban
Institute Press. Case Study 1.3. Research in Action: The Case of
Inner-city Entrepreneurs Daniel Monti The project discussed
here, Inner-city Entrepreneurs (ICE), was the brain-child of the
author.7 ICE, as it was originally conceived, would bring
together the owners of existing inner-city businesses to figure
out how to take their enterprise to “the next level,” not just
economically but also in their larger contribution to the
community. They would receive in-class training, mentoring
from technical experts and owners of larger businesses, and
networking opportunities that, it was hoped, would put them on
a faster track to success. Business owners also agreed to have
their experiences tracked for several years after they graduated
from the program so that we could track the effects of the
program and how attendees put into practice what they had
learned. The research team consisted of two faculty members
from Boston University and two graduate students, one each
from the School of Management and sociology department.
Professor Candida Brush, now at Babson College, had contacts
with the Kauffman Foundation and assumed 7The early training
work was underwritten by the Citizens Bank Foundation of
Boston. The research was supported by a grant from The Ewing
Marion Kauffman Foundation, which is located in Kansas City.
A good portion of this case study is drawn from the report our
research team submitted to the foundation in 2005 (Brush,
Monti, Ryan, & Gannon, 2005). Two academic papers based on
findings from the first two cohorts of businesses going through
the program have been published from the information we
collected (Brush, Monti, Ryan, & Gannon, 2007; Monti, Brush,
Ryan, & Gannon, 2007). In addition to the several hundreds of
thousands of dollars contributed by these organizations, ICE
received “in-kind” contributions from Boston University,
Roxbury Community College, and many individual businessmen
and women, lawyers, and other people with technical skills that
our participants could make use of. FOR THE USE OF GRAND
CANYON UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND FACULTY ONLY.

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