Social Change and Citizen Involvement in Model Cities

SOCIAL CHANGE AND CITIZEN INVOLVEMENT IN MODEL CITIES Margie Kaminsky Submitted to the Department of City and Regional Planning on May 17, 1968 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of City Planning. The thesis examines citizen involvement and some of the possibilities for its operation within the framework of the national Model Cities program. "Social change" is used as an introductory idea, since citizen involvement is one possible means to such change. The Demonstration Cities legislation of 1966 called for "resident participation," which could in practIce vary greatly from city to city. The legi-elation's "process" goal of citizen participation was In potential conflict with i'ts "product" goals of efficient programs. This conflict, and the program's built-in time constraints, would be important in determining the kinds of citizen involvement really feasible for Model Cities. As a pattern for discussion, an analytical framework for citizen participation is proposed. The major aspect of this framework is the suggestion that citizen involvement can serve a number of different purposes or functions. It can function to attain community mobilization, access to decision processes, political learning and power, and to promote policy or program achievement by the citizens themselves, Two more aspects of the framework are the structural and informal context for participation, and the modes or tactics for its operation. This discussion framework is then used to analyze two case examples of citizen participation, in Boston and Cambridge Model Cities programs. In Boston, citizen action centered around the Neighborhood Board, an elected resident body that was officially parallel to the City'i own Model Cities agency. This study shows that emphasis in Boston was placed on the nolity and program-achievement functions of citizen involvement, despite the fact that some of the other functions were critically needed by the community. Unless these other functions could be pursued also, the prospects for Boston's Model Cities program were dim as far as meaningful citizen involvement was concerned.