UPCD 201: History & Theory of Community Development

This course is an introduction to Community Development. It traces the origins of community development as process and practice. It examines the way different social actors formulate solutions to ameliorate the impact market forces, private and public policies, and other forces have had on communities and neighborhoods. The course reviews the history and theories of community development by examining the way capital (industrial, real-estate, and financial), labor, and government interact, and how their interaction is recorded in space. The course takes as its central question poverty: How it is produced in the US; the way different sectors of society have analyzed and explained it; and the ideological apparatus framing solutions to ameliorate poverty and inequality in American Society. Thus Community Development incorporates ideas, concepts and theories from Social Work, Urban Planning, the Social Sciences, and Cultural Studies.