Learning How to Smell a Rat and Identify the Spaces: Community-Based Education and Urban Renewal

Abstract

This chapter examines urban renewal as a site for civic participation and community education. It commences with a consideration of how literary and philosophical perspectives have been taken to understanding the city in the process of change. Urbanisation and its attendant structural and technological advances is a site of tension and contradiction, which in turn impacts on programs to foster democratic participation in this process. The central question is: Can learning opportunities be provided in ways that promote social solidarity, enabling community organisations to engage with the politics of regeneration democratically? A case study is offered of Active Learning for Active Citizenship (ALAC), a community-based citizenship education strategy which was developed through regional partnerships or ‘hubs’. I argue that, despite their inherent contradictions and in-built tensions, initiatives such as this have provided spaces for community-based learning in the pursuit of urban renewal and community solidarity agendas rooted in social justice values. However, there is scope for participants to be involved in a deeper, more critical analysis of the social structural factors involved.