Research for Democracy: Linking Community Organizing and Research to Leverage Blight Policy

Abstract

Urban scholarship has focused on the role of power and politics in fostering uneven development, showing that urban patterns are not inevitable but controllable. Yet shifting power from one group to another is easier said than done. How may community organizations acquire leverage that permits them to alter political decision making around space and urban development? This article describes a collaboration in Philadelphia between a citywide faith‐based coalition and a university policy research center. Called “Research for Democracy,” this collaboration combined research and organizing sophistication to successfully reshape citywide policy around neighborhood blight. Research for Democracy became a collaboration where community leaders' experiences were voiced in the collective research experience. This helped to reinforce alternative views on blight and break down the third dimension of power—the ability to shape the conceptions and ideas of the powerless. Armed with research ammunition that mirrored people's shared experiences, organizers strategically worked with other political actors to reshape the policy agenda around blight and break down the second dimension of power—policy agenda setting. As a consequence, Philadelphia's blight policy was broadened to include money for neighborhood stabilization, acquisition, and improvements, not solely demolition as was originally proposed.