Abstract
Recent years have seen a paradigm shift from individualistic, market-based models of community development to more sustainable and human-centered approaches that emphasize inclusion and participation. Yet processes of privatization in the era of neoliberalism threaten these efforts by concentrating profits for elites while impoverishing everyday people and the environments they inhabit, resulting in profoundly uneven access to resources, inclusion, and participation. This analysis examines the psychosocial processes that produce and are produced by these unequal and segregated settings, as well as the causes and correlates of this imbalance in the context of the United States. Then, empirical literature is reviewed exploring the harmful consequences that inequality entails for individual and societal wellbeing, arguing that inequality (a) undermines opportunity by limiting access to resources and constraining upward mobility, (b) undermines community by dissolving trust and cohesion, (c) undermines ecosystems health by accelerating environmental degradation, and (d) undermines democracy by reducing the political power of the non-wealthy relative to the wealthy. Finally, four placemaking principles are proposed as a way to promote more sustainable, equitable, and inclusive community development.
Highlights
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Processes of privatization in the era of neoliberalism have contributed to growing inequality by prioritizing economic growth over social and environmental wellbeing
This imbalance is driven by top-down, exclusionary models of community development that result in concentrated wealth for elites and impoverishment for everyday people and the places they inhabit
Summary
Participation in the public realm, and in the places and institutions that make it up, has historically been dominated by elites and limited for the majority of the public. Outcomes were defined largely in economic terms, with less attention given to social and environmental considerations, and were prescribed to “developing” countries with aid from “developed” countries This approach neglected to acknowledge a history of practices and policies enacted by affluent individuals and nations to commodify the land and labor of a marginalized majority for their private enrichment, resulting in unsustainable and vastly divergent outcomes [27]. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), implemented in 2016 to succeed the MDGs, attempted to address these critiques by seeking participation from multiple working groups and large-scale surveys on policy preferences administered to the public [28]. Unlike their predecessors, these goals went beyond a narrow focus on per capita GDP [28]. Inequitable policies and practices by institutions of power, including international bodies, government agencies, financial institutions, schools, and housing authorities, contribute to a two-tiered society that undermines equitable development
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