The Neighborhood Story Project: A Practice Model for Fostering Place Attachments, Social Ties, and Collective Action

Purpose:  Gentrification – commonly understood as the transformation of areas with relatively high levels of affordable housing into areas targeting middle and upper income uses – is one of the most pressing risks to low-income neighborhoods. In addition to physical displacement of residents, gentrification displaces community histories, social ties, and spaces of cultural gathering and civic action. The Neighborhood Story Project is a place-based intervention designed to engage residents as agents of change in theorizing, studying, and taking action in their own gentrifying neighborhoods. Following a multi-case study in three neighborhoods, this paper examines the Neighborhood Story Project as a practice model for practitioners seeking to collaborate with residents to advance equity, opportunity and justice in their communities.

Context: The Neighborhood Story Project is a 3-month participatory action research project that engages small groups of residents in participatory action research.  To understand the possibilities and limitations of the Neighborhood Story Project as an intervention in gentrifying neighborhoods, I conducted a multi-case study of three Neighborhood Story Projects. In each neighborhood, participants identified their own research questions, conducted place-based inquiry, and shared what they learned with the broader community. There were significant variations in research questions and culminating projects, with one group using research as a tool for resident organizing against displacement, another using research to strengthen social ties within a rapidly changing neighborhood, and the third using research to retell the history of a highly-stigmatized school in the heart of the neighborhood. Despite these distinct trajectories, participants across all three projects reported similar gains in 1) place knowledge and attachments, 2) social relationships, and 3) self and collective efficacy. In this paper, I focus on the group process and intervention design elements that supported these outcomes.

Methods: This constructivist, multi-case study draws data from participant observation over the course of each of the three-month long Story Projects, participant focus groups at the conclusion, and participant interviews 6 months after.

Results/Implications: Findings from this multi-case study suggest a broad practice model for fostering place attachments, social ties, and collective action. Member gains were supported by the intentional combination of a therapeutic environment (drawing on the groupwork tradition in social work), a learning environment (drawing on critical pedagogy/popular education), and opportunities for research and action (utilizing PAR). It was the co-occurrence of these dimensions, rather than any one individually, that supported participant gains.

These findings suggest that neighborhood-based researchers must reimagine their roles as facilitators of a process of social inquiry that helps communities get curious about social conditions, study their environment, and take action to make a positive difference. Social work is particularly well suited to conducting this kind of engaged research, as we train social workers in both the tools of social inquiry and the needed practice skills to create effective group spaces for learning and change.  These findings also suggest the need for greater interdisciplinary study, learning and practice. Collaboration between social work, urban planning and geography will strengthen our collective ability to advance equity in gentrifying communities.