The Geography Of Opportunity And Programmatic Approaches For Enhancement in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Creators: name: Kosarko, Gretchen
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2004

description: The majority of social scientists--including anthropologists, economists and sociologists--agree that the environment in which individuals live, work and socialize plays a central role in their range of opportunities and quality of life.1 A substantial body of research specifically highlights the deleterious effects that socially isolated and economically deprived neighborhoods can have on individuals. This type of segregation from mainstream society is too often the fate of poor, urban African Americans. Residents of these neighborhoods experience not only physical isolation from jobs, quality housing and amenities, but also social isolation from individuals and institutions that inhibits formation of diverse social networks and participation in civic life.2 The results of this isolation are believed to be more detrimental to children,3 but are manifested throughout the community in the form of poor educational institutions and outcomes, incarceration of youth and high levels of adult unemployment and underemployment.4 While social science researchers agree that neighborhood conditions influence opportunity, public policy developers and analysts are less consistent in their beliefs regarding the interaction of place and individual outcomes.5 Despite this disagreement on causality, both "place-based" and "people-based" strategies have been proposed and implemented as a means of increasing opportunity for residents of poor neighborhoods. Though no consensus exists regarding which is more effective or efficient, Avis Vidal (1995) contends that being able to declare the universal superiority of one approach or the other is not the issue: The relevant policy issue is not people versus place or strengthening poor neighborhoods versus dispersing their residents and somehow starting over; rather the issue is whether and under what circumstances specific interventions targeted to, and tailored to the needs of, disadvantaged neighborhoods have a constructive role in the policy portfolio.6 Given the growing disparity in income levels and continued concentration of poverty in the United States today, determining the most appropriate strategic direction in a given context is a key policy issue. In this paper, I explore what types and combinations of programs appear most promising for increasing the opportunity of residents of the distressed neighborhoods of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I begin with a review of Galster and Killen's conceptual framework of the "geography of opportunity." In the following section, I examine the results of exemplar programs of each type and offer broad suggestions of the contexts in which each type may be most appropriately used. I offer a brief description of the geography of opportunity in Milwaukee as well as past and current efforts to enhance this geography. I conclude with an assessment of how both types of development strategies (place- and people-based) might be most effectively implemented in Milwaukee in the future.