History and critique of planning in the Fresno Model Cities Program: a preliminary evaluation of goals and strategies of change

The writer's knowledge of and involvement in the administrative and political processes of the Fresno Model Cities Program began, approximately, with his experiences as a graduate intern in the Chief Administrative Office of the City of Fresno in June, 1 $-68. Being thus placed in a position not directly within the administrative structure of the model cities agency (the City Demonstration Agency, or CDA), afforded him the opportunity, for about seven months, to take a broad and general stance in his observation and analysis of the demonstration planning process, the various formal and informal organizational relationships included therein (such as, for example, between the Model Cities Board and the City Council, or between the CDA Director and the Chief Administrative Officer), and the directions or approaches pursued by the program participants to community development, community organization and community change. One of the major concerns of the writer, as well as his original purpose in developing and structuring the following report, was his feeling that local participants in the Fresno Model Cities Program—politicians, administrators, and citizens—have not been sufficiently considering the strengths and weaknesses of the demonstration project in light of the experiences of others across the nation with various approaches, or goals and strategies, to anti-poverty. The writer subsequently executed a contract with the City Demonstration Agency to research and write the following report. Although the intention in contracting with the City Demonstration Agency was also to inform those who might be unaware of the historical development in the Fresno demonstration of some of the processes by which its characteristic approaches were formed, more important was the instructional objective of affording interested individuals the opportunity to view that history more broadly than if only local developments were considered. This, basically, is the purpose of Chapter I. Its title, "Statement of the Problem," is meant to indicate that what is being dealt with is not so much what has been happening in the City of Fresno on a day-to-day level as it is what has resulted from efforts made earlier, on a national level, in other demonstration programs in which goals and strategies leading towards anti-poverty were pursued. The reader may note an apparent lack of transition in style, reference material and format between the first and second chapters. The writer's intention was that the history and analysis of the local project, presented in Chapter II, be read as a unit but in such a way that the broader problem of pursuing programmatic anti-poverty objectives is kept foremost by the reader. In Chapter I, the reader is presented a theoretical framework with which to consider those objectives and also a description of the experiences in programs preceding Model Cities in which strategies were pursued for achieving them. Additionally, a distinction is made between the experiences in the earlier program approaches, and the expectations and intentions held by federal officials for the Model Cities Program. References are made throughout Chapter I to the recently published literature in which concepts and evaluations of concepts relevant to the discussion are presented. The writer anticipates that the reader, having read the first chapter, will be better prepared to assess the descriptive analysis of the local program in a new light and with a broad frame of reference which would not easily be possible were only the geographically immediate characteristics considered. Additionally, the reader will also be better able to understand that the criticisms made in Chapter II—of those whose participation has been performed within the planning structure of the model cities agency as well as those whose participation has been performed externally to it yet potentially and effectively influential over its activities—have not been made for the mere sake of being critical, but rather as an introduction to recommendations made in Chapter III. These recommendations were made with the idea that additional change oriented strategies can be pursued locally without encountering many of the weaknesses and obstacles to such pursuits as are presented throughout the first chapter. Thus, although the first two chapters are not interrelated in specific content, their relationship is drawn on a normative, yet instructional, level from which the writer has attempted to direct the reader's attention to evaluative criteria which are not readily apparent when the two chapters are not taken in sequence. Mention has been made above, and is made again frequently throughout the following chapters, of community development, community organization and community change. So that confusion may be avoided with various interpretations given to these three terms in the social science and social work literature, the writer's distinction between them is given at the outset. By community development, the writer means to imply specific objectives and strategies pertaining to general environmental welfare} environmental welfare includes, but is not limited to, increasing the quantity, quality, or effectiveness of the following: housing, transportation, the design and maintenance of the physical environment, education, individual and group counseling, health, recreation, culture, employment and employment training, and business and industrial development. Projects which are planned by participants in the local demonstration program, as well as the extent of the comprehensiveness and interrelationship between them, are not presented as the primary objects of focus in the following chapters. Community development, in this sense, is alluded to only as an example of goals and strategies which are included in what are described in the first pages of Chapter I as "cooperative rationality" and "individual rationality" approaches to achieving anti-poverty objectives. More attention is given to the terms, community organization and community change. By community organization, the writer means the mobilization of either individuals or financial resources in an acted commitment to achieving objectives of community development. Through the national Model Cities Program limited resources are made available to cities in which organized efforts are to be made to coordinate and plan community development projects. The local commitment to these efforts must be in the form of providing twenty per cent of the total program's costs. No requirement is made, though, that elected representatives of the demonstration city, or anyone else for that matter, exert efforts to increase the commitment in their community to allocate additional funds to the development of the target area or neighborhood of the program. All that is required is that the federal monies as well as the local matching share not be used to sustain already existing community anti-poverty efforts. Community organization, in this sense, can mean a number of things, depending on the particular frame of reference employed. In terms of a program which is meant to utilize, in the most efficient means as possible, the existing resources available to community development projects, community organization can mean either? 1) the mobilization of local agency representatives to coordinate their efforts in a program relevant to the felt needs of the target neighborhood population! or, 2) the mobilization of interest among target area residents to participate in an organized and structured process wherein they identify their needs, set priorities for meeting them, and relate their findings, through the demonstration planners, to the agency administrators responsible for carrying out the development projects. Another way of looking at community organization, though, is that it involves the mobilization of increased commitment in the policy making arenas of the broader community to allocate funds, in addition to those already available, to meet the development needs identified by the target area population. It is in this latter sense of community organization that the term community change is employed. By community change, the writer means those strategies which are meant to result in identifiable shifts or alterations in the local policy making arenas in which decisions pertaining to the allocation of resources are developed and made. These strategies might include, but are not necessarily limited to, the mobilization of participation by target area residents in support of individuals who, as their political representatives on specific decision issues, are new participants in community resource allocation processes—or policy negotiations—and who could not otherwise participate as equals in those arenas. Whether or not strategies employing the participation of poverty area representatives in policy making arenas are pursued, the ultimate identification of actual community change rests with the extent to which decisions to increase the local commitment to allocate community resources to development objectives in the poverty area are made. After clarifying further, the meanings of these terms, and giving examples of them from earlier anti-poverty programs, it is shown, in Chapter II, that the greatest effort in the Fresno demonstration program has been given primarily to the pursuit of community development goals and strategies. In this respect, it is concluded in Chapter III that the strengthening of the local program will be dependent upon the degree to which increased attention will be given to pursuing the goals and strategies of community organization (or the mobilization of efforts to coordinate resources) and community change (or the attainment of additional resources committed to community development objectives).