1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

In the mid-1990s, the United States was on verge of an unprecedented economic

boom. Upmarket chain retailers and gleaming new shopping centers were sprouting up in

every city‘s more affluent suburbs. The Internet age was just beginning. In large swaths

of American cities, however, one could find block after block of abandoned housing and

other signs of decay and seeming chaos. Living amidst this were millions of what Wilson

(1997) called the ―working poor,‖ those persons who did not receive much in the way of

public assistance and who often owned property, but who bore the brunt of such inner

city problems all the same. It was hoped that the new national affluence could trickle

down to the neighborhoods where such persons dwelled, although it had not in the 1980s,

when that term ―trickle down‖ was popularized.

An inner city neighborhood with just this sort of dominant working poor character

was Mobile, Alabama‘s Trinity Gardens. By the time Fred Richardson took office as a

city councilman for the area in 1997, the neighborhood had crime and blight problems

that had reached a crisis level. The neighborhood of four thousand or so individuals was

also as isolated from the city‘s mainstream as any neighborhood in the Mobile metro

area, both economically and geographically. The major commercial centers were located

miles away from the north Mobile neighborhood, in the more affluent West Mobile area.

To its immediate north was a public housing development and Prichard, one of the

2

poorest municipalities in America, with a government working under bankruptcy

protection. The problems of Trinity Gardens were, then, seemingly intractable.

Richardson declined to see Trinity Gardens‘s troubles as permanent. He decided,

instead, to put to work his reputation and contacts made through his decades long work in

civic rights activism and church to strengthen cooperation between citizens and

municipal government. He formed a system of all volunteer street ―captains‖ on every

block in his District 1 to help police do their jobs. He also joined forces with a new civic

group, the Bay Area Women Coalition, that was interested in crime prevention issues.

Soon, their partnership came to include the city police department and other municipal

agencies and officials. Then, they began the process of transforming Trinity Gardens.

More importantly, for the purposes of this research, those involved went about their

development work in a manner that appeared to transcend existing arguments about the

connection between civil society—or, rather, a still-young social and political science

twist on that concept known as social capital—and policy outcomes. Could the Trinity

Gardens experience help shed any light on the continuing debate about the conceptual

premise of social capital and, in particular, its relationship to government? This was

among the research questions, detailed further below, that it was hoped a close

examination of the Trinity Gardens development process could help answer–if not

definitively, then at least in a way that could further the evolution of the burgeoning field

of social capital research. Amazingly, given the history of the study of political

participation in the U.S., a history to which the study of social capital was bound, it was

also a question that had never really been asked.

3

The Theoretical Context

To begin the process of answering such questions, and understanding the

singularity of what happened in Trinity Gardens, first requires knowing that the study of

the relationship between government and community organizations in the United States

was almost as old as the country itself. Tocqueville (1966), for instance, saw the effect of

grass-roots associational and civic activity on governance as central to the American

democratic and political experience. The effect of civic participation eventually became

central to the literature of public administration in the 20th

Century (Thomas, 1992, p.

163). The study of collective action, meanwhile, grew into a preoccupation of many

social scientists, most notably among them Olson (1965). Nevertheless, one question

remained largely unexamined: How could the mass of civic organizations—not just the

lobbying interest groups studied by pluralists—affect governance and, in turn, the

development of communities?

Scholarship regarding this relationship experienced a resurgence in the 1990s,

with the interest in Putnam's notion of social capital (1993, 1995, 2000), which holds that

a community's level of associational or civic activity is the key to its prosperity and

sustainability. In most academic research related to the concept, however, government is

seen less as an active player in community relations, and more as the benefactor or victim

of their success or failure. Later research on the effects of civic life on economic

development (Evans, 1997; Grisham, 1999; Menashi, 1997; Woolcock, 1998), as well as

educational reform (Orr, 1999; Stone, Henig, & Jones, 2001) would point the way toward

a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of this relationship. Community cooperation

and coordination are, in this research, thought to have no small effect.

4

It seems clear that further study may accordingly provide a favorable opportunity

for the building of a new political science theory, albeit one with roots in the democratic

theory of centuries past. Still, even as many in the practitioner community look to social

capital as the missing link between stagnation and progress, the larger picture of relations

between government and community remains far from clear. To the contrary, the picture

is hazy and indistinct, blanketed by dust and grime from years of disregard.

The purpose of this case study is, then, to try to carefully uncover what was

underneath the muck. It is, more particularly, a largely qualitative theory-building

exercise, one centered around what appeared to be an interactive relationship between

government and social capital. This relationship appears, in turn, to have a formidable

effect on community development. Much research has already suggested that social

capital can have an effect on development. Initial research in the field in Trinity Gardens,

however, suggested that government may have been able to increase the impact of social

capital by channeling its energy or giving it direction. It may have increased cooperation

between different groups and sectors within the community. Evidence further indicated

that the Mobile story was relevant and worthy of consideration for a host of other

reasons, including the seemingly perpetual distress of the American inner city.

Nonetheless, the story's greatest salience appears to lie in what it says about how

communities and government could come to work together for a common or agreed-upon

larger cause.

Trinity Gardens‘s success appeared to be unique enough among inner cities.

Significant citizen participation is particularly rare in the Deep South as well (Elazar,

1984). When laid against the existing social capital literature, however, the story looked

5

even more uncommon. Given the role of Mobile‘s city government in the Trinity Gardens

experience, it seemed to have the potential to challenge the basic tenets of a concept

whose popularity had spread far outside the walls of academe and into the world of

popular discourse. The Trinity Gardens experience could do so by putting social capital's

effects within a broader context of state and societal relations.

Understanding what makes social capital work within such a larger context is not

a trivial matter, given that so many foundations involved in community and economic

development, as well as groups associated with "good government,‖ such as the National

Civic League (1998), have heavily promoted Putnam's (1993, 1995) ideas. At the turn of

the new century, the World Bank (2002, 2003) undertook a social capital initiative aimed

at shoring up "stocks" of social capital in poorer nations. Academics and practitioners

alike were seeing social capital as a panacea for a profusion of societal problems

(Menashi, 1997, p. 4). The World Bank studies found that communities with large stocks

of social capital were more successful in managing irrigation, water supply and

sanitation, and other types of infrastructure projects. Education initiatives also benefited

from the presence of cohesive and well-functioning parent-teacher associations

(Grootaert, 2002, p. 78).

Studies aimed at the practitioner community were increasingly showing, however,

that social capital could not do such a herculean job alone. Even before the Trinity

Gardens study was undertaken, placing Putnam's (1993, 1995, 2000) concept at the center

of community development efforts was becoming a troublesome practice, for he saw it as

something that a community could not really change. Only by delving into the literature

was the precarious nature of social capital made clear.

6

It seems essential to note that an interest in building social capital in the service

of community development provided the spark for this project. Over time, however,

channeling the effects or energy of existing social capital in ways that would encourage

such development became the focus instead. To fully comprehend how the Mobile

project made its way to this point, however, it is necessary to examine the literature that

provides its conceptual underpinning.

The literature review below begins with social capital, but takes a turn into less

crowded territory as it moves along. In so doing, the survey of the literature reflects the

evolution of the Mobile project. It also examines this evolution in accordance with what

were existing rules of thumb for largely qualitative, exploratory case studies, especially

ones aimed at theory building (Gillham, 2000; Janesick, 1998; Yin, 1994). The idea

behind the review was to explain the research aims and backing for what Yin (1994)

called tentative research propositions and what Merriam (2002) referred to as working

hypotheses, which address specific or localized situations from which generalizations

cannot be made. Consequently, these research statements were thought to be more

suitable to a single case study such as the Mobile one.

That the time is not right for more statistically-derived generalizing about the

relationship between social capital and government, regardless, seems evident from the

literature. Far too much about the relationship remains unexplored, even though it has

remained hidden in plain sight for many years.

7

CHAPTER II

SOCIAL CAPITAL LITERATURE REVIEW

Social capital has unquestionably been the most celebrated new concept of the

late 1990s and the early 21st Century, both within political science and among scholars of

and practitioners in community relations. As such, it should hardly be surprising that an

interest in community development issues led to an interest in social capital-related

research. Unfortunately, it was quickly noticed that the definition of social capital is quite

slippery. It has been, in fact, so consistently elusive that one can have been forgiven for

considering social capital as just another political or community development buzz

phrase, and thus a concept of little use to those who advocate or seek substantial

improvement of their communities. Some scholars (Boggs, 2001; Fine, 2001; DeFillipis,

2001) saw social capital as just this sort of superficial and unhelpful concept. Social

capital turned people's eyes away from more important issues, some of these critics

suggested, most notably those surrounding economic inequality (Duncan, 1999; Uslaner,

2002). This problem contributed to a reassessment of social capital during the initial

research phase.

The question then asked was, "Why bother dealing with social capital at all?" For

starters, although such negative assessments of social capital were by no means

completely off the mark, whether they overshot it was another matter. Oftentimes, social

or political concepts are hard to pin down, after all. Power, political culture, presidential

success—all of these terms are largely subjective in character, but have nonetheless been

8

the focus of much classic research. The concept of social capital is in this sense no

exception to the usual thorny rule; it is most certainly abstract and at times seemingly

ethereal in its varying in definition from researcher to researcher. However, the lack of a

precise definition may also have something to do with the concept's youth. Grootaert

(1998) aptly compared social capital to the popular concept of human capital (Becker,

1966)—usually taken to mean the intelligence and skills of individuals—in making a case

for social capital's value. Social capital, he thought, may have been at the same point in

its evolution as human capital was thirty years before (Grootaert, 2002, p. 43). The

concept of human capital was forty years old and still hard to define and measure. "But

this difficulty," Grootaert reminded readers, "has not prevented the empirical literature on

human capital from blossoming and leading to many extremely useful results for

developing and implementing education policy" (2002, p. 43). At the same time,

variations on the social capital concept have been researched by scholars in several

academic disciplines, including sociology, political science, history and economics. The

dominant approaches to the study of human behavior varied greatly from discipline to

discipline, and researchers were thus not necessarily working along parallel lines. This

further contributed to a bewildering array of definitions and ways of measuring social

capital.

What saved the social capital concept from utter uselessness was that articles in

the larger body of social capital research did have in common one thing, something with

major implications for the Mobile research: They all suggested that social relations

between individuals can be a potential resource for social or economic gain. The studies

differed as to whether this resource is held by individuals or communities, but there was

9

little disagreement as to whether associational activity has the potential to benefit a

community. Social capital was seen as involving social networks, as opposed to any

particular individual.

A closer look at the evolution and various considerations of the concept shed light

on how these social networks worked, both in poor areas such as Trinity Gardens and

within the larger urban society. As it turned out, the idea that institutions can affect

change by putting social capital to work had long been floating around on the edges of

the social science world. This notion had just never been captured or rather, explicitly

stated or outlined.

Social Capital Conceptualized

The term social capital, as formulated in the 1990s, was not at all contemporary. It

was not suddenly pulled out of the air by a social scientist looking to coin yet another

catchy neologism du jour. Use of the phrase social capital instead dated back to the early

20th

Century. The first person to use the term in writing of any note was Lyda Judson

Hanifan, the state supervisor of rural schools in West Virginia, who mentioned the term

in writing about rural school community centers. His use of the phrase described the

means by which he thought good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse are

developed among those who make up a social unit. This process was seen as essential:

The individual is helpless socially if left to himself… If he comes into

contact with his neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be an

accumulation of social capital, which may bear a social potentiality

sufficient to the substantial improvement of living conditions in the whole

community. (1916, p. 130)

10

Every other notable academic mention of the phrase came after the century's mid-

point, however. Jacobs (1961) would be the next prominent academic to use the term,

specifically in her landmark Death and Life of Great American Cities. She saw social

capital as consisting of social connections that could be used as resources in job searches,

dealing with city government and the like. A detailed academic concept was not

developed until much later. Until Putnam's (1993) study of Italy, the study of social

capital was confined to sociology or social theory, and its primary exponents were

Bourdieu (1972) and Coleman (1988, p. 95).

Bourdieu's concept remains the most complex of any frequently cited, and the

least connected to the concept as broadly understood in the early 21st Century, at least

within the United States. Social capital, he believed, is one of three types of capital, the

others being cultural capital, which relates to an individual's level of education and

perceived "cultural competence" or sophistication, and economic capital, which is

synonymous with money and finance. The more elusive of all the forms is symbolic

capital, which may be thought of as the esteem or deference gained through what seem,

on their face, to be the pursuit of selfless or harmless interests. Contributions to non-

profit organizations, for instance, may have as large or larger a potential payoff for the

individual or entity making the contribution as the organization. Social capital, by

contrast, is thought as connections, as well as the esteem that comes from such

connections, that can be used as a credential. This "capital" also has an interactive and

nearly interchangeable relationship with economic and cultural capital. Bourdieu had

little to say directly about how social capital could affect the public realm. He had the

belief, however, that accumulations of cultural capital can—in combination with social

11

and economic capital—help one class or group to maintain dominance within society.

This accounts for the transmission of power and privileges from one generation to

another (1983, p. 254).

For all its theoretical messiness, Bourdieu's typology of social capital attempted to

address the concerns that scholars from across the disciplinary spectrum had with social

capital in regard to issues of class and economic power. To be more specific, it was rarely

acknowledged in much mainstream social capital literature that some sectors of society

may be almost totally isolated from their immediate communities, even while safe and

thriving economically (DeFillipis, 2001). These sectors may thrive economically because

they have acquired high stocks of economic, cultural and symbolic capital. Individuals

within these sectors, however, network amongst themselves and those of similar classes

in other parts of the globe, and rarely need ―connections‖ with people in lower-income

neighborhoods anymore. Consequently, as Putnam (2002, p. 318) acknowledged,

bridging social capital appears to be more essential for society's poor than it does for

other groups.

By contrast, Coleman's (1988) conceptualization of social capital, which involved

how certain aspects of social networks allow people to meet ends that would not be

possible without their existence, was vastly more influential in the United States, and

inspired more than a decade of extensive research within American sociology. Much of

that scholarship concerned the use of social capital within markets, however, and more

particularly was used to explain market failure (Baker, 2000; Burt, 1995). Social capital,

as Coleman defined it, would rarely be used to investigate matters related to political life

or civil society. Even so, the sociologist's initial research grew out of an investigation into

12

why Catholic high schools had vastly lower dropout rates than either public or other

private high schools (1988). Coleman reasoned that the schools had a lower dropout rate

because they were part of a highly supportive religious community, one in which parents

were deeply involved with their children's schoolwork. The values of a particular family

could also have led to involvement. Nonetheless, Coleman suggested that trust between

parents and community norms, as well as good information channels, played a role in this

success as well. Trust and community norms are both connected to social networks.

Scholars including Burt (1995), an economic sociologist, later extended social

capital research much further into the study of markets. Burt became known for his

market-oriented concept of structural holes. This concept concerns how particular

individuals with a connection to two different groups—ones whose members have little

contact with one another—can exploit this connection to their own economic advantage.

These agents, in short, gain power through lack of bonds between different groups. Burt‘s

theory had implications for the entire field of social capital literature, but it was not a

theory that directly involved government or civic life.

Becker, an economist most readily associated with the concept of human capital,

provided yet another definition of social capital, one that placed it within a larger context

(1996, pp. 4-5). The Nobel prize winner (who held a joint appointment in the same

University of Chicago sociology department as Coleman) declared social capital to be a

form of personal capital and, by association, a form of human capital. In so doing, he

echoed Bourdieu, as well as later scholars who more closely considered relations between

government and society. Personal capital, Becker explained, includes relevant past

consumption and other personal experiences that can affect current and future

13

preferences. Social capital, more specifically, incorporates the past influence of peers and

other individuals within one's social network, and the influence of societal institutions

such as the state. All such influences help create societal norms and may greatly affect

trust. Consequently, the influence of society may impact the future choices and

preferences of individuals. The social capital concept, Becker suggested, also

demonstrated why it was hard for governments to break out of status quo patterns.

It was left to Putnam in Making Democracy Work (1993), a study of government

performance in Italian regions, to outright shove the social capital spotlight back into the

public realm. In the process, he also codified, altered, and popularized the ideas of

Coleman (1988, 1990) and Jacobs (1961). The concept was introduced toward the

conclusion of his Italian study. Social capital was again defined as consisting of norms,

networks, and trust. Unlike Coleman, however, Putnam suggested that social capital is

not just held by individuals but communities. He further stated that social capital consists

partially of networks, many of which were primarily horizontal in character, bringing

together agents of equivalent status and power. Others are primarily vertical, linking

unequal agents in asymmetric relations of status and power. The horizontal linkages most

benefit democratic governance. Vertical linkages between government or elites and

citizens, by contrast, can lead to exploitation and corruption. Also introduced by Putnam

was a specific measure of social capital in which he contrasted a social capital index—

including associational membership, newspaper readership, and interpersonal trust—in

northern and southern regions with an index of various indicators of regional government

performance. Then, he put together an index of government performance to contrast with

regional social capital, something that was possible to do without calling into question the

14

study's validity, given that all Italian regions had a similar institutional structure. It turned

out that government performance and social capital were highly correlated. Economic

growth was also connected to levels of social capital. These results contradicted

renowned studies such as Olson's Rise and Decline of Nations (1982), which built upon

his consideration of collective action by arguing that too many competing interest groups

could create a weak society. Networks of civic engagement, to the contrary, appeared to

strengthen northern Italy in regard to both governmental efficiency and effectiveness and

economic development.

Putnam's (1993, 1995) ideas evolved somewhat over the coming decade, and

would also be transported across the Atlantic. Social capital, born in the New World in

the booming 1920s, was to come home in the midst of the similarly roaring and

speculative U.S. economy of the 1990s. In an article for the Journal of Democracy

(1995), Putnam examined social capital in the United States, and cited evidence of a

serious decline in American civic engagement. Years later, he expanded upon the much-

discussed article in a book of the same name, Bowling Alone (2000).

Bowling Alone contained a detailed revision of his basic social capital concept,

one that took in terms he introduced in an article for Fannie Mae's Housing Policy Debate

(1998). To be specific, two more categories of social capital were added to the

aforementioned horizontal and vertical social capital of the Italian study. These new

categories were bonding and bridging social capital. Bonding social capital is said to take

place within organizations or communities of interest, whereas bridging social capital

refers to inter-group relations. Bonding social capital is akin to crazy glue for society,

while bridging provides a sociological WD-40. However, while crazy glue-like social

15

capital may be needed to hold individual groups together, Putnam suggested that the WD-

40 type is to be preferred. Bridging social capital helps create linkages between larger

groups of citizens, whereas bonding can lead to strong out-group antagonism. Putnam's

new formulations were more or less a restating of Hornburg and Lang's (1997) notion of

social glue and social bridges. They saw these bridges as consisting of the links between

neighborhoods and a larger community.

Uphoff (2000) invented two further categories which have since been used in

World Bank (2003, 2002, 2002a) social capital studies. The first was structural social

capital, which referred to networks, associations, and institutions. Almost any form of

human association can be included in this category. The second of Uphoff's forms,

cognitive social capital, comprises generally accepted attitudes and norms of behavior,

shared values, reciprocity, and trust. The former is relatively objective and observable,

while the other is subjective and largely intangible. Uphoff added,

These two domains of social capital are intrinsically connected because

although networks together with roles, rules, precedents, and procedures

can have observable lives of their own, ultimately they all come from

cognitive processes. (2000, p. 218)

In months to come, the World Bank (Grootaert, 1998; Woolcock, 1998) would

bring government back into the social capital debate in a way that echoed Bourdieu and

Becker, while respecting Putnam (1993, 1995, 2000) and Coleman's (1988, 1990)

innovations. The development institution also built an extensive Internet site dedicated to

social capital, which informed readers that the term referred to the institutions,

relationships, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of a society's social

interactions. Bank researchers noted, "Increasing evidence shows that social cohesion is

16

critical for societies to prosper economically and for development to be sustainable.

Social capital is not just the sum of the institutions which underpin a society—it is the

glue that holds them together‖ (2002).

While it was clear that the World Bank's resident scholars perceived social capital

in Putnam's (1993, 1995, 2000) terms, however, its social capital site broadened the basic

concept by suggesting that the "broadest and most encompassing view of social capital

includes the social and political environment that shapes social structure and enables

norms to develop" (2003). The bank‘s researchers saw social capital as being interactive

with formal institutions and leadership. Looking at social capital in such a context, they

thought, could help account for the virtues of social capital, as well as the vices of civic

activity outlined so expertly in Olson's (1965) analysis of collective action. Such an

approach also recognized that the capacity of various social groups to act in their interest

may depend on the support they receive from the state, in addition to the private sector.

Similarly, the state depends on social stability and widespread popular support. In short,

economic and social development thrive when representatives of the state, the corporate

sector, and civil society create forums in and through which they can identify and pursue

common goals (2002).

The World Bank's detailing of the relationship between social capital and

government largely came about through the research of Woolcock (1998) and, by

extension, Evans (1997). Their work would greatly influence this dissertation‘s direction.

In the post-Putnam era, plenty of academics and practitioners alike would examine how

social capital affected community development, but no one had seriously examined the

government's role in the process. To understand the failure to examine such issues, it is

17

necessary to examine why the relationship between government and social capital was

being glossed over.

What Affects Social Capital

Given the effect which—at least according to Putnam (1993)—social capital had

on the well-being of Italian regions, it was probably inevitable that many practitioners

would almost immediately begin looking for ways of increasing social capital. Even so,

Putnam expressed strong doubt that social capital could be developed in an intentional

fashion, given that the disparity in social capital between regions in southern and northern

Italy appeared to be the result of hundreds of years of history. Social capital, he

suggested, is too affected by what economic historian North (1990) termed path

dependence—roughly defined as the long-term, often self-reinforcing institutional and

societal direction of a state or people—to be buffeted by denizens of the current age.

Putnam's treatment of this effect, however, seemed so problematic as to bring into

question much of the basis of his research. This appeared particularly true of the research

as it regarded, or more accurately disregarded, the role of government.

As Putnam explained it, the effect of path dependence is no small thing. North's

quite accessible concept was not just historical; it was outright Faulknerian in its

insistence that the past never really fades away. Decisions made in years past can lock

leaders and governments of future years into making certain decisions, notwithstanding

what may or may not seem logical, and despite their institutional structure. The divergent

paths taken by Spain and England—one toward democracy and free trade, the other

toward continued elite dominance and centralization that would lead to stagnation and

decline—during the early Renaissance period, for instance, would affect them well into

18

the 20th

Century. Similarly, the north and south of Italy followed different political and

socioeconomic paths for centuries, even though they had shared leadership, a language,

and cultural traits. They were still at variance in their economies, levels of political

corruption and of course social capital. Putnam took from this a lesson: The relatively

new similarity in institutional structure was not going to place all Italian regions on the

same path, although standardization would bring about positive incremental change. It

followed that southern Italian regions would probably continue to have low social capital

for decades to come, no matter what government did. Like the chemistry needed for

amore, social capital would either be there, or it would sadly not.

A few years later, however, a curious thing occurred: Putnam (2000) left path

dependence completely out of his study of stateside social capital. It was an omission that

may have left even the most previously enthralled reader befuddled. To be fair, the

professor was consistent here in declining to suggest that institutions could have much of

an effect on civic life. The relationship between institutional and social capital was not

seen as fluid, but as nearly always bottom-up. One new assertion involving the creation

of social capital made its way into the U.S. study, though. Government, it was

hypothesized, can have a positive impact on civic life in times of crisis. It is hard to deny,

for instance, that the federal government's organizing of society during World War II had

an effect on civic America. Nevertheless, the absence of North's path dependence theory

was glaring. As Fine (2001) pointed out, in Bowling Alone Putnam completely ignored

the spirit of the economic historian's arguments. How could social capital in Italy be the

end result of hundreds of years of history, while U.S. social capital declined so greatly

over little more than half a century?

19

Even so, Putnam did have a culprit for the decline in the United States. Path

dependence was replaced by the much less grand theory known as, "Television did it."

The history of Europe since the Renaissance, with all its grand struggles for self-rule and

imperialism and epic poetry, as an explanation for social capital was discarded stateside

in favor of a box that transmits pictures by way of a cathode ray tube. It was time to say

goodbye to Hamlet and Don Quixote, and say hello to Baywatch and Entertainment

Tonight. Few people, it was suggested, are immune to the television problem. Even

people who watch only some television grew less civically active. Neither, it seemed, are

people who watch more public affairs-oriented programming as civically active as they

can be, given how shallow or sensational such fare has become. Moreover, empirical

evidence has demonstrated that television makes people lazy, passive and more

susceptible to a variety of problems, including indigestion and headaches. It was also

suggested that television has been connected to increasing materialism. Research

published after Putnam's Journal of Democracy article (1995) but before Bowling Alone,

however, had already shown this thesis to be debatable. Uslaner (1998), for instance,

found no systematic effect of television on either civic engagement or trust. Others cited

evidence showing that materialistic values were more likely to be held by younger

viewers (Rahn & Transue, 1998). Whatever the case, if television could have an effect in

such a short time, why not government?

An even closer reading of Bowling Alone showed that there existed more than a

few other such prickly problems with Putnam's work . His selective reading of research,

for instance, often got the better of him. He used a study of anomie in a typical upper-

middle class American suburb as an example of the effects of a decline in social capital,

20

ignoring the fact that the very same study showed that civic group membership was

higher than normal there. The problem in the suburb was, to the contrary, a lack of the

strong ties needed for a balanced emotional life, ones of the sort needed for peace and

safety. This suburban world was marked by weak ties (Baumgartner, 1988). Ironically,

Putnam had seen a myriad of weak ties with societies as being enabling of social service

and political participation.

Furthermore, Putnam at least implied that social capital‘s effects are always

positive. Nonetheless, even bowling leagues--Putnam's central example of the type of

small organization, then in decline, that led people to become active in their communities

–may not necessarily have a positive impact on society. Then, ironically, Oklahoma City

federal building bomber Timothy McVeigh was a member of such a league. He

apparently did not bowl alone (Fine, 2001, p. 90). The mere mention of the name

McVeigh brought to mind Putnam's repeated downplaying of the possibility of negative

social capital, given his flirtation with militia groups. Organized crime and the Ku Klux

Klan also appear to be examples of social capital at work. Putnam attempted to get

around this problem by making the distinction between bridging and bonding capital, but

Fine did not think Putnam made the matter clear enough. Chambers and Kopstein (2001)

agreed, citing the fact that Putnam's research did not delve into why people might join

bad organizations. He did not address how to prevent the formation of such groups either.

Durlauf (1999) suggested that Putnam's social capital became tautologically present

whenever a good outcome was observed (1999, p. 2).

A related problem was suggested by Burt's "structural holes" theory, as DeFillipis

(2001) noted. If some people benefit from their individually-held social capital, will

21

others not be deprived of these benefits? Putnam, in seeing social capital as something

that communities held, as opposed to individuals, overlooked this dilemma. Yet, who will

be winners and losers in a social capital game is something of enormous social and

political relevance. Ironically, it may also not be connections, necessarily, that lead some

people or groups to produce and reproduce wealth, but isolation. Bridging capital may

only really be needed if a community's residents are poor and therefore on the losing end

of power relations (DeFillipis, 2001, p. 790). Who, then, is supposed to encourage or

provide this "bridging" power, or increase ties between different sectors? The answer to

that question may be government leadership, path dependence, or no. Government

certainly can play a large role in any community's power relations. Perhaps intuitively

remembering this, even critics who have found the general idea of social capital

tantalizing justifiably took Putnam to task for all but ignoring any possible institutional

effects in his theorizing about social capital (Harris, 2001; Levi, 1998, 1996; Maloney,

Smith, & Stoker, 2001). Levi brought Hobbes (1998) into the picture in noting that the

absence of a state can lead to distrust and a "war of all against all" (Levi, 1998, p. 84).

Other scholars, most notably Jackman and Miller (1998), pointed out that parts of

southern Italy—the problems of which were central to Putnam‘s original conception of

the impact of social capital—progressed dramatically since World War II, in large part as

a consequence of emigration and economic growth, but also because of land reform and

the construction of new infrastructure. Boggs (2002, p. 196) called the fixation on social

capital disparities in Italy "profoundly misleading" regardless, given the complexity of

Italian history. Tarrow (1996, p. 394) asserted that every regime which governed

southern Italy until the modern era exploited the region. Scholarly criticism of this

22

treatment of institutional effects was, meanwhile, not confined to the Italian research.

Skocpol (1996), for instance, reminded modern readers that the United States' federal

government encouraged the formation of several major national interest groups. Other

major national groups were organized in ways that reflected the American institutions of

government. In short, critics saw Putnam‘s use of history in his Italian study (1995) and

television in his stateside research (2000) as not only contradictory but a cop-out.

Government, they believed, could be an active force for the creation or, at least, the

focusing of the social networks and organization.

Conclusion and Research Propositions

From the above analysis came the first and most important--even overriding--

proposition for this research project. More to the point, the aforementioned findings of

Levi, Tarrow, and Skokpol seemed, at least on an intuitive level, to fit an impression

gleaned from an initial investigation in Mobile, which was as follows: Government

played a central role in increasing the effect, if not the stock, of social capital in Trinity

Gardens. More specifically, the role of government in affecting how social capital

worked there may have been both less constrictive than the decidedly minor role

suggested by Putnam (1993, 1995, 2000), and less expansive than the role some in the

practitioner community and good government-oriented organizations apparently believed

possible. What the interactive relationship of government and social capital likely

affected was, in turn, the outcome of district community development efforts. The study

of social capital was already headed into this direction. The idea, however, demanded

further examination.

23

Of course, the respective work of Levi, Tarrow and Skocpol applied to social

capital at the national level, whereas the Mobile project was concerned with civic life at

the local level. Not a single author surveyed, however, made any distinction--either

implied or explicit--between social capital at the national and local levels. What seemed

to matter more is how different sectors of the polity may cooperate and coordinate their

efforts.

Despite Putnam's (1993, 2000) discounting of institutional effects, other scholars

surveyed did not hesitate in demanding that attention be paid to their consequence and

worth. Their efforts sparked something of a mini-renaissance of scholarship regarding the

relationship between government and community organizations. Even though many have

implied as much, no scholar had convincingly demonstrated in formal research that

government may directly affect social capital. Its effects were largely seen as incremental

or peripheral in character. By the same token, no study had demonstrated in any empirical

way how government and social capital could possibly reinforce or play off one another,

even though there existed substantial support for such a relationship.

The idea that social capital may not be of much assistance to community unless

sparked is not really new. It stretches back to Hanifan's first mention of the term.

Communities, he asserted, could benefit by the cooperation of all their parts (Hanifen,

1916, p. 130). Even those who saw government as a possible hindrance to grass-roots

efforts (Gittell & Vidal, 1998; Harris, 2001; Shucksmith, 2000, p. 216) suggested that

strong local organizations such as community development corporations were needed to

put social capital to work. Stone et al. (2001), in research on education reform, went a

step further by hypothesizing that all of a community's elites needed to be on board for

24

success—at least in educational policy, the field he examined. Specifically, Stone et al.

found that communities whose major public and private sector organizations came to an

agreement on certain educational issues, and were cooperative, were more likely to be

high achievers. This cooperation and coordination—what Stone et al. called civic

capacity—was seen as more important than any structural reform. This idea was

reinforced by Orr (1999) in research on ―black social capital‖ and public education in

Baltimore, Maryland. The city's black community did not lack social capital, Orr

believed, and this existing resource was put to work in local education reform efforts. He

echoed Hanifan, however, in suggesting that Baltimore efforts ultimately failed because

there was little cross-sectoral cooperation in education reform. In short, the schools and

their reform were left largely to the control and care of black residents and social

networks alone. Large segments of the wider metro-area population—including wealthy

whites and white business and civic leaders—were hardly involved in reform efforts, if

they were at all.

The ideas of Stone et al. (2001) were echoed in research regarding the economic

success story of Tupelo, Mississippi, a highly notable thing given that Putnam called it an

example of social capital at work (2000, pp. 323-24). Civic groups and organizations had

been active in Tupelo before, even if they rarely worked together. Nonetheless, the

economy of what was once one of the poorest municipalities in America's poorest state

took off once community government and business elites agreed upon goals and had

ensured the cooperation of all segments of Tupelo society. This result came about not

through any grass-roots efforts but through the urging of a newspaper editor. Local

leaders, persuaded by the editor, began their work by closing down the city's old

25

economic elite-dominated Chamber of Commerce, and formed a more expansive

organization known as the Community Development Foundation (CDF). The CDF

formed development councils for sections of the Tupelo municipality and sections of the

surrounding rural community, and in so doing encouraged local input and participation

(Grisham, 1999, pp. 1-19). In the late 1990s, some fifty Fortune 500 businesses had

operations in the Tupelo vicinity. The city and surrounding county had a poverty rate that

was half the national average and regularly reported per capita family incomes at, or

higher than, the same.

Grisham's history of Tupelo, and its lessons, were later echoed in other economic

development research, much of which pointed the way toward a more coherent or more

all-encompassing theory of the relations between social capital and community

organizations. For instance, Menashi (1997), and to a lesser extent Grisham, showed that

local government played a significant role in the success of Joint Venture—Silicon

Valley—an economic development organization. It was formed in 1992 in response to

economic decline. The regional development effort was spearheaded by the San Jose

Chamber of Commerce, and soon after its founding, this organization came to include

many of the top business and industry groups in the region. Many in the chamber then

pressed for a partnership with regional government. The public sector, however, was shut

out of early-stage planning, while government was blamed for many economic woes.

Accordingly, public officials in the area took a dim view of Joint Venture. San Jose

Mayor Susan Hammer nonetheless saw the development organization as promising and

put her reputation and resources fully behind it. Soon thereafter, the municipality became

a full partner, and the organization grew rapidly. Silicon Valley became the center of the

26

computer and Internet industries and epitomized an unprecedented American economic

boom (Menashi, 1997, pp. 49-50).

Other studies regarding the relations between social capital and government were

more purely theoretical, most significantly that of Evans (1997) and Woolcock (1998).

Both scholars asserted that the public sector and community organizations had a durable

and significant effect on one another, but the relationship was two-way and dynamic. In

so doing, the two researchers paved the way for a civic capacity-type theory of social

capital and government relations to be taken outside the world of economic development.

Evans called the relationship in question state-society synergy and believed that a lack of

it—or, rather, the lack of competent government or strong community organizations—is

what kept many Third World countries behind in their development. Neither government

or community organizations, in short, could work without the other. Building upon the

ideas of Evans (1997), Woolcock (1998) asserted that optimum development conditions

exist when there are both bottom-up (grass-roots or citizen-driven) and top-down

(government or elite driven) efforts, along with linkages between major community

actors and more general integration within a community. More accurately, he suggested

that development may depend upon the extent to which bottom-up and top-down efforts

are balanced. Top-down efforts are usually needed to introduce, sustain, and

institutionalize "bottom-up" development, so in most cases such dilemmas will have to be

resolved. He echoed Uphoff here, who had earlier contemplated, "We are commonly

constrained to think in ‗either-or' terms . . . when both are needed in a positive-sum way

to achieve our purposes" (1992, p. 273).

27

Some scholars were already considering the ideas of Woolcock (1998), and by

extension Evans (1997), in other policy areas, by the time this research began in earnest.

Keyes (2002), for instance, considered several case studies regarding housing

development in the United States and found that Woolcock's model held up well in a

variety of circumstances. Along with initial evidence from District 1, these studies

inspired a second research proposition: A relationship between social capital and

government was ultimately tied in with the success of community development efforts in

Trinity Gardens. Community development is defined here as including everything but

strictly economically-oriented initiatives and planning or education reform. In the Mobile

district, the efforts were limited to community policing and crime control, anti-pollution

efforts, and housing development. Whatever the case, the work of Menashi (1997) and

Grisham (1999) in economic development research, as well as Stone et al. (2001) in

education, certainly suggested that this proposition was worthy for study. Whether

community development required any different type of communal effort than economic

development and education was unclear.

Even so, Stone et al.‘s (2001) conceptualization of civic capacity and Orr's

research on ―black social capital‖ (1999) laid the ground for something of a caveat, one

that doubles as a third proposition: Cross-sectoral cooperation appears to be vital to

community development efforts. However, more extensive interaction (including cross-

metropolitan, intergovernmental, or interagency cooperation) will be needed for any

further-reaching development efforts. Cross-sectoral support was essential to economic

development in Silicon Valley and Tupelo, as outlined by Menashi and Grisham

respectively. Stone et al. and Orr also saw such widespread support and interaction as

28

central to the success of educational reform efforts. Whether such cross-sectoral

assistance would prove quite as necessary at the neighborhood level in areas such as

crime policy and the cleanup of pollution was another issue. Skogan (1990), in a study of

disorder in inner cities, suggested that homogeneity can be of some benefit to

neighborhood groups. Unfortunately, poor inner city communities are typically marked

by low rates of political and civic participation. Consequently, inner city crime

prevention programs that require cooperation between inner city residents are usually not

successful (Skogan, 1990, p. 130).

Metro-wide and intergovernmental or interagency cooperation is another matter.

The initial investigation demonstrated that many ties seemed to exist between the

neighborhood and the city at large. Nevertheless, how these relationships affected

community development within the district and neighborhood, and how and whether such

relationships strengthened the area's ties to the rest of the city, needed to be thoroughly

investigated. Given how important social service organizations could be to lower income

and inner city areas, it also appeared as if it would be of no small benefit to understand

how well they coordinated their activities within Trinity Gardens. Delving into whether

Councilman Richardson and district civic leaders had developed or were developing

relationships with private sector organizations or state and federal agencies also seemed a

worthy task.

Meanwhile, Evans (1997) or Woolcock (1998) may have left out one essential

variable in their development model—that of the role of leadership in relations between

government and communities. Menashi (1997) strongly suggested as much, as did

Grisham. Crothers (2002) did so as well in noting how community policing is oriented

29

toward the development of social capital. She suggested that these types of programs

cannot work without strong but adaptable leadership. The author then placed the

development of social capital within a framework that took in both democratic and

leadership theory, particularly the transformational leadership concept of Burns (1978).

Community policing strategies easily lent themselves to such theorizing, since their

common strategies included forming neighborhood groups to assess community needs

and shape policies. The community policing model (one which loosely formed the basis

of Richardson's precinct meetings) was also developed with promoting good citizenship

in mind as well. Police, however, need to channel communication in helpful directions in

order for the programs to be effective, while also sustaining social discourse and teaching

citizens about the democratic process. Consequently, the centrality of leadership in these

programs cannot be understated (Crothers, 2002, pp. 225-236). Sampson (2002) echoed

Crothers, noting that police often find it difficult in community policing "beat meetings"

to sustain resident input and induce collective problem-solving among residents. The

meetings nevertheless can trigger just the sort of civil involvement that social capital

theorists have prescribed for poor communities (Sampson, 2002, p. 105). Levi seconded

the idea that leadership can have an enormous impact on citizen trust of government

which may, in turn, increase generalized trust. Individual actors, including both elected

officials and administrators, may have such an impact through the effect of charisma

(1998, p. 86). No scholar surveyed examined whether government and community

leadership is best here, or even whether both can have a formidable effect. Even in the

one case examined where a government leader did not act as a policy and organizing

entrepreneur, in the Tupelo study, the newspaper editor who crusaded for economic

30

development still relied upon the cooperation of government to carry out many of his

ideas (Grisham, 1999).

These ideas regarding leadership, as they intersected with previously surveyed

research and initial evidence in Mobile, suggested a fourth proposition: Government and

community leadership were essential to increasing the effect of social capital in Trinity

Gardens, and not just government itself. Evidence gathered during an initial research

phase suggested that much of this leadership had come from Richardson. The community

policing literature referenced above was particularly relevant here because Richardson's

idea for "precinct meetings" was at least loosely inspired by the community policing

model. In the place of a police officer discussing crime and policing issues with residents

and pushing the meetings in a certain direction, there was Richardson doing the same

with crime and a wider array of community development issues. Concomitantly,

Richardson's leadership certainly appeared, at the surface level, to have been of the

charismatic variety cited by Levi as the sort that could affect change within an official's

jurisdiction. The councilman was already a regular fixture of area civic life, one who had

won notoriety for his civil rights work decades before. It also appeared, however, that the

leadership of the Bay Area Women's Coalition was also essential here, even if not as

central as Richardson's.

The impact that leadership could have was greatly contested. Skogan (1990)

suggested that it could be substantial, but it would be limited over time nonetheless,

especially in modern, bureaucratized societies where people do not know one another.

That charisma has limitations was also suggested by Weber (1968), among others.

Nonetheless, Skogan failed to take into account how particular leaders can affect

31

longer-lasting change by pulling together various sectors of a community to meet certain

goals or solve particular problems. In the end, no one surveyed took such a scenario into

account. It was at this point that the literature reached a limit.

A final hypothesis, closely related to the previously listed one, was to be not so

much investigated itself as more fully demonstrated through the research as a whole. The

proposition was as follows:

No one person, group, or social phenomenon was solely responsible for the

outcome of community development efforts in Trinity Gardens. In other words, the

political relationships that affected community development were fluid and dynamic.

Leadership may have been central to development in the neighborhood, but it likely did

not work in a vacuum. Moreover, community organizations and their leadership did not

do their work in isolation from the larger institutional matrix. This idea was not

necessarily new, even if left unreflected in the bulk of the social capital literature.

Hanifan, the first person to put the term "social capital" on the printed page, thought that

a community benefits by the cooperation of all its parts (1916, p. 130). This proposition

logically followed the idea that Hanifan expressed in such understandable terms. It

seemed to be a decades old idea in its origins even while paradoxically new—both in the

way it challenged conventional wisdom about social capital, and the manner in which

community organization and governance was being considered. In this manner, the

proposition reflected the essence, or spirit, of the arguments being presented here.

32

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

Walters (2002) suggested that Putnam's (1993, 1995, 2000) work pointed towards

an alternative to then-existing models of political interaction. In doing so, he pulled off a

remarkable feat. Social capital, as the concept‘s political science progenitor saw it,

assumes a world in which governance is no longer presumed to monopolize the political

structure. Power and authority are instead dispersed. The slack is taken up not by

privatized or decentralized agencies, but by active citizens. Putnam's basic thesis did not

seem to be too far off the mark here. Again, though, it appeared that institutional effects

on the political structure had been wrongly overlooked, or at least understated.

How to study such effects, however, was as complex an issue as any considered

during the formative stages of this research. It was decided, in any case, rather quickly

that there seemed to be no greater option than the use, or at least partial use, of a case

study in laying foundation for more extensive future research and a model of the type

Walters imagined. The case study has been traditional and popular within the community

development and local governance literature for decades because it serves as a practical

means of examining local and urban issues. An understanding of how local governance

works has always required an up-close investigation of how it does so. Besides, in

examining such matters, urban case studies have contributed much to political science as

a whole. It could hardly have been denied, for instance, that they created viable

alternatives to once-prevailing models of political interaction. Among the most influential

33

in this regard were Dahl's (1961) pluralist study of New Haven, Connecticut and the

Hunter study of community power in Atlanta, Georgia (1953, 1980), which spurred as

much academic interest or more in its day than Putnam's (1993, 1995, 2000) concept of

social capital had at the time this project began. San Jose had once been the focus of just

such a study, for instance (Christensen & Trounstine, 1982). Concurrently, community

and economic development literature was still strongly influenced by Banfield's (1958)

case study of amoral familism in a southern Italian village, which argued in part that

years of authoritarian or controlling governments created a legacy of interpersonal

distrust and limited political participation. It should be noted that all of the above studies

inform this dissertation, because all seriously and directly address the relationship

between state and society.

Micro-level case studies involving social capital seemed to be essential,

regardless. It was apparent that Orr (1999) believed as much. He asserted that such

studies could prove to be good exercises in theory-building, given that social capital was

still a relatively new theoretical force for analyzing governance and society, one

criticized for its lack of clarity. Making matters worse was that indices used to measure

social capital often seemed as if their items were selected arbitrarily, given how their

makeup seemed to change from one study to the next. Conducting in-depth case studies

seemed to offer a better means for working through the theoretical fog. "As Hanes

Walton, Jr., recently observed, ‗In a barren and undiscovered intellectual terrain, basic

mapping, formal parameters, and useful guide-ways and promising paths must be

fashioned. Case studies permit the establishment of intellectual frontiers'" (Orr, 1999, p.

16). Orr took his cues from King, Keohane, and Verba (1994), who argued that case

34

studies may be beneficial, not just in the testing of newer theories, but also in the

development of social concepts which are highly abstract in nature.

Backing for this direction also came from Woolcock, who believed that

approaching the study of social capital in as broad a context as possible could help

improve related research (1998, p. 188). He elaborated:

Rather than trying to prove or refute assertions that social relations are

always and everywhere the construction of "rational" agents, or instead the

result of primordial norms or "culture," a more fruitful approach invokes a

social-structural explanation of economic life and seeks to identify the

types and combinations of social relations involved, the institutional

environments shaping them, and their historical emergence and continuity.

(1998, p. 185)

Woolcock stressed a notion of broad interactivity in the relationship of institutions

and social networks that would be at the heart of the Mobile research and reflected in the

previously listed propositions. All the propositions were, it should be recalled, developed

more as a guide for theory-building than for the testing of traditional hypotheses. At the

same time, the context Woolcock described was certainly dynamic. It only stood to

reason that the propositions could be altered upon investigation in order to act as a better

aid in describing reality.

One of the working hypotheses presented a special challenge, however—namely,

the third one, which involved cross-sectoral cooperation. No proposition pointed the

Mobile project more into uncharted territory than this one. Only one micro-level study of

the relationship between government and community organizations in minority

communities had been conducted, much less conducted in an inner city—namely, Orr's

(1999) research on "black social capital" and Baltimore public education.

35

The last of the five propositions, which suggested that no one person or entity was

responsible for development outcomes in the Mobile district, was also unique in that it

addressed a matter that would be central to the general methodology here. As a

consequence of the apparent interactive nature of cooperation in District 1 and Trinity

Gardens, no traditional type of social science model seemed to apply here. Instead, this

largely qualitative and exploratory case study was inspired by a pioneering form of social

science methodology known as social network analysis. This type of analysis—

sometimes quantitative, but not always (Breiger, 2002)—provides scholars with a means

of examining linkages between different sectors of society, as well as groups and

individuals. These sorts of linkages are usually ignored in political science research. This

is not, however, because scholars within the field saw such linkages as being of minor

importance. Instead, these researchers conform to one overwhelming rule of empirical

social science inquiry; namely, that units of analysis need to be as homogenous as

possible.

Given the importance of networks in social capital, and confusion over whether it

lay with individuals and communities and the like, a more unique approach seemed

needed. As such, there was no dependent or independent variable for my Trinity Gardens

study, in the traditional sense. An actor who served as an independent variable, however,

could affect certain groupings, which would in turn be a dependent variable, within the

network. Such an actor could have been Richardson, say, while one such group could

have been the Bay Area Women Coalition.

The above two propositions, like the other three, were examined through as many

avenues as was possible and practical. What Yin asserted—namely, that case studies need

36

to be complete, to include as much evidence as is feasible—was always kept in mind

(1994, pp. 148-49). Likewise, it was noted that all case studies gained strength, not to

mention internal validity, by being methodologically rich or, to put it in more technical

terms, by "triangulating" data from as many sources or means as possible (Gillham, 2000,

p. 13; King et al., 1994; Merriam, 2000, pp. 25-27; Yin, 1994). Yin also asserted that

there exist six main sources of evidence for case studies, and that all need to be

considered for thoroughness. These sources include documentation, archival records,

interviews, direct observation, participant-observation, and physical artifacts. All but the

last two were used only in the initial stages of the Mobile research.

Later, the idea was to gather evidence in a more comprehensive and planned

manner. The evidence was largely taken from in-depth interviews with community

leaders, including but not limited to Richardson. These included elected officials in

Mobile and neighboring Prichard, police department officers and administrators, federal

law enforcement officials, local clergy, officers of health and social service agencies, and

the directors of non-profit social service organizations. Bay Area Women Coalition

members were also interviewed extensively. By the end of the summer of 2003,

interviews were conducted with thirty-five individuals in the Mobile area. They averaged

around 30 minutes apiece.

The collection of documentation, meanwhile, was considered to be of the utmost

importance. U.S. Census data, in particular, was gathered for demographic and

socioeconomic information on the areas under study. (The above was the sort of data that

Grootaert and Bastelaer (2002) argued would form the base of any social capital-related

research.) Some district-level crime and pollution records of the City of Mobile were also

37

gathered for presentations of supplemental quantitative data. Otherwise, some city

documents, such as a community-cleanup network list and community policing records,

were collected even during the initial stages. Archival records such as Richardson's

(1996) civil rights-related memoirs and books regarding Mobile history were also

collected during this period (Hoffman, 2001; Jackson, 2001; Nicholls, 2001). Major

documents that were to be used extensively, including a city survey related to community

development issues in Trinity Gardens, were collected during the summer of 2003. The

latter included the city‘s application for Trinity Gardens‘s inclusion into the U.S. Justice

Department‘s anti-crime Weed and Seed initiative.

Finally, direct observation of community meetings, neighborhoods, and

community action was employed as a method as well. A journal was kept—at first well,

but later intermittently, given a tight schedule—to record such observation, as suggested

by Goffman (2002) and Merriam (2002), who noted that such writing can leave an "audit

trail" for independent readers (2002, p. 27). For similar reasons, written notes from

meetings and interviews were kept on file.

Still another source of evidence for even largely qualitative studies, Yin (1994)

suggested, is the survey. Data collected from such a survey could have only been used in

a supplemental manner in the typical case study. Such surveys, however, could boost

research validity. Consequently, a formal survey of area residents at community meetings

was initially considered for this project. It was decided later, however, to interview 30

area residents in a less formalized fashion, mainly in an attempt to gain as much

information about the area and its development as possible. Questions were kept

somewhat open-ended as well, in hopes of collecting as much pertinent data as possible.

38

Nonetheless, interview subjects were only asked about certain topics. Among them were

the following:

1. General feelings about the neighborhood.

2. Areas in which residents saw a need for improvement.

3. How the neighborhood had changed over the past decade, if indeed it had

changed at all.

4. How residents thought Trinity Gardens compared to neighboring areas.

Given that the research was going to be conducted in such a thorough fashion, it

was thought that the research would carry with it the promise of an important, if modest,

contribution to an understanding of the relationship between social capital and

government. As Woolcock (1998) suggested, responsible research involving social

capital needs to be modest, given the complexity and newness of the territory.

Nevertheless, it bears repeating that no concept or theory regarding the relation of

government and community organizations had been developed outside of education or

economic development policy areas at the time of this project's planning. Certainly, no

research regarding the relationship between government and social capital has been

applied to community development within an inner city, or a larger urban area. The

Mobile research, it was thought, could thus be eminently useful, both from a theoretical

and a more practical aspect. The potential existed to develop a strong heuristic for leaders

interested in community development and for both academics and practitioners to better

understand how an inner city can see its way out of decay and despair. The material

presented was collected in a manner aimed at best reaching that goal.

There were, meanwhile, more specific relationships and patterns of social and

political behavior that were sought. It was believed that looking for these patterns and

relationships would assure that the working hypotheses described the reality of the

39

Trinity Gardens experience in as accurate a manner as possible. The sort of data that was

sought is listed as follows:

Proposition 1: Government played a central role in increasing the effect, if not

the stock, of social capital in Trinity Gardens.

Given that there were frequent contradictions in the literature as to how to

operationalize, much less measure, social capital, no strict definition was used here. The

term was instead intended to refer mainly to civic activity and civic group membership,

as well as social networking, that had the potential to affect a particular community‘s

policy or development process outcomes. In theory, a community‘s social capital can

entail all of the organized groups within it, including religious congregations, card

groups, sports-oriented groups, ad-hoc interest groups and even street gangs, all of which

are likely to have certain norms and strong levels of generalized trust between members.

Putnam (1993, 1995, 2000) also thought that the existence of larger numbers of these

groups—and the weak ties between individuals across various sectors of a community

that could be formed by membership—encourage trust and the adaptation of norms at a

larger level. It did seem likely that many groups could have had an impact on

development in Trinity Gardens, whether their impact was perceived by community elites

or leadership and citizens. Nonetheless, the connection between the number of groups,

and good policy outcomes, was often decried and contradicted within the literature

surveyed. Likewise, there were too many contradictions between the understanding of the

concept in social capital within political science, not to mention between political science

and sociology. (Putnam believed that social capital existed at the community level, while

Coleman (1988, 1990) and other sociologists saw it as existing at the individual level

40

only.) Consequently, norms and levels of trust between these groups were not searched

for outright, although both norms and trust were discussed by interview subjects and were

considered accordingly.

Whatever the case, the literature seemed to point to the idea that the effects of

such organizations and social networks will not be strong unless they are channeled in a

particular direction, whether that direction is broad or narrow. Otherwise, groups may

work at cross-purposes with one another. In the absence of such focus, these groups and

networks—particularly those with aims involving policy or development outcomes—

might not be able to sustain their efforts over time. Alternately, as social capital theorists

within sociology suggested, individuals and groups who seek such ends may try to gain

social capital for themselves at the expense of others. It is perhaps even the case that the

personal ambitions or goals of individuals within groups and networks cannot be easily

disassociated from their seeming concerns for a broader policy or community

development-related cause.

It was a given, still, that a consideration of the Bay Area Women Coalition would

be a central part of this research. As indicated earlier, initial research in 2002 showed that

the BAWC was seen by many within the Mobile government and service organization

communities as having played an integral role in neighborhood development. Bay Area

representatives appeared at community meetings overseen by Richardson, and interacted

with elected officials and administrators in a manner which suggested that, for all

practical purposes, they had a government sanction or acted in a quasi-public capacity. It

could have been said that both group members and these city representatives had

41

independent ambitions that they were hoping to fulfill in working with one another. The

interaction, in any case, definitely warranted greater study.

At the same time, it was not assumed that no other organization was involved in

the Trinity Gardens development process; neither was it presumed that all the significant

players in the development process had been identified in initial research. It did seem

reasonable, all the same, to believe that the majority of important players would be

identified through direct observation of community events and, more importantly,

extensive interviews. The goal was to interview individuals from as many policy and

community sectors as possible, including not just elected officials and BAWC members

but citizens, in addition to persons working within the public safety, law enforcement,

and public health arenas, and in the legal community, social service agencies, and

educational institutions.

Government, meanwhile, was operationalized as the larger metropolitan

government infrastructure—namely, local and municipal government agencies including

jurisdictional law enforcement authorities, as well as those local agencies which played

some significant role in community development efforts. Government was also seen as

entailing the elected local representation for the Trinity Gardens area. Nonetheless,

Mobile‘s government won primary consideration here, even though part of Trinity

Gardens fell within the jurisdiction of Prichard. That neighboring municipality would

later be seen as more significant than initially thought, but its impact was portrayed by

many interview subjects as being mostly negative in certain ways (it was working under

bankruptcy protection, and was not a particularly desirable neighbor, for instance). In

42

other respects, however, its impact was portrayed as minimal or negligible in regard to

specific changes in Trinity Gardens.

Proposition 2: The relationship between social capital and government was

ultimately tied in with the success of community development efforts in Trinity Gardens.

In this study, community development was seen as taking in all development

efforts, with the exception of those that were more strictly economic-minded, or oriented

toward education reform. These could have been rightly considered as integral to the

success of any neighborhood. Nevertheless, economic development and education reform

efforts were city and metropolitan area-wide affairs. Trinity Gardens contained a middle

school, for instance, but its student body largely consisted of children who lived in other

neighborhoods. A private church-associated school also existed, but it did not cater

strictly to Trinity Gardens; likewise, it did not cross boundaries with the public schools.

Similarly, while the City of Mobile engaged in some economic development efforts

aimed at countering problems in lower-income neighborhoods—such as forming a center

on the city‘s south side that had a business library, computers for students, and a work

training facility that doubled as operational discount store—most of these initiatives were

geared toward gaining retail and industrial facilities that would enlarge the overall city

tax base and well-being of the larger metropolitan area.

Consequently, the developmental arenas that appeared most worthy of exploration

included the following: crime prevention and abatement, housing development, pollution

control, blight removal, the promotion of the humanities and cultural enrichment efforts,

and the protection and education of at-risk youth. The notion of what constituted

community development was gleaned from the surveyed literature, combined from

43

information obtained through direct observation and interviews with subjects from a

variety of government, charitable, civic, and social service organizations.

Meanwhile, a community development effort was accepted as successful when

portrayed by a large cross-section of interview subjects—or, perhaps more accurately,

was seen as successful when these individuals believed that the goal of neighborhood

leaders had been reached or completed. Certainly, it was kept in mind that what was seen

as a success in one community or section of a larger metro area might have been seen as a

failure in another. The completion of an arts center in an inner-city neighborhood could

have been considered a major success in and of itself, for instance, while a municipal

convention center might have been thought of as only a starting point for a larger, multi-

million dollar downtown redevelopment effort. Context, in short, mattered considerably.

How an individual defines or operationalizes success—be it of community development

efforts, one‘s own career or athletic achievements—necessarily depends upon one‘s

vantage point. It seems clear, though, that a researcher of urban social and political life

can tell something about how a neighborhood or community is doing based upon the

goals set by its own leaders, as well as the expectations of or standards set by leaders

from a larger metropolitan area.

Proposition 3: Cross-sectoral cooperation appeared to be vital to community

development efforts in Trinity Gardens. However, more extensive interaction would be

needed for any further-reaching development efforts.

As noted earlier, it appeared as if this proposition would prove to be the most

difficult to investigate. It was also the most unusual, given that it was looking at

community development efforts beyond the basic ones, such as anti-blight and crime

44

prevention efforts that had already been undertaken in Trinity Gardens. Discussion of

these further-reaching efforts was heard during the initial research period. It seemed then

that some individuals involved aimed to turn the area into a self-contained community.

When more fully researching the development process, an attempt was made at gauging

whether the efforts were geared toward a more sustainable sort of development; that is, a

sort that would keep the Trinity Gardens population at least stable, and hopefully

growing.

The work of Woolcock (1998) and others at the World Bank (Grootaert, 1998;

Grootaer & van Bastelaer, 2002; Uphoff, 2000) provided a clear starting point for

research here. Cross-sectoral cooperation was accordingly seen as being a cooperative (or

non-zero sum) variety of social networking between elected authorities, social service

agencies, and charitable organizations, as well as the larger metro area business

community and economic establishment. These would be joined, of course, by

community civic groups in working on development in Trinity Gardens. It was not a

consistent cooperation between all these groups simultaneously that was sought,

however, so much as evidence of positive cooperation between neighborhood

organizations and municipal leadership, as well as with leaders or elites within the larger

metro area.

Cooperation and positive social networking between the community and persons

and groups outside of metro area lines was also considered, given that organizations and

forces at the state or national level were positioned to have a serious impact on area

development. Among these organizations were Alabama‘s state government and the

federal government, given the importance of intergovernmental relations in the United

45

States. Many community development efforts of federal agencies, more specifically,

would have been unthinkable without the use of monetary grants, which are administered

through state government agencies. Since World War II, federal authorities have

demonstrated more of an interest in urban affairs, although more control over these

efforts has increasingly been granted to state leaders and agencies. Federal priorities

nonetheless remained important and influential.

Proposition 4: Government and community leadership were essential to

increasing the effect of social capital in Trinity Gardens, and not just government itself.

As with earlier propositions, this one was based in large part on initial field

research, as well as the surveyed literature. It certainly appeared as if Richardson and the

leaders of the Bay Area Women Coalition played a significant role in the neighborhood‘s

development, although the phenomena had not been fully investigated. The literature

suggested that such leadership is often central to development, given the focus that one

driven or charismatic individual can bring to any community efforts.

Even so, it was thought that government leadership may have been necessary

from a wider array of officialdom, given the number of agencies involved in the

neighborhood‘s development. More particularly, leadership from major city agencies,

such as those engaged in law enforcement and pollution control, may have been essential.

At any rate, government was seen in a fashion similar to the way in which social capital

was portrayed—that is, as a force whose potential could have lain largely dormant or

unfocused until sparked by a particular individual or group of individuals.

Proposition 5: No one person, group, or social phenomenon was solely

responsible for the outcome of community development efforts in Trinity Gardens.

46

As was easy to predict, from the initial investigation it appeared that multiple

organizations and individuals had indeed been involved in the community development

effort. The fact that many people were involved, however, was not of more specific

interest here. What was being sought in research was instead the extent to which

individuals or groups largely initiated or brought particular efforts to fruition, either with

knowledge of the goals of community leaders or not. It was thought that, even if a

particular focus was given by leadership, surely ideas might have been picked up and

brought to completion by others. It seemed even more likely, and somewhat apparent

from the initial research besides, that scarce financial resources in Trinity Gardens made

a decentralized sort of development process all the more likely, even necessary.

The only potentially problematic part of this proposition was the

operationalization of the term social phenomenon. Was the development process itself a

social phenomenon? Perhaps, but it was certainly not expected that all parties involved—

from, potentially, officials of federal agencies to neighborhood churches to officials in the

neighboring municipalities of Mobile and Prichard—would see themselves as part of

some unified or holistic community development effort.

47

CHAPTER IV

TRINITY GARDENS IN CONTEXT

The central idea that drove this dissertation was, despite the nuanced analysis

developed later, fairly straightforward. It was that government's relationship to social

capital seemed underplayed and in need of reexamining. The idea, however, drove this

research even before Trinity Gardens was selected as the place to study the ideas behind

it. The neighborhood was not chosen at random, but it was selected in an after-the-fact

fashion.

To more completely sum up earlier analysis, underlying the research was the

notion that government seemed wrongly left out of the larger picture, especially when it

came to the analysis of crime reduction and community development. For instance, how

can any great crime prevention efforts be undertaken without police? Who builds most of

an area‘s infrastructure? At the same time, it seemed clear that public officials can surely

drive communities as much as they are driven by the wishes of the people, even if other

larger forces and more powerful behind-the-scenes powers drive their decision-making.

Consequently, the potential for an enriching research project definitely existed. It

would take a year of reading, however, and initial investigations in Trinity Gardens in

2002 and 2003 to work out ideas. What resulted were five propositions, the first of which

was in essence a restatement of the idea that brought me to Trinity Gardens initially.

"Government, it seems apparent, can play a central role in increasing the effect, if not the

48

stock, of a political community's social capital." The ideas driving the research were not

changed at this point. They only grew more complicated, more filled with subtleties.

These propositions were more thoroughly investigated over the summer of 2003,

specifically from around May 15 until August 31. While working on this project, I would

not only live in the Mobile area but assist with a survey of youth in low-income

neighborhoods conducted by The University of Alabama‘s Institute for Social Science

Research. This field work led to a familiarization with the areas surrounding Trinity

Gardens, and with areas of comparable socioeconomic status. The work allowed the

possibility of putting the development and problems of Trinity Gardens into a larger

metropolitan context. Nevertheless, as the weeks went by, the focus of the project did not

change in any substantial way. Interview questions remained intentionally narrow in their

scope. Many interview subjects had previously worked their way through similar

academic research projects or were seemingly into theorizing, and suggested their own

hypotheses, some of which are discussed below. The straying into material that did not

concern the larger research issue was, however, strongly discouraged.

The effect of putting the Trinity Gardens story into this context suggested, in

combination with the interviews and other evidence, that the reality of life in Trinity

Gardens was more tangled than initial investigations indicated. To make this clear,

however, first requires a deeper look at the neighborhood‘s demographics, history,

geography, and economics. This chapter‘s purpose is to begin the process of addressing

those complications, while more specifically giving deeper consideration to the context in

which the Trinity Gardens experience takes place. It concludes with a comparison of

Trinity Gardens and areas with similar demographics, as well as a comparison with the

49

metro area at large. The data presented in this chapter, both in the narrative and several

charts that accompany it, are referenced throughout the dissertation.

The Metropolitan Context

The most important thing to understand about Trinity Gardens is the degree of its

isolation. More specifically, the neighborhood is isolated in the context of the Mobile

metropolitan area, and in a manner connected to economics. It sits several miles away

from the city‘s premier shopping areas, which long ago moved westward from the city‘s

central section and nearby Prichard. To make matters worse, part of the Trinity Gardens

area lies within the latter city, a once-thriving area that had seen continuous decline since

the 1960s. In 2003, its government was working under bankruptcy protection.

Concomitantly, a larger public housing development, Bessemer Apartments, then also sat

directly across U.S. 45 (St. Stephen‘s Road) from Trinity Gardens. More importantly,

perhaps, the private sector was barely registered on the neighborhood‘s development

radar, in large part as a consequence of the layout of roads and municipal zoning. Given

this economic isolation, it was no surprise that government was a major force within

Trinity Gardens. Certainly, like other poor neighborhoods in the far northern (and far

southern) sections of Mobile, Trinity Gardens depended on government for much of

whatever developmental success it had—even if it was not quite as dependent as some of

its neighbors.

It nevertheless seemed clear that there had long been substantial civic activity and

something recognizable as civil society within Trinity Gardens, and it had maintained

itself during decades in which the neighborhood was arguably even more isolated than

surrounding areas. Perhaps more accurately, it had both a cultural connection to the

50

greater Mobile area, and a sense of being somehow apart. Several interviewees stressed

that, given its history, Trinity Gardens had both a strong community identity and its own

unique history. The walls of a meeting room in the Dotch Community Center were filled

with pictures of founding members of area civic groups. These included the prosaically

named Civic Club and the more exotically named Paradise Garden Club. (The center was

housed in an up-to-date, $2.4 million facility that, along with the subsidized garden home

subdivision and the $1.4 million dollar amphitheater that surrounded it, was the shiny

new center of community life.) In many ways, Trinity Gardens had a small town sort of

character. Still, Trinity Gardens also had a Mardi Gras mystic society, or fraternal

organization, a fact that connected the neighborhood to the rest of the city culturally, even

while arguably providing further evidence of the community‘s unique position among its

neighbors. Having a mystic society was no small thing in a city that takes pride in having

hosted the first Carnival on the North American continent.

This indefinable or presumed sense of identity was tied in with how the

neighborhood was founded, which certainly did stand out among neighboring areas and

those in Mobile with similar demographics. According to one history of the area,

contained within an application for a federally-driven anti-crime program designation

(City of Mobile, 2000), the area‘s roots could be traced back to the very founding of

Mobile by French explorers. Newly freed slaves and whites moved into the area in the

late 19th Century. The area‘s identity as Trinity Gardens, however, was established much

later, more specifically in the late 1930s, as a neighborhood full of individually built

houses. Rather than being a government-subsidized sort of Potemkin Village, or another

51

impersonal public housing development, the neighborhood began its life as a private

subdivision.

The area was apparently not the best or most obvious pick for a new subdivision.

More to the point, Trinity Gardens was built in an area that was largely swampy. For

years, Census records would describe the southern boundary of one of the two Trinity

Gardens tracts as an ―unnamed ditch.‖ Its early days were consequently muddy ones.

Almost perversely, however, the community‘s very lack of obvious advantages,

combined with the greater industrial hiring of blacks in the 1940s and 1950s, made

Trinity Gardens popular with African-Americans who wanted to build homes. Its

development largely occurred as many black settlers found jobs in the shipyard near the

now-closed Brookley Air Force Base during World War II. Many other factory workers

lived in the area, as did brick-masons and carpenters, the latter of whom apparently

helped build many of the neighborhood's homes.

The advantages for these newfound residents seemed to be twofold. First, the

area‘s swampiness kept whites and the more affluent from desiring property there. Many

residents also reportedly discovered, over time, that living in Trinity Gardens made it

easier to build a home during the Jim Crow era. Most homes there were built in a room-

by-room fashion, not by contractors but with the help of community skill networks (City

of Mobile, 2000). These residents would, despite the swampy conditions, live in a

neighborhood whose very street signs reflected its founders‘ hopes and World War II

experiences. The streets have names including Greenback, Bank, Gold, Ruby, Diamond

and Silver, along with Bataan, Warsaw, and Victory.

52

As the 1960s drew to a close, the institution of southern segregation finally

collapsed, however, and the population of areas such as Trinity Gardens declined with it.

The effect of Jim Crow‘s inevitable demise was probably exacerbated by layoffs at

shipyards near the Brookley Air Force base, and the closing of the base itself. Like so

many other African-American neighborhoods in urban America, Trinity Gardens

residents were hit hard by the harsh effects of industrial layoffs and factory closings

(Wilson, 1997, 1987). Whatever the ultimate cause, it was certainly true that Trinity

Gardens declined, while the rest of Mobile continued to grow. More specifically, over

7,000 residents lived in the two Census tracts that made up the neighborhood in 1970. By

1980, that population would fall to within the range of 6,000 and the mid-4000s by 1990.

Meanwhile, the number of unemployed in the area increased with each census. In 1970,

for instance, 8.2 percent of all residents in the labor force counted themselves as

unemployed. The number had increased to 13.2 percent in 1980 and jumped to 23.8

percent by 1990. Also showing a steady increase was the percentage of males over 16 not

counted as part of the labor force. In 1970, that figure stood at 30 percent. In 1990, the

figure for the same category stood at 41.1 percent. About two of every five males over

16, then, was not being counted as part of the labor force, and 3 in 10 of those who were

counted were not employed, making for an effective unemployment rate of 58.8 percent.

Demographic and economic trends aside, it was also often said that Trinity

Gardens became one of the most crime-infested areas of the Mobile metropolitan area.

Exactly how bad the situation became was, unfortunately, far from clear, considering that

the city did not have well-kept records in regard to crime in neighborhoods. Mobile

public safety officials did not have any such records available except for the late 1990s,

53

when the city began working with what it would call community action groups. Everyone

interviewed for this project at least perceived that Trinity Gardens came to have an ever-

worsening crime problem, one that escalated over time, particularly in the 1980s and

early 1990s. Interview subjects, including officers who had patrolled the neighborhood

over the years, also agreed that most of the crime probably came into the area from

neighboring area and specific corners of Trinity Gardens. Of particular concern was a

housing project in the Queen's Court apartment complex, where many extremely

impoverished families and individuals lived with the assistance of housing subsidies. It is

located on the neighborhood's far northeastern end, in an area colloquially known as

Bullshead (and also often called a part of the "Harlem" area, as a consequence of its

location near the Harlem Club, a bar and nightclub on U.S. 45.) Most people

interviewed, including residents of the neighborhood and those who lived elsewhere in

Mobile, further stated that it was hard to understate how different Trinity Gardens was at

its nadir from the neighborhood it was in 2003. Representative comments included:

Police administrator: Trinity Gardens is nothing like it was 20 years ago. Twenty

years ago it was a combat zone. So this year we had one murder. So if you want be

statically spoken in your language, you can say we had a 100 percent increase in

homicide in a year. But the number, the truth of it is you had one murder. (Mikell,

2003, p. 225)

Volunteer, civilian police board: Well, it was, it was like day and night. It was a

place that was infested with crime, criminals, drug activity, prostitution, a general

attitude of a majority of the people just not caring. On a scale from one to ten,

Trinity Gardens was a one . . . But it's nothing like it used to be. (Mikell, 2003, p.

211)

Civic leader: I have seen so much violence in this neighborhood. And now they say

we have done a miraculous thing because we've only had one murder here now. We

went from two to three murders a month to one a year. (Mikell, 2003, p. 192)

54

Trinity Gardens was said to have begun a turnaround in the late 1990s, much as

the nation‘s economy had. It was almost certainly as good a time to start a redevelopment

plan as any. By 2000, the proportion of unemployed in Trinity Gardens stood at 4.7

percent. The total of males over 16, but not counted as part of the labor force, fell to 17

percent, representing a drop of nearly 25 points since 1990. Thus, the effective

unemployment rate was 20.9 percent, compared with 58.8 a decade earlier.

Census records for 2000 made clear, nevertheless, that the area was still far from

being middle class, or even within close range of such status. The neighborhood was still

impoverished. Its adults were still underemployed and under-educated. It was still,

however, seen by many officials and public and non-profit administrators interviewed as

having made progress and singular among its neighbors in how far it had come.

Trinity Gardens was also seen as having certain advantages that other low-income

areas of the Mobile metro area did not have, the greatest of which was its high rate of

owner-occupied housing. Certainly, the large rate of home ownership appeared to be a

source of community pride. Still, neighborhood denizens were thought to have a different

way of looking at things. They were seen as classic examples of ―the working poor.‖ In

many cases, homes were decidedly austere, but residents still took pride in ownership.

One interview subject who frequently worked in the neighborhood summed up this ethos

as, ―Even if it's ratty, it's mine‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 255). Residents were also praised for

taking pride in helping one another out, as earlier generations had when building up the

neighborhood during the Jim Crow era.

Some observers suggested that this history of home ownership made organizing

the community easier. No such organizing, it was noted, could have easily occurred in a

55

public housing development, if at all. Home owners just had what the administrator

thought of as an ―honest-to-God‖ investment in their neighborhoods. There were also, as

a consequence, more longer-term residents in Trinity Gardens. The word stakeholder

may have been cliched in political science and public administration, one administrator

noted, but that was definitely what homeowners in the area had become. Moreover,

families that had lived in Trinity Gardens for three or four generations remained in the

area, something not typically found in public housing developments or private apartment

complexes. ―You don‘t,‖ the administrator noted, ―find that sense of roots and belonging

that you find in a community of owners‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 125-6). Other officers echoed

this sentiment, although one found additional significance in the fact that a large slate of

middle-class homeowners existed in the area, and that it had grown over the past few

decades.

Demographic Context

How much did Trinity Gardens really differ from other lower-income

neighborhoods in the Mobile area, though? Was it really that distinctive in areas such

areas as home ownership—which, as the data presented in the next chapter will show,

was seen by many officials as being the key to its success? Did it stand out among other

low-income neighborhoods not just culturally and historically, but from a social and

economic standpoint? Was Trinity Gardens really distinctive among lower-income

neighborhoods, or was this idea more a matter of perception and reputation?

An in-depth comparison of the Trinity Gardens area, surrounding neighborhoods

in the north section of the Mobile metropolitan area, and neighborhoods in other sections

with similarly lower-income and minority populations was produced as a means of

56

addressing such questions. The tables were created, more specifically, to compare the

above areas over a three-decade period in areas including population, mean family and

household income, proportion of residents living below the poverty level (the U.S.

Census Bureau measure of which had not substantially changed between 1970 and 2000),

and levels of education. Gathered alongside the data were maps of the Mobile

metropolitan statistical area (as defined by the Census authorities), and the individual

census tracts under study. All the information presented, with the exception of the Census

Bureau maps, was taken from the Neighborhood Change Database, a compact disc that

allows one to study the area within the tracts drawn up for the 2000 census over four

censuses, even though the boundaries of such tracts often vary significantly from census

to census. In other words, the data available on the disc was normalized for 2000 U.S.

Census geographies.

The maps of these tracts are presented below, and are followed in each case by

narrative descriptions of the areas in question, ones that further allow for a consideration

of Trinity Gardens‘s place within metropolitan Mobile. These maps and descriptions are

followed by the tables discussed earlier. Each of the tables is followed by a discussion of

the associated data.

57

Figure 1. Mobile metropolitan area.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Metropolitan Mobile

The metropolitan context discussed earlier in this chapter is shown more clearly

here. The Mobile metro area, as one might have presumed given the tendency of

American cities toward urban sprawl, had been considerably smaller geographically at

the time the first Census studied, 1970. The heart of commercial activity in Mobile had

moved, as noted earlier, from central Mobile and Prichard to annexed western areas, and

now stretched for several miles westward down Airport Boulevard—represented on this

map as Alabama State Highway 56—and into unincorporated areas of Mobile County.

Given motor vehicle gridlock on Airport Boulevard, however, small towns to the east

58

such as Daphne and Fairhope, which were for many years reachable only by a causeway

across Mobile Bay that was easily breached by marsh and bay water, had become

thriving suburban areas by the late 1990s.

Sections of what was known locally as Old Mobile, or the central city (with the

arguable exception of historic areas of the Midtown section) were, however, left behind

economically. These included the previously mentioned areas immediately to the south of

U.S. Highway 43, or Government Road, the boulevard which served as the main street of

Old Mobile, and the northern section of Mobile around U.S. 45 (or St. Stephen‘s Road).

Prichard, which was also hit hard, is mostly situated north of St. Stephen‘s Road. Two

varying exceptions to the socioeconomic rule, Saraland and Chickasaw, are located north

of Prichard. Both are predominantly white. The latter was in 2003 more working class

oriented and shrinking in population, while the former was seeing modest middle-class

growth.

Trinity Gardens is located due southeast of the Interstate 65 exit at St. Stephen‘s

Road. The federal expressway is shown as a curved line running south through Saraland

and Chickasaw, and on through central Mobile. It stops upon meeting Interstate 10.

59

Figure 2. Census tracts; Mobile, Prichard.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Census Tract View

A better view of Trinity Gardens‘s location is presented here—it is, again, found

where U.S. 45 meets Interstate 65. The neighborhood (highlighted on Figure 2) makes up

tracts 39.01 and 39.02. Among the other tracts studied are 32.03, located off Airport

Boulevard in West Mobile; and 13.02, which is found south of Government Boulevard, in

the map‘s far southeastern corner. Also studied are other northern tracts such as numbers

41 and 48 in Prichard and 4.01, 4.01 and 5, which are located northwest of Downtown

Mobile, represented here as Tract 2 on the far eastern central edge of the map.

60

Figure 3. Census tracts 39.01 and 39.02 (Trinity Gardens).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Census Tracts 39.01 and 39.02: Trinity Gardens

As mentioned previously, these two tracts make up Trinity Gardens. Despite some

economic differences, most of the two tracts are considered to be part of the same

neighborhood, one that stretched from Berkley Avenue on the west side to Prichard

Avenue on the east. The more affluent parts of Trinity Gardens are found further south in

Mobile, mostly but not exclusively within the central and southern sections of 39.01. By

contrast, the far northern half of 39.01 is noticeably poorer and less developed.

61

Figure 4. Census tract 41, Prichard (NE of Trinity Gardens).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Census Tract 41: Prichard, Northeast of Trinity Gardens

This census area was located immediately north of the eastern half of Trinity

Gardens. It was also located in Prichard, and to the west of Prichard Avenue. This area

was chosen for study as a consequence of its perceived resemblance to its neighbor in

regard to housing mix and income levels. A church in this neighborhood served as the

starting point of an anti-violence march, one named in memory of the child slain at

Queen‘s Court. The march is discussed in Chapter V.

62

Figure 5. Census tract 48, Prichard (NW of Trinity Gardens).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Census Tract 48: Gulf Village and Alabama Village

An area of Mobile as seemingly wracked by poverty as any within its metro

region was this one, in Prichard. Tract 48 took in a public housing development by the

name of Gulf Village, and Alabama Village, which operated under private ownership.

Gulf Village is located at the northeastern tip of the tract, near Chickasaw, and the outlay

of its roads forms an easily recognizable shape on maps, one that brings to mind a

snowman. Alabama Village, meanwhile, is located to its immediate southwest.

63

Figure 6. Census tracts 4.01 and 5, Mobile (MLK Area).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Census Tracts 4.01 and 5, Martin Luther King area

The area surrounding Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard makes up most of tracts

4.01 and 5, which are located about four miles away from Trinity Gardens. Census Tract

5 is notable for a more noticeable density of housing and population. The streets are also

in many cases more narrow than in surrounding neighborhoods. It appeared, at best, to be

only a nominal improvement—socially, economically or environmentally—over the

public housing developments formally known as the Alfred Owens and Jesse Thomas

Homes, located to the east of Tract 4.01.

64

Figure 7. Census tract 4.02 (Orange Grove).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Census Tract 4.02, Orange Grove

This area, located due north of Downtown Mobile, included the impoverished

Orange Grove development. It is marked by a high level of environmental disorder.

Shards of glass litter almost every roadside, and trash is strewn throughout the district,

attracting swarms of seagulls. In 2004, the Mobile Housing Board announced that the

Alfred Owens Homes and Jesse Thomas Homes would be demolished and replaced with

mixed income housing, using funds provided through a federal HOPE IV grant.

65

Figure 8. Census tract 32.03, Mobile (West Mobile, Azalea Road).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Census Tract 32.03, West Mobile

In working on a federally sponsored youth survey in poor areas of Mobile, it grew

clear that West Mobile, an area with a more modern suburban sort of feel, was growing

home to more lower-income residents. This was likely a consequence of the growing use

of federal housing vouchers, as well as the high number of service industry jobs to be

found in the immediate area, which was highly commercialized. Lower income housing

was particularly found off Azalea Road in this tract.

66

Figure 9. Census tract 13.02, Mobile (South Mobile).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Census Tract 13.02, South Mobile

Given its demographic similarity to north Mobile, it seemed appropriate to

include at least one neighborhood in the southern section of Old Mobile. Only the

presence of the historic district and more middle class sections of Midtown, which are

centered around Government and Dauphin streets, breaks any potential continuity

between north and south Mobile. This specific tract was chosen because it seems to be,

like Trinity Gardens, a neighborhood made up primarily of the working poor. It also

contains Oaklawn, a 100-unit public housing development near the intersection of S.

Broad and Baltimore streets.

67

Social Indicators, Mobile Metropolitan Area

The demographic tables for the Mobile metropolitan area paint a portrait of a

healthy urban area, one whose growing number of residents had become not only more

affluent or prosperous over some three decades, but also better educated, on the whole.

Of all the statistics presented here, the contrast between percentage of residents who were

high school graduates in 2000 and in 1970 was easily the most striking. By contrast, the

rate of home ownership remained fairly stable. There were, meanwhile fewer people

living in poverty in the Mobile area in 2000 than in 1990, something that should not have

been particularly surprising, given the growth of the U.S. economy in the late 1990s.

Table 1

Population, Mobile Metro Area; Normalized for 2000 Census Boundaries

Year

Population

1970

376,380

1980 443,302

1990 476,924

2000 540,258

Percentage Change 30.3

68

Table 2

Housing, Mobile Metro Area; Normalized for 2000 Census Boundaries

Year Occupied Percent Owner Percent Renter

1970

109,488 68.9 31.1

1980

150,074 68.7 31.3

1990

173,944 68.7 31.3

2000

205,515 71.7 28.3

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

Table 3

Income, Mobile Metro Area, Normalized for 2000 Census Boundaries

Year

Mean, Family Mean, Household

1970

$8,959 $8,221

1980

$19,868 $17,471

1990

$35,076 $30,703

2000

$53,607 $47,113

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

69

Table 4

Poverty, Population, Mobile Metro Area; Normalized for 2000 Census Boundaries

Year

Individuals Proportion of Population

1970

86,497 22.98%

1980

80,168 18.08%

1990

93,260 19.55%

2000

86,567 16.02%

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

Table 5

Education, Population, Mobile Metro Area; Normalized for 2000 Census Boundaries

Education,

Persons Over 25

High School Diploma

Only

Some College, No

Degree*

Bachelor‘s Degree

and Higher

1970

27.1% 8% 7.3%

1980

34.5% 14.5% 15.8%

1990

32.2% 22.7% 16%

2000

31.3% 27.1% 19.8%

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

* Includes associate‘s degree holders

70

Population

These charts reinforce earlier points, among them that Trinity Gardens and

surrounding parts of north Mobile and Prichard had hemorrhaged residents over the past

three decades, particularly from 1970 to 1990. The only major exception was found in

Tract 13.02 of southern Mobile, whose numbers were stable over time, and Tract 32.03 in

West Mobile. A decline also occurred in Tract 4.01, but its population had changed

dramatically over time, as the housing tables that follow show more clearly.

71

Table 6

Population, By Mobile County Census Tracts; Normalized for 2000 Boundaries

Year

Population

Trinity Gardens

(39.01, 39.02)

1970

7314

1980

6050

1990

4338

2000

4241

Percentage Change

-42.01

Alabama Village,

Gulf Village area

(48)

1970

4630

1980

3855

1990

3258

2000

2510

Percentage Change

-45.8

West Mobile, Azalea Road

(32.03)

1970

2743

1980

3893

1990

3437

2000

3324

Percentage Change

17.4

South Mobile

(13.02)

1970

3779

1980

4359

1990

3971

2000

3669

Percentage Change -3.0

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

72

Table 7

Population by Mobile County, Alabama Census Tracts; Normalized for 2000 Boundaries

Year

Population

Prichard,

NE of Trinity Gardens

(41)

1970

3003

1980

2091

1990

1534

2000

1233

Percentage Change

-58.94

MLK Area I

(5)

1970

5308

1980

3899

1990

2513

2000

2452

Percentage Change

-54.01

MLK Area II

(4.01)

1970

6662

1980

4853

1990

3291

2000

2891

Percentage Change

-56.6

Orange Grove

(4.02)

1970

2150

1980

2370

1990

2139

2000

2092

Percentage Change -2.7

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

73

Housing

The Census data presented did not show that Trinity Gardens was

overwhelmingly unique in the Mobile metro area in regard to its housing situation, or

even in its far northern sections, which were by and large poverty-stricken. However, it

did stand out as being somewhat more stable with regard to home ownership among the

majority of the areas studied, and had clearly showed progress over time and particularly

from 1990 to 2000. Its rate of home ownership in 2000, more specifically, did not vary

dramatically from that recorded in earlier years, but it did rise faster than most in the

Mobile area.

That being said, it should be remembered that Trinity Gardens lost a great deal of

its population from 1970 to 1990. Moreover, it did not differ dramatically from areas with

similar demographics in regard to home ownership, such as Tracts 41 and 13.02. Grant

claims made about its rate of home ownership were probably sparked instead by a

comparison with areas of Mobile and Prichard that were perceived to be as dangerous as

Trinity Gardens once had been. These included Tract 4.02, which included the Orange

Grove public housing development and neighboring rental property-heavy areas.

Otherwise, the charts here present two intriguing anomalies. The first comes in

the housing data for Tract 4.02. Its percentage of renter-occupied properties rose from

zero in 1970 to 99 percent in 2000, thanks to the construction of redevelopment programs

that included the opening of public housing in Orange Grove. Even so, the tract which

most stands out is 32.03. Home ownership spiked upward and rental rates declined there

between 1980 and 1990, but both rates evened out to 1980 levels in 2000.

74

Table 8

Housing, By Mobile County, Alabama Census Tracts; Normalized for 2000 Boundaries

Year Occupied Percent

Owner

Percent

Renter

Trinity Gardens

(39.01, 39.02)

1970

1740 64 36

1980

1750 62 38

1990

1415 68.1 31.9

2000

1356 68.5 31.5

Alabama Village,

Gulf Village area (48)

1970

1410 33.5 66.5

1980

1295 31.5 68.5

1990

1073 31.2 68.8

2000

857 29.9 70.1

West Mobile (32.03)

1970

831 78.2 21.8

1980

1653 51 49

1990

1415 68 32

2000

1417 51.6 43

South Mobile (13.02) 1970

831 78.2 21.8

1980

1653 51 49

1990

1415 68 32

2000

1219 61.4 38.6

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

75

Table 9

Housing, By Mobile County, Alabama Census Tracts; Normalized for 2000 Boundaries

Year Occupied Percent

Owner

Percent

Renter

Prichard, NE of

Trinity Gardens (41)

1970

824 52.8 47.2

1980

693 57.6 42.4

1990

571 66.4 33.6

2000

580 65.9 34.1

MLK Area I (5)

1970

1633 51.1 48.9

1980

1583 51 49

1990

1331 52.1 47.9

2000

981 51.7 48.3

MLK Area II (4.01) 1970

1934 25.8 74.2

1980

1675 25.5 74.5

1990

1157 26 75

2000

1023 34.8 65.2

Orange Grove (4.02) 1970

592 100 0

1980

681 0 100

1990

681 2.2 97.8

2000

690 1 99

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

76

Income

What stands out most about this longitudinal comparison is that home ownership

is somewhat correlated with income, at least among the tracts studied. How much the two

are correlated is difficult to say, given that the rate of variation between tracts in income

and as regard home ownership is not the same. The chart also compares neighborhoods,

after all, and is not a study of the entire metropolitan area. Nonetheless, it is worth noting

again that Tract 41 and Tract 13.02 and Trinity Gardens showed a remarkable degree of

similarity over time—although, in this case, the former easily outperformed the latter as

far as mean family income went in 2000 (although it only did modestly better in the case

of mean household income for the same year).

By contrast, those neighborhoods with lower incomes also tended to have lower

rates of home ownership and higher percentages of renter-occupied dwellings. Again, the

variance between home ownership and income was not a match. For instance, Tract 48,

which included two large, lower-income rental developments, Alabama Village and Gulf

Village, had a lower rental rate than Tract 4.01, the site of Orange Grove. However, it

also had lower reports of mean family and household income. Nevertheless, those

neighborhoods with lower incomes had higher numbers of renter-occupied housing units.

Interestingly, Tract 48 started out the period under study with higher reported income

than Trinity Gardens.

Otherwise, it is worth noting that incomes improved across the board in all the

neighborhoods studied between 1990 and 2000—in some cases dramatically. This proved

as true for Trinity Gardens as it did for Orange Grove. In truth, the latter neighborhood‘s

progress here was more astounding than any reported.

77

Table 10

Income, By Mobile County, Alabama Census Tracts; Normalized for 2000 Boundaries

Year Mean,

Family

Mean, Household

Trinity Gardens

(39.01, 39.02)

1970

$5,242 $4,943

1980

$11,000 $9,835

1990

$16,668 $14,521

2000

$33,415 $28,439

Alabama Village,

Gulf Village area (48)

1970

$6,777 $6.069

1980

$12,008 $11,186

1990

$11,967 $11,098

2000

$18,807 $19,149

Census Tract 32.03, Mobile 1970

$13,691 $12,919

1980

$23,644 $20,438

1990

$35,617 $35,536

2000

$49,256 $47,761

Census Tract 13.02, Mobile

1970

$7,237 $6,138

1980

$12,195 $10,689

1990

$17,974 $16,818

2000

$30,061 $27,199

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

78

Table 11

Income, By Mobile County, Alabama Census Tracts, Normalized for 2000 Boundaries

Year Mean,

Family

Mean

Household

Prichard, NE of

Trinity Gardens (41)

1970

$4,429 $4,228

1980

$12,077 $10,059

1990

$16,197 $14,131

2000

$42,491 $30,955

MLK Area I (5) 1970

$5,519 $4,794

1980

$11,651 $9,906

1990

$15.390 $13,009

2000

$27,477 $21,922

MLK Area II (4.01) 1970

$4,061 $3,627

1980

$9,488 $8,262

1990

$9,450 $9,076

2000

$21,632 $18,709

Orange Grove (4.02) 1970 $4,073

$3,034

1980 $4,931

$4,146

1990 $7,455

$6,861

2000 $26,515

$21,808

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

79

Poverty

Just as there appeared to be a correlation between home ownership and rental

rates and income in the neighborhoods studied, so was there a connection between the

same and rates of poverty. Again, the variance between reported rates of poverty and

home ownership did not precisely match in this case. Some 47 percent of Tract 48's

residents lived in poverty, for instance, compared to 32 percent for Trinity Gardens. By

contrast, only about 30 percent of all dwellings were owner-occupied in that area, which

included Gulf Village and Alabama Village, a number that nearly matched Trinity

Gardens‘s percentage of renter-occupied units. By the same token, the variance between

income and poverty was perfectly matched. In Orange Grove‘s tract, 4.02, for instance,

close to 75 percent of all residents lived below the poverty level. It had, however, far

higher reports of mean family and household income.

Even so, the lower-income neighborhoods with lower rates of poverty also tended

to have higher incomes and higher rates of home ownership, and vice versa. In 2003, for

instance, the Alabama Village area in Tract 48 featured homes with dirt parking areas,

rows of apartments marked by burned out sections and multiple graffiti tributes to

apparently murdered individuals. One-lane streets there were, in 2003, clogged weeks

after what local media reported to be the rainiest June on record. Other neighborhoods

with higher rates of poverty either had public housing developments or featured more

abandoned housing and general disorder. Meanwhile, it appeared that Tract 32.03 in

West Mobile indeed attracted more of Mobile‘s poorer residents. Some 27.1 percent of its

residents lived below the poverty level in 2000, compared to 16.3 in 1990.

80

Table 12

Persons Below Poverty Level; by Mobile County, Alabama Census Tracts; Normalized

for 2000 Boundaries

Year Individuals Living

Below Poverty

Level

Proportion of

Population

Trinity Gardens

(39.01, 39.02)

1970

3748 51.2%

1980

2471 40.9%

1990

1947 44.8%

2000

1376 32.4%

Alabama Village,

Gulf Village area (48)

1970

1397 41.8%

1980

1668 43.2%

1990

2122 65.1%

2000

1571 47.2%

Census Tract 32.03, Mobile

1970

41 14.9%

1980

290 7.4%

1990

562 16.3%

2000

900 27.1%

Census Tract 13.02, Mobile

1970

969 25.6%

1980

1568 35.9%

1990

1972 49.6%

2000

1390 38.1%

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

81

Table 13

Persons Below Poverty Level, By Mobile County, Alabama Census Tracts; Normalized

for 2000 Boundaries

Year Individuals Living

Below Poverty

Level

Proportion of

Population

Prichard, NE of

Trinity Gardens (41)

1970

1631 54.3%

1980

714 34.2%

1990

687 45%

2000

344 28.1%

MLK Area I (5) 1970

2109 39.7%

1980

1345 34.5%

1990 1141 46.1%

46.1

2000

1081 44.1%

MLK Area II (4.01) 1970

4137 62%

1980

2537 52.3%

1990

2301 70%

2000

1575 54.5%

Orange Grove (4.02) 1970

1582 73.6%

1980

1968 83.0%

1990

1857 86.8%

2000

1575 75.3%

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

82

Education

Education was the one area in which Trinity Gardens did not reach the

performance of its closest demographic peers, such as Tracts 41 in Prichard and 13.02 in

south Mobile. Here, in fact, Trinity Gardens seemed closer to areas like the

neighborhoods near Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. Even Tract 48, the home of Gulf

Village and Alabama Village, had more residents who had graduated from high school.

Social science research had consistently demonstrated a correlation between

education and income, so the percentages reported for Trinity Gardens were at odds with

expectations. Given that, there was something happening in the neighborhood that the

given statistics did not explain. No other economic statistics, however, could explain the

contrary results. There was apparently not any higher number of upper-income residents

that pushed the neighborhood‘s mean income figures to a level above what it might have

been otherwise. In other words, reported median family and household incomes in 2000

(not available for many earlier years) for the neighborhood tracts did not vary

dramatically from the figures reported for its peers. Likewise, the percentage of homes

under $50,000 in 2000 was higher in Tract 41 than in either 39.01 or 39.02. The number

of retirees and number of householders over age 65 was also not vastly different in

Trinity Gardens than nearby neighborhoods or those with similar overall demographics.

Despite this, it remained clear that the percentage of educated persons grew in all

the tracts studied over time, throughout the Mobile area, and in most of its lower-income

areas. Figures for only one of the neighborhoods studied, the Orange Grove development,

demonstrated that fewer than half its residents were high school graduates.

83

Table 14

Education, Persons 25 and Over, By Mobile County, Alabama Census Tracts;

Normalized for 2000 Boundaries

Year High School

Diploma

Only

Some

College,

No Degree*

Bachelor‘s

Degree or

Higher

Trinity Gardens

(39.01, 39.02)

1970

16.1% 2.3% 1%

1980

25.9% 7% 1.7%

1990

30.4% 11% 2.1%

2000

31.8% 19.1% 4.5%

Alabama Village,

Gulf Village area (48)

1970

18.1% 7.1% 1.4%

1980

20.7% 8.2% 5.6%

1990

33.3% 12% 3.8%

2000

36.6% 17.5% 6.8%

Census Tract 32.03, Mobile

1970

39.1% 19% 16.2%

1980

37.1% 20.3% 23%

1990

34.2% 29.1% 19.7%

2000

32.6% 33.6% 23.3%

Census Tract 13.02, Mobile

1970

22.2%

3.1% 2.7%

1980

36.4%

9.1% 2.9%

1990

27.2%

18.6% 3.3%

2000

38.2%

24.1% 4.6%

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

* Includes associate‘s degree holders

84

Table 15

Education, Persons 25 and Over, By Mobile County, Alabama Census Tracts;

Normalized for 2000 Boundaries

Year High School

Diploma

Only

Some

College,

No Degree*

Bachelor‘s

Degree or

Higher

Prichard, NE of

Trinity Gardens (41)

1970

16.5% 3.2% 2%

1980

24% 13.1% 3.4%

1990

27.1% 14.8% 5.7%

2000

30.2% 26.6% 7.8%

MLK Area I (5) 1970

16.7% 7.4% 5.6%

1980

23.2% 14.4% 9.6%

1990

29% 13.6% 7.6%

2000

27% 19.4% 11.5%

MLK Area II (4.01) 1970

14.5% 3% 2.2%

1980

20% 9.3% 2.3%

1990

19.3% 11.8% 6.0%

2000

28.3% 19.5% 3.6%

Orange Grove (4.02) 1970

12.5% 1.2% 0.7%

1980

27% 3% 1.7%

1990

28.2% 17.2% .9%

2000

28.8% 15.2% 1.0%

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Neighborhood Change Database

*Includes associate‘s degree holders

85

Conclusion: Patterns and Limits

In the end, the Census data presented did not show that Trinity Gardens was

overwhelmingly unique in the Mobile metro area with regard to its housing situation.

However, it did stand out for being somewhat more stable than the majority of the areas

studied, and clearly showed progress over time from 1990 to 2000, although it too lost a

great deal of its population.

Areas with socioeconomic characteristics closer to that of Trinity Gardens,

however, had comparable rates of home ownership, including the western half of the

Martin Luther King Boulevard area, located just a few miles east, and areas north of

Trinity Gardens in Prichard. In short, there appeared to be more of a connection between

the degree of poverty, income levels, and home ownership in Mobile, even if the areas

with higher rates of such ownership, including Trinity Gardens, could hardly have been

considered affluent. Trinity Gardens differed in a significant way from these areas only

by the percentage of residents who had graduated from high school. Tables 14 and 15 put

the neighborhood in even sharper perspective.

That being said, only so much could be explained through Census data. For

instance, if one took away the eastern tract of Trinity Gardens, 39.02, what would have

been left was an area that held its own with the northern metro Mobile area, excluding its

far northern suburbs. The home ownership rate in 39.01 was 74.4, a rate slightly higher

than that of the entire Mobile metropolitan area, and higher than the rate in the

comparable Tract 41 in Prichard and 13.02 in southern Mobile. The majority of the

college graduates living within Trinity Gardens also resided within tract 39.01. Again,

though, Trinity Gardens was thought of as one large neighborhood and not two, even if

86

the Bullshead section of the neighborhood‘s far northeastern corner was perceived as

having its own particular issues and concerns.

Despite the problems with census data, however, it hardly seemed over the line to

suggest that increases in income and lower rates of poverty within Trinity Gardens in the

1980s and 1990s may have played a role in spurring development efforts there. Its rate of

home ownership had in fact been boosted over the 1980s and 1990s, more so than in any

area studied, with the exception of Tract 41 in Prichard. Suggesting that this

socioeconomic progress almost certainly played a role in allowing the neighborhood‘s

development efforts to unfurl, however, was not the same as saying the efforts were

inevitable. Other neighborhoods in northern Mobile did well during the 1990s, after all.

One could likewise have pointed out that Trinity Gardens‘s population was just

getting older. According to the Neighborhood Change Database, the percentage of

retirees there increased from 6.5 percent of its population in 1970 to 17.8 percent in 2000.

This did not, however, make Trinity Gardens dramatically different from its neighbors.

The American population as a whole was getting older.

What was happening in Trinity Gardens, then, must have been something more

out of the ordinary than could be explained by Census numbers, high rates of home-

ownership, changes in the demographics of northern Mobile, or the number of retirees in

the neighborhood. What could be more easily explained was how the process began,

along with who was involved at the early stages of that process. In so doing, other

phenomena that sparked the development process besides demographic factors could be

revealed. What could also be revealed in investigating these causes was how thorny the

process was. The line between government and social capital intersected at points that

87

were hard to pin down. It was not as if government was some monolithic entity, either.

What was certain was that the development of Trinity Gardens would have proven

impossible without the existence of native social networks, and ties between those

networks and municipal government in Mobile, a matter addressed in the next chapter.

88

CHAPTER V

PROPOSITION 1

Government played a central role in increasing the effect, if not the stock,

of social capital in Trinity Gardens.

Mobile‘s municipal government, as indicated in Chapter IV, was well positioned

to be a major player in Trinity Gardens. Moreover, documentary evidence and

observation conducted in the initial stage of research made it clear that there was a great

deal of intergovernmental activity in the neighborhood, with much of that led or carried

out by municipal authorities. On the whole, the presence of government in Trinity

Gardens seemed almost overwhelming. That would have proved true of government

activity in wealthier areas too, to be sure, but the assistance and funding of government

agencies were essential to Trinity Gardens‘s viability and ongoing development.

What became clear, then, was that the term government as used in Proposition 1

was too vague in describing the neighborhood‘s development. Instead, what appeared to

be happening was something akin to the following: One government official, Richardson,

played the lead role in the development process, and encouraged the assistance and

organizing of others. In so doing, he won the trust and support of other officials within

the bureaucracy of the Mobile municipal government, as well as the city‘s mayor.

Meanwhile, the Bay Area Women Coalition lobbied and—to borrow a word favored by

Putnam (2000) in Bowling Alone in describing the sort of behavior that encourages social

trust—schmoozed with those same local administrators and even lower-level municipal

89

employees as a means of reinforcing aims shared with Richardson, as well as aims the

group seemed to develop somewhat independently. As interview subjects ranging from

key players to marginal figures put it, a great deal seemed to be happening in or involving

Trinity Gardens simultaneously.

It was certainly true, however, that some significant changes occurred in the

neighborhood in the years before the taking of the 2000 Census. These changes,

particularly those that involved community organization, were just not precisely

quantifiable. First came the increasing prominence and activity of the Bay Area Women

Coalition (BAWC). Around the same time, Richardson began organizing what would

become known as a "community policing" committee, staffed by volunteers from

neighborhoods including Trinity Gardens. This same organization held community

meetings monthly at sites throughout District 1, the neighborhood‘s political home. Both

these developments gave focus to civic renewal efforts in the neighborhood.

Sorting Through the Grass Roots: Beginnings of Renewal

No one interviewed questioned how significant these two groups would soon

become in development efforts. How these groups came to exist, by contrast, was a much

more complex matter, particularly in the case of the BAWC. The lack of clarity was to a

large degree understandable. Details, after all, of important moments can become

indistinct just a few years after events occur. Even a cursory knowledge of the discipline

of history would teach one that people can remember events or the evolution of certain

movements or phenomena differently, without at all being dishonest. Details are

remembered, when they are at all remembered, from the respective vantage points of

individuals. It was nonetheless clear that local residents and officials really did form more

90

than something of a partnership, and one that all parties saw as meaningful and powerful

as would regard neighborhood change.

Richardson took an active role in forming such a partnership, since he thought

civic activity declined because of high crime. Consequently, he urged the leaders

associated with the BAWC to call a meeting and organize several other groups under the

Bay Area umbrella. At the first such meeting, Bay Area leader Levonnes Dubose stood

up and called a roll of area organizations. According to Richardson, she would say, ―‗The

Civic League! What are you all working on now?‘ ‗We‘re gettin‘ these people registered

to vote.‘ ‗OK, how‘s it coming?‘ . . . ‗The Garden Club!‘ ‗We‘re planting flowers and

trees,‘ and then she goes on down the list‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 5).

The Bay Area Women Coalition existed before such a larger cooperation,

however. Dubose, a former school teacher, said that she and Soline ―Sweet‖ Wiley (who

was known to residents of the community and parts elsewhere as a maker of mouth-

watering pecan pralines and candy apples, a reputation from which her sobriquet

derived), came together in the mid-1990s not long after their respective families were

affected by drug use and related violence. Specifically, Wiley‘s son had a drug

dependency, while Dubose‘s brother was killed in a narcotics trade-related incident. Even

so, these were not the primary sparks behind their joining forces.

Instead, the two BAWC leaders and others came together with the idea of opening

a franchise of a regional breakfast food restaurant chain. They planned to locate the

breakfast emporium on U.S. 45, in Prichard and near the Interstate 65 exit. Months of

work and planning went into the idea. Prichard‘s economic development chief assisted

the women. Soon thereafter, the would-be entrepreneurs began touring other outlets in

91

Alabama. They were expecting to receive a $200,000 loan, and called bankers in for a

meeting. As if on cue, though, just before loan-signing day, the women‘s loan facilitator

died. He put together deals with banks and contractors, and was trusted by the women.

Now, they felt lost. As one BAWC member recalled, ―He fell down dead. And since we

are religious women, we said, ‗The Lord is trying to tell us something‘‖ (Mikell, 2003, p.

200). To be more specific, they believed that a higher power was telling them to forgo all

plans for the restaurant.

In the midst of this seemingly for-naught work, however, the Prichard economic

development official suggested that the women needed to be more concerned about the

crime rate in Trinity Gardens. Even if a twenty-four hour armed guard was to be secured

for the chain restaurant, he suggested, a long-term solution to security problems would be

needed to make the area attractive to businesses. An idea then began to take root.

Their breakfast-serving ambitions were thwarted, but a new project would soon

begin—the BAWC‘s fight against crime. It was a crusade to gain the attention of local

officials and administrators or, rather, to send people in local government a message in

regard to what group members perceived as an urgent need for change in Trinity

Gardens. The campaign included letter writing and personal visits to elected officials, law

enforcement, and other administrators.

One of the first officials on the receiving end of this approach was Mobile Mayor

Michael C. Dow. The women told him, ―Mr. Mayor, you‘re gonna be ashamed when you

see this. You‘re gonna be ashamed at the condition of our neighborhood‖ (Mikell, 2003,

p. 73). The BAWC members brought along a video to him which showed abandoned lots

92

(some 90 existed in the neighborhood at that time, five of them thought to be crack

houses) and such, which by most accounts were disquieting.

It was suggested that the city was not doing its job. The mayor, however, asked

the women to assist police and to organize their neighborhood. He told them that police

and other officials could not do their jobs without assistance from communities.

Richardson also saw the need for such community organization. He justified the idea on

the grounds of the tired-and-true belief that when the wheel is not squeaking, it does not

get any grease. Trinity Gardens, he believed, badly needed that grease.

Consequently, in 1997—the year in which Richardson took office—the Bay Area

group started to strengthen itself as an organization, while simultaneously undertaking an

outreach to the neighborhood at large. BAWC members visited clergy of the

neighborhood‘s nearly 30 churches. The women also sought the help of faculty and

administrators from universities and colleges in the metro in their efforts to develop a

plan for neighborhood revitalization. Academics consulted were informed that Trinity

Gardens was dying and needed help. Eventually, group leaders won assistance from the

University of South Alabama. Sociology students studied options for the organization and

the possibility of neighborhood revitalization. They proposed that the BAWC needed to

seek federal non-profit, or 501-C3, status in order to improve financially and to

encourage the sustainability of revitalization efforts. The group balked at this idea,

however, opting instead to go with an attorney‘s advice to form a limited partnership. In

doing so, the group leaders later realized, they had tossed away $5,000 for naught. So, the

BAWC went back to the proverbial square one and gained legally recognized non-profit

status.

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Nonetheless, even after establishing itself properly, the non-profit group had

much organizing to do. There were plenty of other non-profit organizations competing

for available grant money, dozens of them in the Mobile area alone, so gaining non-profit

status alone certainly did not translate into success. The BAWC‘s leadership

consequently decided to increase the group‘s presence in the community. Furthermore,

the group also began working closely with Richardson, and by extension the City of

Mobile and its agencies. Mayor Dow found the group‘s ways to be astonishing:

Trinity Gardens is, I think, the most fantastic example of people from

everyday walks of life, average people, housewives, who said, ―We are

tired of poverty, we‘re tired of crime, we‘re tired of blight, and we‘re

willing to do something on our end to make a difference. We‘re gonna

organize and come to you with a plan and we‘re gonna tell you what we

need in order for us to successfully get our community where it needs to

be‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 73).

Richardson‘s Reverse Path: The Policing Committee

In the meantime, Richardson was busy putting together his own community-

building efforts. His measures were aimed at bettering life in all sections of District 1.

Even so, there was no doubt that Trinity Gardens was a focal point for him—or, in the

more common parlance many interview subjects used, was in many ways ―his baby.‖ The

neighborhood simply had more problems than other communities. It was the center of

crime in the district, and as such it demanded more attention. Richardson recalled telling

Mayor Dow about his plans, and that he was asking for Dow‘s total support in every area.

―He told me, ‗Fred if you can take Trinity Gardens around, there will be no excuse for us

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to have any part of our city which ain‘t turned around,‘ and he probably said that because

he didn‘t believe that it would happen‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 1).

So it was with the neighborhood in mind that the councilman first began devising

a plan for community policing in the district. On the other hand, Richardson did not so

much come up with a long-range, point-by-point plan as he did several pragmatic-minded

ideas, the first of which was to ask the Mobile Police Department to assign an officer to

work in Trinity Gardens full-time. Trinity Gardens, the councilman explained, was at the

time in a departmental district called Beat 30, one that did have officers assigned full-

time. It was thought that officers avoided Trinity Gardens, and instead patrolled the

Beltline Road that paralleled Interstate 65. Consequently, Richardson decided to meet

with the police chief about this particular problem. In response, the department created

another police district for Trinity Gardens, Beat 38. Richardson told police that he wanted

an officer who came to the neighborhood willingly, however. He did not want an officer

who was ―frightened out of his wits‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 2) patrolling the neighborhood

because such an officer was too likely to react, to harass citizens, or to be too quick to

react. He wanted, instead, a police officer who was comfortable with his surroundings.

Later on, Richardson decided to call a community meeting, with the express

purpose of devising a strategy to, in his own words, take the community back. He

explained:

Over there at that meeting I had somebody sitting up there with a

flip chart, and I had all of the streets in Trinity Gardens up there. And I

said I would need a street captain on all of these streets, and I showed

them the streets. And I said . . .we're going to come back in two weeks,

and when I call the roll, I want somebody to answer. I said, I'm not going

to ask you tonight to be a street captain, but in order to take this

neighborhood back, you've got to be my eyes and my ears. You've got to

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say, "I will be responsible for my street," to report any inappropriate

activity. "Anything going on strange, I will report it." So when we came

back, it was unbelievable. "First Avenue," they called the name. "Give us

your address!" We called every street in Trinity Gardens. We had two and

three people on every street to sign up to be a captain in Trinity Gardens.

(Mikell, 2003, p. 2)

These ―captains‖ would become members of an organization, known as the District One

Community Policing Committee. After establishing a formal structure and electing

officers, the group would hold meetings every month for the next three years, skipping

months only for holidays. The focus of its meetings also remained fairly constant—

tackling issues important within the district. Also seen as important were the unique

problems of the neighborhoods in which the meetings were held; the meetings were thus

held in a different part of the district every month. Over time, the agendas for the

meetings evolved or branched out into community development rather than just crime

prevention. The basic format of the meetings, however, did not substantially change;

neither, it was noted, did the level of interest from district residents waver.

The Mobile police department, one police official pointed out, worked with about

70 to 80 other officially recognized community groups connected to its crime prevention

program. Community policing techniques were used department-wide, and police

regularly participated in meetings throughout the city. Even so, it was suggested that the

committee Richardson helped establish would remain singular in both its design and

orientation, largely because of its distinctive district-wide meetings.

The key to everything, however, was Richardson. One police administrator noted

that it took a great amount of time and energy to devote to such meetings. Given this, he

recalled, ―I honestly thought maybe after the election was over he might go away. I was a

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little suspicious. But he did not‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 86). The fact that he did stick around,

the official believed, was very gratifying because police needed to work with residents

and civic organizations. Mobile police learned over time that their job was too big and

complex to handle alone.

The administrator was one of several interview subjects that stressed how unique

both the community meetings and the creation of the District 1 Policing Committee were.

Another, more theoretically-oriented police administrator described the case in a more

straightforward fashion: Richardson did everything backwards, the opposite of the way

standard texts in neighborhood organizing had it; that is, he took the way community

building was usually handled, and did the reverse. Typically, neighborhood or

community builders would organize groups at the micro level, and only after this process

began, hold a large meeting. Richardson, by contrast, held a big meeting, and from that

meeting he gained volunteer street captains. In the process, Richardson showed that there

was more than one way from A to point B. What the councilman did worked. His model

would not, however, become adopted throughout the city, even though police

administrators tried to encourage such.

Many administrators noted that the tone of the meetings was unique, largely

because of the way Richardson handled them. One interview subject memorably

described the meetings as ―a cross between an evangelical prayer meeting and a problem

solving conference‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 235). To sum it up, Richardson tried to boost the

confidence and enthusiasm of the participants, in a way common to both preachers and

motivational speakers. At the same time, he often asked participants to tell him about

community problems.

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The police department nevertheless worked quite frequently with the Bay Area

Women Coalition as well. The organization was in fact considered one of dozens of

community groups with which it worked citywide. Whatever the case, most of the police

officials interviewed agreed that working with the BAWC worked very well for the

department. On the whole, the group received as much, or more, credit from police for its

efforts in Trinity Gardens than the District 1 Community Policing Committee. To a

certain degree, police even seemed to link the two groups together, or to talk about them

in an inextricably linked fashion. While police administrators interviewed referred to the

efforts or the support of the Trinity Gardens ―community,‖ they were often referring

specifically to the work of the BAWC and the District 1 committee.

Police grew more accustomed over the 1990s to working with volunteer

organizations. In Mobile, however, there was no great idealistic movement which brought

this about. Instead, working with such groups was an example of pragmatism brought

about by economic circumstances. To put it bluntly, Mobile was not an affluent city by

North American standards. Many interview subjects pointed out that the police

department had limited funds with which to work, so the department had to be creative.

One officer recalled going to Chicago and hearing that administrators there had hired

civilians to organize neighborhoods for community policing efforts. Mobile could not

have considered undertaking any such effort, given that it did not have the necessary

dollars. The department most certainly could not look to the state of Alabama for funding

either, given its marked tendency toward penny pinching. Furthermore, in 2003, the state

contemplated the possibility of making draconian budget cuts, just to keep operations

going at a minimum. To make matter worse, the city‘s own sales tax collections were

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falling. Mobile police were forced to depend, instead, on a certain civic spirit and more

than a little loyalty and passion for their community policing-oriented efforts to work.

Development‘s Future: Factionalism, Competition

Whatever led to the partnership between the city and community, it was clear that

its formation did lead to action. This partnership was definitely not a neighborhood-wide

version of a breakfast club or coffee klatch. Whether it would evolve into something else

entirely, or follow along a Douglass North-like historical path from then on, was another

question.

The history of police work and neighborhood organization suggested that the path

would change, however, with the lifespan of the social networks involved. The

community policing model so popular in the 1990s, as one officer pointed out, differed

greatly from the partnerships police formed with the wider community in the past. In the

1960s, by contrast, the model for police and community relations was the neighborhood

watch group. These groups did not have a particularly complex agenda. Citizen

participants instead took turns canvassing neighborhoods at night. Such efforts were an

easy thing to organize, since neighbors in most places tended to look out for one another.

The nuclear family was more common, while mobility was not as great. Eventually,

though, neighborhood watch programs came to be victims of their own success. Crime

would be driven out of a neighborhood, and only a few residents would stay interested;

sometimes, these residents would do little more than pester law enforcement officials

(Mikell, 2003a). The groups also died out because connections in the neighborhoods

became looser, the officer suggested, in a way that seemed at odds with Putnam‘s (1993,

2000) statements about the power of weak ties. The dominance of weaker links in

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communities, the officer believed, did not bode well for neighborhood watch groups

(Mikell, 2003a).

By contrast, the organization of Trinity Gardens—which was more in line with

the community policing ideal, even if distinct in how it was undertaken—was something

in which municipal government was a more active agent, or in which it kept in touch with

groups more frequently. The groups involved discussed and addressed not just crime and

crime prevention but a wide range of community development issues. To a certain

degree, this multifaceted approach was made possible by the fact that law enforcement

and other local government organizations came to see a wide array of community

development issues as linked to crime prevention. The perception of the role of police

also underwent enormous change. Much of the public, one interview subject suggested,

came to view police officers as problem solvers, rather than just crime stoppers.

Exactly how organized the area came to be, however, was far from agreed upon.

In a speech given at a Dotch Community Center on a rainy July 4th

in 2003, Richardson

attributed the success of organizational efforts to the neighborhood‘s lack of the irksome

phenomenon that Madison, in Federalist No. 10, famously labeled the ―violence of

faction‖ (Madison, 2005). The ―factionalism‖ the councilman spoke about referred, in

more common English, to competition between groups, or the activity of a minority

interest, that could eat at the social fabric and reduce the problem-solving capacity of

government. However, one longtime observer indicated that relations were not

necessarily all of the sweetness-and-light sort in Trinity Gardens. The interests of the Bay

Area Women were not necessarily shared by all in the community, either. Personalities

and family connections, as well as connections to criminal elements, sometimes resulted

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in factionalism. On the whole, it was suggested, the partnership between the city and the

BAWC definitely paid off for the community. The power dynamics in the neighborhood,

however, were not always easily spotted or explicable.

Whatever the case, the Bay Area Coalition was definitely not the only

organization within the area that showed a great interest in development issues. At least

two churches, for instance, were also highly active, and the neighborhood‘s religious

community was perceived as an important source of power and influence on the whole.

Mayor Dow, in first meeting with the BAWC, noticed as much by suggesting that the

area‘s thirty or more churches represented one of Trinity Gardens‘s most significant

strengths. Bay Area members also frequently met with pastors, and in fact had done so

since the group began trying to reach out to the larger community.

These particular churches seemed especially worthy of attention, however. They

were located just a few hundred feet from one another, but sat in different places in

relation to how their leaders viewed community development issues. Church 1 worked

closely with the Bay Area Women Coalition and local governments. It had long been

active in community affairs, in large part because the church operated a private school.

The church hosted community development-related meetings, and was a player in several

key development efforts of the late 1990s. By comparison, the Church 2 grew

tremendously over a far shorter period. Its pastor decided only late in the game that he

needed to start ministering to the surrounding neighborhood.

However, Church 2's vision did not necessarily align with that of the BAWC, or

of local government officials and the police department. The church brought a different

slant to the community development process, because its pastor saw its priority as being

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in the area of spiritual uplift and human capital as it related to the same. The church

consequently opened a drug rehabilitation center, and provided shelter for homeless

persons, and was considered partnering with others to provide a health clinic and

domestic violence shelter. Moreover, despite Church 2‘s greater attention to spiritual

matters, its leadership assisted in the creation of a community development corporation

that was poised to become involved in more seemingly temporal areas. The CDC‘s

funding and finances were to be separated even if the church planned to occasionally

partner with the agency. The agency had, by the summer of 2003, received a grant from a

non-profit agency to start a program for entrepreneurial education. It also attained faith-

based grant monies—that is, money given by federal agencies to religious organizations

involved in social services—by way of a major area non-profit, social service

organization. Still, in 2003, Church 2 was a relatively fresh entrant into Trinity Gardens‘s

community development landscape. Whether it would provide a serious alternative to

government in economic development programs was far from clear. All that seemed clear

was that the church‘s leadership would more than likely have maintained an independent

stance, even while realizing—as its pastor put it—that the goals of the church and

government could sometimes align.

The competition for ideas did not stop with the churches. Another civic

organization, the Bullshead Community Action group, was winning some notice in 2003.

It appeared, however, not to have as broad a base of support as the longer-running

organization. The group was also more concerned with a particular area of Trinity

Gardens, namely the area in and around the former Queen‘s Court apartment complex in

Prichard. The organization was headed by relatives of Kearis Bonham, a three-year-old

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who was killed during a shootout in 2001 between police and gang members at the

complex. That being said, the BAWC‘s Dubose was the master of ceremonies at an anti-

violence rally sponsored by the Bullshead group in 2003.

By the summer of 2003, then, development in Trinity Gardens had become a

more crowded affair. What seemed poised to change, as a consequence, was the direction

of the neighborhood‘s development. In some ways, such competition appeared to have

been the result of perceived successes. At the same time, as the rise of the Bullshead

group and the church CDC demonstrated, new community leaders were able to arrive on

the development scene despite the partnership between the Bay Area Women and city

agencies and officialdom. This should not have been unexpected. Community

development efforts anywhere could be altered by unexpected events, such as major

crimes or disasters. They also were open to change by way of specific government

policies, including ones like the Bush administration‘s faith-based initiatives. This

program, in particular, had the potential to have more of an impact in places like Trinity

Gardens. This community of some 4,000 people had almost 30 churches. Religion was a

part of the fabric of society throughout the United States, but not many American

neighborhoods of comparable size would have dedicated an entire month to inter-faith

revivals and clergy exchanges, as happened in Trinity Gardens in 2003. African-

American churches in the South and elsewhere in America also had a tendency to double

as more generally social and political institutions. How church leaders chose to view or

cooperate with government officials and other civic players, and vice versa, thus

promised to have an enormous impact on community development. On the other hand, as

one interview subject involved in social services noted, churches had long been active

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within the community, organizing children‘s choirs and the like. The effect of their work

was already difficult to overstate.

Even though this competition for ideas made the future direction of Trinity

Gardens‘s development harder to predict, though, times had certainly changed.

Richardson went as far as in December 2003 to tell fellow city council members that the

neighborhood had been cleaned up. The Mobile Register, he said, had been wrong in

suggesting that Trinity Gardens was drug-infested (City of Mobile, 2003). (The paper

suggested as much in an article on AIDS and HIV education that focused on how the

disease affected neighborhood residents.) Debatable as that may have been, the

neighborhood was, at the very least, fighting for its long-term existence as a viable

community. Even so, the notion that the neighborhood could not be saved was to many

minds a notion best left to local history.

Summary: Openness in Development

What the Trinity Gardens experience also appeared to cast aside was the idea that

no agents of government could have little, if any, effect upon community organizing, and

encouraging trust and cooperation between various factions within a neighborhood.

Richardson and others within Mobile officialdom and its municipal bureaucracy did

appear to give focus for or channel the effects of the neighborhood‘s social capital. The

process was not a carefully planned one, however. Richardson certainly had a plan, if a

vague one, and kicked the process off. All the while, however, he handed power to

others, and sought community input. He did so, first, by forming the District 1

Community Policing Committee. He also depended upon the assistance and activism of

the Bay Area Women‘s Coalition, a relatively new group that shared his concerns and

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hopes for the neighborhood, although it developed independently. Richardson did not

pressure people to work with him, or turn to sycophantic assistants for advice. The

development process in Trinity Gardens was left open to seemingly all comers.

The relationship between officialdom and Trinity Gardens community leaders,

then, was not unidirectional. Government agents did not give orders and act as a one-way

conduit of information. To the contrary, a public forum or space was created in which

developmental issues and plans could be worked out. And particular civic activists or

participants took full advantage of this opportunity. Out of this effort, a partnership

flowered.

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CHAPTER VI

PROPOSITION 2

The relationship between social capital and government was ultimately

tied in with the success of community development efforts.

The community organizing efforts that took place in Trinity Gardens in the late

1990s were undertaken with categorically civic purposes in mind. Neither the District 1

Community Policing Committee, nor the Bay Area Women Coalition, were formed with

strictly social aims, even if the women had first come together for an aborted

entrepreneurial effort. Most, if not all, of the neighborhood personalities involved had

known each other for years, so they needed no introductions. Their expressed goal was to

save a community that had become crime-ridden, and which had long since lost so much

vitality.

This organizational effort began with crime prevention and anti-blight efforts. The

larger goal of those involved, however, almost from the beginning had been the creation

of a self-contained community, one with all the basic amenities of a more affluent city

neighborhood or at least a typical small town, including a fire department, a library,

exercise facilities, expansive parks, and arts and performance spaces. To a certain extent,

these goals grew in reach because of the emphasis on crime, given that development had

become interlinked with crime prevention. Even so, as the organizing process continued,

it might have seemed as if the end of a broader sort of development was being met in part

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through sheer inertia or, as several interview subjects suggested, the sort of success that

can result in more success.

Upon closer investigation, one could see the development following along certain

lines—not clear or solid ones, but ones that marked a certain rough path when taken

together. Ideas that started as a dream in one person‘s head ended up being tackled by

others. Problems identified by certain key players eventually met solutions, although

seldom in the exact manner that anyone had predicted. Such solutions did not seem to be

the result of blind luck, though. Development occurred in the manner it did, the results

suggest, because the major players and organizations involved were focused and had

long-range goals.

How the development process evolved in Trinity Gardens is detailed below. Many

specific initiatives and projects that were undertaken during the mid-1990s are discussed.

Only projects that were mentioned by interview subjects, or discovered through searches

of government documents, are mentioned. Meanwhile, the respective efforts and goals of

the city government, the Bay Area Women Coalition and other area organizations,

governments, and agencies are highlighted. The chapter also includes a consideration of

the future of Trinity Gardens‘s development.

It seemed safe to say, first, that what sparked the development process in Trinity

Gardens was at least partially the result of a unique set of circumstances. The decline of

Trinity Gardens, and more especially the high crime there, was by most accounts what

led to the involvement of Mobile‘s municipal government, and Fred Richardson

individually. As shown in the previous chapter, institutions were also well-situated to

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have an impact in this lower-income area of metropolitan Mobile. City government was

particularly essential in regard to crime prevention.

Even so, the proposition examined here is that neither government nor social

capital could have done without each other in sparking the area‘s development, and this

was evidently the case in Trinity Gardens. As Woolcock (1998) might have suggested,

top-down efforts may have been needed to introduce, sustain, and institutionalize

"bottom-up" development. Nevertheless, the line between bottom-up and top-down in

Trinity Gardens was often vague. Development efforts in the area came to be far flung,

making the line more ambiguous. By the summer of 2003, Trinity Gardens was not just

experiencing a decrease in its crime rate, but witnessing the construction of a new

subsidized housing subdivision, as well as the construction of a nearby community center

with recreational facilities and a large amphitheater and performing arts center. Street

improvements were made. Drainage work worth approximately $16 million was

considered. Dozens of abandoned houses had been torn down. Moreover, there were

plans to open a community library. New programs were undertaken for the elderly and

the training and education of area youth. Moreover, it seemed clear that the potential for

continued expansion of development existed. People in Trinity Gardens, or at least the

most active ones, were definitely peering off into the distance and trying to figure out

what would come next, or needed to come next.

City Government‘s Priorities

Exactly when municipal efforts began to have an impact on development in

Trinity Gardens was open to debate, but opinion coalesced around the notion that said

efforts were rooted in events that occurred a decade or more before. Many residents

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pointed to the appointment of the city‘s first minority police chief in the early 1990s as a

marker for the beginning of changes there. Indeed, he was often cited for boosting crime

prevention efforts within the city‘s boundaries. Before the chief took his position, a

greater emphasis had been placed on detention and arrests; afterward, prevention came to

have equal stature.

Others, particularly administrators from both the public and non-profit sectors,

noted that the city had undergone significant structural changes not long before the chief

began his tenure. The city went from having a commission form of government to the

venerable mayor-council form. Formerly, city operations had been overseen by three at-

large commissioners. Afterward, Mobile would have seven council members elected by

the district and a mayor elected at large. This 1985 development was required to keep the

city from diluting minority voter strength and to keep the city‘s representational system

in accordance with federal one-person, one-vote requirements. The result, several

interviewees suggested, was to make representatives more responsive and accountable to

people in specific geographic areas. One observer noted that even if the changes were not

mentioned often in discussions about places like Trinity Gardens, ―It happens to be a

great sociological fact‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 236). It was within this context that Richardson

entered political office. He believed, first of all, in the basic precepts of community

policing and with the emphasis on crime prevention. He also agreed with the idea,

prevalent in community policing literature, that there was a correlation between blight

and crime. He realized that one of District 1's neighborhoods, Trinity Gardens, had both a

serious crime problem and a serious blight problem. Almost immediately upon taking

office, Richardson decided to tackle both problems simultaneously.

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The crackdown on blight, however, received more immediate citizen reaction than

did crime prevention and eradication efforts, because more citizens were affected in a

direct and unpleasant fashion. Many citizens, to put it bluntly, found themselves facing

fines. It soon became apparent that Richardson requested that the city‘s Development

Department put together a list of properties with trash and abandoned cars, and

overgrown lots. A consequence of this effort was that around 320 tickets were issued to

area property owners. These individuals were then given a chance to meet their legal

obligations in some way. Those who did not come to terms with the city were formally

charged with code violations. If they decided to contest any charges, residents were

required to go before the Mobile Environmental Court, a court of original jurisdiction that

dealt in part with violations of city code contributing to blight. Within a couple of years,

environmental court sessions would be held in District 1, mainly in the neighboring area

of Toulminville. In August 2003, one court session was held inside the Dotch

Community Center in Trinity Gardens.

The reaction to the anti-blight initiative was swift. People called Richardson and

other city officials and asked, or demanded to know, why they were issued citations.

They would sometimes contend that they did not realize they were even breaking the law

by, for instance, keeping a junked car in a particular yard. Richardson said he would

typically, after hearing such a rationale, query a caller as to whether he or she were

concerned about crime. Upon hearing the inevitable yes, he would inform residents of the

pretext behind the crackdown—namely, that it would help to rid the community of the

conditions that bred crime. Consequently, Richardson‘s message would be, ―Get that junk

out of your yard!‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 9). In dealing with such problems, the councilman

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decided that municipal officials needed to take a hard line. The same attitude was taken

by the environmental court in dealing with violations. If people removed junk from their

property within a reasonable amount of time, the judge would drop all charges. If not,

they were fined. City officials had apparent compassion, in other words, but refused to be

seen as enabling anyone contributing to litter or blight, and by extension allowing said

individuals to impose their issues on everyone else.

Soon after taking office, the councilman formed the Community Policing

Committee. He did so, more specifically, after calling an emergency meeting regarding

the crime situation in Trinity Gardens and surrounding areas of Mobile. From this

meeting evolved a series of other public meetings, ones held by the committee every

month, in a different part of District 1. Moreover, that first meeting was organized with

the intent of getting citizens more interested in anti-crime measures. Citizens were asked

to report any suspicious activity of which they were aware, and to put these concerns onto

paper and mail them to a specific post office box. No one was required to leave a name.

People were reluctant to use the service at first, but eventually, the idea took hold. These

dual efforts did not go unnoticed. After a time, Richardson‘s office began receiving more

calls from citizens, and not only about blight but about crime. Citizens alerted police to

changes in the methods of drug dealers, such as hiding drugs underneath water meters.

These residents, Richardson believed, were on top of things, and did not fear speaking up.

The councilman also employed the assistance of residents and the Bay Area

Women Coalition in putting together a list of street lights that needed to have their bulbs

replaced. He then turned the list over to Alabama Power Company, the city‘s electric

utility, which replaced all the lights listed. By the time the work was done, the

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councilman suggested, ―Every street in Trinity Gardens was lit up like Broadway in New

York‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 4).

Meanwhile, the District 1 Community Policing Committee organized what were

known as community clean-up days. The idea was to get together on particular Saturdays

and clean up police districts known as beats. Beforehand, the group‘s street captains

would recruit volunteers. Later, officers from the department‘s crime prevention unit

would show up with a van at the chosen location, with all the necessary equipment. Both

committee members and volunteers would then pick up trash. They were joined by land

use code staff from the city‘s Urban Development Department, who issued citations for

serious violations. The committee was further assisted in its efforts by Keep Mobile

Beautiful, a branch of the national anti-litter organization Keep America Beautiful.

Both official and volunteer participants recalled that litter clean-ups became

major community events rather quickly. As one noted, ―It‘s almost like, success breeds

success but, in this case, cleaning up your community breeds more people to have the

same ambition and goals‖ (Mikell, 2003). Of course, as one administrator involved

pointed out, the clean-ups had not left the participating communities free of litter, nor

were they ever likely to do so. These events were also not easy to put together, and could

certainly not be organized every weekend. Trash would thus inevitably show up in the

affected areas not long after the clean-ups, even if their collective grime did not reach

previous levels. Certainly, the Trinity Gardens of 2003 would not have been mistaken as

far as its cleanliness went for Fairhope, the preternaturally gleaming, yet quaint,

retirement and arts center on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay. The presence of plastic soft

drink bottles in random locations was almost always conspicuous in Trinity Gardens. On

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the other hand, there were far more and far larger piles of trash on the streets and empty

sections of Prichard, and in other low-income sections of Mobile such as the public

housing development colloquially known as Orange Grove.

These events, it should be noted, served a secondary function in getting citizens

out and about. In doing so, the program increased the chances that residents would

become aware of what was going on in their neighborhood. Like Jacobs (1961),

Richardson believed that having citizens on the streets would help keep the criminal

element on its toes, because citizens would notice any suspicious activity. As he put it, ―If

you‘re out there cutting your yard, painting your house, and trimming your hedges, that

means you‘ve got eyes and ears out there‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 27). It was also thought that

the cleanups would demonstrate community competenency. The idea here seemed to be

that perceptions could often be as important as reality. Richardson noted, ―If someone

asks you, ‗What is the worst area in the city?‘ you‘re going to be naming the most

blighted area‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 9).These anti-blight programs, and the more purely crime

prevention-oriented ones detailed in Chapter V, were the hallmark of the early stages of

development in Trinity Gardens. Even then, however, those attending the meetings found

over time that citizens were interested in more than anti-crime measures. As one observer

recalled:

What we found is that most people are concerned about the basic quality

of life issues. When we first started meeting, we thought, "Well, they're

going to be worried about murders and robberies and things of that

nature." It very rarely comes up. It's mostly about people speeding down

the street, throwing trash in their yards or not keeping their yard clean, or

music being too loud in the neighborhood—things as simple as that; but

they're quality of life issues. A person wants to able to walk outside their

house and walk down the street and not be bothered, is what it amounts to.

They don't want to be approached by a homeless person, they don't want

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to be approached by a purse snatcher or somebody that's going to bother

them. They realize that there are murders and serious crime in this city but

they feel like the chances of their being involved is very, very low. They

do express their concern about the basic things. They don't like people

playing loud music in their cars going down the street, the boom-boxes,

they don't like the trash on the streets, they don't like the water backing up

in their drainage, they don't like things of that nature. (Mikell, 2003, p. 80)

Over time, as shown above, Richardson‘s vision came to be intertwined with

larger goals and aspirations of Trinity Gardens residents. More significantly, his vision

would come to be conjoined with the community-minded goals and aspirations of one

particular subset of female residents.

Bay Area Women: Forming A Partnership

While local officialdom worked closely with neighborhood civic groups

throughout Mobile proper, none of these groups came to be as prominent as the Bay Area

Women Coalition. The organization‘s leaders were so active that they became regular

neighborhood fixtures, almost something akin to de facto public officials. Co-founder

Levonnes Dubose, in particular, made her ever-gregarious presence felt, whether people

were ready for it or not. She had as high a visibility quotient as any local government

official and frequently appeared alongside elected officials at public events and meetings

such as those of the District 1 Community Policing Committee.

Dubose and the BAWC‘s partnership with the city nonetheless started with more

than a hint of confrontation. There was also some mistrust, one observer noted, stemming

from the negative experiences many African-Americans had with police. As noted in the

previous chapter, group members went to the mayor‘s office early on to confront him

about the problems in Trinity Gardens. Members similarly showed a tape of Trinity

Gardens to other city officials to more or less shame them into coming out in favor of

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paying attention to problems in the neighborhood. Dubose and other members constantly

wrote letters to city officials, in order to get their attention.

By the end of the 1990s, times had certainly changed, even if members were still

keeping the heat on city officials. By then, Bay Area group members were regularly

meeting with police, along with members of the Civic Club, at least once a month. It was,

one member noted, an amazing thing that happened:

When we meet with them we're thinking, ―They're gonna make the

neighborhood better.‖ They're saying we're the ones who make our

neighborhood better. And we're saying, their presence is the one that's

making our neighborhood better. So that‘s a partnership we did not have

before. (Mikell, 2003, p. 190)

In the interim, the group had become involved in all facets of Trinity Gardens‘s

development. BAWC members were involved not just with local police but federally-

sponsored Weed and Seed crime prevention programs in both Mobile and Prichard. They

lobbied for the Richardson Heights housing development. The group even had a hand in

naming the development, as they also had with the new Michael C. Dow amphitheater

and performing arts center. In both cases, the women shrewdly suggested naming the

developments after officials who were not only still living but still in office.

The group‘s work did not go unnoticed. At nearly every major public meeting or

event within Trinity Gardens, there was some type of acknowledgment of the group‘s

work and presence. Many interview subjects—of all sorts, from key city figures to non-

profit directors—praised or at least prominently mentioned Dubose and the BAWC when

talking about Trinity Gardens. One could have noticed the centrality of the organization‘s

role, however, just by spending a week or so in neighborhood development circles.

Dubose and, to a lesser degree, her BAWC cohorts were ubiquitous when it came to area

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civic events. She was, moreover, ebullient in a frequently over-the-top fashion, and

intentionally entertaining besides. In this way, she fulfilled a sort-of social role that the

city leaders did not. One administrator said of her, ―She‘s the real matriarch of that

community in enthusiasm‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 240).

To see Dubose in action was, in most cases, to understand. At one of

Richardson‘s District 1 Community Policing Committee meetings, for instance, she was

practically bouncing around the room. Before the meeting, she greeted people and gave

most of the attendees she greeted kisses that, apparently due to both force and the amount

of cosmetics involved, left lipstick marks. Even those who were not particularly well

accustomed to the ways of this civic dynamo were granted such a welcome. A

demonstration of both her ebullience or grandiosity and closeness to officials came later,

when she was asked by Richardson to wish one official in attendance a happy birthday.

She waltzed over to the official, put a dollar in his pocket and gave him a hearty kiss on

the cheek, a move that left most of the crowd laughing. Similarly, when working as the

master of ceremonies at an anti-crime rally in Prichard, she introduced officials and

dignitaries from both Prichard and Mobile by contributing salty commentary on their

appearance. Nearly all such VIPs were said to look good, either in those exact words or

more elaborate terminology or colloquialisms. Singling out Dubose for all attention

would be misguided, however. The local matriarch was frequently accompanied by five

other core BAWC members. Still, it was Dubose who usually acted as the public face of

the organization. When interviewees talked about citizens of the community growing

tired of crime and taking action into their own hands, they were usually speaking of the

BAWC and not one particular person.

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Typically, praise of the Bay Area Women Coalition in interviews came in a

roundabout way. One administrator, for instance, suggested that the development effort in

Trinity Gardens did not come from any specific person or agency. Instead, he thought

many ideas were coming about simultaneously. What substantially helped to bring such

change about, in any case, was that some particularly active Trinity Gardens residents

wanted it. He recalled, ―Some very strong leadership—and you‘d never guess who I‘m

talking about—emerged and that helped substantially‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 124). The Bay

Area Women, the administrator thought, exercised a leadership of the type essential for

neighborhood development. These comments echoed the social capital literature, the

work of Putnam (1993, 1995, 2000) in particular, in its stress on the absolute necessity of

existing social capital. Concomitantly, it was noted, ―It‘s a leadership that has to develop

within the community. It can‘t be imported from any other governmental source‖ (Mikell,

2003, p. 127). Government‘s role, the official suggested, was nonetheless important in

regard to the nurturing of civic-related organizations.

Changing the Status Quo: Municipal Efforts

Efforts by the city to nurture or support the organizing of communities did not, by

contrast, always work so smoothly. Some veterans of the neighborhood development

scene noted that sometimes only one or two people would be interested in anti-crime

efforts within a neighborhood or particular area. Attendance at meetings would, as a

consequence, be invariably low. These individuals may have had the drive, but they were

unable to get others involved. Sometimes, this occurred because there was no sense of

urgency among residents about their situation, particularly in areas with lower crime

rates. The status quo may have been deemed acceptable. Nonetheless, the situation in

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Trinity Gardens had become grave enough that many in the community at large felt they

had no choice but to become involved in crime prevention.

Meanwhile, finding a common denominator in Trinity Gardens was not an

elementary task, even for experienced investigators. There were always, as one observer

put it, outliers that proved a hassle in north Mobile, up to and including the fact that

crime problems involved Prichard. Even basic logic, however, would have suggested that

the interests of the Bay Area Women would not always align with the interest of every

individual within the neighborhood. To cite the most evident example, citizens involved

in crime surely had no desire to be involved with Bay Area members, because they were

likely seen as working in conjunction with Mobile police. By the same token, some

neighborhood residents had a tendency to let personalities cloud their judgement of

individual motivations—a tendency not uncommon to human association in general, but

perhaps more prevalent than normal in lower-income neighborhoods. Some family-

oriented factionalism existed as well.

In short, police had to circumnavigate or manipulate the elements of a crime

prevention terrain in Trinity Gardens that was more complicated than what might have

initially seemed apparent, in order to full take advantage of the partnership with

community stakeholders. Even so, such difficulties were not seen as having made the

partnership any less authentic, and certainly did not keep the partnership from being a

fruitful one. Observers suggested that the Bay Area Women seemed deserving of

enormous credit.

The neighborhood coalition did not want to stop at crime prevention. Group

members had long had an ambitious agenda. Exhibit A in the case for this idea was an

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unofficial city document called a ―community vision report‖ that was produced in 1998

as part of the Neighborhood Collaborative Planning program of Mobile‘s Urban

Development Department. The program was a citywide one that included public

hearings. Afterward, Trinity Gardens was selected as the pilot location for a more

extensive collaborate planning process. According to the department‘s report, the area

was chosen for the following reasons:

1. Established, active civic organizations existed in Trinity Gardens.

2. The development of a joint project with Prichard existed.

3. Residents had expressed interest in participating in the project.

4. The area was identified as a Community Development Block Grant site.

5. Citizen concerns, as expressed at informational meetings, showed that

Trinity Gardens was in need of revitalization.

An executive board was created to assist with the process. BAWC members made

up most of the board‘s membership. The document showed what residents, and

particularly area civic leaders, thought were or should have been area priorities. Several

of the priorities listed below continued to receive attention from area residents or in some

cases were fulfilled in some manner. What seemed more remarkable about the document

was not how it was dominated by crime prevention measures, but instead fueled by a

more all-encompassing vision for development. The requests were listed as follows:

1. Police Community Advisory Board. The board would include representatives

from the Mobile and Prichard police departments. Its reason for existence would have

been to provide Trinity Gardens residents with direct input into crime prevention.

Mobile‘s police chief told the development group that Mobile Police Department

representatives would regularly meet with the advisory board. He further offered to

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attend the meetings periodically. The Prichard police chief, however, indicated that the

city‘s budget problems and shortage of personnel kept her from fully committing.

2. Public Library. The neighborhood planning board requested a branch of the

Mobile Public Library in the neighborhood since no such facility was accessible to many

Trinity Gardens residents. The absence of a library was said to contribute to low area

education levels and reading skills. However, the director of the Mobile system told the

board that a library was already located within a two-mile radius, in Toulminville.

Furthermore, the Loop area of Mobile‘s Midtown area was also predominantly low-

income and in need of library services.

3. Post Office. The board did not give any elaborate reasons for requesting

consideration of a branch office for Trinity Gardens. A U.S. Postal Service representative

told board members that the main criteria for opening a post office was population

growth. Even so, he thought the Post Office could contract with a commercial

establishment to handle certain postal duties, such as the sale of stamps and money

orders. (A post office was located in Prichard, and about 1.5 miles away from most

Trinity Gardens residents.)

4. Health Care Facility. Many residents, the board noted, did not have the

transportation available to get them to any health care facilities. The elderly population

was in particular need of health services.

5. Neighborhood Revenue and Licensing Office. It would have been good, the

board thought, to have Mobile County and city revenue and license commissioners

housed within the community in order to regulate the activities of businesses operating as

part of an underground economy. The idea here was to crack down on businesses that

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were supporting criminal activities. The board received no promises to open such offices

in Trinity Gardens, mainly due to insufficient personnel, but representatives suggested

that they would work with community groups, and urged citizens with complaints to call

the appropriate city offices.

6. Educational Programs. The board looked into the possibility of year-round

schools, magnet programs at area churches, community-based schools, and post-

secondary school recruitment and retention programs. The magnet school idea, it turned

out, had been discussed by officials of the Mobile County Public School System before.

There were no plans to open them in Trinity Gardens or anywhere else in the county.

University representatives, meanwhile, noted that they already worked to recruit students

at area schools. The representatives expressed an interest in attending neighborhood

meetings to further explain programs to parents and students.

7. Construction of Catholic and Methodist Churches. Little information was

provided regarding the reasoning behind church construction as a development priority.

Even so, the board did receive responses from both Catholic and Methodist

representatives. These representatives informed board members that the construction of

houses of worship depended on some combination of expressed interest and evaluation of

community interests. With the Catholic Church, proximity to existing parishes was a

consideration, as was land availability.

8. Programs for Senior Citizens. Among the facilities for senior citizens that

Trinity Gardens board members requested were a senior citizen-oriented shopping center,

a seniors-oriented fitness facility, and health spa. Board members wanted surrounding

vacant areas studied for possible development. Members were told by a YMCA

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representative that the organization wanted to be involved wherever there was a need for

fitness programs, but that community needs would have to be ascertained, as would costs.

Meanwhile, board members gathered details concerning vacant areas of Trinity Gardens.

One such area, in the south and southeast portion of the community, was a brownfield. It

was bound by railroad tracks on the east, a creek to the south, and city streets to the north.

Several individuals owned parcels of the land, ranging from four to ten acres. The City of

Mobile owned 28 acres of land, zoned for light residential use, near Interstate 65.

9. Transportation. The board had only one request with regard to transportation;

specifically, for plexiglass bus stop shelters. The city‘s Metro Transit Authority informed

the board that the agency had not installed any such shelters in years, although it was in

the process of developing a capital plan, which would entail financing for shelters. These

would be placed at sites according to need. A six-month survey (March to August, 1998)

found that a monthly average of 15,614 individuals used the route serving Trinity

Gardens. (It was, according to a 2000 Mobile Weed and Seed report, the busiest route in

Mobile.)

10. Recreation. The board listed a need for five neighborhood parks, including

ones for adolescents, pre-kindergarten children, and senior citizens, as well as general

family and heritage parks. Although this might have sounded like an outlandish request,

the truth was that Trinity Gardens had fewer park areas than a City of Mobile

comprehensive plan had recommended for a neighborhood of its size. The board also

heard from a representative of Mobile‘s Black History Museum—whose main branch

was located near downtown—concerning the possibility of opening a satellite in Trinity

Gardens. Board members were told that expansion would depend upon financial support

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from the city. The museum curator suggested that, in the interim, the Black History

Museum material could be exhibited at the Dotch Community Center from time to time.

11. Housing. Affordable housing was deemed an area necessity, as was the

upgrading or removal of substandard housing. The board received word that the Martin

Luther King Redevelopment Corporation was working with Mobile officials on plans for

an affordable housing development. It was to be built in an area near First Avenue and

Ruby Street in Trinity Gardens. (This development would be named Richardson

Heights.) Board members also heard from a representative of Habitat for Humanity, who

noted that the non-profit would have to be given the title for land for any project. Finally,

Mobile Housing Board authorities noted that the community was eligible for its

Emergency Home Repair Program. Unfortunately, there were long waiting lists for

individual assistance.

12. Employment and Economic Development. Instead of focusing on business

development, board members looked into the possibility of getting job training for area

residents. They also believed that someone needed to research the work-related needs of

these individuals. A community development programs officer told residents that low-

income residents from throughout the Mobile area would be eligible for training at the

Clinton L. Johnson Economic Development Center near the R.V. Taylor public housing

development in south central Mobile. It took at least 20 to 25 minutes by car to get from

Trinity Gardens to the facility.

13. Child Care. The magnet school issue was addressed by the board again when

addressing child care. A new request concerned the need to crack down on daycare

facilities operating without proper certification. It turned out that such certification was

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not required in Alabama, although the lack of it would have kept a facility from receiving

the business of individuals and families who received state daycare aid.

14. Public (or Building) Safety. The board inquired about the possibility of routine

inspection of public buildings, home daycare and nursing care programs, church

buildings, and operating licenses of businesses including grocers and nightclubs.

Moreover, it let city officials know that 29 homes in Trinity Gardens were without indoor

plumbing. Members were informed by a Mobile city inspector that the city was operating

with a limited number of personnel. A representative of the city‘s Urban Development

Department nevertheless admitted that sometimes complaints about substandard housing

fell through the cracks, given the complexity of working within the Mobile metro area.

15. Other Problem Areas: Among several other issues addressed in the report in

less detail were drainage, a perennial Mobile concern, as well as traffic and speeding,

yard maintenance, and street beautification.

Bay Area Women Coalition members, meanwhile, dreamed of getting for Trinity

Gardens such amenities as a Mobile fire station. The nearest Mobile station, in

Toulminville, was located just two miles away, but traffic and circuitous routes to avoid

rail stops left response times inadequate. As one member put it, ―Every month, we lose a

house in this neighborhood, every month, and they're not being replaced—that aggravates

me‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 193). According to a municipal study, trucks from the Toulminville

station were able to meet the six minute recommended response time on only 62 percent

of all calls. Trinity Gardens was thus next in the city‘s line for a new fire station. A

Prichard station was, meanwhile, located on the northern border of Trinity Gardens,

specifically on St. Stephen‘s Road (U.S. 45) within the Bullshead community.

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Unfortunately, the City of Mobile had an agreement with the financially beleaguered

Prichard to provide all firefighting services for both the Prichard and Mobile sections of

Trinity Gardens.

The creation of a neighborhood-based health clinic would also be a preoccupation

of BAWC leaders. The neighborhood was served by a Mobile County clinic in Eight

Mile, a city located several miles up U.S. 45 and to the west of Prichard. That in itself

was not a particular problem, even if not convenient. The problem was that many Trinity

Gardens residents relied on public transportation to get to the clinic, and bus service was

minimal in Mobile. Despite the clamor of community leaders, there was still no shelter

for the bus stops in Trinity Gardens either. Likewise, the closest hospital to the

neighborhood was the University of South Alabama Medical Center in Toulminville.

Unfortunately, the shortest route to the hospital from the community required the

crossing of a railroad track, one that was still regularly used by Illinois Central for

hauling freight. Once residents finally entered the medical center complex, they faced

long waiting times at the hospital emergency room. According to local media, the

university hospital reported consistently high operating deficits for years, mainly because

it was left virtually alone within the Mobile metro area in the treatment of indigent

patients. Whether private hospitals in the area needed to agree to treat more such patients,

or whether new ways of funding such care needed to be considered, was a perennial

debate topic. Such deliberation, however, had not led to the creation of any viable

solutions (Rabb, 2001).

Neighborhood leaders did gain some attention just by trying to make the gaining

of a health clinic a top priority, however. One observer recalled that these lobbying

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efforts led the Mobile County Health Department to consider a Trinity Gardens site in the

late 1990s. The agency tried to do so independent of officialdom, however, and failed

miserably. In effect, the agency had no well-known and trusted individual or entity to

vouch for it. Another long-time development watcher noted that the agency did not

receive cooperation from a local school on whose property it wanted to locate the facility.

In other areas, BAWC members found more success. This was particularly true of

housing, with the construction of Richardson Heights. Changes that group members

pushed for, though, would largely be made a reality by others. This seemed to be the

story of the coalition‘s existence. For example, the organization did not win a grant that

would have enabled it to start a community development corporation, one through which

it could have put its ideas into action. Nevertheless, the Bay Area Women had done much

toward helping set the tone for development in Trinity Gardens. Moreover, it was seen by

many from outside the community as more representative of the area than any other

individual or organization. Governmental organizations were among those who managed

to put these ideas into effect. The most substantial contributions made by any government

entities, besides the Mobile city government, was the U.S. Department of Justice. Still,

the effects it had, largely through the controlling of area crime through a program known

as Weed and Seed, was not as great as one might have supposed was possible.

Intergovernmental Initiatives: Weed and Seed

For a neighborhood that had been as focused on crime prevention and blight

removal as Trinity Gardens, the entrance of the federal Weed and Seed initiative into the

community appeared to be a natural fit. It was a well-established program that was

focused on both the here-and-now and the long term, a role reflected in its name. Its goal

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was to weed out crime and drugs, and to plant seeds for prevention. Even so, the

initiatives had as of mid-2003 failed to live up to expectations in Trinity Gardens. Exactly

why had much to do with how it was locally structured. The hands-off role taken by the

federal government in implementing the program may not have helped either.

Weed and Seed had been designed with local control and participation in mind. It

was funded by the U.S. Justice Department‘s Office of Justice Programs and facilitated in

cooperation with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. Weed and Seed

had been rather prototypical of its era. It was born during the administration of President

George H.W. Bush and, like so many other programs of the era, relied on such

community support, even while attempting to coordinate the efforts and technical

assistance of multiple federal agencies. The primary Weed and Seed duties in Trinity

Gardens were accordingly handled by local officials, and specifically those of the Mobile

Police Department. The idea was that officials at this level would understand local affairs

better, and thus have more real power in affecting change.

Unfortunately, local control did not work as efficiently in practice as in theory.

As of mid-2003, Mobile Weed and Seed had run through four different local directors.

One was replaced by the police department, while others were promoted out of the

initiative. The local coordinator had just taken over his position in late spring. To make

matters worse, Weed and Seed was designed to encourage partnerships with the private

sector. Even so, there were few businesses of substantial size within the Trinity Gardens

area, and thus few sponsors or partners. Moreover, the Prichard section of the

neighborhood—which included commercial territory—had long been covered by that

city‘s Harlem Area Weed and Seed. As sensible as such a move might have seemed, the

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operations of the Mobile and Prichard sites were never coordinated in any significant

way. They were both initiated and operated separately.

Despite its problems and setbacks, Mobile Weed and Seed was contributing to the

further development of Trinity Gardens. For instance, the program sponsored a summer

children‘s program at the Dotch Community Center. Children were assisted with reading

and math. They were taken on field trips, including a visit to the Aquarium of the

Americas in New Orleans. The department also developed a Police Explorers unit (one

connected to the larger Boy Scouts of America organization) in Trinity Gardens, with

about fifty participants. The unit had more than an educational function, however; it

granted police the opportunity to interact with neighborhood parents. The program was

aimed—as Crothers (2002) suggested was often true of community policing-oriented

programs—at increasing bonds, or trust, between citizens and police, and more especially

police and young people. Furthermore, part of the Explorers concept was to instill in

youth a broader understanding of citizenship, a goal that Levi (1998) had suggested that

government was within its power to meet.

Mobile Weed and Seed also had plans on the table for a housing rehabilitation

initiative. Some $25,000 had been set aside for materials needed to make minor repairs

and paint older homes. The labor was set to be provided by a religious-oriented youth

volunteer organization. The program also furthered the aims of Richardson and the Bay

Area Women with crime prevention, even if only in incremental ways. It allowed police

to dedicate more resources to an area that was already finding success in crime

prevention, and that was reinforcing its success at a critical time. Weed and Seed, it was

said, had already proven its effectiveness in this area. Crime rates had declined in every

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area covered by Weed and Seed in Mobile, including an area a few miles to the east that

borders the city‘s Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Even so, those involved indicated

that the program was having to play catch-up. One officer found unused Weed and Seed

signs in mid-2003 to place around Trinity Gardens, ones that had apparently been lost in

the shuffle of federal strategy implementation. The only consolation was that

neighborhood strategy was only halfway through its funding period. Whether this fact

was either a positive or a negative depended on one‘s vantage point.

The Role of Charitable Organizations and Churches

Two features of community life in Trinity Gardens made it certain that

government and civic groups such as the Bay Area Women Coalition would not be the

only entities involved in area development. First, because it was a predominantly low-

income neighborhood, the area had long received the attention of major metro area non-

profit groups. In African-American neighborhoods, the more established or larger area

Christian churches were accorded an extremely high level of respect. As one BAWC

member noted, people in areas like Trinity Gardens were not very trusting of

government, given negative personal experiences connected to the historical treatment of

black individuals and communities. The word or endorsement of a respected pastor,

however, was seen as something that could go a long way in effecting change in the

neighborhood. The churches had what was more or less described as moral authority, or

at least what Weber (1968) might have recognized as charismatic power. This was

arguably brought about through the association of black churches with the civil rights

movement, and their historical role as safe havens for black self-expression. In fact, two

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churches were bringing—or at least trying to bring—to fruition some of the goals of the

Bay Area Women. One was located in Prichard, while the other was in Mobile.

It was not surprising that Church A would have been working along the same

lines as the BAWC. The institution had long been something of a go-to organization for

government. It was an official safe haven for Weed and Seed, for instance, which more or

less made it a community center and site for the strategy‘s educational efforts. The

longtime neighborhood church, however, was acting in some ways on its own. It was,

most notably, bringing to reality the community library sought by the BAWC and others

on the Trinity Gardens development board. According to one source, the facility was to

be affiliated with the Mobile Public Library, although it would be located on church

property. The plans were to have the library stay open until 8 p.m. and be open part-time

on Saturdays. It was hoped that the library would open with some 25,000 books, and

would add to its collection fairly quickly. Furthermore, 25 computers were ready to be

placed in the new facility. All were to have Internet access.

Located in the Prichard section, Church B had no such history of community

development activity. All the same, its leadership had dreams of bringing a health clinic

to the area, something neither local government nor the Bay Area Women had been able

to accomplish. A community development corporation established by the church also

looked to become involved in youth job skills training. The church-established agency,

however, had the potential to become a competitor for both ideas and grants with the

BAWC, as mentioned previously. It also brought to the table ideas for drug rehabilitation,

a concern that had not previously been cited as a community priority. The role of one

major local non-profit organization was more quiet and maybe even overlooked. The

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Boys & Girls Clubs of South Alabama had nonetheless been active in Trinity Gardens for

almost two decades. In 2003 the non-profit organization continued its work by serving

children in programs at the Dotch Community Center. Before that, the organization

operated out of the nearby Leona Tricksey Center for senior citizens, which had formerly

housed the Dotch Community Center. The Boys and Girls Club was consequently a

fixture of the area‘s youth-targeted development efforts. For instance, it worked with

Mobile Weed and Seed. It was also partnering with a neighborhood church, by way of a

grant it received with Volunteers of America Southeast, to provide job skills training to

adjudicated youth. (The grant required the organization to develop a partnership with a

faith-based organization.)

The organization‘s youth uplift programs extended into the cultural arena. It was a

Boys & Girls Club representative, for example, who suggested that the city put a

recording studio in the Michael C. Dow Amphitheater. The representative took the idea

from a similar program in San Francisco. Other arts programs were set to be made

available for teens at the amphitheater, including dance, music, and other performing

arts-related activities. They were to be held after school, in the evenings, and probably on

Saturdays. Otherwise, the non-profit entity planned to work with a local television station

to teach students how to make their own videos.

At the same time, the youth organization shared credit with the BAWC‘s Dubose

for another cultural coup; namely, the bringing of adult dance classes to the

neighborhood. The classes were led by the director of the Alabama Contemporary Dance

Company, which frequently worked in the area given its association with the Boys and

Girls Clubs. The classes got underway after the company‘s director met Dubose at an

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anti-violence rally in Prichard. The event featured an African dance performance, a

routine similar to one the company used to open ceremonies in New York that

memorialized the World Trade Center disaster of September 11, 2001. The director soon

began holding adult African dance classes in the community, with the idea that adults

who took them would participate in the opening of the Dow Amphitheater in the summer

of 2003. The ceremonies were delayed as a result of heavy rains, which kept the

construction from being completed by the scheduled opening date, but classes were to

continue.

Consistency Versus Expansion in Development

Questions regarding the sustainability of development-related organizational

efforts in Trinity Gardens constituted a crucial issue. What was just as important,

however, and in fact a closely related matter, was the direction in which such efforts

would be channeled. Did they need to continue as they had, or did the focus need to shift

somewhat from crime prevention? Was there a need for a more expansive view of

development in Trinity Gardens, or did civic leaders and government officials with whom

they worked need to keep a steadier course? Opinions differed sharply among interview

subjects. It certainly seemed that vigilance would be required as far as crime prevention

and eradication went. Some observers thought that the manner in which such matters

were approached needed to be reconsidered, at least. Less pressure needed to be placed

on police, in particular, to respond to every small complaint. The fact was, these

observers pointed out, that very little crime actually existed in Trinity Gardens. There

was, consequently, not much left for police and local government to do in this area. Even

so, police continued to receive continuous pressure from neighborhood civic participants.

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The squeaky wheel did indeed get the grease, one observer noted, and Trinity Gardens

residents were right to be so squeaky. Nonetheless, crime was eradicated to such a

point—and people in the neighborhood came to expect so much attention—that any

minor crime‘s effects were magnified. If a ladder was stolen, some residents would have

feared that crime was on the rise again. Of course, one of the observers admitted, there

were still little things that police could have done to ease the concerns of local residents,

among them having an officer to patrol for loitering. Police were looking into funding

just such a patrol through Weed and Seed. Even so, the observer pointed out:

If they‘re looking for a crime-free neighborhood, it‘s not gonna happen.

The only thing that you can hope is to reduce crime to a tolerable level,

but there‘s no area nowhere with no crime. We would like to think so, but

that‘s not gonna happen. (Mikell, 2003, p. 66)

Some residents were looking far past anti-crime measures regardless, as some in

fact long had. At least one civic leader was getting even more ambitious. This individual

had commissioned elaborately detailed plans for a subdivision called Holy Land Heights,

a name that echoed the sometimes nickname of Trinity Gardens—namely, The Promised

Land. (Richardson, it should be noted, was often said to play the Moses role here, even

though, as was noted during the August 2003 environmental court proceeding in the

neighborhood, Moses died without ever setting foot in the original Middle Eastern locale

of the same name.) The development would have been a walled community of the type

often seen in wealthier areas; only the homes in this one were to be marketed to lower

middle income residents.

The proposal also addressed another of Trinity Gardens‘s perceived needs, as

listed in a 1998 report of a Trinity Gardens community development planning board—

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specifically, the need for an exercise and fitness facility. Mobile‘s Dearborn YMCA,

which had served as the black YMCA during the Jim Crow era, was named as the

probable operator of the planned fitness center. Its facilities would be open to anyone

who could afford membership fees. YMCA officials suggested that fees would be needed

in order to pay equipment and upkeep costs. The original idea, which was to have the

facility open to the community, did not appear feasible.

Still, financial issues were holding the plans for Holy Land Heights back. Several

hundred thousand dollars were needed, given the expense of the land, and potentially

high land redevelopment costs. There was in fact a myriad of other problems with the

proposed real estate development. For one, having Prichard, a city with little in the way

of resources and serious crime problems, as a neighbor was an albatross. By the same

token, the undeveloped land on which the theoretical subdivision would be built was

located near active railroad tracks. Earplugs would have been a requirement, in other

words, for the self-selected few who entered the Holy Land—or rather, the Holy Land

development.

As one observer noted, however, such development was needed to keep the

neighborhood‘s development alive. It was essential to try to lure new residents, especially

those with more income, into the area. They needed to be given the sense of living in a

place apart somehow. The other oft-suggested means of making the area viable was the

recruitment and creation of neighborhood businesses. Some observers mentioned that the

lack of a private sector as one of the biggest obstacles in the way of progress in Trinity

Gardens. Because of the lack of such businesses, there was little support for community

activities and initiatives, such as Mobile Weed and Seed.

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The idea that Trinity Gardens could somehow turn itself into a business oasis

struck others as more than a bit absurd, though. Most of the community was zoned for

residential use. Only those areas bordering Interstate 65 were available for non-residential

use, and as noted previously, they were zoned for light industrial use. The nearest

commercial strips were located at the community‘s northern edge in Prichard and to the

south in the Crichton area. Of these, the U.S. 45/St. Stephen‘s Road strip was closer, but

the Crichton community on Moffett Road in Mobile was busier and had more

mainstream, nationally recognized franchise businesses. Even considerable swaths of the

U.S. 45 strip, by contrast, had no businesses on the side closest to Trinity Gardens in

Prichard, but instead featured old warehouses and empty lots. One area resident had been

buying up much of this property, but there were no indications as to his specific plans.

The strategic plan for Weed and Seed suggested that a transitional business zone

be considered for the neighborhood. Such a zone would have promoted pedestrian-

friendly businesses and small retail shops, all located within a comfortable distance from

residents, many of whom did not own vehicles. The sorts of businesses attracted into the

zone would not have degraded the character or value of residential neighborhoods

(Mobile Weed and Seed, 2000, p. 77). Nevertheless, there existed no plans for rezoning.

The main hope for developmental sustainability instead appeared to be the possibility of

gaining some sort of cooperation with Mobile‘s next-door neighbor, Prichard.

Meanwhile, others saw opportunities for continuing development in Trinity

Gardens that did not entail the need for great financing. For instance, one police

administrator expressed excitement about the possibility of opening an actual community

garden within Trinity Gardens. There was, it was noted, empty space within the area that

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could be converted into a sort of natural oasis. The administrator envisioned having

people of all ages working in the garden, with the elderly teaching the students about the

ins and outs of working in the soil. The garden would then have become about something

larger than just crops. It would have been a way of developing a cooperative spirit.

Moreover, it was suggested that such efforts had a secondary effect when people from

outside areas were involved. The work changed the way police saw residents and vice

versa. As a consequence, such activities helped to build ties and increase trust between

individuals. In short, they built what Hornburg and Lang (1997) and Putnam (2000)

would have recognized as social bridges and bridging social capital, respectively. The

administrator continued, in speaking of both Mobile residents and Trinity Gardens

residents more specifically:

If they work on a common goal, then they begin to trust each other. And I

also believe that‘s where some of the racial boundaries have been able to

be broken because if we‘re working together on a common goal, then the

issue of what color you are becomes less important; because you start to

realize that you both want the same thing. You want a place to live that‘s

somewhat safe. You want your kids to grow up in an environment that‘s

conducive to them learning . . . You find out that people are pretty much

the same, they want the same things. Until you begin to know a person and

begin to trust him, you‘ll never overcome the racial barrier, I don‘t

believe. (Mikell, 2003, p. 90)

Such sentiments may have sounded corny, the observer thought, but they nevertheless

seemed to be true.

Summary: Assessing Success

What those involved in the development effort ended up seeing as more

important, then, was not so much whether a relationship between agents of the Mobile

municipal government and social capital led to success, but the very fact that a

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partnership was formed. Many of the ideas brought up before the board for the Trinity

Gardens planning process did end up being carried out, or work had started on them.

Richardson‘s crime prevention and litter abatement ideas were apparently paying off.

Even so, many ideas remained far out of reach. In 2003, for instance. there were still no

bus shelters. There was still no neighborhood health clinic. New housing was relatively

scarce. It was safe to say, however, that no one involved in the Trinity Gardens

development process saw it as a failure, or that it would soon fail, given the cooperative

partnership developed between municipal officials and community leadership.

As the data in the next chapter will demonstrate more fully, however, such a

cooperative spirit was not always so easy to develop, especially when sought at a

metropolitan-wide level. Neither, it seemed, were ties between individuals of differing

groups or communities always beneficial. Their worth depended on the circumstances—

and these were far more thorny, at least insofar as they regarded Trinity Gardens‘s

relations with the rest of the Mobile area, than was apparent at the surface level.

Nonetheless, the most serious complexity absolutely did lie at its literal, geophysical

surface; specifically, in the form of a not-so-well-placed border between two notably

different municipalities.

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CHAPTER VII

PROPOSITION 3

Cross-sectoral cooperation appears to be vital to community development

efforts. However, more extensive interaction will be needed for any

further-reaching development efforts.

At the turn of the 21st Century, it would probably have been impossible to find an

American politician or civic leader who would state, without equivocation, that he or she

did not believe in getting citizens to work together. Talk of the cooperative spirit had

become a regular stump line, a cliche, as had the oft-stated notion that Americans did not

work together enough—unlike in some idealized, but not-so-distant past. That there was a

need for people to work together ironically appeared to be one of the few things that the

majority of American politicians and citizens could get behind. The popularity of the

social capital concept was, it appeared, to no small degree a reflection of such sentiments.

In this context, it could not have been surprising to hear elected officials and

administrators in both Mobile and Prichard, Alabama—the two municipalities in which

Trinity Gardens was included—talking about the worthiness of efforts that brought

citizens together, and of utilizing the power of communities to affect change. What was

less talked about was gaining cooperation between differing economic sectors, and

different governing authorities, agencies, or economic groups. Despite getting such short

shrift, the gaining of such cooperation was a crucial matter as it related to development in

Trinity Gardens. At the least, it was an issue that promised to become increasingly

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important as time passed. Whether the neighborhood‘s development efforts could be

taken to a higher level depended on it.

It was not that the major actors in Trinity Gardens hardly ever worked with forces

outside of their world. To the contrary, they had received and sought assistance before,

not only from Mobile city government and the police department but from nonprofit

groups such as the Boys and Girls Clubs, area businesses and public utilities. The area

nonetheless faced some rather unique problems in the cross-sectoral arena, particularly

ones caused by the lack of cooperation between the municipalities of Mobile and

Prichard. At the same time, Trinity Gardens was enormously isolated from the view of

the metro area‘s more affluent, sprawling suburban areas.

Nevertheless, evidence suggested that the quality of cross-sectoral relationships,

as they affected Trinity Gardens, mattered at least as much as their very existence.

Maybe, in certain circumstances, gaining cooperation from leadership and citizens in

other parts of the city or metro area was not even worth the trouble. It was argued by one

observer that the Mobile section of Trinity Gardens might have seen more progress by

gating itself off, given the problems in Prichard. On the other hand, even a surface-level

examination suggested that the neighborhood needed support of the larger business

community of the Mobile metropolitan area, and people in more far-flung suburban areas

in order to keep its development going. The right answer, however, did not clearly

suggest itself. When did attempting to grow from within, and to be self-sufficient, cease

being a good thing? Where could you draw a line?

These issues are explored below, in two distinct sections. The first explores the

story of Prichard, and how its problems affected Trinity Gardens, as well as federal

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initiatives that involved crime prevention in both Mobile and Prichard. Finally, the

chapter includes a more all-encompassing consideration of the neighborhood‘s place

within the larger Mobile metropolitan area.

Prichard: The Road to Bankruptcy

The worlds of the Prichard and Mobile sections of Trinity Gardens are

interconnected in the most literal sense. The boundary between the two municipalities is

not provided by a particular street, or any natural geographic feature. There is,

consequently, almost no sure way to tell what city you were in. In 2003, it was only safe

to presume you were in Prichard when you see more trash out in the streets and in yards

while driving through the northeastern half of Trinity Gardens. There was one notable

exception—a smoothly paved and widened section of Berkley Avenue in Prichard, the

home of two major area church buildings and two schools (one public and one

denominational), with hardly any litter evident. Prichard was ceded the small stretch of

road and surrounding territory in the late 1990s by Mobile‘s city government, since

Prichard officialdom expected new industry to open there. Otherwise, most of the areas to

the northeast were conspicuously grimy. A Mobile administrator explained:

A lot of the difficulties in Trinity Gardens are the political boundaries, the

artificial boundaries of the community. Trinity Gardens tends to view

itself as a whole, when in essence part of Trinity Gardens is the City of

Mobile, and part of Trinity Gardens is the City of Prichard. And I think

that the relationship and the impact of services and policing are very

different depending on which side of the line you happen to live on, for a

host of reasons. That's a problem because some of the people that live in

Trinity Gardens on the Prichard side see that things are substantially

different on the other side of the line, and they wonder why it doesn't

apply to them. And I don't know how we're ever going to be able to

overcome that. (Mikell, 2003, p. 124)

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The primary explanation for the greater amount of litter in Prichard was the city‘s

financial situation. To be more specific, in 2003 Prichard was just coming out of federal

bankruptcy protection. It had been more or less forced to file for legal protection in 2002,

given a fiscal crisis that led the city‘s mayor and its entire city council to be forced out of

(but not removed from) office. What was, in effect, a wholesale expulsion of Prichard

officialdom resulted from fraud charges brought by the Mobile District Attorney‘s office.

The DA led an investigation after the Alabama examiner of public accounts found that

Prichard cheated its employees. City staff had been receiving regular paychecks. The city

had not, however, been paying related expenses, such as matching Social Security

contributions. Those unpaid expenses were worth some $2.5 million. At the same time,

the city had an accumulated total debt of more than $7 million, a debt that apparently

developed over several decades. In an attempt to overcome such massive problems,

Prichard adopted and began operating under the aforementioned bankruptcy plan. It

called for the city to pay off all its outstanding debt within seven years.

The financial crackdown had severe effects on a city already suffering from a

scandalous lack of business development, an unpropitious thing in a state where

municipalities depend on sales taxes. As a consequence, the city found itself barely able

provide even the most basic services. At one point, the Prichard Police Department had

only one patrolman available for the entire city of some 33,000 residents at any one time.

Likewise, the city‘s fire department was unable to respond to calls after gas station

owners demanded to be paid in cash for fill-ups.

The city bore the brunt of the financial pain early, however, and by 2003 appeared

to be well on its way to finding some semblance of stability. Even so, Prichard‘s

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underlying problem with business development had not substantially changed.

Concomitantly, there was not much in the way of retail businesses within the city‘s

boundaries. Its downtown remained full of store buildings so grey that they brought fresh

meaning to the word ―nondescript.‖ The area hosted rent-to-own stores, a spiritual candle

purveyor and pawn shops, all in flat-roofed buildings with bars on their windows. In the

city‘s northern half, retail businesses were scarcely seen until one reached the nearby

suburb of Chickasaw. A Burger King sat just across the border, and more modern gas

stations, apartments, and strip businesses were just up the road. The businesses that

existed in Prichard‘s northern section, meanwhile, had names such as ―Divine Auto

Sales‖ (located next to a church) and primitive, hand-painted signs. To be fair, many

businesses with relatively modern signage and decor were located in Prichard‘s western

section, across Interstate 65—an area in which there was also some residential growth—

but still nothing remotely upmarket.

No one particular phenomenon led to this deplorable state of affairs. Many

interview subjects nonetheless suggested that white flight—the term used to describe a

white residential exodus to outlying areas—unquestionably had a huge impact. The

exodus was prompted by two linked concerns, among them a decline in the city‘s retail

fortunes, and the end of legal segregation. Prichard, several interview subjects noted, was

once a highly popular shopping area, probably the fastest-growing in the Mobile area.

Although a viewing of the area today would make this seem improbable, the city‘s

downtown had once proudly hosted a J.C. Penney department store and other respected

retail establishments. In the late 1960s, however, premier retailers started opening stores

in Mobile again, this time in West Mobile. The end of Prichard‘s retail dominance

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brought with it a soft housing market. The end of segregation, meanwhile, had

consequences that compounded those of the retail decline. According to U.S. Census

data, Prichard had long hosted a substantial African-American population. In its heyday,

the city had been almost equally populated by whites and blacks. All the same, Jim Crow

ruled just as surely in Prichard as it had throughout the Deep South. With the end of

segregation, though, black residents were free to move into formerly all-white areas, and

a softening of the housing market only increased the incentive for blacks to do so. One

consequence was that African-Americans in Prichard began flexing the collective

political power that had previously been denied to blacks in the Deep South. By 1972,

Prichard residents elected a black mayor.

Once the city‘s African-American population gained power, the municipality

quickly fell into financial decline. The exodus of whites, and particularly more affluent

whites, represented the loss a previously dependable tax base, given how formidable the

exodus was. From 1960 to 2000, the city went from being 47 percent to 84.5 percent

African-American. It lost 40 percent of its total population over the same number of

years—from 47,731 residents in 1960 to 28,633 in 2000. The most massive loss, of 17

percent of its total population, occurred between 1960 and 1970, but the decline had been

steady ever since. Prichard's black population had declined between 1960 and 1970 as

well, by six percent. The white population just declined much more, specifically by 22

percent during the same period.

By the early 1990s, the future looked practically hopeless for most of Prichard.

Even one instance of good fortune turned out to be merely a glimpse of what might have

been. More specifically, in 1994 a new, $240 million elevated freeway opened in the

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Mobile area. It connects Interstate 65, which runs north-to-south, to Mobile‘s central

business district and its busy port. This route provides access to Interstate 10, which runs

east-to-west. In so doing, it runs through Prichard and includes two exits there, ones

created at a considerable financial and human cost. About 275 residents were relocated to

make way for this infrastructure, and some 50 businesses were bought out. By the federal

government‘s own, absurdly understated admission, however, the project did not bring

prosperity to Prichard (City Impact Assessment, 1998).

Trinity Gardens and Prichard‘s Future

In short, part of Trinity Gardens was overseen by what had been a municipal

basket case, and there was seemingly little that anyone could do to improve the situation.

The situation was just that stark, that brutal. This should not be taken to mean that

neighborhood civic leaders did nothing to change the status quo, however, or that no one

saw a glimmer of hope with regard to a chance to improve matters. Leaders of the Bay

Area Women Coalition had in fact long worked with Prichard officials. Dubose was

active with the city‘s Harlem Area Weed and Seed, whose program area included the

Prichard section of Trinity Gardens. Her likeness could be seen in pictures displayed

inside the operation‘s headquarters in the Bessemer public housing development. BAWC

members also consistently wrote police and fire officials in Prichard. They tried to put as

much pressure on officials there as in Mobile. (The mayors of Prichard and Mobile had a

cordial relationship, it should be noted, before financial troubles forced the resignation of

Prichard‘s chief executive. The relationship had not been replaced as of mid-2003.)

It was suggested by some observers, however, that working with Prichard

officials proved more difficult for Trinity Gardens civic leaders, given municipal

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corruption in Prichard. Even after new council was elected in the wake of the fraud

controversy, however, there was still a lack of cooperation between Mobile and Prichard,

a lack in no small part fueled by the latter‘s scarce fiscal resources. Prichard had a

relatively new police chief whose background looked promising in regard to changing

this situation. The chief had formerly headed the Mobile Police Department‘s crime

prevention office. Consequently, he still had many contacts within and good relations

with people inside the MPD. Moreover, he brought ideas and lessons learned from his

days in Mobile with him. He was, for instance, working with neighborhood groups. He

believed in working with neighborhood leaders, and in the tenets of community-oriented

policing. Unfortunately, what several observers thought he did not have was much in the

way of support, financial or otherwise, from Prichard authorities. He could thus not create

as extensive a community-oriented policing plan as might have been expected.

Other Mobile interviewees indicated that the whole idea of harnessing the power

of community leadership never caught on in Prichard. And, this made the city‘s

development all the more elusive. Leaders there were accused of being too focused on big

projects. They were seen as far too preoccupied with attracting major industry and

commercial development. Prichard officials interviewed also believed that the city leaders

needed to concentrate more on cleaning up the city, and on organizing its population. One

official noted that people attending Harlem Area Weed and Seed community meetings

seemed to be longing for someone to ask for their assistance. It was hard to get them to

volunteer, however, because of Prichard‘s crime and blight. It was easy for critics to say

that it was time to mobilize citizens when conditions grew so extreme. Unfortunately, the

official suggested:

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Nowadays, you can‘t just do that, because

they‘re frightened to death with criminals,

and they‘re scared if the criminals see them

out there doing something positive. They‘ve

got something coming through their

window, coming at a very high speed, or

they‘re just being subjected to a lot of verbal

abuse or to an ugly stare. You have to

challenge them to take their community

back and to do it, and it‘s even small things

to do. Yes, we have a lot of fiscal

challenges, but we‘re more than capable by

district - and you take each district you can

have the city as a whole. There are things we

are capable of doing right now, today. I‘ve

got some houses I‘m having torn down in a

neighborhood that was real, real bad with

prostitution and truancy, drugs and just flat-

out blight. That‘s what‘s really killing

Prichard‘s realty, is the abandoned property.

Your house has no value when it‘s situated

right next to a suburban jungle. (Mikell,

2003, p. 114-15)

Still, only once did an interview subject from Prichard suggest that matters such as blight

removal needed to be addressed before talking about large scale economic development

projects. More often heard was the idea that someone from the private sector was needed

to take a chance on the city.

One planned economic development project did appear poised to have a major

impact on Trinity Gardens. The Harlem Area Weed and Seed project received federal

funding to redevelop the site of the Bessemer public housing development. Most of the

apartments would be torn down to make way for a shopping center, and the buildings left

over would be converted to elderly housing. The decision was made after a process that

included hearings attended by residents of Trinity Gardens, both from Mobile and

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Prichard. Participants involved in the decision in redeveloping Bessemer from both

municipalities agreed that the status quo was no longer worth maintaining.

There was no way of knowing exactly how much the planned development would

affect surrounding neighborhoods, though. Research on the effects of proximity to public

housing projects was contradictory. In 1981, for instance, Roncek and Bell (1981) found

in a study of 4,000 residential city blocks that the effect of proximity to public housing

did have a statistically significant relationship with reports of criminal activity. All the

same, the effect of proximity looked minor once socioeconomic and housing

characteristics of the adjacent blocks were taken into account. Furthermore, blocks near

public housing developments, but not adjacent to them, did not have significantly higher

incidence of violent or property crimes. Later, Hyatt and Holzman (1999) would note that

no one had ever been able to find a connection between public housing and crime. Only a

handful of criminologists had attempted to gauge the levels of crime in public housing,

and all had failed. The problem, the two researchers suggested, was that American police

did not issue crime statistics that took in one public housing development, in an isolated

fashion.

On the other hand, there were still blight-ridden areas of Prichard further north,

ones where tributes to presumably fallen comrades were spray-painted on the sides of

run-down houses. Concurrently, there existed the possibility that crime in Trinity

Gardens had traveled to Prichard in the early part of the new century. One Mobile

administrator stated the case as follows:

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There is some bleed-over from Prichard to Mobile. Criminals are

basically, the way I see it, cowards. They‘re not going to stay where

people are pursuing them and good people are standing up for what they

believe in. They‘re going to go where there‘s the path of least resistance. I

hate to say it, but they may have stepped over into Prichard. (Mikell, 2003,

p. 90)

For such reasons, police in Mobile did not have any qualms about accepting an invitation

to an anti-crime rally in Prichard in 2003, despite jurisdictional issues.

I didn‘t see a problem with it. I think we can do some things to help us on

that side of the line that‘ll bleed over to us to because it‘s awful close.

Sometimes things that begin over there wind up on our side. So if we can

help them, and I believe that the way I see it, I‘m going to do what I can to

help (the chief). (Mikell, 2003, p. 91)

Despite such expressions of a desire to cooperate, whether any partnership could ever

come to fruition was doubtful because of Prichard‘s financial condition or perhaps, as

some Mobile observers put it, because of its failure to embrace the power of citizen

participation—or maybe even both.

Federal Programs in Prichard

The Prichard problem might have also exacerbated inherent and existing problems

of two federal anti-crime initiatives operating in the Mobile area. These programs

included the Justice Department-directed Weed and Seed program and the Drug

Enforcement Agency‘s Integrated Drug Enforcement (IDEA) strategy. Moreover, low

public participation was cited as a contributor to problems in the latter program.

As noted earlier, the Weed and Seed initiatives had plenty of problems. First,

given that the programs were designed with local control in mind, no federal coordinator

could step in and force Mobile and Prichard to coordinate their efforts, despite the fact

that strategy zones in the two respective municipalities bordered one another. To make

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matters worse, Mobile‘s Weed and Seed took in an area with little in the way of a

business community. By contrast, Prichard did at least have enough commercial activity

to allow the program to work as a public-private partnership, as program designers

intended. Still, although both Weed and Seed programs helped push Trinity Gardens‘s

development along, they had not come close to having their maximum effect.

The IDEA program was far more troubled, and interview subjects involved with

the programs traced most of its problems back to the Mobile-Prichard relationship—and,

more specifically, to Prichard alone. This was a shame, one federal observer noted,

because the city had a new police chief, one with contacts in the Mobile Police

Department. It seemed as if there was a chance, with the chief‘s appointment, to

overcome any past lack of cooperation. The observer continued:I think (the chief) wants,

in his heart of hearts, he wants do the right thing for that city. He's got the best intentions

of anyone I've met in Prichard. I'm not saying somebody else has bad intentions, but he

really cares about what he's doing. He's committed, and he's committed for the right

reasons. He's not committed to doing his job for a vote or a bonus or anything like that.

He's doing it because it's the right thing to do and that's his job. I think there's a lot more

politics than he can overcome by himself. His instrument isn't the biggest one in the band.

He's doing what he can do . . . I think Prichard leaders aren't sure how to take advantage

of this without someone giving them a handout. Saying, ―We're going to support this,‖ or,

―Were going to do this,‖ is one thing, but . . . getting an abandoned house cleaned or

having inmates down to cut grass, it's not that hard of thing, but there's not a big crowd to

watch you there (Mikell, 2003, p. 103).

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At the same time, low rates of public participation at public meetings in Prichard

seemed to affect the process, according to observers. If this bit of reportage were

accurate, it appeared that the city‘s path to community renewal would remain indefinitely

blocked. It also would likely have proved almost pointless and futile for Mobile civic

leaders to try to reach cooperative agreements with their peers next door.

Solutions: Annexation, Connected Fates

Whatever the greatest contributor to Prichard‘s woes might have been, the

question of how to improve Prichard‘s situation—and, more to the point, to do so to the

ultimate benefit of Trinity Gardens—did not lend itself to easy answers. It was possible

that increased participation would solve the situation alone. There were still, however,

those nagging fiscal woes with which to deal, ones that no amount of community

organizing could easily overcome. What good would lobbying for changes have done if

local officials were unable to fund any new initiatives?

One consequent resolution to the conundrum, several interview subjects noted,

would have been for Mobile to annex Prichard. Expanding the Alabama port city‘s

boundaries in such a fashion would not necessarily have been to its ultimate benefit,

however. Taking over Prichard would have proven incredibly costly. Mobile would not

have seen much in the way of sales taxes from the new territory for quite some time,

possibly decades. The city would have inherited Prichard‘s crime problems. Finally,

Mobile would have needed assurances of incentives and grants of untold millions before

even entertaining the annexation idea. One administrator explained:

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Mobile wouldn't go for annexation. It would be kind of like you going out

and . . .Why would you buy a 1965 car that was basically worn out? It

needs all this work, and there's no visible dollars there. Now, if somebody

said, I'm going to give you a Duesenberg, and with it comes a $200,000

grant to maintain it because Mr. Kellogg wants somebody to take care of

his car, you'd say, Sure, give me that. I'll take a 1931 Duesenberg and the

$200,000 maintenance grant, that's a no-brainer and it would be fun.

(Mikell, 2003, p. 249)

A more logical or easier option would have been for Prichard to de-incorporate and leave

its administration to Mobile County, if the city‘s fiscal problems continued after coming

out of bankruptcy protection.

In the end, Trinity Gardens‘s civic leaders absolutely had to continue to pay some

attention to Prichard, whether it stayed incorporated or not. A reminder of how dramatic

the effects of a lack of governmental responsiveness across city borders could be

occurred in 2004, when a massive sewer leak in the city sent millions of gallons of

untreated waste into an isolated wooded area just a short drive from the neighborhood.

The Alabama Attorney General‘s office filed suit in order to strip the city‘s water and

sewer authority (which operated, curiously enough, independently of the municipal

government) of its authority.

The incident demonstrated that Trinity Gardens‘s leaders needed to be interested

in its relations outside its borders. However, it seemed clear that its leaders also would

have benefited by seeking connections to networks in all parts of the metro area or,

rather, to concentrate on the seeking of bridging social capital or social bridges (Putnam,

2000; Hornburg & Lang, 1997). The neighborhood needed a whole set of bridges,

really—to the rich and poor places, to the powers that were, and to money and services, if

it hoped to ever thrive.

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Outside Assistance

Community organizing efforts in Trinity Gardens had long involved people from

outside the neighborhood. The partnership that the community‘s civic leadership had

formed with local officials and especially Mobile police had been central to development

efforts. Even so, the assistance and cooperation that the neighborhood received from

forces outside its streets went far beyond that partnership. Major national and regional

non-profit organizations, such as the Boys and Girls Clubs, frequently worked within

Trinity Gardens. Richardson asked for and received assistance from the metro area‘s

business sector. Local utilities assisted in the replacement of street lighting, and provided

bulbs free of charge. Surveys of the neighborhood‘s condition were taken with the use of

donated cell phones. The Bay Area Women, meanwhile, received thousands of dollars in

grant monies from businesses and foundations.

Despite receiving such assistance, the neighborhood surely remained a foreign

land to plenty of Mobile residents. There was little reason—outside of visits to

relations—for anyone living in a more affluent section of the metro area to make his or

her way into Trinity Gardens. All the same, Trinity Gardens had received its fair share of

flattering media attention, including two lengthy, front-page features on its development

efforts in the city‘s daily newspaper, The Mobile Register (Nicholes, 1998b; Wilson,

1999). An article on the then-new Dotch Center‘s opening made the front page in the

interim (Nicholes, 1998). The articles, both of which delved deeply into the

neighborhood‘s history, were published within a year of one another. The neighborhood‘s

story had been so well-circulated, in fact, that Richardson felt compelled to tell fellow

council members in 2003 that not all the area‘s problems had been solved. On the other

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hand, the construction of the Dow Amphitheater had been the subject of mocking

derision from some quarters, if only because of its name (Mobile, one observer noted,

had a bad habit of naming things after people who were still alive) and the fact that it had

been a Richardson-associated project. The council member was still seen as something of

a controversial figure by some metro area denizens, if only for his tendency to play up his

achievements.

Others approached Richardson and BAWC members with assistance in an

unsolicited fashion. Among these was a television station that offered to teach students

how to make videos in classes at the Dow Amphitheater. Likewise, a large home building

supply chain donated paint used in the construction of the Richardson Heights homes.

Businesses and individuals from throughout the Mobile metro area similarly donated

supplies and expertise. Unfortunately, an observer suggested, sometimes the donated

items were not of particularly high quality. Paint used in the Richardson Heights homes,

for instance, faded about a year-and-a-half after use, even though the paint was advertised

to last much longer. The observer supposed that when those doing the donating had no

personal stake in a project‘s outcome, and were donating mainly to receive federal tax

deductions, that they did not particularly concern themselves with quality (Mikell, 2003,

p. 163).

What Trinity Gardens and those who called it home surely needed was not so much

decorative essentials as larger-scale private sector or charitable support for more basic

needs, such as health care. Most health care for indigent patients in Mobile was provided

by the University of South Alabama Medical Center, and that state institution ran up

mammoth annual deficits in doing so. Likewise, no one from the private sector or any

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wealthy benefactor offered to build libraries or support adult education in such

neighborhoods. It was left to the government to merely contemplate the building of

simple bus stop shelters.

Mobile once had an organization that increased communication among civic

leaders and groups in different parts of the metro area, one observer noted, and could

have benefited by the presence of a similar group. The long-since defunct group‘s name

was Mobile Community Organization, formed in 1974. The institution was meant to

operate as something of an umbrella for area civic organizations. It was biracial in its

membership. Moreover, it had the support of some of the city‘s largest private sector

names and benefactors—this at a time when most grocery and dry goods stores were still

mostly local and regional affairs. The organization‘s bread and butter had been the sort of

community development issues that Trinity Gardens‘s leadership would take up later.

The only difference in this case was that the issues were addressed at a citywide level.

One longtime neighborhood leader explained:

The key thing about the Mobile Community Organization is that we had

the support of all the group, so if we had a problem here in Trinity

Gardens, people from down the Bay or West Mobile who had a group or

organization would give us their support to solve the problem. So that was

a good system, I think, in working the political system and the people to

get things done. (Mikell, 2003, p. 137)

The affiliation of community-based groups did not last. The observer‘s opinion was that

the group was practically doomed to failure once a popular white director left to take a

job in North Carolina. After an African-American woman took over the organization‘s

reins, financial and moral support for the organization started to dwindle. To make

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matters worse, the director was charged with misuse of funds. The group was never able

to restructure.

That being said, it was not as if Mobile‘s private sector kept itself out local

affairs altogether in the days after the citywide organization‘s demise. Not long after the

city switched to a mayor-council form of government, the Mobile Chamber of Commerce

and many area business people worked with the city and county governments on a

strategic planning process called Goals for Mobile. In so doing, one official thought, the

entities involved accomplished something highly significant:

They laid the framework for redevelopment, for being competitive, and for

going out and recruiting in the international arena the kind of jobs and

investment that we needed. And over the years, those strategic plans have

pulled us together and got us focused not only being Democrats and

Republicans and being separate races or whatever, but being a community

and focused on how we could help that community be more competitive

and improve . . . the crime prevention parts of it, the quality of life parts of

it, by getting inside of neighborhoods and putting police precincts,

recreation centers, fixing their drainage, fixing the sidewalks so the kids

could go to school, putting affordable housing in the neighborhoods and

controlling blight. We set up an environmental court. So that larger picture

of planning to make our city stronger set up a framework where effective

neighborhood organizing can punch into it and they can tell us more

clearly what they need and we can respond to their needs instead of us

assuming what is best for them. (Mikell, 2003, p. 73)

In the end, the idea of increasing ties and trust—or what Putnam termed bridging

social capital (2000), in a reformulation of Hornburg and Lang‘s (1997) concept of social

bridges—between lower-income neighborhoods like Trinity Gardens and wealthier

havens somehow seemed to be too big of an issue to grasp. Certainly, one could easily

get lost in one of the more affluent areas of Mobile after a visit to Trinity Gardens and

feel as if he or she were transported to another planet. This other, more plugged-in place

had fresh produce in its grocery stores, specialty stores galore, the occasional upmarket

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boutique and professional business signs, rather than the vaguely Third World-like hand-

painted ones seen along St. Stephen‘s Road (U.S. 45) in Prichard. It could seem as if

isolation of a place like Trinity Gardens would be an almost impossible burden to

overcome, that the neighborhood was too far behind in the hyper-capitalist wonderland

that was post-millennial America.

Most residents interviewed did not to seem to mind the neighborhood‘s state of

affairs. To the contrary, most suggested that crime had declined dramatically over the

past few years. The place they called home was in 2003 a quiet neighborhood of working

people and retirees, and residents wanted to keep it that way. More than half of all

residents interviewed pointed out that the area needed sidewalks more than anything else.

They wanted to see its streets as well kept as those in other Mobile neighborhoods

(although, in this rain-sloshed city, even some highly affluent areas had streets crumbling

from flooding).

Residents who were more skeptical of development efforts, by contrast, suggested

that what its people needed more were jobs. There was only so much city leaders could

have done do to help residents in their search for the American Dream, though, especially

in times marked by increasing global economic integration. As Peterson (1981)

suggested, American municipal governments were not structured in a way that enabled

them to have much of an effect on creating jobs for and redistributing funds to lower-

income residents. Mobile was also forced to rely on sales taxes for its operations, given

Alabama law. Even trying to persuade local employers to undertake programs for lower-

income residents would have probably been a waste of time, given that a large cross-

section of Mobile‘s private sector was overseen by large corporations. Mobile-based

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chains that had once been well-known regional brands, such as the Delchamps

supermarket and Morrison‘s Cafeteria, did not survive the corporate buyout binges of the

1990s.

Job creation was indeed a concern of Mobile officialdom. The city had

constructed a job training center in south central Mobile. Its library and retail training

facility (a working store of the Dollar General discount chain) was unlikely to make a

great dent on Mobile‘s unemployment rate, which at the turn of the new century was

higher than the Alabama average. Even so, the most that could have been expected from

local government was for its agencies to keep city streets as free from crime as possible,

to clean up abandoned housing and the like. Quality of life matters such as the upkeep,

and construction of municipal parks was not to be discounted, either. Most of what local

leaders could best focus upon was the basics of city governance—the nuts and bolts. By

extension, those in civic organizations who hoped for and lobbied for change were more

likely to be successful by pressing city officials to do what was within their inherently

limited power.

The institutions more equipped to bring greater economic change were, instead,

the state and federal governments. Unfortunately, local civic leaders and organizations

who hoped to have an impact on these institutions had their work cut out for them.

Mobile‘s Congressional representation consisted of conservative Republicans who were

not likely to support extensive economic uplift programs for lower-income residents—

although, to be fair, Trinity Gardens‘s civic leaders successfully lobbied the delegation on

housing issues. By contrast, the neighborhood‘s state legislative delegation was

predominantly Democratic. This was not a fact of huge importance, though, given that

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the state had little in the way of discretionary funds. Alabama voters did not appear

willing to hand politicians in the state capital of Montgomery more tax money. Trinity

Gardens residents were against doing so as well, if the number of anti-tax reform signs

seen in the neighborhood in 2003 during a tax increase and budget reform referendum

campaign were any indication. The signs, more specifically, regarded a tax reform plan

put forward by Republican Governor Bob Riley. Under the plan, Alabama tax revenues

would have been greatly increased, although the taxes of most lower-income residents

would have been cut. Although the plan ended up being supported more in heavily

African-American areas than other parts of the state, anti-tax reform signs were nearly

ubiquitous in Trinity Gardens prior to the election. Only a smattering of pro-reform signs

stating, ―Let‘s Do the Right Thing‖ were found. Richardson maintained a neutral stance

on the matter before the referendum. Voters statewide ultimately rejected the plan by

almost 3-to-1 (Copeland, 2003; Cotter, 2003).

Despite how pleased residents might have been with the state of affairs in Trinity

Gardens and how much they may have supported the state‘s fiscal status quo, their civic

leadership was likely to keep pushing for neighborhood progress. One observer noted that

residents were still not content, however. You could tell as much by looking at the

number of complaints Trinity Gardens residents filed about crime and blight. By contrast,

those living in nearby Toulminville were thought to be much more satisfied. Their

neighborhood had more of a middle class character (Mikell, 2003, p. 24). That Trinity

Gardens had a far stronger identity may have also played a role. Still, some officials

suggested, dissatisfaction was the greater spur to civic participation.

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No matter how strong their drive, civic leaders in places like Trinity Gardens had

to be plugged into the larger metro system if they wanted the neighborhood to progress.

Members of groups such as the BAWC managed to do that to a surprising extent, one

observer noted. As things stood in 2003, however, there was still much work to do. By

the same token, there was a tendency of organizations, including public agencies and

civic and non-profit organizations, to protect their turf, a habit that could only have

worked against the common good in the long term. What it took to overcome suspicion

and too much competitiveness between different groups and agencies, one observer

suggested, was some way of getting everyone to the table and relaxing. In the Deep

South, food seemed to do the trick in the short term, at least, but more substantial ways of

bringing such cooperation about remained elusive.

Of course, not everyone interviewed thought people‘s ideas, be they unique or

banal, always needed to be heard, or that everyone needed to be brought to the table.

Sometimes, one administrator not directly involved in Trinity Gardens efforts suggested,

hearing people out too much could only slow the policy process down. Public meetings

could turn into whining forums (Mikell, 2003, p. 247). Certainly, District 1 Community

Policing Committee meetings attracted regulars who addressed the officials attending in

confrontational or sarcastic manners. Another observer, in a typically New Testament-

informed southern manner involving fishing instruction, talked about the need to teach

residents to be more independent, and to stop relying on government so much for positive

change. Governments and those from whom they sought input and assistance, in other

words, needed to come to the table with one another with respect and something

resembling an equal standing. But, in the lack of such standing, was any greater attempt

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at gaining cooperation among citizens, much less different sectors of a far larger

metropolitan area, really needed?

Summary: Openness versus Isolation, and Leadership

Certainly the evidence presented in this chapter regarding metro area cooperation

demonstrates that the lack of cooperation between Prichard and Mobile had an effect on

Trinity Gardens. Given that part of the neighborhood sat within Prichard, it was probably

impossible to avoid that municipality‘s problems, but no easy solution presented itself. It

also seemed apparent, simultaneously, that Trinity Gardens leaders and Richardson

would need to find support from individuals and organizations working within more

affluent sections of the metro area—and little of this was apparent in 2003, despite the

fact that major area non-profits had been active within the area and that companies had

donated materials for housing improvements and such. One could well argue, however,

that places like Trinity Gardens may have benefited from having their development take

place in some isolation. Such seeming success stories as the building of the amphitheater,

after all, had not been universally praised in Mobile.

What you were getting when wondering about the need for more openness in the

development process, as opposed to shutting certain negative forces out or working in

isolation, were subjective matters. What was being addressed was to a large extent the

need for and purpose of leadership. It was a far weightier issue, and perhaps even the

central one, in regard to the development of Trinity Gardens.

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CHAPTER VIII

PROPOSITION 4

Government and community leadership were essential to increasing the

effect of social capital in Trinity Gardens, and not just government itself.

Grand claims had often been made in public administration practitioner circles for

the power of social capital and the need to promote it. While these claims were usually

questionable, the idea that aspects of social capital are important for communities to have

was supported by interview subjects. Trust, for instance, was seen as having been

absolutely essential to getting certain anti-crime and blight initiatives to work in Trinity

Gardens. By contrast, a failed attempt at bringing a health clinic into the area was

attributed to the lack of trust. Administrators and police also noted that experience had

taught them to seek the help of networks within communities like Trinity Gardens.

People there were participating in the neighborhood‘s affairs.

Many astute observers pointed out that the neighborhood benefited from a certain

extra intangible something; however, a force of the sort needed to get any public policy

or initiative to work, regardless of the level of social capital within a community. Its

residents shared that something extra that sparked the development of once struggling,

but now-successful communities such as the Putnam (2000) favorite of Tupelo,

Mississippi. They had strong leadership, which helped give community efforts shape and

direction.

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Unfortunately, the modern conception of good leadership had much in common

with social capital. The two shared many intangible qualities or, rather, both suffered

from ambiguity. The concept of leadership could, like social capital, be operationalized

for the purposes of a particular research project, or for the study of a given situation, but

it seemed unlikely that anyone was going to soon come across any universal measure.

Similarly, the effects of strong leadership could have been either positive or negative.

The literature from the burgeoning leadership studies field suggested that what was

needed from leadership was indeed something of a highly tentative nature. Whether

leadership was effective or not depended upon ever-shifting or endlessly varying

circumstances.

Likewise, it was not a particularly simple matter to pinpoint how much leadership

had shaped what transpired in Trinity Gardens. It may have been, instead, that

community leaders were as shaped by the neighborhood and the larger social and

political system of which it was but a small part. Richardson and Dubose of the Bay Area

Women Coalition had not, for instance, worked in a vacuum. They were affected not only

by the decisions of other civic and government leaders of the past and present, but shaped

by the fiscal, political, and social environments in which they worked, and by events or

social and political trends. Whether they helped shape the political and social landscape,

in turn, is another question.

The effects of leadership on Trinity Gardens are examined below. A theoretical

overview of leadership in political environments is introduced first, and is followed by

closer looks at Richardson, Dubose, and the Bay Area Women. The chapter concludes

with a consideration of leadership as it emerged from other sources within the

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neighborhood. It should be noted that many of the events, circumstances, and decisions

that affected leadership and are alluded to below were discussed in greater detail in

previous chapters. Consequently, discussion of these matters is kept brief.

Defining Leadership: Administrative Skill and Charisma

It seemed best, before discussing the dynamics and effects of leadership within

Trinity Gardens, was to place such matters within a theoretical framework. It also seemed

prudent to focus more on the study of leadership in modern public or political settings,

rather than within any wider history, and to say that this study revolved around two main

and sometimes opposing ideal types or categories of leadership styles; namely,

transactional and transformational.

The most traditional of these styles was the transactional one. What was most

expected of a leader of this style was how to handle the more technical or strictly

managerial aspects of a position of authority. A transactional leader needed to use the

tools and procedures at his or her command in the most efficacious manner possible.

Furthermore, the leader would know how to use persuasion in the promotion of rational

self-interest, a la Neustadt‘s (1961) ideal American president. The leader needed to know

how to broker and make deals with friend and foe alike. The basic idea here was that

good leadership in a public setting best came through the efficacious use of power, and

the skills and resources at one‘s command, as opposed to any particularly mystical

quality.

Later, from Weber (1968), came the notion of the charismatic leader, the direct

forerunner of the transformational type. The charismatic leader could lead movements

and, by the force of his or her unconventional personality, visionary qualities, and

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strength of oratory, shake up the bureaucratic conservatism of modern-day governments

or administration. Burns‘s (1982, 2003) more specific notion of transformational

leadership was built on top of Weber‘s model. Burns suggested that charisma, combined

with some sort of ethical or moral uplift of followers, could bring about change in any

political organization or body politic. Likewise, Kouzes and Posner (1993) thought that

the credibility of leadership depended on its moral purpose, trust, and the hopes it

engendered, and not just charisma itself.

Unfortunately, scientific research involving transformational leadership was

largely confined to offices and self-contained organizations, despite the fact that the word

―transformational‖ had ascended to the buzzword lexicon of community development

practitioners. There was little research in leadership studies involving the activity of

governments or the development of public policy, despite Burns‘s use of the leaders of

nations as his models (Bass, 1998; Koehler & Pankowski, 1996). The line between

transformational and transactional leadership, moreover, was quite ambiguous, even if

the two basic schools of thought sometimes seemed to be set against one another in the

leadership studies literature. Burns (1990, 2003), for instance, saw authentically

transforming leaders as being individuals who recognized the psychological needs of

citizens or employees, ones ranging up Maslow‘s (1954) hierarchy—from security to

self-actualization. They did not exploit employees, but instead empowered them to meet

those needs through a variety of means. Even so, Burns insisted that minority dissent and

competition—and checks and balances of the sort that reflected a view of leadership as

being primarily transactional—were essential for leadership to be most effective.

According to Bass, critics of Burns and his concept suggested that transformational

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leaders could be anti-democratic, in stressing loyalty to the leader and his or her goals.

The executive‘s vision of the future becomes that sought by the employees. Authentically

transformational leaders will, however, not be coercive. They can, he suggests,

internalize democratic values and facilitate them within an organization or political

community. Bass continues:

Along with its checks and balances, democracy requires that its leaders

also go beyond their own self-interests with a nurtured devotion to the

public good. Both with respect to its leaders and followers, governance

calls for guidance and control of the irrational aspects and the

encouragement of the values of logic and rationality . . . Self-interest

antithetical to the common good can be offset by . . . the appeals of

transformational leadership. (Bass, 1997, ¶37)

Both types of leadership were cited by interview subjects as having been present

in Trinity Gardens, as is demonstrated below. These types were, however, in actuality the

sorts of leadership that dozens of theorists writing before the modern era had stressed.

Surely, for instance, the pseudonymous authors of The Federalist Papers (Hamilton, Jay,

& Madison, 2005)—which Richardson seemed to call forth in saying that Trinity

Gardens was marked by its lack of factionalism—stressed the need for skill and

resourcefulness in leadership, as well as moral purpose. Both sorts of leadership were

crucial to the survival and growth of a new republic, and were arguably just as crucial to

the development of modern-day, inner-city neighborhoods like Trinity Gardens.

The Councilman and His Environment

In August 2003, court was held in Trinity Gardens, a place without a standing

judicial building. More specifically, a session of the Mobile Environmental Court—a

court of original jurisdiction that hears cases involving city code violations involving

blight and pollution—was held at the neighborhood‘s Dotch Community Center. It was

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unusual enough to have court held there, but the tenor of the proceedings was even more

out of the ordinary. The session was something of a shotgun marriage, forced between a

dignified court session and a more colorful community meeting and motivational rally.

What was happening at the community center, though, could not have been seen as

particularly strange when viewed within a neighborhood context. A segment of the local

judiciary paid a visit to Fred Richardson‘s political universe, and had more or less

adapted to the immediate environment.

The councilman was at the center of the event, given that the hearing was being

held in lieu of the usual meeting of the Community Policing Committee. The

organization had not held its typical early evening meeting on this August day, given that

this was the Deep South‘s most oppressively humid month. Even so, it was made clear

that court was held on the day of the usual District 1 meeting for symbolic reasons. In this

spirit, Richardson—who had organized and given moral support and direction to the

policing committee—spoke before the session began, after a brief introductory talk by

Environmental Court Judge Holmes Whiddon. The councilman explained what the court

was all about, and about how Whiddon had thrown his support behind the district and

Trinity Gardens. He then urged residents to be vigilant about blight and litter, eventually

reaching to an oratorical crescendo more typical of evangelical Christian church rallies

than political-oriented meetings. He told citizens, in fever-pitch tones, that they were

going to get rid of litter. ―We‘re going to clean it up!‖ (Mikell, 2003b, p. 2)

What was on display here was Richardson‘s signature style. It was typical of him

to get worked up, to speak to citizens in such an exhortative manner. That he would adopt

such a personal style made sense, though, given his involvement in religion and civil

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rights. First, he had been a longtime, active member of the Stone Street Baptist Church in

Mobile, founded in 1806 and thus one of the oldest black churches in America. The

future councilman had come of age politically in the late 1960s, as one of the pivotal

figures in the civil rights-oriented Neighborhood Organization Workers (NOW) group.

The councilman nonetheless once had a reputation as something of a firebrand.

According to historical accounts, including Richardson‘s (1996) memoirs of the era, the

NOW organization had been opposed to what members felt was the undue moderation of

the city‘s more traditional civil rights leadership. Members of the National Association

for the Advancement of Colored People, the younger members of NOW thought, had

compromised far too often with the city‘s white establishment. This stance was taken at a

time when the NAACP‘s own goals had hardly been completely accepted by more

conservative whites (Nicholls, 2001).

Richardson continued to be portrayed as a controversial figure well into his

mature political years. He was still sometimes painted as being as overtly confrontational.

Moreover, he outlined his credentials in a manner that some felt involved an overload of

braggadocio. He described himself on his official City of Mobile web site, for instance,

as a ―political scientist, historian, writer, playwright, author, and lecturer‖ (City of

Mobile, 2004, ¶ 8). Richardson received further criticism for his globetrotting—or, more

specifically, trade trips and official visits that took him to parts of Europe, Latin America,

and Africa. In Trinity Gardens, however, observers noted that Richardson tried to be not

just a unifier, but someone who gave citizens an opportunity to participate. Interview

subjects noted time and again that the District 1 Community Policing Committee he

organized was singular within the metro area. As one observer noted, the Mobile Police

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Department worked with somewhere between 75 and 80 community groups. Even so, it

was suggested:

We have only one community policing committee, simply because it takes

the motivation and the energy of that district councilperson to pursue it.

And not many—or if any others have the energy that Mr. Richardson has.

Now, others will come and attend some of the community meetings . . .

but they‘re not there to run the show like Fred does. (Mikell, 2003, p. 85)

At the same time, when Richardson could not be at the meetings, you could easily

feel his absence. Richardson controlled the meetings in a way that others did not, or could

not. He was a person of high skills, the observer suggested, in that manner. ―He‘s a

politician, and a good one‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 85).

Even so, Richardson consistently noted that he relied on the power of the people.

In turn, he felt, the people of Trinity Gardens had been uniquely reliable in their strong

support of community initiatives. They took as much initiative as he had. The councilman

believed, and consistently stressed, that the greatest resource he had as a political leader

was the ―human resource‖ and not funding from Mobile‘s municipal budget. Learning to

harness the power of this resource was what he called a dream, one he wanted to sell to

the world at large. Transforming leaders, Burns suggested, were ones who could engage

with citizens, and who would do so in order to stay attuned to the evolving needs of their

constituencies. Richardson had by most accounts been consistently engaged with the

residents of District 1 and Trinity Gardens. Since the beginning of his time in public

office, however, he worked closely with a non-elected official with a similar leadership

style.

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Civic Leadership and Organizational Change

The power of citizen action so praised by Richardson had come from many

sources in Trinity Gardens, including the District 1 Community Policing Committee.

When most interview subjects praised community civic leadership, however, they more

often cited the leadership of the Bay Area Women Coalition, and more especially that of

director Leevones Dubose. Like Richardson, she had what observers recognized as a

charismatic style. She always made her presence felt—as she had, for instance, at the

environmental court hearing. When Whiddon pointed out the attendance of BAWC

members, Dubose blew the judge a kiss and remarked, in a typically flamboyant manner,

―We love you, judge!‖ (Mikell, 2003b, p. 1)

What was just as intriguing about the leadership of Dubose and the BAWC was,

nevertheless, how consistently they used transactional techniques. For example, group

members were not shy in utilizing the power of lobbying. They never let city officials rest

or police slack off in regard to patrolling the neighborhood. Then, they kept pushing for

more comprehensive change. One observer traced the group‘s evolution:

The people in Trinity Gardens said, We‘re not gonna take it anymore.

We‘re taxpayers and there‘s no reason why we shouldn‘t get the resources

that we need to combat the crime, to clean the trash up, to do different

things that it took to increase their quality of life out there. By standing up,

then pushing, demanding things, they got things done, and . . . They‘re

like, Well, gee, is this all that it took? Of course they did it with a lot of

work, they did a lot of rallying together. . . . and once they realized what it

took to get some action or some reaction from city government then they

said, Well, we know this works. Then they kept pushing for a lot of things.

(Mikell, 2003, p. 58)

The Bay Area Women and other groups with which it met demonstrated the power of the

proverbial squeaky wheel, the observer thought. Sometimes, neighborhood civic groups

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would squeak so much that they could leave those on the receiving end of complaints

exasperated. Even so, the observer suggested, they were fighting for what was rightfully

theirs—responsiveness from civil authorities.

Mobile police were, however, willing to take up their challenge, in large part

because the department‘s own goals and way of looking at crime prevention changed.

Actually, it came to be as interested in a more general sort of community development

than just crime prevention. It was a change in orientation that evolved over many years.

As one officer put it, ―We've gone from being enforcers of the law to problem solvers‖

(Mikell, 2003, p. 233). This was part of a larger change or trend in the culture of

American policing. This change led the MPD to, among other things, create what it called

family intervention teams. These units focused on all sorts of family-related problems,

and more particularly problems with deviant juvenile behavior, and poor school behavior

and scholastic performance. As the administrator explained, ―For whatever reason,

communities tend to be turning more and more to the police service for more social

issues than police issues; and a lot of our departments are taking those on‖ (Mikell, 2003,

p. 233).

Bay Area Women Coalition members were, meanwhile, appointed to

government-directed boards that were involved in crime prevention and more general

community development matters. There may have been something of what Selznick

(1949) called administrative cooptation going on here. This would have granted some

greater legitimacy to the BAWC, while giving Mobile agencies a foothold within the

community. Major development actors with both the city and the BAWC noted, though,

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that government and civic leaders could not have done without one another—and that

Trinity Gardens would not have progressed without that partnership.

Even so, the group‘s association with MPD and city government did not win it

every advantage. The recognition the BAWC received from local officials, for instance,

did not secure support from the federal government. Instead, the second Bush

administration‘s focus on faith-based grants as a means of addressing social problems

virtually assured that the Bay Area Women would not receive major funding for its

development and community uplift efforts.

The ever-shifting focus of the federal government had the potential, however, to

demonstrate something valuable to area civic groups, such as the BAWC and the

predominantly male Civic Club. If the potential effect of such shifts highlighted anything,

it was the fact that the leaders of these groups needed to be flexible. They also could not

necessarily rely on the government. Fortunately, some community civic leaders appeared

to be looking beyond Mobile‘s city government and the usual suspects in the non-profit

world as a means of furthering their aims. Even so, government could not be completely

ignored. Certainly, it would have helped Trinity Gardens enormously to have had a more

professional and financially stable government in Prichard. Whether change in Prichard

was too difficult to affect was another question. Meanwhile, crime prevention measures

and street improvements would demand at least some continuing contact with

governmental authorities. Increasing development in Trinity Gardens would, then, require

both innovation and adaptability, as well as some consistency.

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Richardson, Prichard, and the Democratic Creed

In talking about the power of citizens to effect change, Richardson shared in

common with leaders in beleaguered Prichard an employment of the rhetoric of

democracy. Both spoke glowingly of the spirit of cooperation. That these leaders echoed

each other‘s thoughts in this manner, however, could hardly have been surprising. A

central idea of the democratic creed, as Dahl (1961) suggested in his New Haven study,

was that the strength of any government came through the people it represented.

Consequently, to disagree with this idea was tantamount to admitting that one was un-

American. At the same time, talk of empowering citizens was so common at the turn of

the 21st century that the word "empowerment" grew cliched.

The universality of this creed in American political culture presented a dilemma

in regard to judging leadership. You could not say in good faith, for instance, whether

such sentiments as those expressed by elected officials in Mobile and Prichard were made

with any sincerity. Instead, you could only compare their words with the reality of what

was happening in their communities—and even then, all the positive things occurring

may not have flowed from any presumed democratic orientation of leadership.

Richardson, for instance, may have benefited by working with a community that already

had stronger participation, in the way that Putnam (1993, 2000) suggested any political

community would. That being said, Richardson had other, more tangible resources which

worked to his advantage. The battle against blight would have proven nearly impossible

without the assistance of Mobile‘s Urban Development Department. Richardson‘s

District 1 also received millions of dollars for infrastructure improvements from the City

of Mobile.

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By contrast, Prichard city council members who represented smaller sections of

the neighborhood did not have such easy access to developmental resources. The city‘s

police department did not have nearly as much money or manpower available as did its

Mobile counterpart. The Prichard council members also necessarily had some different

priorities and smaller constituencies within Trinity Gardens, as noted earlier.

Nevertheless, Prichard officials spoke of the importance of mobilizing the city‘s

population. The city‘s long-term fiscal stability and economic growth were crucial

concerns, one council member suggested, but there were more moderate goals that city

leaders could agree upon, such as the need to rid the city of blight. The council member

continued:

Businesses come in to places that number one, they're gonna feel like their

businesses are gonna be safe; secondly, that the city is clean and they have

fire protection also. They even look at the schools and how they are

performing. Believe it or not businesses even look at cemeteries, and the

reason why they look at cemeteries is, if you've got your cemeteries

growing up grass all over that means you're not gonna do very well with

anything else. (Mikell, 2003, p. 157)

Other observers deemed the failure of Prichard to clear itself of blight mostly matters of

creativity and will. One public administrator interviewed suggested that the city‘s policy

priorities seemed rather peculiar or, as he put it, in deadpan fashion, ―different‖ (Mikell,

2003, p. 103). Dealing with abandoned housing and litter was not such a difficult task. If

enough officials and citizens in Prichard had been committed to cleaning up the worst

parts of the city, they surely could have found a way to meet their ends.

In Richardson‘s case, by contrast, interview subjects noted that he did have the

will to change Trinity Gardens, and consequently found the means. Some suggested that

reaching a crisis point as far as crime went may have made it easier to get the

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neighborhood organized. It could not be seriously argued that Prichard and other areas of

Mobile, outside of Trinity Gardens and District 1, did not have critical problems of their

own. By the same token, even if Richardson‘s leadership had been shaped by forces

larger than himself, it seemed hard to argue that he had not taken full advantage of his

situation. He took the circumstances he inherited, both positive and negative, and did

with them what is required for good leadership. He seized the moment.

The Federal Role: IDEA, Weed, and Seed

A much more stark contrast with the leadership of Richardson, and his alliance

with the Bay Area Women Coalition, was provided by a consideration of the role of the

federal government in Trinity Gardens. In all instances of federal activity, the

government‘s role was marked by a largely hands-off relationship with local leadership.

Also, the national government had no direct association with civic groups and leadership

more favored by local officials, among them the Bay Area Women Coalition. Federal

agencies and administrators were not, in other words, active agents in the neighborhood‘s

development, as Richardson and the City of Mobile were, nor were they much concerned

with local administrative networks or alliances. That federal role here reflected a

historical legacy. The national government had once been much more interventionist in

regard to local affairs. In the War on Poverty programs of the Lyndon B. Johnson

administration, for instance, federal monies were funneled through Community Action

Agencies (CAA) operated by non-profit groups, in large part to go over the heads of local

officials in segregated southern locales and the Daley machine in Chicago (Lehmann,

1992). Funds were also granted directly to cities, in other Johnson-era programs. By

contrast, grants with few strings attached had been handed to local government as part of

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President Richard Nixon‘s General Revenue Sharing program, which was inspired by the

backlash over the perceived and actual radicalism of Community Action Agency staff.

Devolution of authority became the dominant federalism-related trend in the 1980s, and

funds traveled to cities by way of state governments. Even so, one feature from the

Johnson era was expanded; namely, requirements for the encouragement of public

participation (Mikell, 1999).

While letting local authorities handle more of their own affairs may have been the

more politically prudent path, the direction of the federal programs in the Mobile area

seemed to suffer at least in part because of a lack of direction from associated authorities.

These authorities in fact had little to no authority to provide such direction. One

administrator spoke of his role in this way: ―It‘s certainly not my position to come in and

say, ‗Why haven‘t you done this?‘ And it is certainly not my position to try to put blame

on anyone or point fingers‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 95). It may also have been that it was

difficult to identify what services or public goods that federal agencies were on hand to

provide. ―Strategies‖ are intangible goods and are usually not something local authorities

desire as much as equipment, technical assistance, and federal dollars. Whatever the case,

the federal government‘s leadership role in Trinity Gardens was quite limited. Despite

years of tinkering with federal implementation procedures in community development-

related programs, they were no closer to being the precise tools for reform than they were

in the 1960s. Most of the energy for community change instead came from local officials

and civic leadership. It was only where money was concerned—specifically, funding for

infrastructure improvements, the Dow Amphitheater and the like—that the federal role

became crucial.

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Summary: Muddling Through Community Development

Leadership was certainly, on the whole, essential to the creation of a partnership

between Mobile officials and agencies and civic organizations in Trinity Gardens, and the

boon this partnership was to the neighborhood‘s development. It was a partnership that

could have easily been threatened by the latent power of the federal government in the

shaping of American urban policy. The federal agencies involved in Trinity Gardens

chose, for reasons connected to political history, not to exercise their power in a focused

way and could probably not be counted on to do so in the near future. It seems worth

noting, however, that there had never been any clear development process in the

neighborhood. No one person or group had clearly been in charge of things, or led

residents toward a brighter future along some straight, well-defined path, largely because

no one had a lock on either resources or had unlimited political capital and flexibility. It

appeared instead that all the institutions, individuals, and groups involved in the

neighborhood‘s betterment were to varying degrees engaging in what Lindblom (1968)

called muddling through. The process moved along, seemingly despite or because of the

intentions of any one person. Of course, as the evidence in this chapter demonstrates, the

process would almost certainly have never begun or been carried along without the

leadership of Richardson and the BAWC, a leadership that evidence suggested was of

both a charismatic and transformational variety. That strong, driven personalities had

driven the process was undeniable.

That the individual was important here, however, should also not obscure that

development in Trinity Gardens was a dynamic process. Richardson never attempted to

choke off leadership at the grass-roots level, and in fact he had long sought the input of

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citizens. What was provided was, as noted earlier, a public space, or a focus or general

push, for the discussion of community development issues. Ideas, however, could and did

come from different sectors of the community and those officials, agencies, and

organizations working within Trinity Gardens. Community leaders brought all persons to

the table, in other words, and shaped the ethical parameters of the developmental effort.

Nevertheless, they were not able to control what happened next.

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CHAPTER IX

PROPOSITION 5

No one person, group, or social phenomenon was solely responsible for

the outcome of community development efforts in Trinity Gardens.

If the development of Trinity Gardens could be said to provide any lesson for

American communities, it was likely to be this one: The process of community

development, regardless of who provides the impetus for it, cannot ultimately be

controlled by any one group, institution, or individual. Moreover, in resource-poor

neighborhoods working within an economic and political system notable for its lack of

strong centralization—a phenomenon exacerbated by national political and administrative

trends—the development process may be especially dynamic. As demonstrated in

Chapter VIII, Richardson and Dubose provided essential leadership in working for the

development of Trinity Gardens. Nevertheless, it was apparent that these central actors

depended on the assistance of other personalities and organizations, both in developing

and implementing ideas.

How many people helped in this process was another question. Some interview

subjects, for instance, insisted that the community at large was responsible for changes in

Trinity Gardens. That being said, no one had ever surveyed all or most of the 4,000 or so

neighborhood residents about their goals, nor had most of these residents ever showed up

for a New England-style town hall meeting or democratic plebiscite. Most private (i.e.,

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non-official or politically active) citizens interviewed indicated that they did not take part

in any development activities.

Meanwhile, few residents interviewed cited either Richardson or the Bay Area

organization when asked who they thought was responsible for positive changes in

Trinity Gardens. It was not a startling thing to learn. It had already seemed apparent from

observation that most development ideas came from and were brought to fruition by a

broad group, or social network, of decision-makers based within Trinity Gardens and

other parts of the Mobile area. This group included Richardson and the BAWC, as well

as leaders and members of organizations ranging from neighborhood churches to major

metro area non-profits that had long worked in Trinity Gardens. Several interview

subjects who were involved in this apparent network talked of meeting one another at

restaurants, and about calling each other‘s residences during after-work hours.

This network was not a completely closed system, although there had been some

turfism displayed by particular actors. To a large extent, however, having a broad

network involved in community issues had been essential and most involved knew it. The

BAWC, after all, received grant monies from businesses and foundations, but did not

have the funding or staff available to carry out many initiatives on its own. Richardson

and the District 1 Policing Committee could not solve all community problems either.

The seeking of developmental success took some effort from a large cross section of the

community, as well as those from outside the neighborhood‘s boundaries whose work

brought them into community affairs. They worked together in a way that Hanifan (1916,

1921)—who first used the term ―social capital‖ in print—would surely have recognized

and approved. Development in the case of Trinity Gardens was, to borrow Hanifan‘s

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(1916, 1920) terminology, the product of various parts of the community—if not all of

these parts all the time, then certainly enough of them some of the time to make a

noticeable impact.

Consequently, it would not have been off-base to say that the development of a

neighborhood like Trinity Gardens required some openness to participation and change.

Nevertheless, as the history of federal affairs in Trinity Gardens demonstrates, assuming

that the development process was completely impossible to control was perhaps not the

wisest move. Given that no one entity held most of the political cards or had any sort of

overwhelming financial resources at its disposal in Trinity Gardens, the process there was

left open to swift, sudden changes of direction. The very dynamism of the development

process, then, although a great resource in carrying out the goals of community leaders,

brought with it the possibility of the destruction of their efforts. Finding success in

development efforts had not come easy.

Power Dynamics and Sustainability

The dynamism referenced above was to a large extent reflective of the very

dynamic quality of human existence. Life in every community on Earth was, of course,

often marked by loss—of position and status, or of life and property, due sometimes to no

fault of the affected individuals. Consequently, one could not have said with any certainty

that most of the major figures involved in Trinity Gardens at the turn of the 21st Century

would still be quite as powerful within a few years, even controlling for questions of

resources and control over them. A simple change in the political winds and

demographics could have wreaked such a change. At the same time, community leaders

could have passed away or moved, and in doing so changed the status quo. Coleman

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(1988) discussed the possibility of just this sort of change in his study of the success of

Catholic schools. When a particularly influential parent or couple left, he found, the

effects of social capital went with them—and it was by no means certain that it could

ever come back.

In Trinity Gardens, the disappearance or deaths of Richardson or BAWC leaders

Dubose and Wiley would surely have had a profound impact on local development

efforts. It would not have been a stretch, some suggested, to think that development

efforts would have been completely derailed. Even if these individuals had remained

alive and healthy, however, their influence could have been greatly diminished by

demographic or political change. Richardson‘s position, by contrast, was by its nature

less secure—or at least no more secure than any politician‘s, despite having retaken his

council seat in a landside in his last run for reelection.

That being said, the Bay Area Women‘s leadership was trying to think ahead.

More specifically, its leaders were trying to train others to take over the reigns of

community activism, and were feeling somewhat optimistic about their chances. Dubose

recalled that she had been raised to fight for justice, but it took years before she finally

decided to do so. The group‘s two main leaders had even lived outside the neighborhood.

Dubose had spent many years living in Atlanta, while Wiley had lived in Fairhope, on

Mobile Bay‘s eastern shore. It was only late in life that the two had become active in the

affairs of their home territory. ―Really,‖ Dubose recalled, ―if you look at it, for about 45

years we did absolutely nothing‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 210). Dubose felt that others within

the community had been raised to similarly fight for justice, and that the BAWC

members were trying to empower them. They would, she thought, want to continue to

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press for positive change. It was just a matter of awakening these future leaders, to make

them aware of the baton that Bay Area members were trying to pass. ―They don't really

realize it's a baton. We're trying to show them it's a baton they can take and keep on

going‖ (Mikell, 2003, p. 210).

For his part, Richardson saw every reason to believe that development efforts

would continue, with or without him. Trinity Gardens residents would endure, he

hypothesized, because the neighborhood‘s progress had a foundation. ―They have a

model to go by,‖ the councilman said. ―So, I don‘t think the people in Trinity Gardens are

gonna turn back. They know. I talk to them. They know what they need to do‖ (Mikell,

2003, p. 16).

Of course, the data show that no one had ever been clear on what precisely to do,

nor had they ever been provided with an elaborately detailed model for community

development. The foundation of which Richardson spoke was one that allowed for the

possibility that the baton might be passed to some totally new civic organization, or

combination of groups and individuals, or whoever chose to come to the table. Even, the

model had also depended on the providing of such a community table by determined and

charismatic individuals. What if no one is around to whom one could pass a baton?

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CHAPTER X

CONCLUDING DISCUSSION

The assumption of Trinity Gardens leaders, as suggested in Chapter IX, was that

their late 1990s model of community development, however imperfect or ill-defined,

would continue to be of influence in years and maybe even decades to come. It seems

logical to ask whether this belief is overly optimistic, however, given that neither

Prichard officials, nor any other Mobile representatives, have ever picked up the model.

Was the development of Trinity Gardens just a fluke, or a one-time thing based upon the

efforts of strong-willed individuals, and ones who managed to bring a governmental

bureaucracy on board? Certainly, given the real or perceived failure of so many

government-oriented planning and development efforts in America, and a popular

cynicism regarding institutional and elite leadership that did not die on September 11,

2001—despite predictions to the contrary—the optimism of Richardson and Dubose is

also too easy to shrug off as hopelessly naive. It is far too easy and tempting to say, ―This

will not last,‖ and that there is as such little to be learned from the effort. Whether there is

or is not something of long-range and exportable worth to Trinity Gardens development

process, however, is in need of neither undue optimism, nor excessive pessimism, but

more investigation.

It seems unlikely, after all, that Trinity Gardens will suffer some dramatic decline

in coming years. Unless the community‘s population is decimated due to some sudden

economic or social decline—some social or political phenomena with the impact of the

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death of Jim Crow segregation, say—Trinity Gardens will surely endure, if not thrive. As

such, Richardson and the Bay Area Women Coalition are likely to be remembered, if

only in passing. Pictures of the councilman, as well as Dubose and Wiley, will probably

be displayed on a wall at the current or a new Dotch Center. Despite so much decline

since the 1960s, the neighborhood has a strong identity and sense of community, and will

likely cling to it as the years pass. Trinity Gardens has a collective historical memory that

the leaders of many American communities, of varying demographics, would find

enviable, and future community leaders, or would-be leaders, will have that to draw

upon.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that one cannot safely assume that community

leaders in Mobile are on target in their positive thinking and exhortations, nor that their

model represents an ideal one for communities nationwide. It is, similarly, also not the

case that sound research can be built on such assumptions. More bluntly, any new or

reworked model of the relationship between social capital and government that is built

more on sheer democratic idealism than any factual foundation could be susceptible to

quick collapse. Likewise, it would be a mistake to see the propositions that were used to

structure the study of Trinity Gardens‘s development process as any final word. This

dissertation‘s research was instead designed with the intention of being a starting point

for a more thorough study of the interaction of social capital and government. In that

spirit, a number of propositions or working hypotheses were developed as a means of

shaping the research and providing some grist for future theory building and testing. They

are listed as follows:

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Proposition 1: Government played a central role in increasing the effect, if not the

stock, of social capital in Trinity Gardens.

Proposition 2: The relationship between social capital and government was

ultimately tied in with the success of community development efforts in Trinity Gardens.

Proposition 3: Cross-sectoral cooperation appeared to be vital to community

development efforts in Trinity Gardens. However, more extensive interaction will be

needed for any further-reaching development efforts.

Proposition 4: Government and community leadership were essential to

increasing the effect of social capital in Trinity Gardens, and not just government itself.

Proposition 5: No one person, group or social phenomenon was solely responsible

for the outcome of community development efforts in Trinity Gardens.

What made these propositions useful is that they managed to be specific to Trinity

Gardens as well as parsimonious, even while providing a possible template for a general

social capital theory. Moreover, they provided a clear structure for the research.

Nevertheless, it was always supposed that the next step in the theory-building process

would be to reexamine the propositions after an analysis of data gathered over the

summer of 2003.

Propositions: Revised and Restated

It seems clear that a relationship between government and social capital exists in

Trinity Gardens that is more complex in reality than initially thought. The problematic

inter-municipal relations of Mobile and Prichard, to cite one significant example, looms

far larger now than at first seemed imaginable. At the same time, the term government

will probably never be efficacious in describing the reality of relations between public

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servants and community groups, regardless of its specific operational definition here.

Consequently, the writing of a list of revised propositions seemed an absolute necessity.

The rewritten propositions are listed below. All will still apply only to the case at hand,

the development of Trinity Gardens. Nevertheless, they present a clearer description of

reality as seen in the field.

New Proposition 1: Governmental agents—specifically, the municipal district

representation for the Mobile section of Trinity Gardens, in association with municipal

agencies and authorities who cooperated with and expanded upon its efforts—played a

central role in increasing the effect, if not the stock, of the neighborhood‘s social capital.

New Proposition 2: The relationship between social capital and agents of the

Mobile government—specifically, the municipal district representation for Trinity

Gardens, along with municipal agencies and authorities that cooperated and expanded

upon this representative‘s efforts—was ultimately tied in with the success of community

development in the Mobile section of the neighborhood.

New Proposition 3: Cross-sectoral cooperation appeared to be vital to community

development efforts, and was actively sought and granted. However, interaction with the

private sector of the larger Mobile metropolitan area—a type of networking that many

development researchers felt necessary for the most extensive sort of community

development—had been limited.

New Proposition 3a: A lack of one highly significant type of cross-sectoral

cooperation—inter-municipal cooperation between Mobile and Prichard—in Trinity

Gardens hindered efforts to develop the neighborhood in its entirety.

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New Proposition 3b: Despite the fact that federal authorities had ties to Trinity

Gardens, and engaged in networking with government and civic leaders there, the federal

government failed, in its intergovernmental crime prevention efforts, to have much of a

direct or a particularly dramatic impact on development efforts or social capital there.

The reasons for this included a) a lack of power of the sort needed by federal authorities

to encourage intergovernmental cooperation; b) program design; and c) government

efforts that were not always coordinated with the assistance and cooperation of local

government and civic leaders.

New Proposition 4: The municipal representation for the Mobile section of Trinity

Gardens was, along with the leadership of the Bay Area Women Coalition, essential to

increasing the effect of social capital, and not just agents of Mobile‘s municipal

government.

New Proposition 5: No one person, group, or social phenomenon was solely

responsible for the outcome of community development efforts in the Mobile section of

Trinity Gardens.

Ideas for research that stem from these rewritten propositions are provided below.

The subsection begins with an analysis of these ideas, and is followed by a consideration

of alternative means of carrying such research out at both the micro and macro levels.

The Sustainability of Trinity Gardens Development

For at least part of what the propositions or working hypotheses gain in accuracy,

unfortunately, they lose in parsimony. Nevertheless, many ideas for future research are to

be found within those propositions, particularly research involving issues of institutional

structure, cross-sectoral cooperation, and the sustainability of neighborhood

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development. Questions posed by the Trinity Gardens experience are by no means

completely new. Instead, they present a means of looking at old issues of community

governance afresh, and for exploring and questioning presumptions about the relationship

between governing authorities and local communities.

As noted earlier, the issues involved have long been explored, and are frequently

addressed in the literature that was surveyed for this research. The same is true of

scholarship that influenced the dissertation‘s direction. The latter works included such

notable urban case studies as Dahl‘s New Haven study (1961), which dealt in part with

similar questions related to participation and leadership, as well as the interaction

between institutional elites and private citizens. (The way in which Dahl saw city politics

as being pluralistic in nature also had a strong influence in this research, as reflected in

statements regarding the dynamism of Trinity Gardens development.) By the same token,

Orr‘s (1999) more recent research on ―black social capital‖ in Baltimore suggested that

cross-sectoral cooperation was a crucial issue for school reform in a city where whites

held most of the corporate and financial cards, even if trust and cooperation levels were

high in the black community, which dominated public education.

Still, the questions posed by the Trinity Gardens experience are singular in plenty

of ways. The books referenced above, for instance, do not address in any great detail the

sustainability of community development efforts. The term sustainability does rear its

head quite often in social science, by contrast, but does so most frequently in relation to

the long-term environmental or physical survival of political communities. Sustainable

cities are, it is often suggested, ones in which natural resources will be used wisely and

with respect or concern for the environment. Few researchers, by contrast, have looked at

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social capital or leadership as a similar type of resource, and one that needs a consistent

sort of renewal and stewardship. This is true despite Coleman‘s (1988) assertion that a

social network‘s chances of meeting goals and reinforcing community norms could be

harmed by the move or death of one or two key individuals. The possibility of such a

loss, unfortunately, could be crucial in neighborhoods such as Trinity Gardens. If the

good a network does ends with the disappearance of one or two individuals, it hardly

seems controversial to ask whether government or civic leaders should be at all

concerned about nurturing civic participation or social capital. Is the use of community

groups in development too risky, or pointless, given the potentially short shelf life of

group efforts? Is the solution, perhaps, more of a stress on leadership development within

communities? Such questions need to be addressed within the social capital literature,

particularly given the stress on the phenomena as a sort of wonder drug for ailing polities.

Concurrently, plenty of researchers have suggested that charismatic movements,

whether put to use in public policy or religion or any other social phenomena, are

exceedingly difficult to maintain. The work of these scholars also needs to be extended.

The problem here was long ago summed up by Weber (1968). Eventually, he suggests,

all successful charismatic movements lose their way, or find their strengths or platforms

co-opted by larger mainstream institutions. Is such an outcome inevitable and, if so, can

anyone build such an expectation into community development plans, to prepare for it?

The question cannot be answered within this dissertation, given that they fall outside the

parameters of its research design. It may, however, be possible to explore such issues

within particular real world communities in a longitudinal fashion.

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Sustainability: A Structural and Institutional Consideration

More structural and institutional concerns, by contrast, bring to the surface

questions related not just to sustainability, but the spread of successful models to all

sections of a municipality. A few interview subjects suggested that a major reason for the

success of development efforts in Trinity Gardens was Mobile‘s switch from at-large to

district-level representation. Whether the district system presented issues of its own was

hardly discussed, although some interviewees did point out that Richardson‘s

developmental innovations were not carried out in other districts. Meanwhile, police and

other city representatives met with neighborhood groups citywide, but these events did

not bring them into as much contact with community leaders and citizens as had the

District 1 meetings. As one administrator noted, without some contacts within

neighborhoods or easily identifiable community leadership, it would have been difficult

to export a similar model of development to other parts of the city, regardless of any help

from a council member. It thus appears that it would be good for researchers working

within social science fields that address matters of local and urban governance (urban

studies, urban sociology, political science, social psychology, and criminology) to try and

identify ways in which coordination of community leadership can be encouraged at a

municipal-wide level, as well as to bring to light how municipal structure plays a role in

such cooperation (or a lack thereof).

The problem of successful models being contained to particular districts or

neighborhoods is linked, meanwhile, to the larger issue of cross-sectoral cooperation and

coordination of development or policy creation and implementation. Urban problems do

not frequently stop, after all, at municipal boundaries, given the structure of metropolitan

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systems within the United States. Metropolitan governance is, in turn, affected by

relations with government agencies at the state and federal levels. How to encourage such

intergovernmental cooperation is, however, a thorny issue. It would seem as if

metropolitan cooperation, for instance, would be most successfully encouraged by

incentives or sanctions handed down by authorities at the state or local level. This,

however, is unlikely to happen in connection with federal urban or anti-poverty policy, or

with lower-income community development programs, given the recent political history

of such initiatives. It matters little that incentives are granted and sanctions are handed

down by the federal government in plenty of other areas, such as transportation and

environmental policy, or that major government officials speak in idealistic terms of

bringing democracy and freedom to failed states such as Iraq. The way in which past

poverty programs are discussed in American politics has seemingly precluded anything

even remotely resembling interventionist urban policy in the area of lower-income

community development and anti-poverty policy.

Whether social capital can play any role in encouraging successful cross-sectoral

development appears even more doubtful. Evidence from this study paints a fairly bleak

picture in regard to the effect that civic activity can have on certain cross-sectoral

relationships, especially those involving a sector that happens to be a recalcitrant

municipal government within a larger metropolitan area. Whether this means that the role

of institutions or particular administrators within the Mobile metro area is of greater

significance than the role of civic organizations or citizens, or instead that civic groups

and political participants are only effective as the government leaders with whom they try

to work, is difficult to say. Further study is desperately needed in this realm.

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The nature of the pressure placed upon Prichard officials by Trinity Gardens

residents may also have played a role in affecting the response of the financially unstable

municipality‘s leaders. In short, the Prichard section of Trinity Gardens may not have

been large enough for municipal leaders in Prichard to see it as crucial to their political

standing and ambition. In such cases, the usefulness of any civic activity—the central

component of the political science conception of social capital, and a type of activity that

helped to bring about other major components of social capital, including social trust—

could be said to be doubtful. Here again, the worth of social capital seems dubious. Why

should residents not bowl alone, metaphorically speaking, if all their activity is likely to

be for naught, given structural forces beyond their immediate control?

Vertical Social Capital Versus Faith-Based Power

A worse alternative, however, would be a strict reliance on governments or

officialdom to give focus to communities or civic activity within a particular jurisdiction.

Putnam (1995, 2000) noticed as much in describing the difference between what he

called horizontal and vertical social capital. Vertical social capital, he suggested, was less

desirable for a community than horizontal social capital because strong vertical ties

encouraged oppression or exploitation of individuals and resources. The governed grew

overly dependent on those who did the governing, in other words—just as they had in the

southern Italian village studied by Banfield (1958). (Southern Italy was the Italian region

where Putnam (1993) found lower levels of social capital, levels that correlated with

lower government performance ranking and greater public corruption there.)

Data from the Trinity Gardens study hint at the negative impact that government

activity could have on community organizing. For starters, the data suggest that

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faith-based grants could shift the balance of power in neighborhood development efforts.

More to the point, such efforts could halt or slow efforts undertaken by Richardson,

Mobile police, the BAWC, and others. That being said, it can be argued that a moderate

level of Madisonian competition among civic organizations needs to be encouraged by

higher governmental authorities, just to keep any one faction from gaining control. It

seems hard to argue, however, that any power shift created by federal spending will

necessarily lead to optimal development outcomes. Interview data showed, for instance,

that one recipient of faith-based funding talked of how spiritual concerns were of more

importance to his church than, say, getting a jazz concert into the neighborhood.

Temporal affairs, in short, mattered less. Then again, the pastor interviewed saw the

promotion of affordable home ownership and the opening of a health clinic as being

future priorities for a community development corporation started by his church, despite

the fact that the spiritual aspect of such priorities is debatable (Mikell, 2003, p. 32). A

jazz concert, similarly, can be one person‘s temporal affair, while serving as another

person‘s spiritual event.

It should not be assumed, whatever the case, that religious figures can deliver in

policy areas more traditionally associated with government or the secular non-profit

sector, such as the promotion of affordable home ownership, better or as well as the

agents of local government and community organizations. Now, the debate regarding the

balance between federal control and influence, on the one hand, and urban or local

control of efforts involving federal grants, on the other, is already well-covered ground.

Questions about that balance go back as far as the New Deal, when local elites in areas

such as the Mississippi Delta used control of government monies as a means of

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increasing their own power and wealth. These questions continued to be asked through

and after the Johnson years with the War on Poverty (Cobb, 1992; Mikell, 1999). How to

balance any governmental power with that of local communities remains still a thorny

question.

Analysis of this balance is more often found today in works of political theory,

particularly those of communitarian writers (Etzioni, 1995), than in empirical research

involving local or urban government. In many cases, communitarian theorists have

stressed the need for a dispersed sort of power that allows citizens to feel as if they have a

stake in a community, and to accept a greater moral responsibility to their neighbors.

Among the ways of increasing community control that these theorists have stressed are

the development of micro-enterprises; that is, small businesses with low overhead

(McDougal, 1993). Likewise, some scholars associated with this school have stressed a

renewed role for churches in community service and organizing.

Communitarian ideas have, however, in some cases been processed through the

American policymaking machine, and come out worse for it. To a certain extent,

government came about these ideas after consulting with authentic academic sources,

such as Etzioni. Putnam (1993, 1995, 2000), who has often both been identified with

communitarians, also advised U.S. Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. Still, it could

be argued that government efforts that brought religion into the policymaking sphere

were not purely communitarian in their orientation, but a result of political compromise

and fitting new ideas into time-worn boxes. Bush‘s faith-based initiative seemed, for

instance, well on its way to becoming a curious post-secular hybrid, something akin to a

Community Action Agency, only with a steeple or some more generally elaborate or

194

distinctive architecture. Certainly, one recipient of millions of faith-based funds, the Rev.

Sun Myung Moon‘s Unification Church, seemed as dubious as any of the more fringy

elements that came to receive extensive negative publicity during the War on Poverty

(Lattin, 2004). Other studies were showing that only programs that were designed

effectively worked, and that their connection to a particular religious faith had nothing to

do with their success or lack thereof. Still another study showed that social service

recipients view faith-based agencies as being more responsive than state welfare offices,

the closest counterparts of faith-based organizations (FBOs) as regards to the types of

services provided. However, FBOs were perceived as no more responsive than non-

sectarian, non-profit organizations offering the same sorts of services (Wuthnow,

Hackett, & Yang, 2003).

On the other hand, Brodie (2003) found that predominantly African-American

churches generally try—as the church which operated an existing elementary school in

Trinity Gardens had—to work more closely with government officials and administrators

than churches with primarily white or interracial congregations. Also, they are on the

whole more dedicated to social service initiatives than other faith-based grant recipients.

Still, among these predominantly African-American churches, those most likely to

collaborate with government have been ones with non-hierarchal congregations that were

still attracting older members, but also getting smaller (Boddie, 2003). They also have not

had as much in resources with which to work in the first place. Churches in African-

American neighborhoods have been, moreover, in general less likely to serve persons

outside of their membership. Perhaps, then, it may be best to be more selective in

choosing churches with which to work, and to consider the sustainability of collaborative

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relationships with older congregations particularly. Few are bothering to examine such

issues, however, as dozens of federal agencies—ranging from the Social Security

Administration to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation—rush to take part in the

latest policy implementation trend (Farris, Nathan, & Wright, 2004). The excitement over

the White House‘s faith-based initiative, and the way in which it is being carried out, is

indeed based more on faith, as opposed to empirical evidence.

It may just be too difficult for the federal government to build authentic governing

or policy coalitions with anyone in a localized community. A history of failed or partially

failed American community development programs in the distance would seem to make

the possibility of developing such coalitions even more slim. Perhaps it was ever thus, the

talk of creating such coalitions in Iraq in this new century—much, if not most, of it

coming from the same sorts of politicians and pundits who condemned the War on

Poverty—to the contrary notwithstanding. Maybe coalitions have to develop over time

among individuals who have long-standing relationships. In other words, as hard as it

may be for people of any partisan or ideological persuasion to admit, maybe such

coalitions can only develop slowly. They may develop best, moreover, among individuals

in a particular community who know one another and have learned through trial and error

not only the importance of social trust, but of learning how to trust one another. Where

government might best come into the picture is in providing carefully developed

incentives—be they monetary, or institutional, or what have you—for continuing or

expanding such behavior. It may provide, as one administrator suggested, a bit of

watering and tending of civic organizations, but it cannot force anyone to cooperate. It

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can, however, as Richardson demonstrated, do a bit more than was previously assumed

by municipal leaders.

Pragmatism or Grand Theories?

It seems just as wrong to assume that coalitions for community development—or,

rather, those of the type examined by this dissertation—must be put together in what

might be described best as at least a quasi-organic fashion, however, as it is to undertake

programs based on theoretical assumptions or hunches. What is not needed is more

presumptive or ideological thinking, such as that which results in seeing social capital as

being tautologically present whenever positive results occur, or that promotes faith-based

initiatives on the basis of some presumed inherent goodness. What is sorely needed is

useful, or pragmatic, research regarding community relations. Practitioners, in particular,

need specific knowledge about how the relationship between social capital and

governments works in the real world, and how to put to use civic groups and citizen

participation to work for the good of the whole. In the lack of that, however, more

modesty in scholarly ambitions and skepticism of grand claims for certain much-

discussed social phenomena might suffice.

The need for such pragmatism could be realized by remembering that the worth,

or lack thereof, of a certain style of community organization is not inherent; its worth

may often depend on situational factors instead. It does not always appear true, for

instance, that vertical relationships are harmful, as plenty of research into European and

Latin American corporatist structures—ones that tie the government to various sectors of

the economy and society—have demonstrated over time. Researchers in the comparative

politics field long ago noted how such organizations allow less room for the hijacking of

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the policymaking process by small, cohesive groups of the type decried by Olsen (1965;

Piatonni, 2001; Ziegler, 1998). The issue here may be one of a balancing of vertical and

horizontal relationships, rather than one or the other.

Consequently, Woolcock (1998) may well have been on-target in suggesting that

the best sort of development, involving social capital, is of both the top-down and

bottom-up variety. The data from the Trinity Gardens study further suggests that his lead

is worth following. It may turn out that Woolcock‘s prediction is wrong for the majority

of cases, and as such his ideas regarding the relationship between horizontal and vertical

social networks demand further study. Nevertheless, only when such ideas are explored

more fully can communities and their leaders come to understand how to better put social

capital to work, or to increase the effect of existing stocks of social capital, while leaving

their citizenry more self-sufficient and development efforts more sustainable. Such

research could end up being contradictory and of limited value, but it is far better to

seriously consider the issues at hand rather than work on hunches. These can lead to

policy failure, and in turn limit the options of future leaders.

Unfortunately, there exists no one best avenue for the consideration of such

issues. To the contrary, there is a myriad of ways to conduct research on social capital

and government, all of which have their strengths and weaknesses. Among them are

those listed in the subsection below.

Future Research and its Methodological Diversity

The data presented in this case study, even if not generalizable, could be put to

good use in designing varying types of research on the interaction of government agents

and social capital. Moreover, the data and new propositions could be utilized in such

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research at both the macro and micro levels, even if local governance is more the focus

here. The original propositions were written with just this intention in mind. It was

believed that the data gleaned from an investigation of these propositions could be used

in future research projects involving varying methodologies and designs, ranging from

multi-city case studies, to the ever-popular national survey, to the longitudinal field

experiments often conducted by social scientists working in the areas of criminology and

public health, as well as public administration and leadership studies.

The alternative methodologies considered in this subsection are listed in order of

their appropriateness to the phenomena at hand. This section was written with the goal of

suggesting and exploring future avenues of research to others, while outlining a sort of

ideal schedule of research projects related to the topic at hand.

First, the type of study that would flow most logically from the Trinity Gardens

data is a multi-city or comparative metropolitan study. A multi-city study of the issues

explored here would still not allow for the making of clear generalizations to any larger

state or national population. Research involving inner cities in several metropolitan

statistical areas could nevertheless represent something of a bridge from research at the

local or micro level to a future macro-level study. A multi-city study of the nexus of

social capital and government could, moreover, be as methodologically rich as any

imaginable. The only potential quandary here involves the economic feasibility of such a

larger study. Questions of exact expenses aside, a model for such research is available;

namely, Stone et al.‘s (2001) study of civic capacity in public education reform in

multiple U.S. cities. The research focused on cross-sectoral relationships and cooperation

in education reform. The study‘s data was taken from structured interviews with

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government officials, civic leaders, and non-profit organization officials involved in

education reform. A disclaimer here must be provided; namely, there is no reason to

follow Stone et al.‘s model to the letter. To the contrary, given the complexity of the

issues involved in the relationship between government and social capital—and that

concept‘s very thorniness—it would probably be more prudent to utilize unstructured or

semi-structured interviews. The civic capacity study could nevertheless provide a solid

starting point and guide.

No matter how the interviews are carried out, there exists the potential to collect

an overwhelming amount, or hundreds of pages, of interview data—about the same

amount as collected here, some 250 double-spaced pages, but multiplied several times

over. On the other hand, content analysis software exists to assist academic researchers in

that process, and there are even programs available to assist in transcribing and storing

vast amounts of audio data. Patterns may then be sought or discovered by coding words

or phrases related to cooperation and community participation, along with other aspects

of social capital such as trust and community norms. Whether using such software could

prove useful depends on how much nuance and detail one seeks from interview data, or

how much simplification a researcher is seeking or willing to accept. Important data may

also be missed in looking for particular words only. Details from the interviews could be

used, in any case, on either a limited or expansive basis to flesh out the issues, or to

demonstrate how certain concepts work in reality. Consequently, a full review of the

transcripts would prove necessary. The result, in the end, could be a more rigorous sort of

research, certainly more rigorous than that allowed by the traditional, single case study.

Even so, the research could be conducted with the same sort of flexibility.

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By the same token, data from separate respondent categories—such as elected

officials and government administrators, private citizens, or community or civic group

leaders—would be best laid out separately. Each category, in short, would be treated as a

discrete unit of analysis. A researcher could ask respondents questions related to trust and

cooperation, and then gauge how the attitudes of said respondents are affected by their

particular roles or places within a larger community.

Another option is to send substantial mail surveys or administer telephone surveys

to research subjects on similar issues. The mail survey has several advantages, not the

least of which is that it is far less expensive to administer than personal interviews. These

surveys, however, typically have notoriously low response rates, and costly incentives for

participation could be needed to obtain a respectable rate. These surveys also typically

give researchers less data with which to work than one can gain through personal

interviews, and less nuanced data at that, although interviewer bias or reactivity would be

kept to a minimum. A telephone survey, by contrast, would likely result in even less

nuanced or more superficial data, even if a good response rate would have been easier to

obtain. Telephone surveys work best when kept shorter, although half-hour or even hour-

long surveys have been conducted in research involving community organizations

(Andrews & Edwards, 2005; Lavrakas, 1986).

However the data is ultimately collected, several independent studies that address

overlapping concerns could be produced from it, either as part of a series or as one

comprehensive piece of research. One research project could focus on the attitudes of

civic leaders, while another could more specifically address the attitudes of elected

officials. Still another could focus on private citizens alone. All these studies could then

201

fit into one larger work or series on the interaction of social capital and government,

much as was the case with the research of Stone et al. (2001). Doing so might prove to

have several advantages, not the least of which is that it would likely provide a better

demonstration of how people in respective categories trust one another, or how willing

they are to cooperate. Moreover, researchers could consider community or metropolitan

norms across distinct respondent categories.

Finally, it seems as if it would be best to take a cue from Putnam‘s (1993) Italian

study and conduct the research in cities with similar populations and institutional

structures. The Trinity Gardens research shows that structural changes—in this case, the

switch from a commission system with representatives elected at large, to a mayor-

council system with district representation—affected how Mobile representatives viewed

their constituencies. More accurately, the data indicate that council members elected at

the district level have more of an incentive to devote themselves to community building

in lower-income areas like Trinity Gardens than those elected on an at-large basis. Of

course, in other locales an at-large system might make cross-metropolitan cooperation

easier. Likewise, the effectiveness of institutions in any given society or community can

be affected by a number of variables besides the structure of municipal political

institutions. These include local history, the effect of state government activity,

institutional structure, levels of political participation, and the amount of media coverage

granted to local affairs.

Unfortunately, a study that treats a group of individuals as a discrete unit of

analysis cannot provide a suitable means of studying linkages between individuals in

independent community sectors. Pinpointing the linkages between leaders or elites and

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citizens through social network analysis, then, might explain a great deal more about the

relationship of governments and community groups. Judging the strengths or weaknesses

of such ties, in particular, could carry with it the possibility of telling future researchers

whether the development process is most often driven by an elite strata, or whether a far

larger cross-section of citizens is usually involved instead. Furthermore, one could study

how social networks are involved in differing areas of community development. The

potential negatives of such analysis, however, are myriad, and include the potentially

large expense of conducting the research, as well as risks to validity from researcher

effects or reactivity, given the time it would take to complete the work.

Experimental group studies are another rarely administered option for political

science research. They have advantages that have long proven of benefit in the study of

public administration, as well as social psychology and leadership studies. Studies of the

relationship between government and social capital would almost certainly involve

phenomena studied in all these fields, including inter-personal trust, group decision-

making, and enforcement of group or community norms. Even so, an experimental lab

study cannot very easily involve whole communities. A better option would be a

longitudinal field experiment undertaken to study how individuals responded to calls

from leadership to participate in community affairs. Researchers would face one major

hazard here, besides the potential for reactivity. Participation might have just been

abnormally low before the study was undertaken, after which it increased to a more

typical level. In short, a researcher might face the danger of regression to the mean.

If more research is done at the micro level and hypotheses regarding the

relationship between social capital and government are refined, a national or state-level

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telephone or mail survey of similar groups might well be in order. That being said, the

research could have a potential downside. If municipal leaders are surveyed at the

national level, for instance, respondents will come from municipalities of far different

population sizes and demographic makeup. Moreover, if closed-ended questions

dominate, the data collected from a survey will have considerably less nuance than that

collected in personal interviews. A mail survey would thus be the best option, given the

potential it would provide for data richness. Whether an empirical study involves a mail

survey or a telephone survey, however, the data collected from it might have considerable

explanatory power, especially if enough time and care were put into question wording.

The means of studying the relationship between social capital and government are

certainly not limited to those mentioned above. All the same, those listed appeared to

represent the best way to explore the ideas contained within and questions sparked by the

Trinity Gardens study. What the literature of social capital needs is not a study that

purports to explain all, though, but one that is informed by no small amount of modesty.

Just as alternative means of studying the phenomena at hand need to be considered, so it

should be realized that no one best way of encouraging cooperation between governments

and communities can be easily found—or even found at all.

The Evolution of Social Capital

Questions of methodology aside, what needs to be avoided is the search for a

grand, all-encompassing theory or conceptualization of community relations. The very

conceptualization of social capital is already too broad, or too much of a catch-all, for

ideas about social and political relations. Critics such as Fine (2001) are not wrong in

seeing the popularity of the concept within social science as something worthy of serious

204

skepticism. It seems clear today that those initially promoting the idea of social capital

had goals that were more morally than scientifically driven. More to the point, it seems

that the early study of social capital within political science was aimed more at

encouraging people to think about the need for political and social organization than

gaining new knowledge about the political world. Empiricism came in second to

normative theorizing, with a slick overlay of statistical analysis. Even then, there was no

differentiating between the moral worth of trust among persons within qualitatively

organizations, despite the fact that trust may have developed within the International Red

Cross in the same way that it presumably has within the Al Queda terror group.

However muddled the specifics may be, the concept of social capital still seems

useful as an umbrella term for interrelated features of community organizations and

communities, and the trust and norms encouraged within them. What needs to be

considered more today is how well those organizations and communities work together to

encourage trust and norms within a wider geographic territory or larger jurisdiction. To

his credit, when Putnam and a co-author titled a book about social capital in American

communities Better Together (Putnam & Feldstein, 2003), he hinted at coming to a

conclusion similar to that of Woolcock (1998) and Evans (1997), as well as Stone et al.

(2001). What is better, Putnam now suggests, is not the number of organizations or the

very fact that many exist within a particular community, but that they work together. To

borrow a bit of favored American organizational lingo, he believes that people within an

organization or community need to be on the same page.

There is a danger here, however, of again assuming an inherent moral worth in

cooperation across organizational or jurisdictional lines. Just as trust and norms can exist

205

within organizations that have corrosive effects on their communities, given their

adherence to bankrupt ideologies and acceptance of corruption, so can there be

cooperation and coordination across communities or sectoral lines regarding dubious

moral or policy aims. If all groups within a political community agree with government

officials, for instance, that it is well and good to spend as much in taxpayer dollars as

possible while cutting taxes to historic lows, that community is not going to have a

―better‖ existence despite the fact that its citizens work ―together‖ to achieve a goal or

multiple goals.

Consequently, the best way to approach social capital research, and research into

interactive relationships between government and social capital specifically, will be to

approach the subject in a manner that allows for community variation. It needs to be

remembered that what leads to positive or ―progressive‖ development outcomes in a

place like Trinity Gardens might not work elsewhere, even if the community is of a

similar size and demographic makeup. The success of any developmental efforts might

be contingent instead upon many variables that are in many instances difficult to

operationalize and measure, as noted earlier.

For instance, as Bourdieu‘s work reminds readers, being provided with

connections to resources, and having a space or a focus on the debate and discussion of

community issues, may not be enough for a lower-income neighborhood like Trinity

Gardens. There exist, the late theorist suggested, culturally constructed barriers of

language and information—and credentials and esteem—that appear to prop up elites or

ruling classes while making it difficult for those in the lower classes to move upward. No

matter how organized a community may become, Bourdieu‘s theory (1984, 1986)

206

suggests that upward mobility or the continuing betterment of a neighborhood is an

exceedingly complex affair (Swartz, 1997). Elites may need, as one observer of the

Trinity Gardens development suggested, some sort of playing to their need or desire for

esteem—something they get through charitable donations and the like, that grants them

legitimacy within a political community—to keep them interested. Getting private sector

investment may take learning an entirely new approach, as the individual attempting to

develop the Holy Land Heights subdivision was finding out. Government, in this area,

was of no great, or even moderate, assistance.

Given such variations and complications, it is clear that joint top-down and

bottom-up efforts in development need to be studied in as wide array of means as

possible, and that such matters need to be seen as sometimes exceedingly complex

affairs. This is likewise true of the social capital concept. It begs to be approached in a

manner similar to the way that organizational leadership, public administration, human

capital, and other such subjects are considered within academia. The concept needs to be

studied, more specifically, in a flexible and diverse way, with overly simplistic

explanations or single-bullet type theories cast aside. It is time for the academic

understanding of social capital to evolve, or be transformed into something else entirely.

207

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