The Community Development Reader

The Community Development Reader is the first comprehensive reader addressing community development. Community development has become a significant component of urban political economies in the past thirty years. This Reader is an ambitious volume bringing together history, theory and power dynamics. It does not just promote the model of community development but also addresses the messiness of community development.

James DeFilippis is an Assistant Professor in the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. He received his PhD in Geography from Rutgers University in 2000, and his BA in Political Science and Geography from the University of Vermont in 1993. He is the author of Unmaking Goliath: Community Control in the Face of Global Capital (Routledge Press, 2004), which was named the "Best Book In Urban Politics, 2004" by the American Political Science Association. He has also published many articles and reports on housing, community development, urban politics, and local economic development.

Susan Saegert is Director of the Center for Human Environments (CHE) and Professor of Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she was also the first director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society. She received her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1973 and her B.A. with honors in government from the University of Texas in 1968. Dr. Saegert has published five books including Social capital in poor communities with Phil Thompson and Mark Warren (Russell Sage, 2001), and From abandonment to hope: community households in Harlem , with Jackie Leavitt (Columbia University Press, 1990). She has also published over fifty articles and book chapters on environmental psychology, women and the environment, crowding, environmental stress, and housing and health, as well as social capital.