Urban Studies Commons^™

Aging In The 100 Largest Metropolitan Areas: How Do Older Adults Fare?, Jan Mutchler, Yang Li

Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging Publications

New estimates from the 2020 Elder Index show that living expenses are high in metropolitan areas across the U.S., and many older singles and couples lack the resources needed to get by in their communities. Focusing on the 100 largest metropolitan areas, we compare the 2020 Elder Index to household incomes among adults aged 65 years or older living in one- and two-person households. Based on this comparison, we find that in each of the 100 largest metro areas, at least 37% of older singles are at risk of being unable to afford basic needs and age in their own …

Refugee Housing In Worcester: A Neighborhood Case Study Of Bell Hill, Tyler Seth Maren

Sustainability and Social Justice

This paper examines refugee resettlement practices at the neighborhood level, asking what neighborhood characteristics are conducive to achieving positive integration and housing stability outcomes. Using data from a quantitative study of refugee resettlement case files from Ascentria Care Alliance as a foundation, this research takes the form of an analysis of the Bell Hill neighborhood in Worcester, MA, a major resettlement destination. Using Ascentria data, secondary data sources such as US Census data and the Worcester Assessor’s Database, and site visits, this paper constructs a profile of Bell Hill along four major dimensions: community characteristics, housing, social infrastructure, and physical …

Zycie W Ameryce: Life In America (Poster), Brynn A. Cotter

Summer Research Program

Poster complementing author's summer research project exploring the history of the Polish-American community of Worcester, Massachusetts centered on the parish of Our Lady of Czestochowa and how its members responded to the forces of Americanization. Research in area archives such as the Worcester Historical Museum, the Worcester Public Library, and at Our Lady of Czestochowa’s rectory and its parish school of Saint Mary’s, as well as oral history interviews with past and longtime members of the community test the assumption that the story of Worcester’s Polish community is one of loss and decline. On the contrary, Polish-American efforts to preserve …

Oral History: John Bartosiewicz

Zycie w Ameryce: A Collection of Polish-American Oral Histories

This conversation is an oral history interview with a former member of Worcester’s Polish-American community. The interview touches on a variety of aspects of life in the community, from school and parish life, to Polishness and the significance of language, and the effects of suburbanization.

Interview keywords: St. Mary’s, church / parish, all Polish, PNI, women’s guild, basketball, immigrant, Polishness, language, John Paul II, I-290, suburbs.

Oral History: Richard Lewandowski

Zycie w Ameryce: A Collection of Polish-American Oral Histories

This conversation is an oral history interview with a former member of Worcester’s Polish-American community. The interview discusses much about the Polish-American experience, from the Polish diaspora, the effects of I-290 and discrimination on the community in Worcester, as well as the effect of global events such as the rise of Solidarity on the Worcester parish.

Interview keywords: St. Mary’s, English, displaced people, I-290, Polish-American parish, Solidarity, Polishness, John Paul II, discrimination, education, Church

Oral History: ​Carol Fredette

Zycie w Ameryce: A Collection of Polish-American Oral Histories

This conversation is an oral history interview with a former teacher at the Polish-American high school in Worcester, Saint Mary’s. The interviewee is not Polish, but of Lebanese descent, so provides the point of view of someone who came from outside the community yet still became a part of it. The interview touches on the rising importance of the English language, the Church’s centrality, ethnic parishes, school life, and high school basketball.

Interview keywords: English, ethnic parish, church, nun, club, basketball

Oral History: Anonymous 1

Zycie w Ameryce: A Collection of Polish-American Oral Histories

This conversation is an oral history interview with a longtime member of Worcester’s Polish-American community. The interview discusses aspects of community life, the neighborhood’s ethnic composition, as well as the effect of I-290 on the neighborhood.

Interview keywords: festivals, non-Polish, White Eagle Club, PNA, PNI, Booster’s, crime, expressway, Polish language

Oral History: Irene Rojcewicz

Zycie w Ameryce: A Collection of Polish-American Oral Histories

This conversation is an oral history interview with a longtime member of Worcester’s Polish-American community. The interview discusses aspects of life in the parish of Czestochowa, from festivals to clubs, to tensions within the diocese, as well as trips organized by the parish to travel to Poland.

Interview keywords: festivals, clubs, English, tension, Poland, John Paul II.

Oral History: Charlene Zimkiewicz

Zycie w Ameryce: A Collection of Polish-American Oral Histories

This conversation is an oral history interview with a longtime member of Worcester’s Polish-American community. This interview touches on difficulties the parish faced, tensions between different groups, school life, and the transition from an ethnic community to a public college.

Interview keywords: ethnic communities, festivals, Irish, fire, I-290, White Eagle Club, basketball, languages, college, immigrants, universal, June Show.

Oral History: John Kraska

Zycie w Ameryce: A Collection of Polish-American Oral Histories

This conversation is an oral history interview with a former member of Worcester’s Polish-American community. This interview touches on community and church life, immigration, divisions in the city, and the effect of I-290 on the community.

Interview keywords: English, festivities, church, I-290, Quo Vadis, White Eagle Club, PNI, sections, basketball, displaced persons.

Oral History: Thaddeus Stachura

Zycie w Ameryce: A Collection of Polish-American Oral Histories

This conversation is an oral history interview with a former pastor of Our Lady of Czestochowa parish, the center of Worcester’s Polish American community. This interview discusses much of the history of the community from its beginnings and delves into the life of a parish priest, while also touching on topics such as immigration, Church corruption, community life and difficulties, and local festivals.

Interview keywords: immigrants, Saint Casimir’s, difficulties, seminary, Bojanowski, Moneta, vocation, dompolski, immoral, Polish priest, Solidarity, redlining, violence, festival, PNI, citizenship.

Gentrification As Anti-Local Economic Development: The Case Of Boston, Massachusetts, James Jennings

Trotter Review

Activists and political leaders across the city of Boston are concerned that gentrification in the form of rapidly rising rents in low-income and the poorest areas are contributing to displacement of families and children. Rising home sale prices and an increasing number of development projects are feeding into this concern. There is also a growing wariness about the impact that this scenario can have on small and neighborhood-based businesses and microenterprises whose markets are represented by the kinds of households facing potential displacement. This potential side-effect suggests that gentrification could actually emerge as anti-local economic development in Boston. It can …

“Separatist City”: The Mandela, Massachusetts (Roxbury) Movement And The Politics Of Incorporation, Self-Determination, And Community Control, 1986–1988, Zebulon V. Miletsky, Tomás González

Trotter Review

November 4, 2016, marks 30 years since the historic referendum in which close to 50,000 citizens of Boston living in or near the predominantly Black area of “Greater Roxbury” voted on whether the area should leave Boston and incorporate as a separate municipality to be named in honor of former South African president Nelson and Winnie Mandela, or remain a part of Boston. The new community, what planners called “Greater Roxbury,” would have included wards in much or all of the neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, the Fenway, the South End, and what was then known as Columbia …

Community Land Trusts: A Powerful Vehicle For Development Without Displacement, May Louie

Trotter Review

In the Great Recession of 2007–2009, Boston’s communities of color were hit hard. A 2009 map of foreclosures looked like a map of the communities of color—Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. The one island of stability was a section of Roxbury called the Dudley Triangle—home to the community land trust of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI).

Originally established to respond to the community’s vision of “development without displacement,” the land trust model was adopted to help residents gain control of land and to use that control to prevent families from being priced out as they organized to improve their neighborhood. …

From Disinvestment To Displacement: Gentrification And Jamaica Plain’S Hyde-Jackson Squares, Jen Douglas

Trotter Review

In this essay, I offer a place-based history of socioeconomic and demographic change in Hyde Square and nearby Jackson Square (henceforth “Hyde-Jackson Squares”). I document the area’s ongoing gentrification and describe the distribution of gentrification pressures. I situate this contemporary process against the socio-spatial patterns carved out by the area’s historical rise as an industrial suburb, its struggle amid decades of disinvestment, and the community efforts that ultimately stabilized the neighborhood. In these sequential transformations is the story of how Latinos and Blacks entered, departed, and have strived to remain in the neighborhood.

The Silent Crisis: Including Latinos And Why It Matters, Representation In Executive Positions, Boards, And Commissions In The City Governments Of Boston, Chelsea, And Somerville, Miren Uriarte, James Jennings, Jen Douglas

Human Services Faculty Publication Series

The Silent Crisis: Involving Latinos in Decision-Making & Why Latino Representation Matters provides a measure of the economic, social, and political inclusion of Latinos at mid-decade in three cities of the Commonwealth where about one fourth of the state’s Latino population lives. Often wrongly referred to as a “new population,” Latinos have been present in Massachusetts since the end of the 19th century, arriving in large numbers beginning in the 1960s and 1970s and growing to nearly 630,000 persons (9.6% of the population) by 2010. That same year, they accounted for 62.1% of the population of Chelsea, 17.5% of the …

Healthy Eating And Savvy Saving: An Evaluation Of Action For Boston Community Development’S Food Dollars Program For Low-Income Elders, Ann Bookman, Susan M. Phillips

Gerontology Institute Publications

This report is an evaluation of an innovative community-based intervention – the Food Dollars Program. Funded by the AARP Foundation, this program was designed and delivered by Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD) and their Elder Services staff in order to promote healthy eating and reduce food and economic insecurity among low-income elders in Boston. The impetus for creating this program arose from the challenges many low-income individuals face in purchasing and consuming healthy foods from the five food groups as recommended by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in their ChooseMyPlate model of healthy eating. The Food Dollars curriculum …

Managing Up: Managing Diversity In Challenging Times, Helen Levine

Commonwealth Compact

Commonwealth Compact is an organization formed to help make Massachusetts a location of choice for people of color and women in the belief that their contributions are vital to the region’s social and economic future. The need for an initiative such as Commonwealth Compact stems from a number of factors. As racial and ethnic diversity increases across the nation, business and civic leaders agree that it is critical to reverse the reputation that Massachusetts and Greater Boston, in particular, have not been seen as a welcoming, diverse place to live and work for people of color. Without a better reputation …

Aging In Hingham: A Community Affair, Jan Mutchler, Caitlin Coyle, Hayley Gravette

Gerontology Institute Publications

The purpose of this needs assessment is to investigate the needs, interests, and opinions of mature residents of Hingham, Massachusetts, relating to their aging experiences and needs for age-related services. This assessment was undertaken by the Gerontology Institute of the McCormack Graduate School at UMass Boston on behalf of the Town of Hingham Department of Elder Services (hereinafter referred to as the Department of Elder Services). The focus of this report is on Hingham residents aged 60+ (referred to here as “Seniors”) and residents aged 45-59 (referred to here as “Boomers”). Information about these two age groups was obtained both …

Mattapan United Community Questionnaire, Mattapan United, Center For Social Policy, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Center for Social Policy Publications

In the winter and spring of 2012, the Steering Committee of the Mattapan United Resilient Communities/Resilient Families project undertook an assessment of community members’ attitudes and opinions for use in planning and program development.

The Committee was assisted in this endeavor by the Center for Social Policy (CSP), McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston. The work of CSP is supported by a grant from The Boston Foundation to provide analytical and evaluation assistance for its Fairmount Initiative along the Fairmount/Indigo Corridor of Boston.

The questionnaire was widely disseminated throughout Mattapan in hard copy and …

Building Bridges: Fostering Dialogue & Shared Understanding Between Communities & Government Agencies, Eben Weitzman, Darren Kew

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Professors Eben Weitzman and Darren Kew of the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance are facilitating ongoing conversations among state and federal agencies and minority community representatives in Massachusetts as a means for fostering shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities inherent to their relationship. Working with the BRIDGES program, they are applying theories around group dialogue in order to help stakeholders build lasting, productive connections.

A Historical Overview Of Poverty Among Blacks In Boston, 1950-1990, Robert C. Hayden

Trotter Review

Like most nineteenth-century residents of Boston, blacks worked hard to maintain their homes and families. Even before the Civil War, both enslaved and free blacks in "freedom's birthplace" worked long and arduous hours. Those who migrated to Boston from the South in the 1800s had come to secure higher wages, mobility, and opportunity for themselves and their families. Boston's black population grew from 2,000 in 1850 to 8,125 in 1890, and to 11,591 by 1900. In 1900, 39 percent of black Bostonians were northern-born (New England, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania), and 53 percent were southern-born.

Residential segregation for …

Pastor Brunson's Shofar, Richard Tenorio

Trotter Review

A short story by Richard Tenorio of sibling love and sacrificed ambition, which is set in Roxbury, traditionally the twentieth-century home territory for blacks in Boston. Today, Roxbury is poised on the lip of gentrification, and blacks in Boston are on the move again, seeking home and security and belonging.

Characteristics Of Homeless Individuals Accessing Massachusetts Emergency Shelters, 1999-2001, Tatjana Meschede, Michelle Kahan, Michelle Hayes, Donna Friedman

Center for Social Policy Publications

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) at the McCormack Institute, University of Massachusetts Boston oversees the Connection, Service, and Partnership through Technology (CSPTech) project. CSPTech operates a homeless management information system being implemented throughout the Commonwealth. Founded in 1995, this project is a networked computerized record-keeping system that allows homeless service providers across Massachusetts to collect uniform client information over time. This information is aggregated in a database used by service providers, advocates, government officials, researchers, and people experiencing homelessness. Analysis of this information is critical to efforts to understand the extent of this problem in Massachusetts in an attempt …

Race, Poverty And Education In The 21st Century, Joan Wallace-Benjamin

Trotter Review

I am here as the president of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts. I am here as a woman. I am here as a partner in the struggle for equal opportunity and access for - women, men, young people, the elderly, Black, white, Latino and Asian, who are not able to fully enjoy the educational, economic and social benefits of our American society. I am here as a colleague of Mary's, [Mary Lassen, Executive Director, Women's Educational and Industrial Union] who works with commitment and passion on these same issues and with whom I have collaborated and will continue to …

Eastward Ho: Issues And Options In Regional Development For The Metropolitan Boston Region, Robert C. Wood, Laura C. Ghirardini, Lori L. Prew, Aundrea Kelley

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

Conventional wisdom suggests that the basic job of public policy studies (and public institutions, for that matter) is to deal in a timely and practical fashion with pressing public issues of the day. The focus typically is on 'ripe' topics, 'hot' political problems. If a study can be ahead of the curve, in John Kingdon's apt phrase "an idea whose time has come," so much the better. But unlike more traditional academic research, where the focus is timeless — i.e., an explanation of previously inexplicable phenomena, timeliness is a prime reason for initiating a policy study.

In this context, analyzing …

A Snapshot Of Individuals And Families Accessing Boston's Emergency Homeless Shelters, 1997, Donna Friedman, Michelle Hayes, John Mcgah, Anthony Roman

Center for Social Policy Publications

This document summarizes key findings from a survey conducted on March 19, 1997 with 338 homeless individuals and 94 families sheltered or served by 33 of 40 shelter programs in the City of Boston. The data presented in this report were collected at one point in time. Point in time data results in an overrepresentation of the "longer term" homeless, and offers limited insight regarding the structural dynamics underlying movement from homelessness to residential stability (Culhane, Lee, Wachter, 1996; White, 1996). However, it does provide a snapshot of the men, women, and children who were spending the night in a …

Managing The Central Artery/Tunnel Project: An Exploration Of Potential Cost Savings, Allan K. Sloan

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

The John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Massachusetts Boston is an institution whose primary mission is public service. Through public policy research, educational programs, policy practice and the dissemination ofknowledge, the Institute seeks to have a constructive impact on policy formulation, problem solving and public discourse concerning urgent civic challenges facing state and local government in the New England region.

In 1996, under Chapter 205 of the 1996 Acts and Resolves, the Massachusetts legislature authorized the Institute to undertake a study *to review and explore possible cost savings within the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel project" …

Shelter Poverty: Housing Affordability Among Asian Americans, Michael E. Stone

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

Relatively little research has been conducted that focuses on the housing situation of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans (hereafter generally referred to as Asian Americans), especially on the national level. From a review of about 30 articles and reports over the past decade that examine racial/ethnic housing situations nationally, only one specifically addressed housing problems of Asian Americans (Hansen, 1986) while two others included Asian Americans along with other populations of color. Of the remaining articles, most used the terms race, racial discrimination, or segregation in their titles, yet did not include Asian Americans in the studies. Of particular note, …

Preliminary Report On A Comparative Analysis Of The Underlying Dimensions Of Unemployment Among Blacks, Hispanics, And Whites In Boston, Jeremiah Cotton

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

There are four major objectives of this research. The first objective is to determine whether and to what extent differences in unemployment rates in Boston among black, Hispanic, and white workers are due to the following: (1) the differences in the percentage of individuals in each group who experience a spell of unemployment at one time or another during the year, that is the incidence of unemployment; or (2) the differences in the average number of spells of unemployment during the year, that is the frequency of unemployment; or (3) the differences in the average length of time a spell …