CRP 388
Seminar on Urban Poverty

Unique Number: 01265
Instructor: Elizabeth J. Mueller, Ph.D.

Aggregate economic growth and average incomes are up and welfare rolls have fallen dramatically. Yet these changes appear to have had relatively little impact on poverty, as measured by the federal poverty standard. Particular regions, neighborhoods and groups in American society continue to be disconnected from the prosperity generated by the current economic boom. In this course we will outline the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of poverty, consider competing explanations for urban poverty and its persistence and discuss promising approaches to its alleviation. We will take an explicitly historical approach, putting current debates and strategies in the context of earlier debates and efforts. Emphasis will be placed on the implications for planners.

Topics covered will include:

1. Definitions and measurement: what does it mean to be poor in the US?
2. The current quantitative and qualitative dimensions of urban poverty
3. What causes poverty: assumptions and explanations
4. History of US poverty policy: from poor house to welfare state to personal responsibility
5. Key policy debates: universal versus targeted programs, targeting people versus places, assumptions about gender roles (work versus child rearing), the role of race and discrimination
6. Contemporary debates over spatially concentrated poverty and the underclass
7. Revitalizing places: the Community Development movement
8. Contemporary debates over the importance of work‹welfare reform and working poverty
9. Wage focused approaches: Living wage campaigns, self-sufficiency budgets, union organizing.
10. Planners, poverty and poor communities: equity planning

The course will follow a seminar format with students bearing significant responsibility for leading class discussion as well as for researching and presenting information on selected topics to the class. In addition, course assignments will build toward completion of a final research paper focused on poverty and past or current anti-poverty efforts in a particular city.