Architecture and the African American Community: An Architect's Anthology of Social Justice Research

Economic development must be a precursor to community development in an impoverished inner city neighborhood in order to reverse the trend of poverty and oppression in that same neighborhood. Can the economic development model of the Mondragon Cooperative in Mondragon, Spain be utilized as a primary model for economic development, the precursor to community development in the Over-The-Rhine neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio? Having grown up in two inner city communities between 1960 & 1978, in two mid-west cities, one located in Ohio and the other Michigan, I have experienced the racial dynamics of ghetto making that occurred in most of the main Midwest cities during the great migration that occurred for African Americans who left the south to live in the north where manufacturing opportunities were located between the 1920’s to the 1970’s.