Home, Neighborhood and Community in the Context of Urban Decline

Preparation of an interactive digital analysis and publication about community-based responses to urban decline in Chester, Pennsylvania.I seek an NEH-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication to complete digital story collection, analysis, and publication in Manifold, an open-source digital platform, with Temple University Press. This project provides a new approach and understanding of urban declension or decline through analysis and interpretation of how low-income minority residents of Chester, Pennsylvania attach meaning and understanding to their varied experiences, memories and commitments to home, neighborhood and community. Collectively, these comprise a local, vernacular form of knowledge that is the centerpiece of this project. The project contributes to interdisciplinary urban studies by situating, analyzing and interpreting vernacular knowledge in relation to dominant ‘city in crisis’ tropes and enhances public access to and awareness of the complexities of maintaining attachment to home, neighborhood and community in the midst of structural decline.