Community Planning in the 1980s and 1990s
Community planning sponsored by local city governments continued through the 1980s and in the last decade of the 20th century. Many active, egalitarian, socially oriented, and inclusive planning efforts occurred in the United States during this period. Members of community-based organizations began to propose changes in city ordinances, zoning laws, or new laws governing the allocation of city services, and demanded the establishment of watchdog com-missions with the authority to investigate police brutality, discrimination, and human rights violations. In the first decade of the 21st century, several major private philanthropic foundations and city governments launched pilot projects to test the effectiveness of a comprehensive approach to community that included community planning, community development, advocacy, and service provision. They represented a new wave of corporate and community partnerships in which federal, state, and local governments cooperated with local planning groups by providing funding and support to address neighborhood needs at the grassroots level (Smock, 1997).