Word: urbanize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...founders, Lloyd Rowdin of MIT and Martin Meyerson of Harvard, modeled the Center after traditional research centers in other fields--with the fundamental view that you can do urban research the same way as other research. The analogy stemmed at least partly from a desire to prove "legitimate" a field of research which was not at the time entirely respectable...
...December, Roxbury spokesmen Bryant Rollins and George Morrison launched a broadside against the Joint Center after Harvard and MIT received $6 million from the Ford Foundation for urban research: "Research conducted by armchair theoreticians and uninvolved intellectuals is a pure waste of money and works to maintain the status quo. By [this] time, people throughout Boston--and particularly people in our black community--should be entirely fed up with researchers and social planners and urban developers telling us and our communities what our problems are and what the solutions...
...supply data of the sort that, when supplied by the government, is highly unreliable and political. Center members are able to evaluate government programs from a more-or-less neutral position. (The most controversial policy study--The Federal Bulldozer, done by Martin Anderson--was a slashing criticism of the urban renewal program...
Perhaps the most critical role of academic urban research is that of contradicting some of the shibboleths--including liberal ones--which guide policy-making. (The Coleman Report, for example--not a Joint Center product but of the same type--has shaken up educators by indicating that a number of factors "obviously" related to classroom performance appear to have no bearing on performance...
Less vociferous critics of the Joint Center than Bryant Rollins point out that the academic style of urban research ignores the problems of implementing change. There are, for example, a variety of possibilities for improving academic performance of ghetto children--"black" curricula, integration, compensatory education, community schools, federal regional schools, and so on. The theoretical pros and cons of these proposals have generated a lot of discussion--but the fact remains that no one knows to what extent any of them might be effective, or what their unanticipated consequences would be. Says Peter Labovitz, lecturer in city planning at Harvard...