Community-Centered Urban Redevelopment: Case Study of Carlisle, PA

Carlisle, a Central Pennsylvania borough positioned twenty-five miles west of Harrisburg, has a deep and rich history through the American Revolution and Civil War until today. Especially during the Industrial Revolution and the latter part of the 20th century, many factories provided a majority of the jobs in the town and were the economic foundation for the community.

However, as seen in countless other communities across the country, these factories fell away and left the town in quick succession due to widespread deindustrialization and globalization: the International Automotive Components factory closed in 2008, the Tyco Electronics factory in 2009, and the Carlisle Tire & Wheel factory in 2010.

The Borough of Carlisle was faced with an enormous challenge yet an enormous opportunity in how to develop the three brownfield sites on the northern side of town. In 2013, after a long and deliberative process, the Carlisle Urban Redevelopment Plan was published, and is an interesting case study to highlight how the CED-SS model can and has been applied in urban communities.

It’s Hard to be a Saint in the City: Urban Challenges to the CED-SS Model

Define community economic development, opportunity, and social sustainability: check.

Connect these in a model to influence local policymaking: check.

Use a case study to validate the model as a policy evaluation tool as well: check.

So, what’s next?

We can take the framework and understanding that we’ve built thus far and apply it to both urban and rural communities’ policy landscapes to improve their social sustainability. We’ll start with urban policymaking first, but before we can start suggesting policy directions, we first need to understand the challenges and opportunities already in urban neighborhoods and communities.

19 East Chocolate: A Case Study for the CED-SS Model

The community economic development-social sustainability (CED-SS) model that we’ve built over the past eight posts is primarily aimed at being a framework to look at creating new policies in a community. It can also be used, however, to evaluate past policies to extract lessons for future policymaking so that it can fully maximize opportunity and foster strong social sustainability.

Let’s take a look at a case study where there was a breakdown in the model and an impending erosion of social sustainability in the community to highlight some of these lessons: the demolition of the Hershey chocolate factory in 2012.

From Government to Governance: Orienting Local Policies through Community Economic Development

Community economic development calls for a recalibration of the local democratic processes where social sustainability policies are created and implemented, a change from the classical governmental-focused frameworks of old to a new, progressive approach.

“A traditional government approach is top-down, hierarchical, and operates in isolation from other stakeholders, while new governance, in contrast, cultivates horizontal, flexible relationships for policymaking.”

Relationships. Relationships are the tracks on which the train of community economic development runs. Relationships between citizens and their local authorities, their neighbors, and the environment around them are at the core of mobilizing social sustainability.

Embracing a Culture of Opportunity

“It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

The American Dream sounds a lot like what social sustainability should look like, at least intuitively. When James Truslow Adams first introduced the term in his 1931 book The Epic of America, the American Dream was a reality in which “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability and achievement.”

Potential. Achievement. Opportunity. For all. These are what Adams saw as major tenets upon which a society should be built.