By: Lindsay Campbell
This website explores the factors shaping the strategies and tactics used and the outcomes achieved by a civil society organization that is involved in the revitalization and reuse of the Gowanus Canal. It represents one of three cases (the others being the Bronx River and Newtown Creek)
that I am researching as a part of my Masters of City Planning
thesis at MIT. The website was produced for a class project in
Fall 2005, while the thesis research is ongoing through Spring
2006. I welcome your feedback to <lkc at mit.edu>.
Why study industrial waterways?
The retrenchment of industry, legacy of contamination, and proximity to residential areas associated with urban, industrial and polluted waterways create planning, environmental restoration, and redevelopment challenges and opportunities. These challenges and opportunities are taken on and seized by various types of actors, including private developers, public agencies, and nonprofit groups. There are a number of different and sometimes opposing visions between and among these types of actors.
Untangling those different visions and understanding how groups seek to achieve them is an interesting study in organizational behavior and interaction.
Why study civil society?
A large portion of the environmental movement has been built on civil society initiatives that eventually get picked up on by the public sector. While there are other models, I am interested in understanding this role of civil society as a "first responder." These organizations fill a role that government and private interests can miss, particularly related to social justice or innovation. Empirically, there are thousands of citizen-led environmental organizations at the local level and they are understudied. Most studies tend to focus on national level membership organizations like the Sierra Club. Also, stewardship (i.e. direct care of the environment) as a function is particularly under-studied, though a lot of civil society groups do this. Finally, I believe that these organizations represent a community asset and a neighborhood voice.
Why study organizational structure, tactics, and dynamics?
It is important to learn from what organizations have done, in terms of: generalizable lessons,
best practices,
potential pitfalls, turning points, and moments of opportunity. Just as other sectors study cases (like in business school), shouldn't someone scrutinize civil society's organizational dynamics?
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