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Community Development and Community Planning

David Popenoe
Version of record first published: 27 Nov 2007

To cite this article: David Popenoe (1967): Community Development and Community Planning, Journal of the American Institute of Planners,
33:4, 259-265
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Downloaded by [Universidad Del Norte] at 13:39 31 July 2012

ment. T o stipulate the objectives of these programs and

to measure their effects and performance, all three levels
of government must act jointly.
Experimental projects are now being developed that
show promise of improving state and local ability to
understand the complex economic and social factors
involved, and enabling them to develop more effective
plans for growth and development. These experimental
projects are designed to link planning with budgeting at
the local level and to provide a framework for systematic
analysis of problems and alternative ways of meeting
them. This, in turn, should lead to a more effective allocation of our limited local resources.

Conclusion
In conclusion, the primary aim of PPBS is to provide a
formal and systematic means for evaluating and measuring effectiveness against costs of government programs.
T o do this, we need to specify our objectives and to
measure performance against these objectives. In so
doing, we hope to move away from decisionmaking on a
subjective (hunch or experience) basis and toward decisionmaking based on benefit-cost and marginal utility
analysis. We feel certain that the new approach will be
a significant improvement over the intuitive processes of
the past. The problems of giving life to the system will,

no doubt, be difficult and time consuming. But the rewards will be a better allocation of resources, greater benefits to public programs, and more sensitive planning and
budgeting at all levels of government.
REFERENCES

The following sources are suggested for the reader who wishes
to study Planning-Programming-Budgeting in more detail. These
sources are not exhaustive; they are selected sources describing
background, current application, and potential usefulness of PPBS.
Committee for Economic Development. Budgeting for National
Objectives. New York: The Committee, 1966.
Foster, Edward. Operations Research in the Federal Government.
Lecture . . . before the University of California Extension Division,
October 1966 (unpublished paper).
Hirsch, Werner Z. Integrating View of Federal Program Brrdgeting. Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation, 1965. (Research
Memorandum RM-4799-RC).
Hirsch, Werner Z. Toward Federal Program Budgeting, Santa
Monica, California: RAND Corporation 1966. (Paper P-3306).
Hitch, Charles J. Decision-Making for Defense. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965.
Novick, David. Program Budgeting . . . Program Analysis and
the Federal Budget. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965.
Rowen, Henry S. PPBS: What and Why, Civil Service lorrrnal.
Washington: U. S. Civil Service Commission, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1966.
Schick, Allen. The Road to PPR-The Stages of Budget Reform
Washington, U . S. Bureau of the Budget, 1966 (unpublished paper).
Smithies, Arthur. The Bzrdgeiary Process in the United States.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955.
U . S. Bureau of the Budget. Planning-Programming-Budgeting,
Washington, 1966 (2 parts-Bulletin 66-3 and Supplement).

Interpretation

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND

COMMUNITY PLANNING
David Popenoe

The rapidity of social change in modern urbanindustrial society and the social and personal disorganization which has resulted from it have given rise to a
rather large and increasing number of methods and techniques, programs, professions, and social movements, the
primary aim of which is to intervene in what might be

AIP JOURNAL
JULY 1967

David Popenoe, Assoc. AIP, is a sociologist and city planner

who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He is
currently Research Director at the Urban Studies Center of
Rutgers-The State University of New lerJey, where he is also
on the graduate faculty in the Department of Sociology. He has
taught previously at New York, University and the University
of Pennsylvania, and held professional planning positions at
the Newark, New Iersey, Central Planning Board and the
Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority.
259

regarded as the normal course of change in such a way as

purposefully to guide it in new directions. Major seg
ments of the older professions, law, medicine, religion,
and education have become reoriented to this aim, and
these have been joined by the newer professions and fields
of social work, city planning, and public administration,
and many others. The older professionals, particularly
ministers and educators, have long concentrated on changing society through changing the individual. They are
joined in this by traditional social caseworkers, by psychiatrists and psychologists, and by many of the newer helping occupations. The new professions or quasi-professions of city planning and public administration, however,
have been concerned almost exclusively with changing

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individuals through changing society, and indeed this

represents a major trend, at the moment, of almost all
activities which are concerned with social change; a
trend which has been greatly enhanced by the rise of the
social sciences. Thus psychiatrists have moved into
preventive psychiatry and community mental health,
ministers into nonparish based urban service, social
workers into community organization, and so on.
These various trends have tended to reinforce an
extremely important insight-that if we are successfully
to cope with the contemporary human condition, we must
change both the society and the individual simultaneously.
It is this insight, it seems to me, that the term community
development essentially signifies-both in theory and in
practice. It is a particularly appropriate term because
community means at least two quite different but related things: one, the objective physical and sccial environment within which life takes place-the
city of
bricks and mortar and the observable social institutions,
such as government, and two, the intangible environment of individual feelings which exists in a group or
place and which gives life there a special meaning and
emotional significance. Thus when the word community
is used without definition, as in the term community development, the implication is that the primary concern
of such development is with both the objective environment and the subjective emotional environment within
which individuals may find meaning and value.
Many fields have been struggling toward a similar
synthesis. Individual therapists, for example, have become
increasingly oriented toward such things as group and
family therapy, where the individual is treated primarily
as a member of a group. Planners and administrators
have turned their attention toward such things as
neighborhood self-determination, where the social group
is treated primarily as a set of distinct individuals.
Because community development has a foot in both the
.individual and the social camps, however, and incorporates a wide array of individual and social change
processes and goals, it is a term which has suffered from
widespread ambiguity. Many people like to use it, partly
because of its connection with the insight mentioned
above, and it has come to be used in a bewildering variety
of different ways. It is used as a process with strategies
ranging from imposition or manipulation to self-determination. It is used as a program ranging from economic
development to social welfare, and under auspices ranging from governmental to voluntary organizations and
groups. And it is conceived by some as a social movement
and possibly an emerging profession. Similarly, though
with somewhat less ambiguity, city planning is sometimes
discussed as a program (the activities of a city planning
agency), as a process (of formulating policy alternatives
and making rational decisions), as a profession (the AIP),
and as a social movement.
There are numerous ways in which the city planning
syndrome and the community development syndrome
could be comparatively discussed. One could look, for
example, at the relationship between land use and welfare
or economic development programs, between the professionalization of city planning and of community development, or between the history and present day goals of
the planning movement and the community development
movement. My intention in this paper is to concentrate
on the relationship between two processes, one of which
is normally called the community planning process and
260

the other of which is sometimes called the community

integration process. The latter is almost always considered
as at least one aspect (and sometimes the major aspect)
of the community development process, but it is seldom
considered as an aspect of the planning process. I consider the community planning-community integration
distinction to be the central one around which the ambiguity in the term community development can be clarified, and the relationship between community development and city planning fruitfully analyzed.
I shall t r y to use the terms city planning and community development, and particularly the process for which,
in part, they stand, in the same way in which they are
used by persons who call themselves city planners and
community developers, who write books on the subjects,
and who identify with national organizations which use
the terms. Planners can be defined as those who are members of the American Institute of Planners, while persons
associated with community development units of universities and other groups, who identify with several
national organizations affiliated with the adult education
and university extension associations, or who read Community Development journal, can be considered community developers. These seem to represent the mainstreams
of each tradition.

Community Planning and Community

Development: Some Definitions
The planning process has been defined by F. Stuart
Chapin, in his influential book Urban Land Use Planning, as consisting of the following six steps:
1. Develop a first estimate of existing conditions and
significant trends in the urban area.
2. Determine the principal and most pressing problems
and needs, briefly evaluate them, and develop an interim
program.
3. Formulate a detailed program indicating priorities
for undertaking component studies of comprehensive
plan.
4. Carry out detailed plan studies according to program
and priority.
5. Integrate various plan studies into comprehensive
plan.
6. Revise plans as conditions alter their applicability.
Elsewhere, he has summarized the process as having to
do with a sequence of action which begins with establishing certain goals, involves certain decisions as to
alternative ways of achieving these goals and eventually
takes the form of steps for carrying out decisions, followed
by evaluation and perhaps a new sequence of action.
More succinctly, another planner has said that the essence
of planning is to make advance decisions in a considered
fashion about what to do.
William Biddle, in a recent book entitled T h e Commzinity Development Process,4 defines community development as a social process by which human beings can
become more competent to live with and gain some control over local aspects of a frustrating and changing
world. It is a group method for expediting personality
growth which can occur when geographic neighbors
work together to serve their growing concept of the good
of all. . . . Personality growth through group responsibility for the local common good is the focus. Biddle says
that its concern is for improvement in people, but that
personal betterment is brought about in the midst of
social action that serves a growing awareness of com-

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munity need. H e defines the process as a progression

of events that is planned by the participants to serve
goals they progressively choose. The events point to
changes in a group and in individuals that can be termed
growth in social sensitivity and competence (emphases
mine). This is a rather extreme use of the term community development because of the primary importance that
it attaches to individual personality development (but,
as we shall see, it is therefore very useful for purposes
of this discussion).
A closely related but less extreme view, in that it seems
to be focused more on the community than on the individual, is that of Irwin T. Sanders. He indicates that the
community development process can be described as:
change from a condition where one or two people or a
small elite within or without the local community make
a decision for the rest of the people to a condition where
people themselves make these decisions about matters of
common concern; from a state of minimum to one of
maximum cooperation; from a condition where few
participate to one where many participate; from a condition where all resources and specialists come from outside
to one where local people make the most use of their own
resources and so forth.

as unwilling to separate the two processes, as we are

trying to do analytically for the purposes of this discussion. A standard definition of community development,
for example, is that of the International Cooperation
Administration: a process of social action in which the
people of a community organize themselves for planning
and action; define their common and individual needs
and problems, make group and individual plans to meet
their needs and solve their problems; execute these plans
with a maximum of reliance upon community resources;
and supplement these resources and material from governmental and non-governmental agencies outside the community. l2
Because of the tendency of many community developers
to speak of their process as consisting of both planning
and integrative aspects, it would be preferable, to avoid
confusion, to speak of community integration when we
are referring to the brand of community development
expounded by Biddle and Sanders, and I shall do so in
the remainder of this article. It must be noted that most
community developers, however, even those in the
combination school, seem to have a distinct preference
for community integration over community planning.
Community Development Ross says, for example, that even though he regards planas Community Integration ning and integration as two integral aspects of the same
Murray G. Ross, in his book Community O r g a n i ~ a t i o n , ~process, by far the more important objective is comone of the leading texts in that field of social work, states munity integration.I3 It must be noted, in addition,
that there are essentially two aspects to the community that it is rather uncommon to find any mention a t all of
organization process: one having to do with planning, community integration in the writings of city planners.
and the second with community integration. Ross deDistinguishing Between the T w o Processes
fines planning as the process of locating and defining
a problem (or set of problems), exploring the nature and What are the essential distinctions between these two
scope of the problem, considering various solutions to it, obviously different processes, one of which may be called
selecting what appears to be the feasible solution, and community planning and the other community development or integration? First, an essential distinction is not
taking action with respect to the solution chosen.
He uses the concept community integration to mean a that one is focused on land use and the other on welprocess in which the exercise of cooperative and collabora- fare, for we are dealing with process independent of
tive attitudes and practices leads to greater 1) identifica- specific program. An obvious and important distinction
tion with the community, 2) interest and participation in is that integration seems to rely heavily on local initiative
the affairs of the community, and 3) sharing of common and self-determinism, and usually involves voluntary
values and means for expressing these values. This im- groups, whereas planning smacks of imposition and
plies a process at work in the community which facilitates manipulation, and more often involves governmental and
the growth of awareness of, and loyalty to, the larger other formal, outside groups. Yet, the planning process
community of which the individual is a part; development can be conceived in such a way that it involves a great
of a sense of responsibility for the condition and status amount of self-determinism-and this is the way in which
of the community; emergence of attitudes which permit most social workers and many city planners tend to concooperation with people who are different; and growth ceive of it. The principal difference, therefore, does not
of common values, symbols, and rituals in the com- seem to be a matter of democratic versus undemomunity as a whole. lo Ross indicates that a synonym for cratic, but rather that the two processes focus on quite
community integration would be community morale, different goals and phenomena. More specifically, each
or community capacity, or the spiritual community. process is focused on a different aspect of the community,
Rosss definition of planning, then, is almost identical and on a different basic function which communities
to that of the city planners, but used in the context of perform. The planning process is concerned primarily
social work, And his definition of community integration with the Objective community of organizations, instituis very similar to that of the community developers men- tions, and their interrelationships, and the integration
tioned above. He is thus, in essence, posing a distinction process is concerned primarily with the subjective combetween community planning and community develop- munity of feeling, or sense of community. Similarly, the
planning process relates to what we shall call the task acment.
Ross maintains, however, that planning and integration complishment function of communities, and the commuare inseparable parts of the one process-in fact, one can nity integration process relates to the social-emotional
state that only when these two aspects are interlocked and maintenance and development function, concepts which
merged into one process is community organization, as shall be elaborated below.
we used the term here, present. l1 Many, and perhaps
Most people seem to be able to understand the planning
most, community developers would probably be equally process orientation-that is, the process of solving prob-

AIP JOURNAL
JULY 1967

Interpretation: Popenoe

261

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lems in the objective community, whether these are

problems of welfare, race relations, land use, or economics.
The process usually leads to solutions which better match
resources with needs, or which involve better coordination of community organizations, or organizational
changes, or the development of new organizations, or
which are concerned with the analysis and projection of
trends, the attempt to plan ahead, and so on.
The community integration process, however, as
Biddle, Ross, and many others have defined it, is a much
more difficult concept to come to grips with. Some might
even suggest that it is not really an aspect of community
development at all, but rather some kind of group therapy,
or even something which involves spiritual and mystical
phenomena. One can go a long way toward understanding this process if he first understands that aspect of C O M munity which the process is trying to affect. The community, as Biddle defines it, is whatever sense of the local
common good citizens can be helped to achieve. l 4 Similarly, Ross defines community as having to do with the
common life which one identifies with and shares in.5

T h e Importance of Community Integration

Now it can hardly be questioned that such a sense of
community actually exists and is important, at least in
the minds of some people, unless we are to assume that
it is some kind of hallucination. The major question is,
however, just how important is it? For example, is it
more important to develop peoples sense of community,
or to solve problems in the objective community of
things and places? There are two basic frames of reference for judging its importance. First, its importance for
the whole community: is it important in the solution of
community problems, for example, that there be a strong
sense of community? Second, its importance for the individual: is it important for personality growth and
development that an individual have a strong sense of
community ?
Many community developers maintain that a strong
sense of community is extremely important, and therefore ought to be developed further, on both counts. Ross
states, for example, that the subjective-feeling aspect of
community not only is an experience which provides the
individual with certain psychological security, and his
life with certain meaning it might not otherwise have,
but that it builds a community capable of dealing with
common problems, which, if they were not solved, would
lead to deterioration of the physical or social community,
or both. lG

Importance for the Group

It would be very nice indeed if we had a body of
empirical evidence which conclusively supported the importance of sense of community in each of these two
respects, but we do not, nor will we have in the near
future. In this regard, let us look first at the relation
between sense of community and other p o u p (rather
than individual) processes, such as the ability of the community to solve problems. If one could measure sense of
community as well as the communitys success in solving
problems, presumably one could begin to devise research
to test the relationship between the two. Common observation tells us, for example, that small rural communities,
which seem to have a high degree of sense of community,
may be relatively more successful at solving their problems than large urban communities, which seem to have
262

a much lower sense of community. Yet, the difference

might be attributed either to size, or to the fact that the
urban community has many more problems to solve, or
to a number of other factors. In short, the problems of
empirical analysis are great.
But I would like to report briefly on a body of evidence
from the social sciences that does lend some support to
the notion that sense of community is important for
other aspects of community life, particularly the problem
solving or task-accomplishment aspects. One of the
earliest findings of the small group analysts at Harvard
under Robert F. Bales l i and others was that groups
seem always to have two basic and necessary functions
which affect the allocation of time and personnel to
roles, and which are represented by distinct group structures or patterns of behavior. On the one hand, Bales
found what he called the instrumental function. One or
more members of the group emerged as leaders in helping the group to accomplish a variety of tasks which it
had before it; such persons were very adept at rational
problem solving, at organizing the group to get the job
done, at making the best use of outside resources, and so
on.
On the other hand, the group could not spend all of its
time at problem solving-it would get edgy, troubled, and
frustrated, its morale would drop, it needed time to relax,
to kid around, to be irrational, and to reachieve the kind
of unity and emotional commitment that was needed if
the group was not to breakup. It needed time for the
individuals to get to know one another personally, to
think through and achieve consensus on the groups goals
and commitments. If the group was not allowed to do
this, it proved to be very poor at accomplishing its tasks.
Different persons from the leaders mentioned above rose
to facilitate this social-emotional maintenance and development function, which Bales called the expressive funtion. Such persons, when compared with the task leaders,
tended to be warmer and more concerned with the
individual personalities in the group, and with their
growth and development as individuals and as group
members. They brought to the group what one might
call the human touch.
For groups to be in equilibrium, it was found that both
of these functions or processes had to be well-developed
and working smoothly. A group whose sole concern was
task accomplishment tended to be brittle, to crack under
the strain, because it did not afford its members certain
basic essentials of human relationships. A group whose
sole concern was social-emotional maintenance and development tended to flounder and lose cohesion because
it felt that it was not accomplishing anything important.
This dichotomy of roles and functions seeins to be
central to most groups in our society. The male-female
roles in the family, for example, are a case in point. The
female tends to have responsibility for social and emotional maintenance and development of the family, and
the male for accomplishing tasks and solving problems
necessary to the familys well-being, such as economic
support. T o suggest that one role is more important
than another is, of course, fallacious-both are essential
to the well-being of the family. As a matter of fact,
the whole business of the role polarity of the sexes in most
human societies is closely related to this basic dichotomy.
Indeed. the dichotomy is found in almost all large
organizations as well. One of the niajor findings of the
analyses of bureaucracy I is that large bureaucratic or-

ganizations tend to develop a whole series of informal

social patterns-such as the development of small primary
groups among workers-which, while they are not directed toward the immediate tasks of the organization,
are essential in the long run if the organization is to
accomplish those tasks. There is even a segment of
management whose primary concern is the maintenance
of group morale among the workers.
The community is a special kind of social group, and it
is often misleading to use more formal groups as analogues to it,19 but this kind of evidence does seem to lend
some very interesting support to the community integration notion.

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Importance for the Individual

In regard to the importance of sense of community for
the individuals (rather than the groups) well-being,
again if it were possible to find two areas or groups, one
with a high and the other with a low sense of community,
one could compare them in terms of the degree to which
individuals in each of the communities have achieved
some level of personal growth and maturity. In addition
to the problem of other things being equal, however, it
would be very difficult to get agreement on, much less to
measure, the levels of individual achievement and maturation. But just as there is some sociological evidence supporting the importance of the relationship of sense of
community to problem solving by the group, there is also
some evidence coming from social psychology and psychology, particularly the new third force or humanistic
school, which supports the importance of the relationship
in this second case.2n
T h e Ideological Backdrop

AIP JOURNAL
JULY 1967

But we cannot wait for the hard data to come in before

making judgments and reaching decisions about processes
of guided social change. While further empirical investigation of these matters is obviously of prime importance,
persons interested in resolving questions of social change
will have to rely, in large part, on their own intuitive
sense about such matters, and on one or another system
of values or social philosophy. That is to say, most people
who regard one of the two aspects of community development as more important than the other will continue to
do so because of a particular ideology that they hold.
Community planners and community integrators at the
two extremes tend to have, I think, somewhat different
views about the directions in which society ought to
develop, about the order of importance of the major
problems which plague it today, and so on. It is not just
a matter of one side favoring one technique or focus, and
the other side another; a kind of functional division of
labor. When Ross states, for example, that by far the
more important objective is community integration, he
means that community integration is more important because it is a necessary prior step to community problem
solving, but also because of its importance to the individual. Biddle would doubtless agree with him. Many
planners, on the other hand, would probably tend to disagree with him on both scores. They would be likely to
assert that the most important task is to get on as quickly
as possible with the business of solving the communities
manifest social, physical, economic, and political problems; that this does not always require community integration; and that the rapid and efficient solution of these
problems would do more toward achieving the maximum
263

Interpretation: Popenoe

growth and development of individuals than would anything else.

The social ideologies that bulwark these two divergent
positions represent different perspectives on the current
social trends of our time. Before discussing these ideologies, therefore, I shall outline briefly what these trends
are-and it is probable that all social change agents, of
whatever persuasion, will agree generally with this
presentation of the facts.
The major forces shaping our communities and our
society today are: industrialization and technological
development, including automation; bureaucrutization
and the rise of large scale organizations; and urbanization
-the aggregation of people in large, dense settlements.
In a nutshell, we have become a nation of highly technologized specialists who work for large organizations
and live in large cities or metropolitan complexes. In
general, the bonds which give cohesion to our communities and our society are increasingly the bonds of the
market and the political process, and not the bonds of
community integration which are characterized by the
term sense of community. As a nation of specialists with
a highly developed communications network, each person
is more dependent on the next person in most aspects of
his life; one persons problem is more quickly felt by the
next person and it is therefore more in need of solution.
These social changes have come about rather quickly
and society has not yet been able to adjust adequately to
the new level of interdependence which has been thrust
upon it. Thus, we have traffic problems, housing problems, poverty problems, governmental jurisdiction problems and so on, most.o which are the result of the fact
that society is not functioning smoothly and efficientlyand this usually leads to solutions which have the effect
of accentuating the amount of specialization, the degree
of centralized decisionmaking, and the scale and complexity of life. This has clearly been the result of the
pursuit of efficiency by large corporations. Sweden is a
good example of where this trend will take us-it
is a
more efficient society than ours, with relatively few of
the urban problems which we see about us today. As our
society moves on in this direction, it doubtless will continue to need a certain amount of informal primary
group relationships just as the large corporation does.
But how much and of what types is not clear-perhaps
the family is enough.
Most planners, it seems to me, are essentially striving
for greater societal and community efficiency-and
the
trend which has just been outlined is in general quite
acceptable to them. On the other hand, most community
developer-integrators would tend to view this trend with
dismay. They would speak of the increasing amount of
dehumanization, of the overspecialization and complexity
of life, the loss or weakening of traditional primary group
ties, the lack of face-to-face contact and warm human
experiences. Planners would regard the new society as
essentially liberating man, giving him abundant opportunity, freedom, and affluence. Community integrators
would regard the society as increasingly crippling man,
taking away from his relationships the opportunity for
full human contact and decreasing his ability to be free
in union or communion with others.
It is this difference in perspective which lies at the
heart of the dispute among the protagonists of the two

aspects of community development. Community integrators might give in on the question of the possibility of
solving a good many social problems of the community
without first having a high level of community integration, but they would never give in on the importance of a
strong sense of community and common life for the development of man as they envision him at his best. And
merely to solve problems efficiently, without at the same
time considering the question of man at his best, they
would argue, is to send society further along the road
toward a thoroughly dehumanized environment-from
which it may be increasingly difficult to escape. Community integrators probably do not want to turn back the
clock, but they certainly have a desire to modify somewhat
the current direction in which society is headed. Planners,
if anything, would like to speed up the clock-we are
headed in basically the right direction, they would say,
h u t we are not moving there fast enough.

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Community Change in Urban Communities

The clash between these two orientations has been
pointed up recently in terms of differing approaches to
the development of urban communities. U p to this point
the term community has been used in the abstract, without any mention of the fact that there are many different
kinds of communities. At a very high level of generalizational, there is a difference between rural and urban
communities-and the distinction relates closely to the
discussion of trends above. The urban community, when
compared with the rural community, is more socially
differentiated, complex, and dependent upon the society
and communities around it. The persons living within it
are more mobile and the psycho-emotional bonds of community cohesion are diminished. This naturally leads
community integrators to regard urban communities as
both more difficult to cope with, and at the same time,
more in need of the community integration process.
However, the level of generalization required for
rural-urban comparisons probably covers up more diversity than it uncovers. The fact is that the suburb, the
slum, the gold coast, the ghetto, the bohemia, the stable
working-class area, and exurbia are all urban communities, and they are quite different from one another. For
the most part, as Herbert Gans and others have pointed
out, the differences can be attributed largely to the social
class, the ethnicity, and the stage of the life-cycle of the
dominant residents in each community.21
Community developers have never considered such differences very fully, primarily because they have traditionally worked in rural communities where such differences did not exist. One can very properly raise the
question, therefore, does the community development
process, particularly its integration aspect, apply in the
same way to a community of working-class, Chinese older
people as it does to middle class, Jewish young people!
Do the working-class, Chinese older people have the
same need as other groups for community integration
and for growth in social sensitivity and competence, or
is their most important need something entirely different?
This line of questioning has become very real, lately,
with the onsct of the War on Poverty, in which both planners and community developers have been asked to apply
their techniques to the development of lower and workingclass urban subcommunities, particularly Negro comniunities. To what degree is it possible and desirable to get
working- and lower class Negroes to help themselves, to
264

achieve individual development through the group process, to secure a stronger community integration and sense
of community? This is an exceedingly difficult question
to answer. Many planners would perhaps make the following points in answer to it:
1) Sensitivity and competence are important, but they
are not as important to the low-income Negro at this moment as better housing, education, and job opportunities.
2) The urban Negro community is almost completely
dependent on other communities for the basic resources
which it needs, and even if it were to organize and develop a strong will to change things within its own community, it still would not have the leverage to secure the
new resources it requires from the communities outside
itself.
3) More geographic community integration for the
Negro may not be wise, because this might just tend to
perpetuate the ghetto.
4) The Negro living in poverty needs the very fastest
and most efficient solutions to the basic problems of the
objective environment which surrounds him, and any
delay is extremely costly-in some cases as measured in
human lives.
Community integrators would probably argue, on the
other hand, that the dignity of the Negro should be
the paramount value, that short-run material gains are of
little value if they tend to counteract long-run community integration gains, and that individual personality
development is a t least as important as environmental
change. A related but nonetheless distinct theme is that
most planners, who are middle class, are unable really to
know what the needs of the poverty class are; therefore,
community self-determination is essential, even if it
is less efficient. We shall leave it to the reader as to
who has the better of the argument.
An important variation on the community integration
theme and one which has some support in both the planning and community integration camps partly because it
is supported by a different ideology than the ones outlined in this paper, is the conflict approach as exemplified
by Saul Alinsky. Traditionally, community development
has striven or consensus within the whole community.
Alinsky, however, supports the integration of certain
groups within a larger community for the purpose of
overtly pressuring the other groups within that community to bring about major institutional change. The conflict-consensus continuum cannot be developed within the
confines of this paper, but it clearly involves issues which
are becoming quite central in public discussion.

Conclusion
The distinction between community integration and community planning is quite obviously more than an academic one-it touches on some of the major issues of
our time. The planning approach is clearly in the ascendency in todays society. Bulwarked by orthodox liberal
ideology, legitimized within the bureaucratic apparatus,
and powered by the dazzling new tools of systems engineering, operations research, program budgeting, decision
theory, and opinion polling, the planners are making
great headway toward the drivers seat. The message of
the community integrators is that the planners are treating only half the community system, and perhaps not
the most important half at that. If this were a message
only from tender-minded souls whose hearts were in the
right place but whose heads were not, it would not give

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us much pause for consideration. The indications are,

however, that it is much more than that. We have
suggested that there are a number of social scientific
findings which come to its aid. Just as important (but
beyond the scope of this paper) is the ideological and
scientific support which is coming from one of the most
rapidly growing currents of modern thought-the convergences of what may be called the existential-phenomenological-humanistic wing of theology, philosophy,
psychology, and psychiatry. Last but by no means least
are the political ideologies of the new left.
The fact is that there is increasing evidence that the
liberal political orthodoxies (to say nothing of such scientific and philosophic orthodoxies as logical positivism,
empiricism, behaviorism, operationalism, and so on, which
have long since had their day) may be crumbling under
the growing realization that large-scale social efficiency
(though we are still a long way from achieving it) will
not automatically lead to the good life; that if most of the
manifest and objective problems of the social environment could be efficiently planned away overnight, we
would still have a very long way to go in the achievement
of individual fulfillment. The meaningful-subjective expressive side of life cannot be treated as a residuum
which can be left for consideration after we achieve the
welfare state, or after we all get to suburbia. It is the
essence of life, the sine qua no#, the source of intrinsic
value. The rediscovery of this side of life, as well as the
subjective-integrative-spiritual side of community, is being made not only by the tender-minded but also the
tough-minded; not only those guided by heart but those
guided by head.
Community integrators would probably argue, on the
other hand, that:
1) An important factor in explaining the slow advancement of the Negro out of the ghetto (in addition to high
visibility and consequent discrimination) is the lack of
strong and ego enhancing feelings of community identification and solidarity, which historically have been very
significant in the advancement of other deprived groups.
2) Short-run material gains are of little value if they,
at the same time, tend to diminish feelings of dignity and
self-worth and to disrupt whatever sense of group belonging and identification with place exists in low income
communities. Many studies have shown, for example,
that identification with place is uniquely important for
the sense of well-being of low income persons.
3) Lack of involvement with environmental planning
may lead to a continuing dependency status and to in-

AIP JOURNAL
JULY 1967

Interpretation:Popenoe

creasing apathy to and alienation from that environment,

no matter how well it is planned.
4) As a related but somewhat distinct theme-most
planners, who are middle class, are unable really to know
what the needs of the poverty class are; therefore, community self determination is essential, even if it is less
efficient.
We shall leave it to the reader as to who has the better
of the argument.
Authors note:
An early draft of this paper was read to the Fourth National
Community Deuelopment Seminar of the National University
Extension Association, Rutger+The State University, New
Brutaswick, New lersey, I d y 26, 1965.
NOTES
1 F. Stuart Chapin, Jr., Urban Land Use Planning (New York:
Harper and Row, 1957), pp. 271-2.
2 Chapin, Foundations of Urban Planning, in Werner 2.
Hirsch (ed.), Urban Life and Form (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, Inc., 1963), p. 224.
3 Henry Fagin, Metropolitan Planning, (Unpublished manuscript, 1960).
4 William W. Biddle and Laureide J. Biddle, T h e Community
Development Process (New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.,
1965).
5 Ibid., pp. 78-79.
6Quoted in Roland L. Warren, The Community in America
(Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1963), p. 324.
7 Murray G. Ross, Community Organization: Theory and Principles (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955).
8 Ibid., p. 50.
9 Ibid., p. 50.
10 Ibid., p. 51.
11 Ibid., p. 50.
12 Quoted in Warren, op. cit., p. 310.
1s Op. cit., p. 52.
14 o p . Cit., p. 77.
15 Op. cit., p. 51
16 op. cit., p. 51.
17 See, for example, Robert F. Bales, The Equilibrium Problem
in Small Groups in Talcott Parsons, Robert F. Bales and Edward
A. Shills (eds.), Working Papers in the Theory of Action (Glencoe,
Ill.: The Free Press, 1963).
lBSee, for example, Peter M. Blau, Bureaumucy in Modern
Society (New York: Random House, 1956).
19See for example Warren, op. at., Chapter 5, and David
Popenoe, The Sociocultural Contexts of Individuals and Organizations in F. Berrien and B. Indik (eds.), People, Groups and
Organizations (tentative title, publication forthcoming).
2oFor a representative sample of the work of this school see
the new lournal of Humanistic Psychology.
21Herbert J. Gans, Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of
Life: A Re-evaluation of Definitions in Arnold M. Rose (ed.)
Human Behavior and Social Processes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1962).