Building the Neighborly Community in the Age of Trump: Toward a University-Community Engagement Movement 3.0

The Neighborly Community Paradigm

The neighborhood is a critical feature in the university-community engagement movement because it is the prime determinant of one’s life chances, well-being, and socioeconomic outcomes (Galster, 2019; Chety, Hendrin, & Katz, 2016; Sampson, 2012; Sharkey, 2013). The neighborhood is as a force field where an interactive relationship exists between people and place. People act on place and place acts on people. In underdeveloped communities, the place has an undesirable impact on people by creating obstacles that thwart their quest for well-being and desirable socioeconomic outcomes (Galster, 2019; Sampson, 2012). The foundation of racial and social class inequality in the United States is found in these underdeveloped communities. Therefore, you cannot build a just metro-knowledge city or nation without their radical transformation (Sharkey, 2013). For this reason, the university-community engagement movement centered on the transformation of underdeveloped communities into neighborly communities.