Home, Neighborhood and Community in the Context of Urban Decline

FAIN: FEL-273875-21

Christopher Mele
SUNY Research Foundation, University at Buffalo (Amherst, NY 14228-2577)

Preparation of an interactive digital analysis and publication about community-based responses to urban decline in Chester, Pennsylvania.

I seek an NEH-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication to complete digital story collection, analysis, and publication in Manifold, an open-source digital platform, with Temple University Press. This project provides a new approach and understanding of urban declension or decline through analysis and interpretation of how low-income minority residents of Chester, Pennsylvania attach meaning and understanding to their varied experiences, memories and commitments to home, neighborhood and community. Collectively, these comprise a local, vernacular form of knowledge that is the centerpiece of this project. The project contributes to interdisciplinary urban studies by situating, analyzing and interpreting vernacular knowledge in relation to dominant ‘city in crisis’ tropes and enhances public access to and awareness of the complexities of maintaining attachment to home, neighborhood and community in the midst of structural decline.

Associated Products

Looking Back, Moving Forward: Law, Policy and Environmental Justice (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Looking Back, Moving Forward: Law, Policy and Environmental Justice
Author: Giovanna Di Chiro
Author: Christopher Mele
Abstract: Looking Back, Moving Forward, is a 2-day virtual conference critically examining the past, present, and potential future roles of the law and legal strategies to advance environmental justice (EJ) policy and action. The conference takes as its starting point the 30-year struggle by the renowned EJ group CRCQL (Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living) to shut down the nation’s largest waste incinerator in Chester, PA. Drawing on the lessons learned from CRCQL’s ongoing organizing against environmental racism, our panelists expanded the conversation to explore new and exciting approaches to EJ law and policy-making being used by grassroots EJ movements more broadly.
Date Range: April 2022
Location: Chester, PA
Primary URL: https://chesterdigital.sunycreate.cloud/ej/
Primary URL Description: Looking Back, Moving Forward: Law, Policy and Environmental Justice

Digital Commons: Looking Back, Moving Forward: Law, Policy and Environmental Justice (Web Resource)
Title: Digital Commons: Looking Back, Moving Forward: Law, Policy and Environmental Justice
Author: Christopher Mele
Abstract: The conference proceedings for Looking Back, Moving Forward: Law, Policy and Environmental Justice are made available to academic researchers through the University at Buffalo’s School of Law Digital Commons.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/looking_back_moving_forward/
Primary URL Description: The conference proceedings for Looking Back, Moving Forward: Law, Policy and Environmental Justice

Chester Women Change Makers (Web Resource)
Title: Chester Women Change Makers
Author: Christopher Mele
Abstract: This site features the amazing stories of women whose ongoing activism and efforts to create positive change are transforming Chester city.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: http://chesterdigital.sunycreate.cloud/rlbennett/
Primary URL Description: Site featuring stories of Chester women whose ongoing activism and efforts to improve conditions in Chester, PA.

Prizes

Leedom B. Morrison Award, Heritage Commission of Delaware County, PA
Date: 5/7/2022
Organization: Heritage Commission of Delaware County, PA

Chester's Ruth L. Bennett (Web Resource)
Title: Chester's Ruth L. Bennett
Author: Christopher Mele
Abstract: This site documents the many accomplishments and the important legacy of Chester’s notable progressive change maker, Ruth L. Bennett.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: http://chesterdigital.sunycreate.cloud/RLBennett/
Primary URL Description: This site documents the many accomplishments and the important legacy of Chester’s notable progressive change maker, Ruth L. Bennett.

Preservation of Local Knowledge and Social Justice (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Preservation of Local Knowledge and Social Justice
Abstract: This lecture provided an overview of how digital storytelling holds promise as a means for class- and race-subjugated communities to publicly counter long-standing official narratives about them and their community.
Author: Christopher Mele
Date: 09/26/22
Location: Swarthmore College

Race as a Construct in Urban Political Economy (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Race as a Construct in Urban Political Economy
Abstract: This presentation provided an overview of how traditional urban studies scholarship often takes a ‘top-down’ approach, examining how urban politicians, developers, and other powerful stakeholders deploy discourses, such as those involving race, to legitimize urban renewal and other forms of urban change, and how digital storytelling holds potential to undo this.
Author: Christopher Mele
Date: 02/09/22
Location: University of Southern Mississippi

Resisting Racialization from Outside: The Importance of Community-based Representation (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Resisting Racialization from Outside: The Importance of Community-based Representation
Abstract: This presentation asks how digital storytelling may be conceived as resistance to racialized narratives of deindustrialization, suburbanization and gentrification by pairing ‘authoritative’ (academic) discourses with the impressions, memories and artefacts of residents who experience urban change first-hand.
Author: Christopher Mele
Date: 01/31/22
Location: Swarthmore College

---