Students interested in urban economic development should consider taking a new course offered by the Center for Public Policy and Administration in the fall. “Strategies for Change: Springfield and the Transformation of Urban America” (PUBP&ADM 597S) is open to graduate students and upper-level undergraduates alike.
Instructor Fred Rose served as a community organizer in Springfield for 15 years with the Pioneer Valley Project, a faith-based organizing coalition. He now co-directs the Wellspring Collaborative, a community development project creating worker-owned companies that provide living-wage jobs in Springfield, Massachusetts’ third largest city.
As the birthplace of the lathe, and one of the first cities to manufacture and use interchangeable parts in assembly-line production, Springfield played an important role in the Industrial Revolution. But changes in the city’s population and in the national and global economy have left many of Springfield’s once-vibrant mills and neighborhoods shadows of their former selves.
Today, Springfield provides both a microcosm of challenges facing older industrial cities across the country and a rich array of community change efforts that engage diverse issues and social actors. In “Strategies for Change,” students will engage with diverse leaders from across the social spectrum and critically examine their strategies to improve conditions of poverty and inequality in Springfield.
Rose will use his experiences working in Springfield to help ground class discussions in an analysis of the changing cultural, economic and political context of the city. He will then compare Springfield with other cities across the country that have confronted similar economic transformations.
“Strategies for Change” meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1 to 2:15 p.m. in Machmer W-13.