Rebuilding Equitable Urban Markets: Keep Making Noise

This research explores the lived experiences of stakeholders involved in a new approach to community transformation in a distressed East Baltimore neighborhood marked by widespread vacant properties, violence, and drug activity. The study centers on a community-led housing strategy created through a partnership between a grassroots organizing group and a nonprofit developer. Together, they co-created an unconventional model of urban development in which trained community members built partnerships with the developer and with city and state officials. This approach, the “Whole Blocks" Build From Strength model, has produced meaningful results without causing displacement or gentrification. Based on interviews with residents, the nonprofit developer, and city and state officials, the findings show that organizing principles, city & state long-term intentional investment, and leadership training contributed to gradual but important improvements in quality-of-life issues, increased community public and private investment, and a stronger sense of community empowerment. Together, these changes helped the community reframe its challenges, respond to them collectively, and build new forms of power for transforming their community.