Community Structure and Innovation: The Case of Public Housing

Abstract

Innovation can be defined as “… the generation, acceptance, and implementation of new ideas, processes, products, or services.” We mean here an activity, process, service, or idea that is new to an American city. We do not restrict it to mean only the first appearance ever of something new (i.e., an invention) or only the first use by one among a set of social actors. We are concerned neither with the diffusion of innovation nor with internal stages in the adoption process, but rather with the characteristics of cities that have successfully implemented innovations in federally financed public housing. We focus on three aspects of community innovation: (1) the presence or absence of a federally financed public housing program in the city, (2) the speed of innovation of such a program, and (3) the level of output or performance of this innovation activity.Most of the studies of innovation have used as units of analysis either individuals or organizations, and little attention has been given to innovation in community systems, although community systems are continually introducing new ideas, activities, processes, and services. For example, the form of government may be changed from a mayor-council to a city-manager type. In fact, two studies of such innovations were carried out prior to World War II, but these were primarily concerned with describing the rate of diffusion of this social invention among American cities, not with characteristics of innovating cities. The addition of a new planning department to the city administration or a decision to fluoridate its water system are community innovations as we have defined the term, But innovations are not limited to actions of city government, although these may be the most frequently observed types of innovations.