From neighborhood to global: Community-based regionalism and shifting concepts of place in community and regional development

The emergence of the policy debates on regionalism, particularly equity and community-based regionalism, illustrate the intersection of community and regional development and the role of community-based organizations (CBOs) in regional economic development strategies. This research seeks to explain how and under what circumstances community-based organizations "go regional" within metropolitan urban areas and how the strategies they adopt address neighborhood revitalization and regional development.; Utilizing social movement theories to explain community-based regionalism (CBR), I examine four case studies in Southeast Los Angeles County, an area heavily impacted by plant closures and economic restructuring now the area of increasing trade and goods movement activity. This analysis reveals several new dimensions of CBR that have implications for the broader field of equity regionalism and community and regional development.; The first is that CBOs utilize strategies that integrate multiple spatial scales simultaneously. This ability to develop strategies across multiple scales reflects a breadth of analysis used by CBOs to situate their neighborhood conditions and power relationships within a broader regional, national and global frame. In this way, CBOs serve as important mechanisms for framing how neighborhood issues relate to regional growth and development and for advancing regional perspectives grounded in neighborhood conditions.; The cases suggest that CBOs engage at the regional level in two distinct ways: The first, familiar in CBR literature recognizes the region as an arena for regional resource and leverage, drawing on specific regional tools and opportunities to address neighborhood conditions and needs. The second, made visible with a social movement lens, reflects how CBOs see the region as necessary scale to link local organizing to broader social movement in neighborhood-based movement approaches to CBR.; Finally, the cases illustrate the ways CBO model the way for regional equity, filling the vacuum of local government regionalism efforts and the absence of regional labor initiatives in Southeast Los Angeles.; While the region will remain a central analytic and strategic arena for CBOs in the near-term, this research suggests new political terrain for CBOs and openings for still undiscovered forms of neighborhood-based institutions and action.