Reflections on Community Development: Stories from Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation


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Center for Brooklyn History
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This exhibition was originally organized and published by the Brooklyn Historical Society.

This exhibition charted the rise and importance of community development corporations in Brooklyn from their inception during the late 1960s into the present.

Using the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation , one of the first community development corporations (CDCs) in the country, the exhibition examined how federal and state elected officials joined with local community activists, politicians, and business leaders to create a truly cooperative public-private partnership. Their goal: complete transformation of economically depressed, neglected urban community into a vibrant, dynamic, safe, stable place to live and work.

Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation became a center for job training, housing development, block rehabilitation, economic development, youth activity, political organization, and the arts. It has renovated entire blocks, put thousands of people to work, hosted political forums, attracted businesses to the community, and served as a center for the arts and theater. Narrating its auspicious beginnings, struggles, and evolution with oral histories, captivating photographs, and rare documents, Reflections on Community Development told the story of Bedford-Stuyvesant's -- indeed the entire nation's -- daring effort to make real the bold vision of a truly democratic society in the midst of America's crushing urban crisis.