Value Recapture: A Rose by Another Name

The fuel crisis, increased federal funding, and urban center development and redevelopment are all increasing the pressure for rapid transit systems in urban areas. As with other publicly funded developments, such systems often lead to an increase in value of privately owned land near transit stations. This is due to the enhanced commercial, industrial, and residential development potential created by superior access and concurrent generation of intense local activity. Such an increase in value is unearned-a windfall, in essence. Arguably, it should accrue, at least in part, to the public agency which incurred substantial expenditures in developing the public facility-the cause of the value increase in the first place. Such an accrual of value could be offset against the public cost of the improvement. This article deals with several proposed methods of such “value recapture”: “excess” or “supplemental” condemnation, tax assessment, intergovernmental cooperation and air rights development.     

Critical Hopefulness Among Urban High School Students

Psychological empowerment encompasses several key aspects of youth civic and sociopolitical development. Most research has focused on psychological empowerment’s emotional component, which entails learned hopefulness about one’s own ability to participate in and lead community change efforts. Fewer studies have assessed critical awareness of how social power operates—psychological empowerment’s cognitive component. The confluence of these two components has been termed critical hopefulness. A complex relationship exists between these two components, and previous research has found relatively small proportions of participants reporting both high levels of critical awareness and simultaneously high levels of hopefulness about their ability to exert influence in the sociopolitical domain. The current study of urban high school students in the Northeastern U.S. (n?=?389; 53.5% female) investigates heterogeneity according to these two components of psychological empowerment. Latent class cluster analyses were conducted and seven distinct groups of participants emerged. Students identifying as Hispanic/Latinx were more likely to be classified into a profile group exhibiting critical hopefulness. Differences were observed between psychological empowerment profile groups on self-reported levels of psychological sense of community, civic engagement, and social justice orientation. Furthermore, a larger proportion of this overall sample was classified into groups that exhibited critical hopefulness than in a previous study of adults. These findings provide useful insights for efforts to engage young people in civic life and to promote sociopolitical development.     

The Tradition Industry: Hofstadter and Santayana on Politics,Culture and Capitalism

Richard Hofstadter’s provocative interpretation of what he called The American Political Tradition has long interested students and scholars. Often read as a response to the crisis times of the depression 1930s and interventionist 1940s, the book’s origins are actually rooted in deeper cultural changes in the United States. This paper argues that George Santayana’s earlier essay, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy” (1911), anticipated several key aspects of Hofstadter’s argument and proved to more accurately foresee the ideological course of twentieth century American politics.     

Neighborhood,Family, and Peer Factors Associated with Early Adolescent Smoking and Alcohol Use

There is broad agreement that neighborhood contexts are important for adolescent development, but there is less consensus about their association with adolescent smoking and alcohol use. Few studies have examined associations between neighborhood socioeconomic contexts and smoking and alcohol use while also accounting for differences in family and peer risk factors for substance use. Data drawn from the Seattle Social Development Project (N?=?808), a gender-balanced (female?=?49%), multiethnic, theory-driven longitudinal study originating in Seattle, WA, were used to estimate trajectories of smoking and alcohol use from 5th to 9th grade. Time-varying measures of neighborhood socioeconomic, family, and peer factors were associated with smoking and alcohol use at each wave after accounting for average growth in smoking and alcohol use over time and demographic differences. Results indicated that living in more socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods, lower family income, lower family general functioning, more permissive family smoking environments, and affiliation with deviant peers were independently associated with increased smoking. Lower family functioning, more permissive family alcohol use environments, and deviant peers were independently associated with increased alcohol use. The effect of neighborhood disadvantage on smoking was mediated by family income and deviant peers while the effect of neighborhood disadvantage on alcohol use was mediated by deviant peers alone. Family functioning and family substance use did not mediate associations between neighborhood disadvantage and smoking or alcohol use. The results highlight the importance of neighborhood, family, and peer factors in early adolescent smoking and alcohol use. Future studies should examine the unique association of neighborhood disadvantage with adolescent smoking net of family socioeconomics, functioning, and substance use, as well as peer affiliations. Better understanding of the role of contextual factors in early adolescent smoking and alcohol use can help bolster efforts to prevent both short and long harms from substance use.