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Root Shock stems from a formal research project based on a methodology she calls “situation analysis.” Fullilove’s research team interviewed key actors in the urban renewal process–“planners, displaced residents of communities targeted for renewal, historians, and advocates”–about their experiences. Maps, photographs, and secondary literature helped develop their understanding of urban renewal. The resulting mix, intriguing if sometimes disjointed, goes far beyond an ordinary compilation of case studies. Its content ranges from a short story written by Fullilove’s father, to a chapter on a 1988 Pittsburgh teach-in that she organized, to an academic chapter on French urbanist Michel Cantal-Dupart. At times Fullilove simply transcribes her interviews, as in the case of Zenobia Ferguson, a woman displaced from her home in the northwest section of Roanoke, Virginia, in 1976. In other chapters, Fullilove narrates her personal involvement with community members as she tried to understand the effects of urban renewal and displacement on their lives and, in the process, to facilitate healing.

Fullilove compellingly discusses the social, and not simply aesthetic, evils of urban renewal. Her descriptions of the pre-1950 African-American communities that are the subject of most of her book are accurate and unabashed. She lets her reader in on the good–attracting tax-paying enterprises to downtown–and the bad–displacement and racism–of urban renewal. Nevertheless, she yearns for the kindness, as she calls it, and connections that the ghetto once made possible: when families felt comfortable and united in their neighborhood settings and lent one another support. Residents and planners falter in trying to revive this neighborhood unity when they spin out reasons to gather–“events” like the theater, a concert, a football game on the West Side of Manhattan–but neglect to work on the places to gather.

At all times, Fullilove is deeply personally engaged. She retells her father’s story as a poignant “what might have been” in the post-Civil Rights period if African-Americans had the option of using their neighborhoods as a platform for economic and social advancement. In another narrative, her sister-in-law becomes an example of how displacement has affected the raising of children in African-American families. And throughout, Fullilove never masks her admiration for the neighborhood advocates she speaks with. Her book has a mission: to understand what can be done to treat root shock as a condition suffered both by individuals and, more importantly, entire communities. The sufferers have been violently ripped from vibrant (even if not wealthy or otherwise ideal) neighborhoods; they’ve been told, “No, you have no control over your own environment.” Fullilove wants to learn how they can heal and restart the process of community self-improvement.

The discussion of post-9/11 New York City serves as an example of how neighborhoods have the capacity to engage that process. The post-9/11 period saw a revived interest in planning by New York residents. All across the city, individuals understood that they had a stake in the site of the World Trade Center and the surrounding neighborhoods. New Yorkers’ incredible level of involvement in that space is in itself significant, whether or not the power brokers in charge heed New Yorkers’ desires.

Her work in Pittsburgh exemplifies Fullilove’s desire to spark a similar discussion in the African-American community. In her book, she documents the history of Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill neighborhood as it went under the knife of urban renewal. In the late-1950s, Lower Hill was torn down and replaced by public housing and by a civic arena, which later became home to the Pittsburgh Penguins. The redevelopment entailed the uprooting, and in many cases the demise of, not only homes but also businesses, organizations, beer gardens, and jazz clubs.

Fullilove applied this research to a modern-day community facing displacement in the same city. In 1997, Pittsburgh announced plans to demolish a public housing site and redevelop it as a mixed-income HOPE VI project. Fullilove distributed a flyer to residents of the public housing. “Hey, Do You Know You Are Moving?” it read, “How Do You Feel About It? Come Out And Talk About It!” At three different sessions, Fullilove worked to “protect the emotional health of the residents,” all of whom were being forced to leave their homes because their community had been labeled distressed. While that distress resulted from mismanagement, the term, Fullilove believed, suggested the residents were to blame.

The initial sessions led to an eighteen-month-long engagement with the community, and a process evolved to allay the hurt that Fullilove’s research indicated would follow forced displacement. A “Community Burn Index” was developed by the group to measure and describe the issues affecting their neighborhood. Community members were asked to conduct their own research on these issues, to examine the Hill District closely, temporarily stepping outside of their role as “insiders to a place” who “stop seeing it.” Applying the index to what they learned allowed participants to face their loss in a process not unlike collective mourning. At a conference open to the general Pittsburgh public, community members shared their findings with over 200 attendees. The audience supplied a therapeutic “connection, bringing [together] the Hill and other parts of Pittsburgh” that had been obliterated by post-war urban renewal’s focus on mammoth arenas and highways. The project sparked greater community participation in the HOPE VI process; residents succeeded in delaying the demolition of one of the housing projects prior to the development of new housing in the adjacent area so that community members would have a place to go before their homes were torn down.

Fullilove is a good storyteller, which advances her goal of producing a work not only for architects and urban planners, but also for the subjects and–as too often happens–the victims of planning. The book is far-reaching; Fullilove puts quite a lot of contemporary domestic problems on the back of urban renewal. But her insistence that black America must heal from the root shock it caused is well-taken. Her prescriptions, however, constitute well-trodden ground. Improving education for African-American children and overcoming fragmentation within the African-American community are important goals, but Fullilove only cursorily examines these issues in the final chapter of her book. Her work with displaced communities and their members is more promising as a novel solution to root shock. The psychologist’s perspective has been historically absent from the debate over urban renewal; its addition should improve our understanding of what constitutes good planning and community development.

This article appeared in the April 2005 issue of Next American City magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW!