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East St Louis and the East St Louis Action Research Project by Stacy Anne Harwood

The East St. Louis Action Research Project (ESLARP) is a university-community collaboration with a mission to promote the revitalization of distressed communities in East St. Louis, Illinois. In the two decades since Rep. Younge’s house bill introduce an outreach program for “East St. Louis’ revitalization”, ESLARP has developed into a successful and replicable model for service learning and action research. ESLARP received a Community Outreach Partnership Centers Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development in 1994 and later opened the Neighborhood Technical Assistance Center in partnership with the City of East St. Louis, Partnership Illinois and HUD in 1995.

Grounded in action research and community engagement, ESLARP has a record of providing technical assistance to community-based organizations in East St. Louis through academic research, service-learning, outreach service weekends and technology centers. This interdisciplinary effort includes faculty and students from architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning, as well as law, leisure studies, library and information science, and social work.

ESLARP concentrates its efforts in East St Louis. Once a thriving industrial city, East St. Louis, is now notorious as a poor, unsafe, and unhealthy place to live. The population is 98% African American, with 35% living below poverty level and a median household income of $21,324 (approximately half the national median). Even though residents face unemployment, inadequate services and environmental hazards, many seek to improve their neighborhoods and express their rich social history and contemporary culture. Community organizations that initially formed to address immediate concerns, such as illegal dumping and crime, are now proactively engaging in long term planning, design, and community development to assure a healthier future. ESLARP assists many of these organizations.

ESLARP Photo

The impetus for engagement in East St. Louis grows out of the place attachment that residents feel for their community and their desire to improve conditions for future generations. Within the breadth of ESLARP activities, an overarching research question is the capacity of action research to simultaneously serve community concerns while furthering knowledge about community-based planning and design in low-income communities of color. Although individual faculty and students may change over time and projects vary, ESLARP provides an ongoing resource and support structure upon which East St. Louis community organizations can rely. Many projects involve physical planning and design that address community organizational capacity building, economic development, environmental restoration, and public health.

Many ESLARP alumni now work throughout Illinois. ESLARP is exploring ways to reconnect and create partnerships with its alumni. Send us your ideas or just drop us a line to say hello. Believe it or not, the East St Louis residents still ask about you!

East St. Louis Action Research Project
326 Noble Hall, 1209 S. Fourth St.
Champaign, IL 61820, USA
Phone: 217-265-0202
Fax: 217-244-9320
Website: http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/
Email: eslarp@uiuc.edu