Walking the Walk: An assets-based approach to transforming neighborhood dynamics and reclaiming forgotten virtues in urban Atlanta

When used in public health, community-based participatory research (CBPR) engages community members, organizational representatives and researchers in all aspects of the research process to focus on social, structural and environmental inequalities. Accountable Communities: Healthy Together uses CBPR to address social, economic, and environmental determinants of health disparities that are faced by residents of Neighborhood Planning Unit V (NPU-V), a cluster of five inner-city neighborhoods in Atlanta. NPU-V once thrived on industry and commerce; now the defining landmarks of the community are vacant houses, parking lots and boarded up homes and stores. Residents have watched highways come and jobs go, rendering their neighborhood notorious for crime and violence. Where some might see hopelessness, this paper will illustrate how residents of NPU-V used windshield and walking tours of their communities to redirect attention to the extensive social capital that exists within all five neighborhoods. This intervention builds upon existing levels of bonding, bridging, and linking social capital, paying special attention to how structural forces limit a communities' ability to preserve social capital. Bonding social capital is built through residents' repeated interactions with each other through biweekly walking tours. Bridging social capital is built through combining neighborhoods on the walk and the involvement of churches as end points for the walking tours. Likewise, linking social capital is built through the involvement of policymakers on the walking tours. This paper will discuss the current debates within the social capital literature and present strategies for building social capital into intervention research.