About the Social Contract Project

Through the Social Contract Project, the Institute for the Study of Civic Values has developed a new way for neighborhood activists, business leaders, and public officials to develop comprehensive plans for neighborhood improvement. These stakeholders negotiate an explicit social contract defining how they will work together to make the neighborhood is clean, safe, economically viable, and a decent place to raise children. The principles underlying the social contract come directly from the Preamble to the Constitution.

Neighborhood Social Contracts: Philosophy

The papers below reflect the underlying philosophy behind the neighborhood social contracts that the Institute is developing.

• Building Community in a Neighborhood, Ed Schwartz
• Neighborhood Reciprocity: Self-Interest, Rightly Understood, Ed Schwartz

Neighborhood Social Contracts: Strategy

There is a basic strategy involved in negotiating and implementing Neighborhood Social Contracts, along with a discussion guide that the Institute uses in the process. If you want to adapt this approach to your own community or neighborhood, you should read the papers below:

• Negotiating Neighborhood Social Contracts
• Social Contract Discussion Guide

To access the online edition of this manual, go to the Building Community in the American Tradition web page:

• Building Community in the American Tradition

Neighborhood Social Contracts: Examples

The Institute has negotiated several social contracts in Philadelphia. In 1993, we worked in Queen Village, a South Philadelphia neighborhood, to help middle-class homeowners work out a common agenda for the neighborhood with leaders of public housing development, Southwark Plaza, that was slated for slated for modernization by the Philadelphia Housing Association.

In 1994, we helped the American Street Corridor Association and the New Kensington Community Development Corporation develop social contracts around plans for economic and community development in a cluster of Kensington neighborhoods surrounding an old industrial corridor.

Most important, however, has been the "Block Club Social Contract"--negotiated over the past two years with a cross-section of neighborhood activists from every section of Philadelphia. The Block Club Social Contract is creating a Neighborhood Agenda for Philadelphia in the 1990's.

These documents demonstrate how a powerful an instrument a Neighborhood Social Contract can be.

• Queen Village Social Contract
• Block Club Social Contract
• Kensington Social Contract

Neighborhood Social Contracts: Getting Involved

If you would like to receive direct assistance from the Institute for the Study of Civic Values in developing a social contract in your community or neighborhood, call us at 215-238-1434, or use the form below to contact us online:

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