The South Side Initiative (SSI) is a wide-ranging initiative of democratic university-community collaboration in the post-industrial city of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where I live and work.

With my colleague, the late John Pettegrew, I co-founded the South Side Initiative in 2007. I was at that time director of Lehigh University’s Humanities Center and John was the director of the American Studies program. Our city was still absorbing the traumatic collapse of the steel industry around which life in Bethlehem had revolved for more than a century. Ninety percent of the children in the South Bethlehem public schools were living in poverty. Many in the city hoped that impending urban redevelopment projects would bring change, but many felt they had no voice in shaping the city’s priorities or its future. After a year of meetings with residents, public officials, and civic leaders, as well as colleagues across Lehigh’s campus, we launched SSI. Community partners and Lehigh faculty and staff believed that, by pooling our intellectual and creative resources, we could foster more robust practices of democracy and improve the quality of life in the city.

Since 2007, thousands of Bethlehem residents have participated in our work, speaking at community forums, collaborating on public history and public art projects, and meeting with elected officials. Through multi-year working-groups, community members have partnered with Lehigh faculty, staff and students to develop dozens of projects to explore our history, analyze pressing challenges, pursue democratic solutions, and share visions for our future. These projects have, for example, promoted food security, free speech, clean air, racial and gender equality, and affordable housing. SSI has sponsored more than a hundred courses focused on the past, present and possible futures of our city, in which many community members have participated as teachers, experts or students. Every course, project, event and working-group contributes to an expanding ecosystem of democratic collaboration and knowledge-exchange.

Learn more about SSI here.