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2 Convenience to the public and intimate contact with city federal government were considered essential factors in early decisions to establish service centers, but of prime importance were the expected cost savings to local government. In addition, traditional decentralization of such facilities as station house and police precinct stations has been mostly worried about the very best functional positioning of scarce resources instead of the special needs of urban residents.

Boost in city scale has, however, rendered many of these centralized centers both physically and emotionally inaccessible to much of the city's population, especially the disadvantaged. A recent survey of social services in Detroit, for instance, notes that just 10.1 per cent of all low-income households have contact with a service firm.

One action to these service spaces has been the decentralized area center. As defined by the U.S. Department of Real Estate and Urban Development, such centers "need to be necessary for performing a program of health, recreational, social, or comparable neighborhood service in a location. The centers established need to be used to offer new services for the area or to improve or extend existing services, at the very same time that existing levels of social services in other parts of the community are preserved." Even more, the facilities need to be used for activities and services which straight benefit area homeowners.

The Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders points out that standard city and state agency services are seldom included, and lots of relevant federal programs are rarely situated in the same. Workforce and education programs for the Departments of Health, Education and Welfare and Labor, for example, have been housed in separate centers without adequate debt consolidation for coordination either geographically or programmatically.

or area place of centers is considered important. This allows doorstep ease of access, a crucial element in serving low-class households who hesitate to leave their familiar communities, and facilitates encouragement of resident participation. There is proof that day-to-day contact and communication between a site-based worker and the occupants becomes a relying on relationship, particularly when the locals learn that aid is available, is reputable, and involves no loss of pride or dignity.

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Any local of a metropolitan area requires "fulcrum points where he can use pressure, and make his will and understanding known and appreciated."4 The community center is an attempt, to react to this requirement. A vast array of neighborhood facilities has been suggested in recent literature, stimulated by the federal government's stated interest in these facilities along with regional efforts to react more meaningfully to the needs of the urban local.

All show, in differing degrees, the current emphasis on joining social worry about administrative efficiency in an effort to relate the private person better to the large scale of metropolitan life. In its recent report to the President, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders states that "city governments ought to considerably decentralize their operations to make them more responsive to the needs of bad Negroes by increasing neighborhood control over such programs as urban renewal, antipoverty work, and job training." According to the Commission's suggestion, this decentralization would take the form of "little municipal government" or community centers throughout the shanty towns.

The branch administrative center concept began first in Los Angeles where, in 1909, the Municipal Department of Structure and Safety opened a branch workplace in San Pedro, a former town which had combined with Los Angeles City. By 1925, branches of the departments of police, health, and water and power had actually been established in a number of far-flung districts of the city.

In 1946, the City Preparation Commission studied alternative website locations and the desirability of organizing offices to form neighborhood administrative. A 1950 master strategy of branch administrative centers suggested development of 12 strategically situated. 3 miles was advised as a reasonable service radius for each significant center, with a two-mile radius for small.

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6 The major centers contain federal and state workplaces, consisting of departments such as internal profits, social security, and the post office; county workplaces, including public support; civic conference halls; branch libraries; fire and cops stations; university hospital; the water and power department; recreation facilities; and the building and safety department.

The city planning commission mentioned economy, performance, benefit, appearance, and civic pride as factors which the decentralized centers would promote. 7 San Antonio, Texas, inaugurated a similar strategy in 1960. This strategy requires a series of "junior town hall," each an integral system headed by an assistant city supervisor with adequate power to act and with whom the citizen can discuss his problems.

Health Department sanitarians, rodent control professionals, and public health nurses are also designated to the decentralized town hall. Proposals were made to include tax evaluating and collecting services as well as cops and fire administrative functions at a future date. As in Los Angeles, efficiency and convenience were pointed out as reasons for decentralizing town hall operations.

Depending on neighborhood size and structure, the permanent staff would consist of an assistant mayor and representatives of local companies, the city councilman's staff, and other appropriate institutions and groups. According to the Commission the neighborhood city hall would accomplish numerous interrelated objectives: It would add to the improvement of civil services by supplying a reliable channel for low-income residents to interact their requirements and issues to the proper public authorities and by increasing the capability of local federal government to respond in a collaborated and timely fashion.

It would make information about federal government programs and services available to ghetto residents, enabling them to make more effective use of such programs and services and explaining the limitations on the availability of all such programs and services. It would broaden chances for meaningful neighborhood access to, and participation in, the planning and application of policy impacting their neighborhood.

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Community health centers were established as early as 1915 in New York City City, where experimental centers were established to "show the expediency of integrating the Health Department operates of [each health] district under the direction of a local Health Officer and ... to cultivate amongst the people of the district a cooperative spirit for the enhancement of their health and hygienic conditions." While a modification in local government stopped extension of this experiment, it did demonstrate the value of combining health functions at the community level.

Beyond this, each center makes its own choices and launches its own tasks. One major difference between the OEO centers and existing centers lies in the expression "comprehensive health services." Clients at OEO centers are dealt with for particular diseases, but the primary objectives are the prevention of health problem and the upkeep of health.