PHILADELPHIA – While Betty Reavis sits on her front porch on Locust Street in West Philadelphia, the smell of barbecue fills the air as children laugh and play. Walnut Hill is farther away from the University of Pennsylvania than neighborhoods such as Spruce Hill, but Reavis nevertheless believes that her neighborhood has benefited from Penn’s new interest in the surrounding neighborhoods. Reavis’ neighborhood, a black neighborhood near the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, has always had a strong sense of community spirit, but she remembers a time 10 years ago when graffiti covered walls and buildings, gunfire was common and residents saw drug sales on the street.”I had the choice between putting the blinds down or walking outside and getting involved with my neighbors,” Reavis said. “That’s the choice that all people have. Are you going to stay inside, or are you going to go out and do something about it.” Penn’s influence in the neighborhood has helped turn the once-dangerous and blighted neighborhood into a pleasant, safe and livable environment. The neighbors on the street woke up early that Saturday morning to pick up litter and sweep the sidewalks in preparation for a block party. With the street cordoned off, children were free to play. All of the residents had chipped in to rent a pony for children to ride on and a big balloon house for them to play in. Basketball hoops were set up in the street for the teenagers that lived in the area.Reavis also remembers a time before Penn was a beloved contributor to neighborhood safety. “There used to be people living down where there are now parking lots and buildings,” Reavis said. “There were markets and houses with people on the porches, and then Penn came and moved them all out.”Ira Harkavy has a unique perspective on the situation. He was a student activist, a a self-described “rabble-rouser” in the 1960s, who led a sit-in to protest and prevent Penn’s expansion.Now, Harkavy is an administrator at Penn, the director of the university’s service learning program, a seemingly a difficult move for a man who fought the “powers that be” just a few decades earlier.Harkavy, however, said the attitude at Penn is different now than it was in the ’60s.”They told the neighborhoods what to do then,” he said. “It was ‘even if community members are against being moved out, it’s for their own good.'”An entire neighborhood, the Black Bottom, an area west of the Penn campus, was demolished, and in many cases, replaced by nothing more than a parking lot. The university simply did not like what was there at the time, and got rid of it, at the expense of those who lived there.Steve Schutt, chief of staff for Penn President Judith Rodin, said the neighborhoods had very little warning, and even less input in the process.”The plan was handed out as the bulldozers were on the doorstep,” he said.Joseph Ruane, former president of the Spruce Hill Community Association, said there is still a foul taste in the mouths of many who lived through that time.”Penn is resented in the city,” he said. “They are very powerful and always had their way in the city.”Harkavy said the Penn administration in the days of Black Bottom were not malicious, just confused.”You have to strive to do things democratically. It’s institutionally central to our mission,” he said. “It was just a case of bad theory and bad practice in the ’60s. The administration wasn’t evil.”Schutt said the difference between the current project and the one in the 1960s is as simple as “consultation rather than convincing.”Schutt said the University learned a valuable lesson from the mistakes of the ’60s. “In general, top-down planning works less well than bottom-up planning in community relations,” he said.