Automatically Generated Summary:
Community development focused on relatively small, bounded places--low-income neighborhoods--but economic, social, and political system dynamics increasingly occur at the regional level. A "40-square block" view of the world fails to recognize the need for broader geographic linkages to provide people in low-income areas with economic and social opportunities. And, some critics argued, community developers may increase concentrated poverty when they insist on amassing affordable housing in low-income areas.
Community Development at a Crossroads
Born in the 1960s, how will this field adapt to a radically changed environment?The U.S. financial and economic crises amplified fundamental challenges faced by the community development field and are ushering in a time for innovation. When three national CD heavyweights--LISC, Neighborhood Works America, and Enterprise--called for a summit in June, they described the field's problem this way: The many CDCs, CDFIs and other institutions that have grown in the field over the past 30 years have done so in an environment of reasonable adequate public and philanthropic capital, thriving tax credit programs, and widespread access to private capital. Today, however, the environment is radically different. The nation and the world are experiencing a liquidity crisis, the loss of wealth has reduced charitable giving, and the loss of profitability has reduced the corporate appetite for tax credit programs. To compound this, the foreclosure crisis is ...
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