Investing in What Works for America’s Communities
The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco or the Federal Reserve System.
Starting from the history and current state of community development, in this eclectic collection of essays, experts on health, education and transportation join community development thinkers and practitioners in urging us to break though silos in our programs, our financing streams, and our thinking. They challenge practitioners, policy makers and researchers alike to respond to the complex challenges facing our families and communities by using data-based rigorous analysis to direct scarce resources to what works.
— Sarah Rosen Wartell, President, Urban Institute
This volume presents the thoughtful ideas and philosophies of an extremely diverse set of leading scholars and policy-oriented experts as well as practitioners who have been driving community-based innovation. In so doing, it leads one to interesting—and sometimes unexpected—places regarding the best approaches for driving effective transformational change. It is a must-read for those contemplating how to integrate people, place, capital, and public, private, and nonprofit institutions to achieve community development and personal growth.
— Raphael Bostic, Professor, University of Southern California
This thoughtful collection will set the standard for the community development field for the next decade. It is an outstanding set of essays by experts in an ever-expanding and always complex field. These are demanding times in the world analyzed in this volume and the authors recognize that those in it are fighting a steep uphill battle. But community development professionals struggle on with imagination and sophistication and the book captures the essence of the learning by front-line workers and those researching their activity. I know when I see a “value-added volume” in the field. This is one of them. Were I still teaching about community development, “Investing in What Works” would be at the top of the required reading list and the basis for the organization of the course.
— Lang Keyes, Ford Professor of City and Regional Planning Emeritus, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT
This volume, an important resource for those engaged in community development, goes beyond the dichotomy of place-based versus people-based policies to define what makes communities sustainable and resilient. Through its holistic approach, this volume provides the latest analysis by foremost community development experts: practitioners, researchers, and policy makers on emerging programs that are successful in building stronger communities in the United States.
— Susan Wachter, Professor of Real Estate and Finance, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Editors and Advisory Committee
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