Community Investments

December 2012
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An Integrated Approach to Community Development - Volume 24, Issue 3

This special issue of Community Investments highlights excerpts from a new book published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Low Income Investment Fund titled Investing in What Works for America’s Communities: Essays on People, Place & Purpose, with a particular focus on the topic of “integration,” a prominent theme that emerges from the book. The most promising models of community development going forward all include elements of integration, such as layered financing, joint development, shared accountability, or coordinated services. The authors argue that the dichotomy of “people versus place” and the rigid siloes separating housing, education, health, and other sectors must become a thing of the past in order to effectively address poverty in the future.

The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco or the Federal Reserve System. Material herein may be reprinted or abstracted provided Community Investments is credited. Please provide our Community Development Department with a copy of any publication in which material is reprinted.

Read the full issue (pdf, 2.2 mb)

Table of Contents

CI Notebook

With every new year comes the promise and hope of progress—we glean lessons from our past about what works and what we need to change going forward. This is difficult work at the individual level and it’s an even more daunting task to apply this introspective lens to an entire sector.

The Continuing Evolution of American Poverty and Its Implications for Community Development

The long-run picture of poverty in America is changing and it demands a flexible, multipronged public policy response to fulfill the promise of economic opportunity for all.

Our History with Concentrated Poverty

The history of efforts to ameliorate urban concentrated poverty has important implications for the future of antipoverty policy.

America’s Tomorrow: Race, Place, and the Equity Agenda

Efforts to improve conditions in low-income communities must address the systemic barriers to success and well-being that lie at the root of economic and social inequity.

From Community to Prosperity

Building effective systems will require a new civic infrastructure that is resilient and able to adapt to changing conditions, and an intolerance of the workaround.

The Future of Community Development

The field must seek realignment among major systems such as urban education, probation, criminal justice, workforce development, and community colleges to promote human development.

Getting to Scale: The Need for a New Model in Housing and Community Development

Affordable housing has been a critical component of the community development strategy, but developers now need a new sustainable business model to continue to survive and thrive.

Routinizing the Extraordinary

The community development field needs a new integrated approach that is cross-sectoral, data-driven and composed of both people- and place-based interventions.