Federal Reserve Bank
of San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank
of San Francisco

Community Development Innovation Review

The Community Development Innovation Review focuses on bridging the gap between theory and practice, from as many viewpoints as possible. The goal of this journal is to promote cross-sector dialogue around a range of emerging issues and related investments that advance economic resilience and mobility for low- and moderate-income communities.

  • Widening the Lens: Arts, Culture, and an Equitable Future for All Communities

    Michael McAfee, PolicyLink; Rip Rapson, Kresge Foundation

    Michael McAfee, president and CEO of PolicyLink, and Rip Rapson, president and CEO of the Kresge Foundation and Chair of the Funders Council of ArtPlace America, explore why arts and culture strategies are central to equitable development and racial justice.

  • Strategies to Address Climate Change Risk in Low- and Moderate-income Communities

    This issue of the Community Development Innovation Review offers strategies that address climate change risk in low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities. As these communities begin to grapple with a changing environment, strategic investments can increase resiliency and support adaptation while simultaneously advancing community development priorities. The articles in this issue of the Review consider these investment opportunities from a diverse set of community, financial, economic, and academic perspectives.

  • Foreword

    Ian Galloway

  • Real Estate as a Tool for Adaptive Banking

    Asaf Bernstein, Matthew Gustafson, and Ryan Lewis

    By aligning the performance of loans with long-term property values, Coasean bargaining suggests that banks could be incentivized to subsidize adaptive projects when doing so provides a net benefit to the community.

  • Climate Adaptation and Community Development

    Jesse M. Keenan

    A central hallmark of adaptation is about building a capacity for not only managing risks (i.e., moderating negative effects) but also for taking advantage of beneficial opportunities. As such, climate adaptation and community development are uniquely aligned in that capacity building has been a central tenet of community development.

  • Insurance Innovation and Community-Based Adaptation Finance

    Shalini Vajjhala and James Rhodes

    Governments traditionally act as “insurers of last resort.” When disaster strikes, vulnerable communities turn to local, state, and federal government agencies for support and recovery assistance. More recently, as the frequency and severity of various disasters—from severe storms and floods to wildfires—have grown, the gap between who has financial protection in the form of insurance and who does not has also grown. As a result, many government agencies have found themselves being expected to act as insurers of first resort.

  • Flood Risk and Structural Adaptation of Markets: An Outline for Action

    Michael D. Berman

    Current flood risk assessment tools are too blunt and outdated to accurately measure flood risk and the impact of hazard mitigation investments. As the frequency and severity of floods in the U.S. continues to increase due to climate change, the shortcomings of our current tools will be increasingly insufficient to quantify flood risk.

  • Community Resilience and Adaptive Capacity: A Meaningful Investment Across Assets

    Natalie Ambrosio and Yoon Kim

    Every investment, from real assets to corporate initiatives, is inextricably connected to the surrounding community. Thus, understanding how acute and chronic physical climate hazards will affect local communities and how these communities are responding enables investors to assess the full extent of the risks they face. This, in turn, cannot be done without considering a community’s adaptive capacity, which mediates the impacts of climate hazards on communities and local infrastructure and has major implications for business continuity.

  • Rebuild to Fail or Rebuild to Adapt: How CRA Lending Can Guide Climate Change Disaster Response

    Mark Northcross

    Wildfire risk mitigation plans can be a model for promoting adaptive reconstruction after climate change-related natural disasters. This approach represents a middle ground between disaster recovery and long-term risk associated with climate change

  • Forest Finance Unlocks Opportunities for Rural Communities: Exploring the Triple Bottom Line Impacts of the Forest Resilience Bond Model

    Nathalie Woolworth and Zach Knight

    The Forest Resilience Bond promises to accelerate the pace and scale at which critical work to restore the health and functioning of the nation’s forested landscapes is undertaken. It does so by engaging private capital to cover the upfront cost of activities to improve forest health and by bringing together stakeholders that benefit from this work to share in the cost of reimbursing investors over time.