Social Compact in the news

Ironically, I wrote the email below to an e-list on asset-based community development last week, not knowing about this article, "A new look finds wealth in inner city," in the Los Angeles Times.

Another problem with a focus on chains is where the money ends up going. While data on the impact varies a little, generally the amount bandied about is that a chain store has a multiplier impact of 14 cents for each dollar spent there, while for a locally owned store, more than 50 cents of every dollar spent in the store recirculates in the local economy.
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I end up not being super impressed with their work, not that it isn't great in terms of their ability to drill down and discover people/data. See this paper by Scott Bernstein of the Center for Neighborhood from the late 1990s: Using The Hidden Assets of America's Communities & Regions to Ensure Sustainable Communities. This paper spawned the kind of analysis employed by Social Compact.

The issue isn't that there are 5 poor people living in a house instead of 2 people. The issue is how do we rebuild urban commercial districts given an incredibly concentrated retail industry, one that for the most part is "chained up," that chains have little interest in urban areas, particularly underserved/poor areas.

To me, the issue is rebuilding the local economy at the neighborhood level (also see Community Economic Development Handbook by Temali).

And this brings up issues of entrepreneurship development, capital formation, capacity building, etc. Anyway, there is someone who says that the phrase "information is power" is only half right, that "information is _potential_ power." The issue is how to utilize the info.

How do we convert the information from potential into power? It happens that this is the big thing that I am dealing with in my work, and is something that for the most part I am not writing about in the blog, because it is the formulation phase. I am working with another consultant on this. Hope to have an integrated framework laid out by the end of the year, although part of it will be delivered within a report to a commercial district in Pittsburgh, and in a community on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and we are talking about it at a conference in Vermont in October.