I attended a workshop several weeks ago on Wealth Creation in Rural Communities conducted by Yellow Wood Associates out of Vermont. The exploration of this concept was supported and championed by the Ford Foundation, who is keenly interested in finding a framework for measuring social programs and ensuring that their investments in programs have a lasting impact. In particular, the Ford Foundation has focused on a few key areas of intense poverty: Appalachia, the Deep South, and the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
The ultra-distilled version of the framework is as follows:
Problem
The term “wealth” need to be rethought in a broader sense that the traditional financial definition. The types of wealth defined in this framework are: individual, social, intellectual, natural, political, built, and financial. Furthermore, income is not the same as wealth.
The core problem is that many, if not all, of the types of wealth are extracted from rural areas and moved into urban and suburban areas. Think of things like food (commodity crops, livestock, produce, etc.), energy (coal, petroleum), timber, but also the labor force (leaving to find education and jobs). This extraction could also be described as exploitation, similar to what we witness in many developing countries.
Goal
Create wealth that “sticks”. How can we stem the flow of wealth out of rural areas and then set in place the building blocks for the communities to improve themselves?
All types of wealth must be addressed in any concerted effort. One type of wealth shall not be gained at the expense of another.
Approach
Collaboration is a must. Given the wide range of problems facing these communities and the variety of various types of initiatives needed, no one agent will be able to handle it all. All investments made should be made in the context of a larger wealth creation initiative.
Programs and initiatives must use a “pull” model instead of a “push” model. This is the difference between demand-side and supply-side interventions. The conventional approach to community development is to push programs onto communities without first determining whether it is needed, and whether the community is in a place where it can utilize the program or service effectively.
We must develop and leverage the idea of “value chains”, which are the counterpoint to traditional supply chains. In a traditional supply chain, one company in a step in the supply chain only interfaces with the next step upstream and downstream and the relationships are purely transactional. In a value chain, all of the steps in the chain collaborate, and thereby share in both the risk and the reward. A limited example of this would be consumer-supported agriculture (CSAs), where the farmers and the consumers share in the cost but also in the fruits of the harvest. This model is less transactional and more communal.
Rural communities and urban areas must be understood as being part of the same system, and that they depend on each other. The relationship between the two must be strengthened and equalized.
I found this presentation to be, well, mind-blowing. This truly is a disruptive concept to the traditional model of community development, and transforms it from the piecemeal approach to a comprehensive and holistic methodology that is truly invested in successful and measurable outcomes. This is the change we need!
As described at the outset, this concept was specifically developed around rural communities. But is there is a way to utilize this same framework with poor inner-city neighborhoods? These distinct types of communities share many of the same challenges of disenfranchisement and public health, though the problem of resource exploitation is typically not as prevalent in urban communities. In fact, inner-city communities have a stronger foundation to build upon, with better access to jobs, health care, and schools to certain extents. So this should be easier, right? We shall see.
Let’s consider the community of Larimer in the East End of Pittsburgh. Here is a matrix of the status of the seven types of wealth in the community:
| Type of Capital | Community Strength | Community Challenge |
| Individual |
| Adverse health effects |
| Social | Strong religious institutions, community organizations like Kingsley Association | High rate of ex-offenders, High percentage of elderly residents. |
| Political | Lots of publicity recently, strong support and attention from State Sen. Jim Ferlo and US Rep Mike Doyle. | Disenfranchisement due to high number of felons. |
| Financial |
| High percent of residents below poverty line. Low property values. |
| Built | Generally flat topography, higher quality building stock than many neighborhoods. Good access to public transit and business centers. | Numerous abandoned and derelict buildings and empty lots |
| Natural | Limited environmental contamination. |
|
| Intellectual |
| No schools within the boundary of the neighborhood |
This lens offers an important perspective on the assets and challenges of the community. But how do we interface and overlay this with the oft-building-focused community strategic plan, which typically focus on streetscapes, green space, land use, and building types? Does one inform the other? Should they overlap or should they complement one another? Are they sequential? Should they be developed together? Are both really necessary? These are hard questions to answer, but the ability to reconcile these two concepts is crucial to their adoption. We need to build the framework by which the wealth creation model can be understood and digested by the designer and planner types, as well as everyday people. Perhaps Yellow Wood Associates has already grappled with this, but I look forward to bringing these two worlds into alignment. More to come on this...
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