Inner-city Innovator: The Non-profit Community Development Corporation

Abstract

This paper examines the potential and the limitations associated with the rise of the community development corporation (CDC) as a vital component of inner-city development politics. Grass-roots mobilisation in impoverished American neighbourhoods has sometimes resulted in the deconstruction of the high-rise 'growth machine' in those neighbourhoods and in the defence of 'home turf' against redevelopment and gentrification. Successful turf defence, however, has rarely been followed by an alternative, community-sensitive means of inner-city development. Recently, this dilemma has been addressed by the rise of an innovative institution capable of connecting community, capital and government in the pursuit of sensitive neighbourhood regeneration: the non-profit CDC. In some inner-city neighbourhoods, CDCs have helped to build an alternative social production process and have advanced elements of a new, progressive development regime.