I’ve been working on a book with Rosa Lee. Our working title is This Shit Works — And Why It Matters.
One of my tasks has been compiling case studies of economic justice solutions, projects like
- Buy Back the Block, which enables average people in poor neighborhoods to become owners of commercial real estate in their own communities;
- ways to make deeply affordable housing more accessible;
- ways to invest in local businesses owned by low- and moderate-income people; and
- ways to subvert redlining and other forms of systemic racism.
Through Neighborhood Economics conferences, we gather the people who care about using these replicable solutions. The tools have a track record of creating economic power in the neighborhoods in every city where people die, on average, ten years younger than in the wealthier zip codes just miles away.
The conference helps these innovations propagate. We connect people so the work can spread.
But something has been bothering me.
If these solutions work, why do they produce phase shifts in some places and stall out in others?
Our editorial colleague Kyle Oliver suggested anchoring the book in our earlier work, The Field Guide to Transformation, which outlines the ecosystem of changemakers required to orchestrate change in local economic systems:
System Entrepreneur – Sometimes known as the community quarterback, this catalytic leader is a code-switcher who can talk to capital and power but also listen deeply to community. It’s hard to fund these folks. For example, they don’t own or build the housing, but they make it possible for housing to happen.
Relational Infrastructure Builders – These community pillars send the invites, take the notes, sit in the endless meetings. This is work that gender expectations have often directed to women, so they are sometimes called mother hens. Without their essential work of building trust slowly over time, coalitions fall apart.
Connected Evangelist — These operators can help open doors for new initiatives. They are comfortable in the Rotary Clubs and boardrooms. They translate the vision into language the powerful understand. Sometimes they can make a bigger ask than the community safely can.
The Prophet — Often coming from a background in social justice advocacy or religious leadership, the prophet helps keep the moral center intact when the horse trading commences.
Anchor Institutions — Hospitals, churches, universities large and hopefully stable operations that aren’t going anywhere and have a vested interest in a thriving community.
But when I overlaid those two lenses (the toolbox and the ecosystem), I realized we were missing a key piece of understanding:
The local ecosystem determines whether the tool-based initiatives can work, or at least flourish.
It all came together for me when I joined our local housing task force here in Buncombe County, North Carolina
I had just helped create a Common Pool Fund for predevelopment: soft dollars for design, zoning, and approvals. It’s the hardest money to raise and rightly considered catalytic capital.
At the very next meeting, Joe Minicozzi of Urban3 showed our task force how poor neighborhoods in our area subsidize affluent ones through distorted property taxes. In Shiloh, a historically Black neighborhood displaced to build Biltmore, residents have been overtaxed for decades. Meanwhile, Biltmore Forest has been undertaxed. Millions were effectively extracted from one neighborhood and gifted to another. It was enough money to pay the salaries of approximately 150 public school teachers, and it was just … gone.
The data was brilliant. The visualizations were shocking. But nothing has changed.
Why? Because having the genius who understands the problems and solutions is not enough. When you need to change public rules, you need organized, interracial, interfaith, activist power. Our task force didn’t have it.
It was the same in San Antonio: Local community foundations engaged big time. The Spurs NBA team hosted a public meeting. Banks said they’d work toward consensus. But nothing changed.
However, in Orange County, North Carolina, a multiracial interfaith coalition took on tax fairness. They made it a central election issue. They had all the bases covered from an ecosystem perspective. That’s organized power aligned with moral authority.
So the breakthrough is this: The book can’t just be about tools. Initiatives that lean too heavily on the technical and financial innovation alone are unlikely to break through. We have to do the forensic ecosystem analysis of conditions under which tools produce the phase shifts we’re looking for.
For each case study we ask:
- What solution were leaders building around?
- Which ecosystem roles were present? Which were missing?
- Did the effort require market action, rule changes, or both?
- Was organized power aligned with technical expertise?
- What triggered, or prevented, the shift?
These innovations are modular. They stack. But whether they work in a place depends not just on financial innovation and scaling but on ecosystem alignment.
Neighborhood Economics is not just about spreading tools. It’s seeding quarterbacks, connecting mother hens, introducing prophets to evangelists, aligning data with organized power.
Transformation in local economic justice is possible, but only when the invisible architecture of change can be built out and coordinated.
This forensic ecosystem analysis is now the spine of the book. We’ll keep you posted on what we’re learning.