Lisa J. Servon

CDCs and the Changing Context for Urban Community Development: A Review of the Field and the Environment

This review takes Rebuilding Communities as a starting point to survey the community development literature, the community development field, and external environmental factors, in order to examine what has happened over the past fifteen years to shape the context in which urban community development corporations (CDCs) now operate. This paper is both a bounded literature review and an environmental scan. We identify categories of changes and influences on the community development field. We find that in the last fifteen years, the community development field has grown increasingly professionalized. Policy initiatives have also shaped the field. New evaluations of community development have been conducted and published. We now know much more about the potential and limits of CDCs than we did when the Rebuilding Communities (RC) study was launched in the late 1980s. At the same time, significant gaps in our knowledge of the community development field remain. In particular, there has been insufficient study of how the changes in this context have affected the work that CDCs do.

Microenterprise Development in the United States: Current Challenges and New Directions

U.S. microenterprise programs provide business training, small amounts of credit (

Why Have Lending Programs Targeting Disadvantaged Small-Business Borrowers Achieved so Little Success in the United States?

35,000 or less), or both to businesses with five or fewer employees. As the microenterprise field nears the end of its second decade in the United States, experts and practitioners agree that the field is in a difficult place; there appears to be relatively widespread agreement on the nature of the problems, which include a lack of standardized data, decreasing funding from some key sectors, increased competition, and difficulty in reaching the target market. The author argues that if the microenterprise field does not make some significant changes, it will neither sustain itself nor approach its potential. Strategies to address these challenges fall into three broad categories: restructuring, innovation, and accreditation and standardization.

The Five Gaps Facing Small and Microbusiness Owners: Evidence From New York City

Small business lending programs designed to move disadvantaged low-income people into business ownership have been difficult to implement successfully in the U.S. context. Based in part on the premise that financing requirements are an entry barrier limiting the ability of aspiring entrepreneurs to create small businesses, these programs are designed to alleviate such barriers for low net-worth individuals with limited borrowing opportunities. The authors’ analysis tracks through time nationally representative samples of adults to investigate the role of financial constraints and other factors delineating self-employment entrants from nonentrants. Paying particular attention to lines of business most accessible to adults lacking college credentials and substantial personal net worth, the authors’ analysis yields no evidence that financial capital constraints are a significant barrier to small-firm creation.

Sensory global towns: an experiential approach to the growth of the Slow City movement

Small businesses play a critical role in economic development. Over the past 20 years, policies and programs have sought to increase the potential success of these businesses. Yet little is known about the extent to which these policies and programs respond to the specific needs of business owners. Using a mixed-methods approach, the authors investigate the barriers to success that small business owners face, the effectiveness of current policies and programs aimed at serving small businesses, and ways to improve the current system. Focusing on disadvantaged entrepreneurs in New York City, the authors find five primary gaps within the current policy system: a transitional gap, an information gap, and an institutional capacity and service delivery gap. The authors argue that the capital and training needs of small business owners are deeper and more complex than what the current policy system addresses and offer recommendations for improvement.

The Continuum Of Capital For Small And Micro Enterprises

This paper explores, through the example of the Slow City (Cittaslow) movement, how an analytical focus on the experiential dimensions of urban experience adds new layers of knowledge to our understandings of how and why town leaders engage with urban frameworks and principles. The global growth of the Italian-based Cittaslow movement has been explained both as part of a deceleration narrative and as a transferable urban development framework. We show how an approach that takes the experiential as its analytical starting point offers an alternative interpretation of the movements contemporary growing global membership. Cittaslow aims to ensure quality of life in its towns and seeks to create an environmentally sustainable and pleasurable future. Drawing on research in Spanish Cittaslow towns, we examine the terms upon which town leaders engage with the movements ideas and framework. We propose that Cittaslow is appealing to town leaders because it enables them not only to identify the qualities of their towns against its membership criteria, but also to invest in its framework normally unspoken, embodied, sensory, and tacit dimensions of their towns. A focus on the experiential, we suggest, is key to understanding the movements appeal to town leaders across diverse cultural and national contexts.

Reassessing the role of housing in community‐based urban development

Since the 1990s, interest in the role of small and microenterprises (SMMEs) in economic development has garnered considerable attention throughout academic and practioner circles. Widely known for their potential to help stimulate economic growth and as a potential avenue for poverty alleviation, the purpose and promise of small businesses have been widely publicized. However, to date, little research exists that adequately documents the specific capital needs of very small businesses (those with less than 20 employees) and microenterprises (those with less than 5 employees) and their owners at specific points in a businesss development and growth. Using data from the 1992 Characteristics of Business Owners Survey, the 2002 Survey of Business Owners and the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances, we analyze the different types of firms in the United States, the amount of capital used by firms of different size and the sources of capital used by firms of different sizes to assess how capital needs and sources differ for those businesses with less than 20 employees. Paying particular attention to businesses owned by women and minorities, we argue that the path of SMMEs differs substantially from the typical path of larger small businesses. In addition, we highlight the implications of our findings and provide our policy recommendations to address them.

CITTASLOW: GOING GLOCAL IN SPAIN

Abstract In this article, we use a random sample of urban community development corporations (CDCs) to determine whether distinct types exist and, if so, to estimate their prevalence in the industry. The typical urban CDC has a diversified portfolio of economic and social development activities, including community organizing, and is likely to have a housing development program, although not necessarily a large one because relatively few are high producers. Large‐scale housing producers, defined in the study as having produced at least 500 units during the previous 10 years, comprise 18 percent of CDCs. A large organizational capacity, an affiliation with national intermediaries, the training of staff and the adoption of computers, the length of executive directors’ tenure, and the share of funding devoted to housing programs are the most important factors increasing the odds that a CDC will belong to the group of high producers.

Progress hindered: The retention and advancement of women in science, engineering, and technology careers

ABSTRACT: Concerns about the long-term effects of development based on pro-growth capitalism and the perceived homogenizing effects of globalization have given rise to movements, such as Cittaslow (the Slow City movement), that promote alternative strategies. These movements, which exist primarily in smaller cities and towns, focus on locality, the ordinariness of place, and sustainable, homegrown economies. We make two related arguments. First, we argue that the experiences of Cittaslow towns in Spain lend support to the thesis that globalization does not always lead to a homogenized world in which the local and the global are pitted against each other in a battle of good vs. evil. Rather, Cittaslow towns actively exploit the interpenetration of the global and the local. Second, we build on this argument to show how the ways that Cittaslow towns develop through a relationship between the local and the global challenges the neoliberal assumption that growth is the key to successful development through initiatives that foster intercity competition.

Vernacular Culture and Urban Economic Development: Thinking Outside the (Big) Box

Over the last two decades rates of women’s participation in science, engineering, and technology careers has greatly increased. However, to date little research exists on how women, especially those in management positions, are performing within these fields. Using data obtained from over 2,493 survey respondents and 28 focus groups, we seek to understand the barriers that hinder the retention and advancement of women in managerial positions in these career fields. Paying particular attention to for-profit science, engineering and technology firms, we argue that there are significant barriers to female retention and advancement within these fields related to the norms of professionalisation, and that from a human resources perspective firms could do a much better job of leveraging the existing female talent pipeline in these occupations. In addition, we highlight the implications of our findings and provide our