What if Marginalized Neighbourhoods Crafted Their Own Handmade, Place-based Economies?

[Lee Cruz]

From entrepreneurs in their 20s to established real estate developers, the diversity of people who joined the first few gatherings on neighbourhood economics in Cincinnati had an initiator of the effort, Peter Block, happily stunned.

“The most excited people in some cases were the people who came in with the most responsibility — and they got it,” Peter says.

Christine Egger, who is supporting the gatherings in Cincinnati, says of all the communities she and her colleagues have been invited to learn with, Cincinnati is hosting the “most robust, diverse, inclusive” conversation on neighbourhood economics.

“Oftentimes we’re convincing people that they have the resources they need to create the communities they want to live in,” says Christine. “But in Cincinnati there was no need of that. There is already a very broad conversation that’s incredibly respectful of what each person in the room has to bring.”

People seem energized by the possibilities of something other than more human services in responding to problems in the city.

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