Entrepreneurial Neighborhood Initiatives: Political Capital in Community Development

Community-based organizations are struggling to find alternative strategies to successfully leverage assistance and resources to improve their neighborhoods. This article offers a three-pronged formula for sustainable community development based on an entrepreneurial approach to undertake neighborhood initiatives. Economic, social, and political capital are necessary ingredients to generate independent community-based strategies that residents and investors can manage over the long term to achieve financial and social successes. Two community organization cases are compared to determine whether different approaches to local government for community development programs and funding represent different strategies and, ultimately, different levels of success.