Innovations are taking place in the strategies to build wealth in poor communities. The key obstacles right now include:

1. Lack of political focus: Too few political leaders willing to commit to a sustained focus on innovating new solutions to reduce poverty by building wealth and re-imagining neighborhoods.
2. Inaccurate mental maps: Too few business leaders see poverty as a business issue. The traditional view is that poverty is a social challenge that someone else takes addresses. ("That's why we pay taxes"). Even fewer see poor communities as a market opportunity. (See, for example the work of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, and the book, At the Bottom of the Pyramid.)
3. Command and control mindsets: To few philanthropic leaders in community foundations are willing to give up their control mindsets and open themselves to deeper more open innovations.

In Savannah, a reframing is taking place that enables more transformational solutions to emerge.

Daniel Dodd of Step Up Savannah, who pioneered a program to reduce poverty in the urban setting of Savannah, Georgia, also addressed the need for long-term, big-picture solutions to fight poverty in ways that involve the broader community. Dodd explained how he has made significant progress by framing poverty as an economic issue and thereby involving organizations, corporations, and business interests in anti-poverty efforts. In Dodd’s own words, “Poverty is a business issue as much as it is a human issue.” Especially in urban communities, doing what’s right may depend on making it clear to all members of the community that fighting poverty is in their own best interests.

Developing Place-Based Solutions to Fight Poverty

Here's a presentation on Savannah's initiative:
Step Up Savannah

For the past four years, I have been working with a pioneering group in Shreveport, LA that focuses on rebuilding neighborhoods through an explicit focus on rebuilding networks of relationships and strategic doing. Community Renewal International is now gaining national attention with a recent grant from the Hewlett Packard Foundation.

Also:

• Developing Place-Based Solutions to Fight Poverty Download slide presentation here.
• Poor Suburbia: Rethinking the geography of American poverty
• Brookings report is available here: The Suburbanization of Poverty: Trends in Metropolitan America, 2000 to 2008