Abstract

CDCs: CONTRIBUTIONS OUTWEIGH CONTRADICTIONS, a Reply to Randy Stoecker RACHEL G. BRATT* Tufts University Randy Stoecker’s paper makes an important contribution to the literature on CDCs and to our understanding of the challenges facing poor urban communities. Critiquing the ways in which CDCs are negatively impacted by the structure of our political and economic sys- tems, his argument goes as follows: CDCs purport to be community-based enterprises that focus on “bottom up” development and on community empowerment through a compre- hensive approach to physical and social ills. Underlying this approach is a basic acceptance of the market economy, with CDC interventions largely focused on the supply side. “Poor neighborhoods are seen as ‘weak markets’. . .requiring reinvestment rather than as oppressed communities requiring mobilization leading CDCs to work within existing eco- nomic rules.” Stoecker argues that CDCs are caught in the middle (mediating between “haves” and “have nots”) managing capital like capitalists, but not investing it for profit, trying to be community oriented, while funding is controlled by outsiders. In short, CDCs have inter- nalized the contradiction between capital and community, resulting in three major problems. The solution, he argues, is to abandon the small, community-based CDC model in