Redeveloping and revitalizing communities is primarily a responsibility of the government for its people. Ironically, blighted communities that seem to need the most assistance to combat poverty and the negativities it entails receive it the least. Community development through public assistance, public housing, and public projects has not been sufficient and brought about social stigma. These projects planned out by committees mainly consisting of the elite overshadowed neighborhood interest and forced a Robert Moses style planning approach. The creation of CDC’s was meant to return control to communities but as funding was cut more severely it became a business interest. The pattern with poorer neighborhoods seems to be that the lack of a strong political foothold causes them to lose out on their own planning.
More affluent neighborhoods can follow a Jane Jacobs approach to community planning because of privately sourced funding. Private capital has become of utmost importance in the age of neoliberalism for getting ahead. The New Deal reforms that promoted home ownership and low interest loans served as a boost for the middle class after the Depression but those in deeper poverty were not helped. This again shows the disparity between political influence. The government chose to invest in the communities that appeared to be more promising but left the poorer areas on their own. Post war surplus introduced urban renewal which catered again to an upper class interest.
In the second chapter one of the conclusions was that in order for members of poorer communities to break the poverty cycle their best option is to move out. In the film “El Barrio” there was one member of the Latino community who was more successful and thus able to move into a more expensive development. This changed his perspective on impoverished communities when he spoke about the public housing that was right outside of him. This serves to show how the solution is not clear and despite historical and ongoing efforts of various organizations these demographic differences still exist.