The New Wealth Package for Community Economic Development: Generating Value in Distressed Urban Communities

Abstract

This paper applies arbitrage theory as a means of valuing assets in urban low-income communities. the reason for this is that capital and wealth formation has become increasingly important, as inner city areas become more robust marketplaces. Increasingly, community based institutions and organizations are being challenged to develop new approaches for creating self-sustaining capital from internal community assets. Until recently, low income and distressed communities attracted resources by showcasing their deficits and the lack of marketable asserts. Today, however, with new immigration and the opening of inner-city areas to new private capital, community based institutions and organizations must find ways to value previously undervalued assets as a means of capturing the wealth they represent and holding them in the community as a new treasury for capitalizing future development. in this paper, I argue that one means of realizing wealth is capitalizing and securtizing the increased value associated with the improved value of all forms of rising in value community based assets through the use of arbitrage methods that use the notion of increased values to form new tradable capital stock that is transferable as well as capturable internally to generate new wealth.