What's Possible: Investing Now for Prosperous, Sustainable Neighborhoods

A collaborative project by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Local Initiatives Support Corporation, and Enterprise Community Partners. Also downloadable as PDF.

The climate crisis runs straight through low-wealth neighborhoods.
After years of increasingly threatening weather—heat, fire, wind,
floods—there is a growing recognition that underserved and rural
communities are hit hardest when natural disasters strike.1 Far
less understood, however, is how critical these communities are to
solving the crisis.

What’s Possible is an essential playbook for building a stronger, more
inclusive future. Putting low-wealth communities at the center, the book
begins with the insight that solutions to deeply rooted problems lie in
communities themselves. These places, home to so many Americans, have
considerable assets, including human capital and dense social networks.
Elevating workable solutions from a cross-disciplinary set of practitioners,
community leaders, and investors, this compilation of essays presents
ideas for harnessing historic public and private climate investments to
foster shared economic opportunity. For too long, we have been working
in silos—climate, finance, health, nonprofit, community development—all
toiling on specific issues in specific regions. Through practical cases, these
chapters illustrate what I’ve practiced on the ground: Lessons learned in
one context are often transportable and cross-sector collaborations are
not only possible but essential. Our collective future depends on it.