Neoliberal Philanthropic Community Development: Do Comprehensive Community Initiatives Improve Neighborhoods?

Abstract

**Please note that the full text is embargoed until 02/01/2026** Neoliberal capitalism has produced increasingly poor outcomes for low-income communities of color in the U.S. due to uneven development between neighborhoods, public sphere retrenchment, and privatization of service provision and community development. Since the 1990s, one response to the issues of neoliberal governance and development has been Comprehensive Community Initiatives led by philanthropic foundations. While Comprehensive Community Initiatives have been praised by foundation leadership as an avenue for creation of neighborhood stability and increased public engagement in low-income neighborhoods, the academic literature is far less optimistic about the prospects of these initiatives. This dissertation project utilizes a neo-Marxist framework and panel data and quasi-experimental statistical methods to re-examine the role and outcomes of philanthropic foundations in community development interventions. Past studies of Comprehensive Community Initiatives have relied on organizational theory and qualitative surveys or interviews with foundation boards and staff to suggest best practices for implementation of these initiatives; however, this evaluative outcome is misaligned with foundation goals of stabilizing low-income neighborhoods. To overcome this inconsistency, my dissertation shifts the theory, subject, and methods of Comprehensive Community Initiative examination to understand the impact of these initiatives from the perspective of low-income neighborhoods. Using Marxist and neo-Marxist conceptualizations of capitalist crises and circuits of capital, the history of philanthropic community development strategy—from the Progressive Era to the present—is examined to reframe private philanthropic foundations as an arm of the private sphere that intervenes in the built environment, social and technological infrastructure, and cultural production and consumption to assist in avoidance or solving of capitalist crises. This refashioning of philanthropic foundations as private stakeholders—instead of altruistic civil society actors—creates the foundation from which the neighborhood stability outcomes of a national Comprehensive Community Initiative strategy, Purpose Built Communities, is quantitatively assessed. In the first stage, a fixed effects model with an intervention dummy variable is used to compare the residential and economic stability outcomes of census tracts where 27 Purpose Built Communities sites are located to census tracts in surrounding counties. In the second stage, ArcGIS Pro is used to create and compare economic stability outcomes—using a difference-in-differences model—between a micro- and macro-neighborhood around a single site, Renaissance West Community Initiative in Charlotte, North Carolina. Both stages of research confirm that these Comprehensive Community Initiatives contribute to residential instability and little to no economic stability. Neo-Marxist theory is then revisited to explain how reformist reforms such as Comprehensive Community Initiatives, and public-private partnerships more broadly, reinforce capitalist consumption and social relations and ultimately fail to produce equity in low-income communities. Non-reformist reforms, such as community wealth building, that help community development stakeholders imagine an anti-capitalist future are suggested as an avenue through which equitable and democratic interventions can be implemented in the future. My project contributes to the burgeoning fields of philanthropic community development and critical nonprofit studies. The content and findings of my dissertation oblige urban planners to pay more attention to philanthropic foundations as increasingly important community development stakeholders. It likewise provides a practical application of neo-Marxist theory for urban planning and philanthropic scholarship and practice. Finally, it provides a rationale for focusing on equity and democracy outcomes in community development interventions, over the typically used economic outcomes.