Reimagining Place-Based Policy and Social Welfare: The City of Chester as a Case Study

To meaningfully address poverty we need to focus on broad place-based social and economic ecosystems rather than focusing exclusively on households.

by Joe Waters

Today we are publishing a new essay by Anthony M. Barr: Reimagining Place-Based Policy and Social Welfare: The City of Chester as a Case Study. 

Anthony is a research assistant in Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy program and a grad student at Pepperdine University. He is a creative emerging policy voice who is challenging the conventional wisdom to offer both new perspectives and imaginative solutions to our most entrenched problems - problems that have bedeviled politicians locked in their ideological certainties for decades. 

His essay focuses on the particular travails of Chester, Pennsylvania, but the legacies of neoliberalism, 20th century racism, predatory lending, segregated public education, and more are not unique to Chester. They are the story of many American cities that have been hollowed out by deindustrialization.

Anthony proposes new directions for place-based policymaking that draw on sources as ideologically diverse as the People’s Policy Project, American Compass, and the Biden Administration. 

In brief, Anthony argues that we need to abandon tired neoliberal approaches to addressing concentrated poverty and suggests instead that “we need place-based approaches that leverage existing assets to create lasting communal wealth.”

If our children and families are to flourish, they need neighborhoods and communities in which flourishing is possible. Anthony’s call to reimagine place-based policy and his creative proposals are a vital contribution to building social contexts that support the well-being of young children and their families.