NYT: A Social Solution, Without Going the Nonprofit Route

An interesting article in today's Times. Amalgam is entering this space in the Northside of Minneapolis. For the past few months we've been planning a marketing initiative for the neighborhood on behalf of a community task force. This work has interested local nonprofits, for-profit corporate citizens and civic leaders we've met along the way. The question is, how does our business and the Northside capitalize? Are these goals at odds?

Among collaborators in the work we're doing there, the discussion continues. How much do you give away in order to do good (paying) work in a challenged neighborhood in the middle of an economic downturn? Is the solution pro bono efforts to set up opportunities, or does it lie in insisting on enterprise, a missing element in a lot of the well-intentioned efforts to open up the neighborhood to investment?

Reinventing Modular Housing as Green

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/reinventing-modular-housing-as-green/?hp

Good article in the New York Times today about modular housing. This week at the "Rethinking Housing" presentation in Minneapolis, we saw a sort of high-level, academic approach to this. But on street level, in the real world of commerce, infill with modular/manufactured would be a powerful innovation for new, attractive, sustainable, affordable housing stock in the Northside. It could also be deployed quickly and with great production efficiency using local resources. I'm talking industry/jobs, visible impact on troubled blocks, and overall neighborhood branding.