Community Economic Development Law: A Text for Engaged Learning, co-authored by Professor Louise Howells, is out now from Carolina Academic Press. The co-authors include Susan D. Bennett, Brenda Bratton Blom, and Deborah Kenn.

Community development law has assumed pre-eminence among strategies to alleviate entrenched poverty and create sustainable economic and social change within low income communities. Despite the growing prominence of community development within graduate schools and the helping professions, there is no comprehensive textbook to date. This text provides that resource.  

The textbook provides a flexible set of materials that faculty can customize to meet the goals of the stand-alone community development class, or the pedagogical needs of community development law clinics. The text enables students to approach the substantive material as would problem-solving, community-based practitioners. They do so by entering the community of Ourfuture City, whose Old World immigrants built a vanished industrial prosperity; and of its neighborhood, Milkweed Park, whose new immigrants and long-time residents confront the stresses of physical and financial isolation, racial segregation and economic disinvestment. Students assume the roles of advisors and advocates for the families, teachers, clergy, bankers, entrepreneurs, non-profits, public institutions, and activists of this prototypical struggling municipality.

 Prof. Louise Howells