Demand and strategy
Demand Studio
Led by Dr. Ebony Edwards
Makes demand legible, and actionable by capital, in distressed census tracts. It is the first step in creating an economy.
Talk to Ebony →An Economy Creation firm
Every city has a “bad part of town.” It was built that way. Let's build it a different way.
We create new economies. Built by anyone who wants to, owned by everyone who does: from neighbors to capital.
Not yet producingProducing (any color)Illustration, not a real census tract
Existing economy01Working as designed
For ninety years, cities and philanthropy have tried to fix economies that were working as designed.
A census tract is the neighborhood-sized area the Census counts in. A distressed census tract is one the federal government certifies as distressed, year after year.
14,496census tracts on the federal distressed list today
Ninety years of patches have been applied to every one of them. It's not that the patches failed. They held. Every one was applied to an economy built to produce this result, so the result came back.
Year ninety-one is already in the budget, and everyone at the table knows what the report will say.
distressed census tracts in this metro
HUD qualified census tracts, 2026 list. Metro areas only.
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ891Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA634Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN460Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX347Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX336Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI294Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL288Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD276Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA232Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV204Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ197Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH191Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA178Cleveland, OH178San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA172Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL161Pittsburgh, PA153Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD141St. Louis, MO-IL140San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA129Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN126Milwaukee-Waukesha, WI117Kansas City, MO-KS116Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC116Columbus, OH116San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX115Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, IN111Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO109Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI109Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV109
Existing economy02How it was built
Planning for permanence · Kansas City
J.C. Nichols built an economy that only worked if another one didn't.
His side of town was protected. Ours was what it was protected from.
The mottoPlanning for Permanence
He built the Country Club District and the Plaza under the motto Planning for Permanence, and what he sold, in his own words, was protection.
The deedsRace restrictions that renewed themselves
The deeds said who it was protection from, by race, and he wrote them to renew themselves so no one would ever have to decide again.
The 1939 mapHis side graded A. Ours graded D.
When the federal map of Kansas City was drawn in 1939, his side was graded A. The other side was graded D, hazardous, and the examiners wrote down the reason: race.
Everyone paid for shelter. Only one side was allowed to accumulate.
On the other side of the line, planning for permanence has meant:
- PermanentVacant properties
- PermanentConcentrations of poverty
- PermanentA housing crisis
- PermanentSchools closing
- PermanentGrocery stores that don't last
- PermanentEntertainment districts that never catch
1950Yellow glow: a business.White glow: a home.
TodayWhat still stands on the same streets.
- Residents61,931 → 12,721
- Businesses1,629 → 237
- Homes11,651 → 3,488
- Buildings standing18,605 → 5,417
Nichols proved permanence is buildable, and built it on exclusion, which was the engine. We build permanence too: authored by the neighbors, not imposed on them.
Today the communities most ready for economic development are the same ones that were redlined ninety years ago and have never been given a way back.
What's different now
Back then, to build up one part of town, they shut down another. Today nothing has to be torn down. The wealth is here, the energy is here, and the people who stayed are here. What's left is to bring the people who want to build, and build next to what's standing.
Existing economy03How it spread
From hazardous (contained) to high risk (spread).
Ninety years later the verdict sounds logical, and it reaches more census tracts than the red lines ever did.
- Graded hazardous, 193985 census tracts
- Still distressed, 202664 of the 85
- Distressed beyond the red lines52 more
Graded hazardous on the 1939 federal mapOn this year's federal distressed listThe Blackout Map's seven census tracts
The same census tracts, ninety years later, and more of them. Every one is underwritten by the same economy.
The 1930sRedliningWho could borrowHazardous
Federal maps graded these neighborhoods hazardous and drew a red line around them. Inside the line: no mortgage, no construction loan, no business credit.
The 1950s and 60sUrban renewalWhat could standSlums, blight
Urban renewal and the interstates cleared what the map had not killed: the commercial strips, the churches, the halls. A neighborhood the map had starved was called blight, and blight could be cleared.
1968 to nowUnderwriting algorithmsWhat it's worthHigh risk
The Fair Housing Act made the map illegal, so the verdict moved into the math. An appraisal prices a home by the sales next door, and next door was priced by the map. Insurers rate the ZIP code. Market models rank the census tract last. Nobody is refusing. Every gate is arithmetic, and the arithmetic was trained on the first two eras.
Then government drew the lines again, this time to help:
- Qualified census tracts
- New Markets Tax Credits
- Low-Income Housing Tax Credits
- Opportunity Zones
- Enterprise zones
Every one begins by certifying the census tract as distressed, and pays someone to carry the risk instead of removing it.
The redline was never repealed. It was automated.
You can't patch an economy that is working as designed. You build a new one next to it. A formula answers only to its inputs, so a new economy manufactures them: homes, households, wages, ownership.
Existing economy04Its words
Pilot. Gap financing. Proof of concept. The existing economy wrote these words.
Every one of these words was created by an economy built to allow only these words. Each one names a patch: a size the design permits, a dollar the design tolerates, a test the design can outlast, a box the design lets you check.
Incremental
The only size the design allows.Gap financing
A check written to the gap, so the gap stays.Proof of concept
A test the design can outlast.Pilot
Designed to end.Housing crisis
One phrase, five definitions, one per seat at the table. Nobody is solving the same thing.Impact
A word that can't be measured, so it reports process instead.High risk
Redlining's new name. The underwriting term that justifies the same line.Gentrification
The only other outcome the design allows.Planning study
Designed to be filed.Did you talk to ___?
The box that gets checked instead of the thing that gets built.
You cannot build a new economy in the vocabulary of the old one.
↑ Above this line: the existing economy, working as designed.Below it: the new economy, the one we create. ↓
New economy01New words
Black start. Critical mass. Compounding. Words the existing economy never needed.
It never had a use for them, because nothing it allowed was ever this size.
Black start
When a power grid goes down, it cannot restart itself. The commissioned sequence that brings it back is called a black start. A distressed census tract is an economy that went down. This is its black start.Production-scale investment
Money sized to put production in the census tract: the yard, the plant, the homes at the rate that resets the comparable sales. Not a grant sized to a program.R&D
Test, try, fail fast, rebuild. The existing economy pilots and reports. A new economy runs experiments and keeps what works.Census tract
The scale the map, the bulldozer and the formula all worked at. So the scale the new economy is built at.Scale
Not the lot, which sits below the pricing unit. Not the metro, where the census tract disappears into the average. The census tract.Critical mass
The point at which an economy holds instead of resetting: enough homes, households and businesses that the next one needs no subsidy.Level of investment
Sized to the threshold, not to the grant. Below critical mass, money is a patch at any amount.Extent of the market
Adam Smith's rule: the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market. A pilot is a market of insufficient extent. A production-scale investment is not.Compounding
What a line does on a ledger once it is back on the books and left alone. Production the census tract keeps, turning over locally more than once, for everyone who built it.
New economy02Where it starts
Fixes start at the top. A new economy starts at the point.
Ten courses, on their point. The point is the smallest course and the only one that is manufactured. Everything above it is produced by it. Fixes start at the top and hope to reach the bottom.
10 · Culture, identity, belonging
the widest course
the widest course
9 · Institutions and civic capacity
8 · Amenities and services
7 · Enterprise
6 · Commercial space
5 · Local purchasing power
the hinge
the hinge
the hinge
4 · Ownership
3 · Work and wages
2 · Housing production
1 · Production capacity
the point: the only course that is manufactured
the point: the only course that is manufactured
↑ We start hereFixes start at the top ↓
One small investment at the point carries everything above it.
New economy03How it compounds
From distressed census tracts to compounding economies.
We didn't learn this from a study. We've spent ten years building it on Kansas City's East Side.
We tried the patches first, in our own neighborhood. That is how we learned what a patch cannot do.
Deleted
Written off the map. The census tract still produces value, but it compounds for people who don't live there.
On the books
Production comes back, financed on ordinary terms. The proof is the first unsubsidized dollar.
Compounding
What the census tract produces stays, and grows, for the people who live there.
An economy isn't proven by what opens. It's proven by what stays open after the subsidy stops.
New economy04Who owns it
For capital
Census tracts are the next asset class. Neighbors build it and own it, alongside everyone else.
The formula prices these census tracts at nothing because the economy it was built to see is not there. The new one is. The asset is the difference between what the map says and what the census tract does, held by everyone who built it.
That is the thesis. The numbers live in a data room, where project numbers belong.
New economy05The studios
Two studios. Hire the side you need, or both.
Demand and strategy on one side. Production and execution on the other. One firm.
Production and execution
Production Studio
Led by Daniel Edwards
Takes census tracts from no production to production. We deploy housing production to communities, not housing.
Together.HomesScale-Built Housing
Talk to Daniel →
Need both? Talk to us both.
Bring us one census tract →