Supported by the MIT CoLab - The Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative (BCDI) is an effort to harness local assets and drive a comprehensive regional economic development strategy that is focused on building wealth, ownership, and business leadership among low and moderate-income residents of the Bronx while fostering an environmentally just and sustainable regional economy.
The aim of the BCDI is to pursue a comprehensive development model, focusing on building wealth broadly, increasing the influence local residents and leaders have in the economy, and building the institutional relationships in the Bronx necessary to bring this bottom up approach of economic development to scale.
"Economic democracy is a socio-economic arrangement where local economic institutions are democratically controlled. These economic institutions include business, finance, research and development, and education sectors. Economic democracy does not reject the role of markets, but rather de-emphasizes the primacy of the profit- maximizing motive among economic decision makers.
One means to achieving economic democracy is through cooperative ownership of the local economy by all who participate. In this case, a wide ownership structure can force a realignment of interests that helps reconcile conflicts between the owners of productive assets and their laborers. Shared ownership of the local economy helps root wealth in communities, keeping resources from “leaking out” of the area. Cooperative businesses are one of the more natural firm types that fits within the model of economic democracy, be they worker, producer, consumer, or housing cooperatives."
Full report here.
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