Curriculum Map

Community Economics

How places regenerate or die — local economic multipliers, cooperative models, food systems, housing policy, zoning, and civic infrastructure. The economics they never teach: the economics of place.

14 Units

Early Units (Foundation)

Building Skills

Advanced Concepts

Capstone/Synthesis

The Extractive vs. Regenerative Economy

Two models for how communities create value — extraction versus regeneration — examined through real case studies of places that thrived and places that were hollowed out.

3-4 days

The Local Multiplier Effect

Why a dollar spent at a locally owned business circulates through the community multiple times before leaving, while a dollar at a chain exits almost immediately — and what this means for local economic health.

3-4 days

How Zoning Shapes Everything

Single-family zoning, parking minimums, setback requirements, and mixed-use development — how obscure land-use rules determine housing costs, walkability, business viability, and community character.

3-4 days

Food Systems and Food Deserts

Farm-to-table economics, food cooperatives, community-supported agriculture, urban farming, and why some neighborhoods have farmers markets while others have dollar stores.

3-4 days

Housing as Infrastructure

Why housing is both shelter and the largest financial asset most families own — gentrification, displacement, community land trusts, and the tension between affordability and investment.

3-4 days

Cooperative Economics

Worker cooperatives, credit unions, mutual aid societies, and community development financial institutions — ownership structures that keep wealth local and distribute economic power differently than conventional corporations.

3-4 days

The Civic Infrastructure You Don't See

School boards, water districts, planning commissions, and county budgets — where local power actually lives, and why 90% of these seats run uncontested.

3-4 days

Community Organizing 101

Power analysis, stakeholder mapping, coalition building, and campaign strategy — how ordinary people change local policy, with historical and contemporary case studies.

3-4 days

Public Goods and the Commons

Parks, libraries, roads, broadband, and clean air — what markets can't provide, what happens when public goods are privatized, and the tragedy of the commons revisited.

3-4 days

Main Street vs. Wall Street

How the financialization of local business — private equity rollups, franchise extraction, absentee landlords — hollows out communities, and the buy-local, invest-local counter-movement.

3-4 days

Brain Drain and Talent Retention

Why young people leave small towns and rural communities — and the economic strategies that reverse it: anchor institutions, place-based scholarships, remote work infrastructure, and entrepreneurship ecosystems.

3-4 days

Environmental Justice as Economic Justice

Who lives near the refinery, who drinks clean water, and why — the geographic distribution of environmental costs and how it maps to race and class.

3-4 days

Measuring What Matters

GDP vs. Genuine Progress Indicator, Bhutan's Gross National Happiness, community health metrics, and the challenge of measuring whether a place is actually getting better.

3-4 days

Building the Place You Want to Live

Participatory budgeting, community visioning, asset mapping, and the proposition that civic engagement is not a duty but a design activity.

3-4 days

Learning Progression

This course is designed to be taken sequentially. Earlier units establish foundational concepts that later units build upon. While you can explore units in any order, following the numbered sequence provides the most coherent learning experience.