In Oakland, California, several sizable community development corporations (CDC) are leading a number of redevelopment projects that highlight the prospects of urban revitalisation. Among these various projects, the potential of community development strategies is particularly typified by two examples: the Fruitvale Transit Village which is principally managed by the “Unity Council” CDC, and the Mandela Transit Village which is controlled by the “Alliance for West Oakland Development” CDC.

Initially, these two homogeneous community-based organisations have implemented similar projects to revitalise “low-income” communities. Both organisations share identical legal structures and the same organisational characteristics, which are non-profit and public benefit-oriented. Moreover, both organisations have implemented quite similar redevelopment projects: visually, aesthetically, and thematically. Indeed, the Fruitvale and the Mandela projects are hailed as a successful blueprint for inner-city redevelopment by commentators from the political spectrum.

Despite the shared similarities from their organisational structures to the characteristics of their respective projects, the socio-economic outcomes produced in the two communities are found to be divergent.

First, CDC has adopted different asset construction methods in their respective communities. While the Unity Council promotes the social assets, the Alliance instead develop market-oriented assets. Second, while the Unity Council seeks to protect the Fruitvale community from the adverse effects of urban renewal and gentrification, the Alliance appears to be aimed at achieving widespread, class-based displacement that systematically threatens the poorest and most vulnerable residents in West Oakland.

To answer the question of how to account for the divergence in the outcomes of similar redevelopment projects, we must refocus on the internal organisational structures of the Unity Council and the Alliance, and the precise external contexts in which their development activities unfold. To begin with, the internal divergence lies in the different funding strategies and the different levels of community engagement fostered by them. As for the various social outcomes of the Fruitvale and Mandela Village projects, the community development within shifting historical, political, and socio-spatial contexts must be recognised. Even though these two projects are only a few miles away, the relative conditions of urban development were significantly changed by the structural processes of economic globalisation, political retrenchment, and urban entrepreneurialism.

To summarise, internal organisational divergences designed by restive economic and social agents, combined with ever-changing external structures, have produced competitive models or “logics” for community development. The first model embodied in Mandela Village is a market-oriented process, mainly controlled by economic agents seeking to maximise exchange value. At the same time, other reconstruction work, such as the Fruitvale Village, may prove the logic of community agency and the maximisation of use-values. These competing redevelopment “logics” have produced different organisational forms and produced completely different social results.

Therefore, the local conditions and external contexts should be considered seriously in community planning. Even identical planning could achieve different output effects because of the respective contexts in the local areas.