Entrepreneurs for a sustainable renewal: Community capital in Greater New Orleans and the impacts of sustainability entrepreneurship

This project intends to identify the vision for regional sustainable development in Greater New Orleans, LA and offer an initial assessment of the recent advent of sustainability entrepreneurs on progress toward this vision. Given the lack of consensus on the meaning of and goals for a sustainable region, especially in light of planning and policy debates surrounding post-Hurricane Katrina renewal, this study attempts to articulate a more unified vision for regional sustainable development. This vision is comprised of both existing policy and planning documents and the perspectives of local leaders in key community issues. The project is guided by the Community Capital Tool and also offers a region-wide sustainable development monitoring tool known as the Sustainable Region Balance Sheet which measures Greater New Orleans’ progress towards this vision. In parallel, it also explores the phenomenon of sustainability entrepreneurship, both by integrating existing literature on the concept and examining the impacts of entrepreneurs with a sustainability vision on stocks of community capital in the region. This assessment reveals that Greater New Orleans is in need of extensive efforts to improve critical stocks of community capital to become a more sustainable region, while there is considerable promise for sustainability entrepreneurs from private, non-profit, and hybrid sectors to lead these efforts.