Emily Badger has a great long piece in Atlantic Cities about Fundrise and the general idea of “crowdfunding” local commercial real estate ventures. The basic idea is that large-scale impersonal financing models naturally end up steering neighborhoods in the direction of standardized development patterns, generic structures, and national chains. People are often much more enthusiastic about quirkier local businesses, and said businesses can actually be much more successful than efforts to pound square pegs into round holes. But it’s much more challenging to assess a quirky business from the standpoint of arm’s length finance, so it tends not to get financed.
Read More at Slate