Not every village or urban neighborhood has benefited from glocalization equally. Local economies try to find ways to plug in on the one hand, or go off grid from the global network.

Ferguson and Dickens define community development as “asset building that improves the quality of life among residents of low- to moderate-income communities."

Richard Smith is a doctoral student in social welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. Before that, he was a Presidential Management Intern at the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, DC where he obtained a professional certificate in economic development from the National Development Council. While studying for his master's in social work at the University of Michigan, he obtained a Ford Foundation community development internship thorough the National Congress for Community Economic Development in Cleveland, Ohio.