The war on poverty has been lost, at least in its mission to increase selfsufficiency, primarily because the built environment was not designed for selfemployment. From the earliest mill towns to today’s metropolis, cities are designed for wage employment with distinct employment and residential zones. Makerhoods.org was founded to reduce this barrier by constructing urban work/live and mixed use developments specifically designed for low to moderate income entrepreneurs. Coupled with a business development support system, a Makerhood community is structured to offer meaningful selfemployment for an urban population with few alternate opportunities for work.


Avi Telyas is an American real estate developer, serial entrepreneur and pioneer in lean manufacturing and large scale modular construction. His passion for architecture and craft entrepreneurship has led him to found the organization called Makerhoods, an organization which advocates for urban land use policies that foster selfemployment and selfsufficiency through affordable working and living space for low income urban entrepreneurs. Mr. Telyas is a 1986 graduate of the Harvard Business School and a former trustee of Pratt Institute.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx