James Shaw says if he brought former Green Party leader Jeanette Fitzsimons out of retirement and down to Castlecliff she would be impressed by its rejuvenation.
"She would say this is exactly what she was talking about back in the 1970s and 1980s."
The current leader was in Whanganui on Tuesday and spent some time in the suburb visiting organisation involved in the suburb's rejuvenation.
"I find Castlecliff really interesting because it's a really good example of how the Greens see local economic development," he told the Chronicle.
"When you've got limited resources it's about how you make the most of those resources in a way that's sustainable socially and economically and environmentally.
"This is a bit cliche, but if National are the party of business and Labour are the party of the state then the Greens could be described as the party of community."
Mr Shaw said it was about building a community that didn't need to rely on central government, business or outside agencies.
"Because they can be unreliable.
"When the economy as a whole goes through its cycles - sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down - when you have those big downs, you do need to rely on local resilience in order to get through."
Meanwhile, Mr Shaw was confident the Greens would get back to around 10-11 per cent following the party's recent plummet in the polls after co-leader Metiria Turei's benefit fraud admission.
And he was not concerned the party would dip below 5 per cent and therefore be out of Parliament.
"Yeah, there was one poll and there might be one or two others, that wouldn't surprise me, but I think that our core vote is stronger than that.
"In order for Labour to form a Government they actually need us to be quite a strong partner otherwise they won't have the numbers to make it up. The risk is New Zealand First will then have them over a barrel."
Mr Shaw said he had no regrets about how it had gone about the poverty debate.
"What we are noticing is that there are people who feel they've never been represented in Parliament before who now feel like they do have representation and that's important.
"Yeah we took a hit but in the grand scheme of things our polling is less important than our ability to move that dial.
"In Government it does mean we will have a mandate to tackle that."