Location: Nationwide
Website: stablecommunities.org/ncst
The U.S. housing market remains extremely uneven. While some areas have rebounded significantly from the recession and have a robust housing market, others – especially communities of color, lower-income areas, and cities where economic activity remains depressed – continue to grapple with high rates of vacant, abandoned and distressed properties that weaken nearby home values, create health and safety risks, lower local tax revenues, and thwart neighborhood revitalization efforts.
The National Community Stabilization Trust (NCST) is a non-profit organization that works to restore vacant and abandoned properties to productive use and protect neighborhoods from blight. Our programs facilitate the rehabilitation of vacant but structurally sound homes, enable safe, targeted demolition when necessary, and support creative and
productive re-use of vacant land.
Established in 2008 by the sponsors listed to the left, NCST offers a unique blend of policy expertise and on-the-ground experience working with local partners to eliminate the blight caused by vacant and foreclosed properties and severely delinquent mortgages in distressed communities.
NCST supports neighborhoods and fights blight through these key activities:
Provide community-based buyers an opportunity to acquire vacant, abandoned and distressed properties as part of a neighborhood revitalization strategy. Our First Look REO acquisition program gives local affordable housing and community development organizations the opportunity to obtain properties in their market areas before they are marketed more broadly. In many cases, REO properties can be acquired at discounts that help make it financially feasible for nonprofit buyers to rehabilitate these properties for new occupants.
Partner with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their Neighborhood Stabilization Initiative.
This partnership offers Fannie and Freddie REO properties to local affordable housing and community development organizations through a special First Look program in 18 strategic markets around the country, mostly east of the Mississippi river.
In collaboration with the Housing Partnership Network (HPN), NCST manages a portfolio of highly distressed mortgages to resolve delinquencies, assist homeowners, and prepare vacant properties for productive disposition. Financial institutions donate these mortgages to NCST and HPN to assist with asset resolution.
Along with many national and local partners, including our six sponsors, we research solutions and advocate for policies to help communities address blight and high rates of vacant, abandoned, and distressed properties.
Offer financing to support local housing work.
Our REO Capital Fund aggregates capital from philanthropic and social investment sources to provide flexible financing for local organizations to acquire and rehabilitate single family homes.
Showing posts with label Neighborhoods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neighborhoods. Show all posts
Monday, December 12, 2016
Monday, October 12, 2015
Blights out
Location: New Orleans, LA
Website: blightsout.org
Blights Out is a collaborative and creative initiative to unite residents, artists, architects, and organizers in the design of a new, inclusive model for development. Our experiential method of “performing architecture” guides us through the purchase, design, and restoration of a blighted structure into a cultural resource center that will seed creative action around issues of blight, disinvestment, and housing. Blights Out will partner with a local Community Land Trust as the cultural organizing arm of the permanently affordable housing movement to share the tools and inspiration for New Orleans residents to build the destinies of their own neighborhoods.
Our objectives are:
- To purchase and restore a blighted property in the Lower Mid-City/ Tremé neighborhood transforming it into functional “social sculpture”: a multipurpose community cultural resource center and socio- economic asset, which will serve at the “mothership” hub of Blights Out’s creative output.
- To align New Orleans’ traditional modes of cultural organizing with today’s most pressing concerns. We believe that the Social Aid nd Pleasure Club is a strong model that can be employed in new terrain. As such, we are using art tofacilitate civic engagement with blight, disinvestment, and housing through programming that draws on New Orleans’traditions of performance, storytelling, and community organizing.
- To partner with a local Community Land Trust (CLT)to organize educational materials and programming on alternative development models, including the CLT.
- To record, visualize, and amplify the history of the neighborhood.
- To document our process and present it as a replicable model for action through the publication of a toolkit that will consolidate scattered resources on housing, lending, and blight remediation in New Orleans, thus serving an unmet need identified at the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center 2015 Annual Fit for King Conference.
Blights Out produces public art inspired by neighborhood stories, architecture, and history, culled from the multi-disciplinary research and critical interactive strategies that we employ.
Blights Out is a collaborative process, involving residents, artists, architects, and organizers, at all stages of conception and implementation.
Our institutional partners include: the National Organization of Minority Architects; Press Street; Newcomb Art Museum at Tulane University; Junebug Productions; New Orleans Master Crafts Guild; Prospect New Orleans; Loyola Law School Human Rights Clinic; Creative Capital; Justice and Beyond Coalition and The St. Roch Community Church. Economic models and development schemes have been perfected by maximizing profit at the expense of people.” “The American Dream is an individual vision incompatible with collective needs.” “Artists will always hasten gentrification.” We intend to deconstruct these truisms and prove them false through the design of an actionable model for community-powered neighborhood development.
Website: blightsout.org
Blights Out is a collaborative and creative initiative to unite residents, artists, architects, and organizers in the design of a new, inclusive model for development. Our experiential method of “performing architecture” guides us through the purchase, design, and restoration of a blighted structure into a cultural resource center that will seed creative action around issues of blight, disinvestment, and housing. Blights Out will partner with a local Community Land Trust as the cultural organizing arm of the permanently affordable housing movement to share the tools and inspiration for New Orleans residents to build the destinies of their own neighborhoods.
Our objectives are:
- To purchase and restore a blighted property in the Lower Mid-City/ Tremé neighborhood transforming it into functional “social sculpture”: a multipurpose community cultural resource center and socio- economic asset, which will serve at the “mothership” hub of Blights Out’s creative output.
- To align New Orleans’ traditional modes of cultural organizing with today’s most pressing concerns. We believe that the Social Aid nd Pleasure Club is a strong model that can be employed in new terrain. As such, we are using art tofacilitate civic engagement with blight, disinvestment, and housing through programming that draws on New Orleans’traditions of performance, storytelling, and community organizing.
- To partner with a local Community Land Trust (CLT)to organize educational materials and programming on alternative development models, including the CLT.
- To record, visualize, and amplify the history of the neighborhood.
- To document our process and present it as a replicable model for action through the publication of a toolkit that will consolidate scattered resources on housing, lending, and blight remediation in New Orleans, thus serving an unmet need identified at the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center 2015 Annual Fit for King Conference.
Blights Out produces public art inspired by neighborhood stories, architecture, and history, culled from the multi-disciplinary research and critical interactive strategies that we employ.
Blights Out is a collaborative process, involving residents, artists, architects, and organizers, at all stages of conception and implementation.
Our institutional partners include: the National Organization of Minority Architects; Press Street; Newcomb Art Museum at Tulane University; Junebug Productions; New Orleans Master Crafts Guild; Prospect New Orleans; Loyola Law School Human Rights Clinic; Creative Capital; Justice and Beyond Coalition and The St. Roch Community Church. Economic models and development schemes have been perfected by maximizing profit at the expense of people.” “The American Dream is an individual vision incompatible with collective needs.” “Artists will always hasten gentrification.” We intend to deconstruct these truisms and prove them false through the design of an actionable model for community-powered neighborhood development.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Neighborhoods Partnership Network
Location: New Orleans, LA
Website: npnnola.org
The Neighborhoods Partnership Network (NPN) is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization representing a citywide network of neighborhoods and community stakeholders. Its mission is to improve quality of life by engaging New Orleanians, individually and collectively, in neighborhood vitality and civic processes.
Established after the Hurricane Katrina disaster, NPN envisions a New Orleans where all neighborhoods are great places to live. We work towards this vision by facilitating neighborhood collaboration, building organizational capacity, increasing access to government and information, and strengthening the voices of individuals and communities across the city. NPN is guided by a board of community leaders which reflects the diversity of New Orleans neighborhoods. Its work is supported by a staff well-versed in coalition building, government relations and community engagement.
The Neighborhoods Partnership Network's foundation lies in the spirit of interdependency revealed in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. It revealed significant weakness in many structures Americans took for granted – physical structures such levees and hospitals, but also governing and social structures from FEMA to state and local entities. Citizens had to become their own “first responders," from rescuing their neighbors to rescuing their neighborhoods. NPN was born from both the failures revealed and opportunities provided by the catastrophe.
NPN's leadership recognized the need for a citywide framework to assist communities in maximizing the use of limited resources and information while providing connections to those with similar obstacles, eliminating duplication of efforts and working toward shared goals. The organization's core infrastructure met the need for New Orleanians to be involved in the formal decision-making processes regarding addressing quality of life issues. That need continues to exist today and NPN continues to play a significant role in building the capacity of residents to stay involved and engaged.
Website: npnnola.org
The Neighborhoods Partnership Network (NPN) is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization representing a citywide network of neighborhoods and community stakeholders. Its mission is to improve quality of life by engaging New Orleanians, individually and collectively, in neighborhood vitality and civic processes.
Established after the Hurricane Katrina disaster, NPN envisions a New Orleans where all neighborhoods are great places to live. We work towards this vision by facilitating neighborhood collaboration, building organizational capacity, increasing access to government and information, and strengthening the voices of individuals and communities across the city. NPN is guided by a board of community leaders which reflects the diversity of New Orleans neighborhoods. Its work is supported by a staff well-versed in coalition building, government relations and community engagement.
The Neighborhoods Partnership Network's foundation lies in the spirit of interdependency revealed in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. It revealed significant weakness in many structures Americans took for granted – physical structures such levees and hospitals, but also governing and social structures from FEMA to state and local entities. Citizens had to become their own “first responders," from rescuing their neighbors to rescuing their neighborhoods. NPN was born from both the failures revealed and opportunities provided by the catastrophe.
NPN's leadership recognized the need for a citywide framework to assist communities in maximizing the use of limited resources and information while providing connections to those with similar obstacles, eliminating duplication of efforts and working toward shared goals. The organization's core infrastructure met the need for New Orleanians to be involved in the formal decision-making processes regarding addressing quality of life issues. That need continues to exist today and NPN continues to play a significant role in building the capacity of residents to stay involved and engaged.
Monday, June 15, 2015
Neighborhood Story Project
Location: New Orleans, LA
Website: neighborhoodstoryproject.org
In 2004, the Neighborhood Story Project was founded as a book-making project based in the neighborhoods where we live and work. We work with writers in neighborhoods around New Orleans to create books about their communities.
We started at our neighborhood public school, John McDonogh Senior High, with the idea of our students investigating their worlds. For a year, the students wrote, photographed, interviewed and edited. In June of 2005, we brought out five books—collaborative ethnographies—about New Orleans.
In the years since, we have expanded our practice of collaborative ethnography outside of schools, producing books and posters that do the work of telling stories of the city. We work with authors and neighborhoods, then celebrate publication with block parties. The books have gone on to be citywide bestsellers, selling more than 35,000 books.
We continue the work as a center at the University of New Orleans, with Rachel in the Department of Anthropology, and Abram in the College of Education and Human Performance, and publish our books through UNO Press and our own 501c3 non-profit.
BOOKSTORE:
When I Was Your Age
In partnership, the Greater New Orleans Writing Project and the NSP led teachers at Andrew H. Wilson Charter School toward writing this book. The resulting document takes readers back in time, to when the teachers were the age of their current students. When I Was Your Age chronicles important events and lessons of youth: first crushes, school dances, bullying, getting lost, and finding truth. It talks back to the notion that teachers were born old and live at school–stories from when teachers were young>
Talk that Music Talk: Passing on Brass Band Music in New Orleans
In the early 1900s, jazz was created in New Orleans. Soon afterwards the fear began…it’s moving away, it’s going to die out, it needs to be preserved. Yet each generation has put time and energy into making sure the roots of the music stay strong in the city. This book is about the history of that kind of organizing work, and what happened when the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park brought together a new group of young people to learn traditional brass band music from older musicians and the Black Men of Labor Social Aid & Pleasure Club.
Straight Outa Swampton: Life at the Intersection of Natural and Built Worlds in New Orleans
From Creative Writing Students at Lake Area NTEC High School, Straight Outta Swampton is about life in a city in which the line between nature and civilization is often unclear. It is the story of a city that rose from a swamp, and that for 300 years has been engaged in an epic struggle with nature for its right to exist. The young writers are themselves both actors and tellers of this story, and they pick the story up in a particular time and place.
Aunt Alice vs. Bob Marley: My Education In New Orleans
Kareem Kennedy documents his quest for an education in the schools and streets of New Orleans. With his father gone and his mother frequently out of the picture, Kareem looks towards teachers, friends and extended family for the skills to muster through public schools, Hurricane Katrina, and the “heavy hands and hard shoes” of his life. Tracing Kareem’s history through the Seventh Ward, exile in Houston, and a return to school in New Orleans, the book represents two years of highs and lows: losing friends, surviving violence, and the beginning of his college career.
Beyond The Bricks
Daron Crawford and Pernell Russell tell more than parallel stories, Beyond the Bricks is a conversation about life in New Orleans as the city’s major public housing projects are torn down. With childhoods spent in the Calliope and St. Bernard Projects, Daron and Pernell document what these communities meant, the new struggles of living outside the projects and their families’ new footholds in the city. Beyond the Bricks documemnts the many cultures of teenage New Orleans: rap and dance, skateboarding and fashion, showing the strengths and tensions of the different scenes they call home>
From My Mother’s House of Beauty
From her childhood in Englishtown on the Caribbean coast of Honduras to her life in the Seventh Ward, Susan Stephanie Henry writes of transitions and shifting identities. In From My Mother’s House of Beauty, Susan investigates her many worlds: family homes, beauty salons, public schools and fashion runways. Part memoir, part ethnography, House of Beauty explores what it means to be a black Honduran woman living in New Orleans.
Signed, the President
A portrait of family life during turbulent times as seen and felt through our narrator and interviewer-at-large, Kenneth Phillips, aka, the President. Kenneth tells his story through interviewing family members — questions that begin to tell the stories of the St. Bernard Public Housing Development, the beginnings of bounce, sweet shops and church services. Where the interviews leave off, Kenneth explains: his relationship with his father, losing the family dog Kobey, and his journey toward manhood.
The House of Dance Feathers
In a backyard on Tupelo Street, in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Ronald W. Lewis has assembled a museum to the various worlds he inhabits. Built in 2003, and rebuilt after Katrina, the House of Dance & Feathers represents many New Orleans societies: Mardi Gras Indians, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, Bone Gangs, and Parade Krewes. More than just a catalogue of the artifacts in the museum, this book is a map of these worlds as experienced by Ronald W. Lewis. Through stories and conversation, we come to know the wide network of people who construct and nurture performance traditions in the city.
Cornerstones
This is New Orleans history through place—less from the Andrew Jackson slept here style and more This is where my parents met style: barrooms as comfortable as living rooms, an empty lot that holds more life than many houses, a barbershop that doubles as an artist’s studio, and a museum that grew out of one man’s back shed. Through interviews, photographs, site maps, and architectural drawings, we document the intersections of places and people that make New Orleans great.
Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club
Beginning with their own childhoods in the Desire Housing Project, Nine Times take the reader on a journey through their world: Motown Sound at Carver games, DJ’s in the courts, and sandlot football. It continues as the Housing Authority of New Orleans begins to demolish the Desire, and Nine Times begins to parade in the Ninth Ward. Written by the members during the year after Katrina, Nine Times writes about their lives, their parades, the storm, and the rebuilding process. Through interviews, photographs, and writing, Nine Times brings readers into their world of second lines, brass bands, Magee’s Lounge, and the ties that bind.
Before and After N. Dorgenois
In her book Before and After North Dorgenois, Ebony Bolding examines life in the Sixth Ward. She talks to her neighbors on North Dorgenois, interviewing newly arrived doctors, members of the church on her block, and a neighbor who has returned to the block where her mother grew up. From her porch near John McDonogh Senior High, she looks at the ways the block is changing, and writes about her mother’s decision to move the family deeper into the Sixth Ward after a new landlord buys their house. Ms. Bolding interviews the new landlord and discusses life in the Sixth Ward with the Bayou Road Boys.
Between Piety and Desire
In their book Between Piety and Desire, brother and sister team Arlet and Sam Wylie talk about their regular and irregular life living above a neighborhood store. They remember a childhood of parents keeping them inside to avoid the struggles of the neighborhood around them. They interview the people who hang out on the block, weaving the history of the street through their own history living upstairs. Unusually candid and self-reflective, the Wylies detail their “inside life,” including Sam’s new fatherhood and Arlet’s new home.
The Combination
In The Combination, Ashley Nelson paints a nuanced and lyrical portrait of one of downtown New Orleans’ oldest public housing complexes, the Lafitte. She begins with her own family, weaving their history through the daily life of the community. Ms. Nelson’s interviews let the reader hear from voices rarely engaged, from the owner of the corner store, to the Residents’ Council, to the members of the community more often profiled than listened to. She writes about and photographs much of Lafitte — from second lines to ward signs, from the Wild Side to the Real Side, from Dooky Chase to Southern Scrap, it’s all here.
Palmyra Street
Jana Dennis examines one the most diverse blocks in New Orleans in her book, Palmyra Street. Located in the heart of Mid-City near the new Streetcar line, her block of Palmyra is rich with many typical and not-so-typical New Orleans stories. Through interviews, photographs, and vignettes, Ms. Dennis paints a thorough and intriguing portrait of a block in flux. The reader watches Jana’s family construct community not only on their block, but also through their participation in church life and the Golden Arrows Mardi Gras Indian Tribe.
What Would the World be Without Women: Stories from the 9th Ward
Waukesha Jackson’s book is an examination of loss and recovery. Starting with her relationship to her mother, Ms. Jackson writes about the struggles that have been a part of many of the lives of women in the Ninth Ward. In particular, she examines the frequent role of women as caretakers of the community– in their homes, social clubs, barrooms, and churches. Through interviews, photography and reflection, Ms. Jackson captures the tough times and victories of her family and neighbors.
Website: neighborhoodstoryproject.org
In 2004, the Neighborhood Story Project was founded as a book-making project based in the neighborhoods where we live and work. We work with writers in neighborhoods around New Orleans to create books about their communities.
We started at our neighborhood public school, John McDonogh Senior High, with the idea of our students investigating their worlds. For a year, the students wrote, photographed, interviewed and edited. In June of 2005, we brought out five books—collaborative ethnographies—about New Orleans.
In the years since, we have expanded our practice of collaborative ethnography outside of schools, producing books and posters that do the work of telling stories of the city. We work with authors and neighborhoods, then celebrate publication with block parties. The books have gone on to be citywide bestsellers, selling more than 35,000 books.
We continue the work as a center at the University of New Orleans, with Rachel in the Department of Anthropology, and Abram in the College of Education and Human Performance, and publish our books through UNO Press and our own 501c3 non-profit.
BOOKSTORE:
When I Was Your Age
In partnership, the Greater New Orleans Writing Project and the NSP led teachers at Andrew H. Wilson Charter School toward writing this book. The resulting document takes readers back in time, to when the teachers were the age of their current students. When I Was Your Age chronicles important events and lessons of youth: first crushes, school dances, bullying, getting lost, and finding truth. It talks back to the notion that teachers were born old and live at school–stories from when teachers were young>
Talk that Music Talk: Passing on Brass Band Music in New Orleans
In the early 1900s, jazz was created in New Orleans. Soon afterwards the fear began…it’s moving away, it’s going to die out, it needs to be preserved. Yet each generation has put time and energy into making sure the roots of the music stay strong in the city. This book is about the history of that kind of organizing work, and what happened when the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park brought together a new group of young people to learn traditional brass band music from older musicians and the Black Men of Labor Social Aid & Pleasure Club.
Straight Outa Swampton: Life at the Intersection of Natural and Built Worlds in New Orleans
From Creative Writing Students at Lake Area NTEC High School, Straight Outta Swampton is about life in a city in which the line between nature and civilization is often unclear. It is the story of a city that rose from a swamp, and that for 300 years has been engaged in an epic struggle with nature for its right to exist. The young writers are themselves both actors and tellers of this story, and they pick the story up in a particular time and place.
Aunt Alice vs. Bob Marley: My Education In New Orleans
Kareem Kennedy documents his quest for an education in the schools and streets of New Orleans. With his father gone and his mother frequently out of the picture, Kareem looks towards teachers, friends and extended family for the skills to muster through public schools, Hurricane Katrina, and the “heavy hands and hard shoes” of his life. Tracing Kareem’s history through the Seventh Ward, exile in Houston, and a return to school in New Orleans, the book represents two years of highs and lows: losing friends, surviving violence, and the beginning of his college career.
Beyond The Bricks
Daron Crawford and Pernell Russell tell more than parallel stories, Beyond the Bricks is a conversation about life in New Orleans as the city’s major public housing projects are torn down. With childhoods spent in the Calliope and St. Bernard Projects, Daron and Pernell document what these communities meant, the new struggles of living outside the projects and their families’ new footholds in the city. Beyond the Bricks documemnts the many cultures of teenage New Orleans: rap and dance, skateboarding and fashion, showing the strengths and tensions of the different scenes they call home>
From My Mother’s House of Beauty
From her childhood in Englishtown on the Caribbean coast of Honduras to her life in the Seventh Ward, Susan Stephanie Henry writes of transitions and shifting identities. In From My Mother’s House of Beauty, Susan investigates her many worlds: family homes, beauty salons, public schools and fashion runways. Part memoir, part ethnography, House of Beauty explores what it means to be a black Honduran woman living in New Orleans.
Signed, the President
A portrait of family life during turbulent times as seen and felt through our narrator and interviewer-at-large, Kenneth Phillips, aka, the President. Kenneth tells his story through interviewing family members — questions that begin to tell the stories of the St. Bernard Public Housing Development, the beginnings of bounce, sweet shops and church services. Where the interviews leave off, Kenneth explains: his relationship with his father, losing the family dog Kobey, and his journey toward manhood.
The House of Dance Feathers
In a backyard on Tupelo Street, in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Ronald W. Lewis has assembled a museum to the various worlds he inhabits. Built in 2003, and rebuilt after Katrina, the House of Dance & Feathers represents many New Orleans societies: Mardi Gras Indians, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, Bone Gangs, and Parade Krewes. More than just a catalogue of the artifacts in the museum, this book is a map of these worlds as experienced by Ronald W. Lewis. Through stories and conversation, we come to know the wide network of people who construct and nurture performance traditions in the city.
Cornerstones
This is New Orleans history through place—less from the Andrew Jackson slept here style and more This is where my parents met style: barrooms as comfortable as living rooms, an empty lot that holds more life than many houses, a barbershop that doubles as an artist’s studio, and a museum that grew out of one man’s back shed. Through interviews, photographs, site maps, and architectural drawings, we document the intersections of places and people that make New Orleans great.
Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club
Beginning with their own childhoods in the Desire Housing Project, Nine Times take the reader on a journey through their world: Motown Sound at Carver games, DJ’s in the courts, and sandlot football. It continues as the Housing Authority of New Orleans begins to demolish the Desire, and Nine Times begins to parade in the Ninth Ward. Written by the members during the year after Katrina, Nine Times writes about their lives, their parades, the storm, and the rebuilding process. Through interviews, photographs, and writing, Nine Times brings readers into their world of second lines, brass bands, Magee’s Lounge, and the ties that bind.
Before and After N. Dorgenois
In her book Before and After North Dorgenois, Ebony Bolding examines life in the Sixth Ward. She talks to her neighbors on North Dorgenois, interviewing newly arrived doctors, members of the church on her block, and a neighbor who has returned to the block where her mother grew up. From her porch near John McDonogh Senior High, she looks at the ways the block is changing, and writes about her mother’s decision to move the family deeper into the Sixth Ward after a new landlord buys their house. Ms. Bolding interviews the new landlord and discusses life in the Sixth Ward with the Bayou Road Boys.
Between Piety and Desire
In their book Between Piety and Desire, brother and sister team Arlet and Sam Wylie talk about their regular and irregular life living above a neighborhood store. They remember a childhood of parents keeping them inside to avoid the struggles of the neighborhood around them. They interview the people who hang out on the block, weaving the history of the street through their own history living upstairs. Unusually candid and self-reflective, the Wylies detail their “inside life,” including Sam’s new fatherhood and Arlet’s new home.
The Combination
In The Combination, Ashley Nelson paints a nuanced and lyrical portrait of one of downtown New Orleans’ oldest public housing complexes, the Lafitte. She begins with her own family, weaving their history through the daily life of the community. Ms. Nelson’s interviews let the reader hear from voices rarely engaged, from the owner of the corner store, to the Residents’ Council, to the members of the community more often profiled than listened to. She writes about and photographs much of Lafitte — from second lines to ward signs, from the Wild Side to the Real Side, from Dooky Chase to Southern Scrap, it’s all here.
Palmyra Street
Jana Dennis examines one the most diverse blocks in New Orleans in her book, Palmyra Street. Located in the heart of Mid-City near the new Streetcar line, her block of Palmyra is rich with many typical and not-so-typical New Orleans stories. Through interviews, photographs, and vignettes, Ms. Dennis paints a thorough and intriguing portrait of a block in flux. The reader watches Jana’s family construct community not only on their block, but also through their participation in church life and the Golden Arrows Mardi Gras Indian Tribe.
What Would the World be Without Women: Stories from the 9th Ward
Waukesha Jackson’s book is an examination of loss and recovery. Starting with her relationship to her mother, Ms. Jackson writes about the struggles that have been a part of many of the lives of women in the Ninth Ward. In particular, she examines the frequent role of women as caretakers of the community– in their homes, social clubs, barrooms, and churches. Through interviews, photography and reflection, Ms. Jackson captures the tough times and victories of her family and neighbors.
Monday, June 1, 2015
Eight Elements of a Great Neighborhood
Location: San Francisco, CA
Website: http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=1704
Over the years, thousands of San Franciscans have told us the things they love about their neighborhoods and the City, from the corner market to the neighborhood park. We have gathered their comments into what we call the eight key elements of a great urban neighborhood. Certainly, there are other more particular day-to-day concerns facing the neighborhood, and they need to be addressed. Before we address these concerns, however, it will be most helpful if we begin first to think broadly about--to imagine--what qualities good urban neighborhoods should have, what a neighborhood might be and should be, and how it can be the best possible neighborhood for those who live in it. We will address most of the day-to-day concerns as we work through what it takes to be a great urban neighborhood. 1. A great neighborhood has everyday stores and services within an easy walk from home. A great neighborhood has stores and shops that satisfy everyday needs within an easy walk from home. Everyday shops and services include corner groceries, day care, cafes and restaurants, banks, dry cleaners, bakeries and the like. An easy walk is about five to ten minutes. 2. A great neighborhood has safe and friendly streets. A great neighborhood has safe and friendly streets. In a great neighborhood people can walk without fear of crime, being threatened by traffic, or being disturbed by excessive noise. People feel like they "belong" on neighborhood streets. Residential streets feel public, and more like open space than trafficways. Streets are a pleasant part of the neighborhood. 3. A great neighborhood has many ways to get around. A great neighborhood has many choices for moving to, from, and within it. Great neighborhoods make it easy to move about on foot, by bicycle, transit, and auto. They accommodate the car, but allow people to live easily without cars. 4. A great neighborhood has a variety of housing types. A great neighborhood has a variety of housing types. A mix of houses, flats and apartments of various sizes to meet different needs and preferences. 5. A great neighborhood has places for people to meet and talk. A great neighborhood has places for people to meet, talk and be neighborly. Public gathering places include parks, plazas, sidewalks, and shops. 6. A great neighborhood has a full range of public services for residents. A great neighborhood has a full range of public services for residents. Public services include parks, schools, police and fire stations, libraries and other amenities. 7. A great neighborhood has its own character. A great neighborhood has its own special character. All neighborhoods are shaped by their physical setting, streets, buildings, open spaces, history, culture and the people who live in them. In great neighborhoods these attributes combine in unique and memorable ways. 8. Great neighborhoods make great cities. Great Neighborhoods Make Great Cities. Great neighborhoods stand out on their own, yet are connected to the City. They can be a refuge for their residents, but also a part of the city's wider community. |
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Center for Community Progress
Location: Nationwide
Website: www.communityprogress.net
Founded in 2010, the Center for Community Progress is the only national 501(c)3 nonprofit organization solely dedicated to building a future in which entrenched, systemic blight no longer exists in American communities. The mission of Community Progress is to ensure that communities have the vision, knowledge, and systems to transform blighted, vacant, and other problem properties into assets supporting neighborhood vitality.
As a national leader on solutions for blight and vacancy, Community Progress serves as the leading resource for local, state and federal policies and best practices that address the full cycle of property revitalization, from blight prevention, through the acquisition and maintenance of problem properties, to their productive reuse.
Community Progress provides technical assistance to communities nationwide, hosts the national Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference, and offers numerous other resources and services to help communities transform blighted properties into community assets.
Major support for Community Progress is generously provided by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
Website: www.communityprogress.net
Founded in 2010, the Center for Community Progress is the only national 501(c)3 nonprofit organization solely dedicated to building a future in which entrenched, systemic blight no longer exists in American communities. The mission of Community Progress is to ensure that communities have the vision, knowledge, and systems to transform blighted, vacant, and other problem properties into assets supporting neighborhood vitality.
As a national leader on solutions for blight and vacancy, Community Progress serves as the leading resource for local, state and federal policies and best practices that address the full cycle of property revitalization, from blight prevention, through the acquisition and maintenance of problem properties, to their productive reuse.
Community Progress provides technical assistance to communities nationwide, hosts the national Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference, and offers numerous other resources and services to help communities transform blighted properties into community assets.
Major support for Community Progress is generously provided by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Southeast Food Access Working Group
Location: San Francisco, CA
Website:
SEFA is a collaborative of residents, community based organizations, city agencies, and others working on food access and food systems. SEFA’s goal is to leverage similar efforts and encourage partnerships and collaboration in order to achieve a vibrant and robust food system for all in Bayview Hunters Point (BVHP). As such, SEFA has identified three pillars that are integral to a robust food system and which guide our work: Food Access, Awareness/Education, and Urban Agriculture.
SEFA has been particularly focused on bringing healthier food retail and grocery options to the neighborhood. In 2007, SEFA members conducted and released a resident food preferences survey which was instrumental for efforts by the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development to recruit a new food retailer, Fresh and Easy to the neighborhood. And, we continue to work with BVHP food retailers to increase their offerings of fresh, affordable and healthy foods.
SEFA and the Food Guardians are key partners in the Bayview HEAL Zone initiative, funded by Kaiser Permanente, to promote healthy eating and active living.
The Southeast Food Access (SEFA) Working Group evolved out of the April 2006 Shape Up San Francisco Summit where community food justice organizations and city agencies identified the need for regular communication among all entities working on food issues in the BVHP. In January 2007, the first SEFA meeting was held and the group has met monthly since to address food systems in the Southeast sector.
Website:
SEFA is a collaborative of residents, community based organizations, city agencies, and others working on food access and food systems. SEFA’s goal is to leverage similar efforts and encourage partnerships and collaboration in order to achieve a vibrant and robust food system for all in Bayview Hunters Point (BVHP). As such, SEFA has identified three pillars that are integral to a robust food system and which guide our work: Food Access, Awareness/Education, and Urban Agriculture.
SEFA has been particularly focused on bringing healthier food retail and grocery options to the neighborhood. In 2007, SEFA members conducted and released a resident food preferences survey which was instrumental for efforts by the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development to recruit a new food retailer, Fresh and Easy to the neighborhood. And, we continue to work with BVHP food retailers to increase their offerings of fresh, affordable and healthy foods.
SEFA and the Food Guardians are key partners in the Bayview HEAL Zone initiative, funded by Kaiser Permanente, to promote healthy eating and active living.
The Southeast Food Access (SEFA) Working Group evolved out of the April 2006 Shape Up San Francisco Summit where community food justice organizations and city agencies identified the need for regular communication among all entities working on food issues in the BVHP. In January 2007, the first SEFA meeting was held and the group has met monthly since to address food systems in the Southeast sector.
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Greater New Orleans Foundation
Location: New Orleans, LA
Website: www.gnof.org
Our mission is to create a thriving community for all. At the Greater New Orleans Foundation, we look to create a resilient, sustainable, vibrant community in which individuals and families flourish and the special character of our region is preserved, celebrated, and supported.
At the Greater New Orleans Foundation, we look to create a resilient, sustainable, vibrant community in which individuals and families flourish and the special character of our region is preserved, celebrated, and supported.
Recognizing that New Orleans is more than a city–it is an interconnected region–we serve the surrounding parishes of Assumption, Jefferson, Lafourche, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, St. John the Baptist, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Terrebonne, and Washington.
Recognizing that New Orleans is more than a city–it is an interconnected region–we serve the surrounding parishes of Assumption, Jefferson, Lafourche, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, St. John the Baptist, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Terrebonne, and Washington.
Like other community foundations, the Greater New Orleans Foundation serves both donors and recipients–linking philanthropists with the needs and aspirations of the greater community. We pull together people, ideas, and resources; we serve as a champion of civil society and civil solutions; and we help the effectiveness of nonprofit leaders and organizations.
Like other community foundations, the Greater New Orleans Foundation serves both donors and recipients–linking philanthropists with the needs and aspirations of the greater community. We pull together people, ideas, and resources; we serve as a champion of civil society and civil solutions; and we help the effectiveness of nonprofit leaders and organizations.
By partnering with donors, we help them achieve their charitable goals–whether that means starting a fund, creating an endowment, leaving a legacy, or just making a gift.
By partnering with donors, we help them achieve their charitable goals–whether that means starting a fund, creating an endowment, leaving a legacy, or just making a gift.
Since our founding by forward-looking community leaders in 1983, the Foundation has grown from scarcely $4 million in assets to more than $275 million in assets under management–and 700 donor funds–today. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the region, but also prompted an outpouring of generosity from long-time supporters and new donors from around the world.
The Foundation played a key role in the region’s recovery, coordinating donor efforts and rallying support for the Unified New Orleans Plan–which made possible the release of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid.
Since our founding by forward-looking community leaders in 1983, the Foundation has grown from scarcely $4 million in assets to more than $275 million in assets under management–and 700 donor funds–today. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the region, but also prompted an outpouring of generosity from long-time supporters and new donors from around the world. The Foundation played a key role in the region’s recovery, coordinating donor efforts and rallying support for the Unified New Orleans Plan–which made possible the release of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid.
Our housing and community development efforts since Katrina included the Economic Opportunity community revitalization Community Revitalization Fund, a five-year, $25 million initiative to support the organizations, people, and systems that produce affordable workforce housing in the City of New Orleans. Since 2007, the Community Revitalization Fund has made 63 grants and other investments to 51 organizations, supporting the development of nearly 9,500 housing units.
Our housing and community development efforts since Katrina included the Economic Opportunity Community Revitalization Fund, a five-year, $25 million initiative to support the organizations, people, and systems that produce affordable workforce housing in the City of New Orleans. Since 2007, the Community Revitalization Fund has made 63 grants and other investments to 51 organizations, supporting the development of nearly 9,500 housing units.
We also worked with the City of New Orleans Center for Community Progress to reduce the city’s number of vacant, abandoned, and blighted properties in the city. We also worked with the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, and the Center for Community Progress to reduce the city’s number of vacant, abandoned, and blighted properties in the city.
Southeast Louisiana faced another unprecedented disaster when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 2010, causing the largest oil spill in the nation’s history. The Foundation responded within days by opening the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund, designated for projects that would restore and strengthen the communities and environments affected by the disaster. Donations poured in from around the world and were channeled into millions of dollars in grant assistance over the next three years.
Southeast Louisiana faced another unprecedented disaster when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 2010, causing the largest oil spill in the nation’s history. The Foundation responded within days by opening the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund, designated for projects that would restore and strengthen the communities and environments affected by the disaster. Donations poured in from around the world and were channeled into millions of dollars in grant assistance over the next three years.
Recognizing that a full 44 percent of our region’s residents live in threatened coastal parishes, addressing both the short-term and long-term needs of these residents–and the environment upon which we all depend–is one of the Foundation’s top priorities.
Most recently, the Foundation’s Coastal 5+1 Initiative has been helping the region’s coastal parishes and the City of New Orleans identify and implement immediate, concrete solutions to long-term problems created by marginalized economies, poor planning, and environmental degradation.
Recognizing that a full 44 percent of our region’s residents live in threatened coastal parishes, addressing both the short-term and long-term needs of these residents–and the environment upon which we all depend–is one of the Foundation’s top priorities.
Most recently, the Foundation’s Coastal Issues - Coastal 5+1 Initiative has been helping the region’s coastal parishes and the City of New Orleans identify and implement immediate, concrete solutions to long-term problems created by marginalized economies, poor planning, and environmental degradation.
Today, GNOF manages more than 700 funds devoted to charitable, environmental, cultural, and economic development purposes. As one of the oldest and largest philanthropic organizations in the region, we’re proud of our investments in creating a thriving community for all.
Today, GNOF manages more than 700 funds devoted to charitable, environmental, cultural, and economic development purposes. As one of the oldest and largest philanthropic organizations in the region, we’re proud of our investments in creating a thriving community for all.
Website: www.gnof.org
Our mission is to create a thriving community for all. At the Greater New Orleans Foundation, we look to create a resilient, sustainable, vibrant community in which individuals and families flourish and the special character of our region is preserved, celebrated, and supported.
At the Greater New Orleans Foundation, we look to create a resilient, sustainable, vibrant community in which individuals and families flourish and the special character of our region is preserved, celebrated, and supported.
Recognizing that New Orleans is more than a city–it is an interconnected region–we serve the surrounding parishes of Assumption, Jefferson, Lafourche, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, St. John the Baptist, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Terrebonne, and Washington.
Recognizing that New Orleans is more than a city–it is an interconnected region–we serve the surrounding parishes of Assumption, Jefferson, Lafourche, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, St. John the Baptist, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Terrebonne, and Washington.
Like other community foundations, the Greater New Orleans Foundation serves both donors and recipients–linking philanthropists with the needs and aspirations of the greater community. We pull together people, ideas, and resources; we serve as a champion of civil society and civil solutions; and we help the effectiveness of nonprofit leaders and organizations.
Like other community foundations, the Greater New Orleans Foundation serves both donors and recipients–linking philanthropists with the needs and aspirations of the greater community. We pull together people, ideas, and resources; we serve as a champion of civil society and civil solutions; and we help the effectiveness of nonprofit leaders and organizations.
By partnering with donors, we help them achieve their charitable goals–whether that means starting a fund, creating an endowment, leaving a legacy, or just making a gift.
By partnering with donors, we help them achieve their charitable goals–whether that means starting a fund, creating an endowment, leaving a legacy, or just making a gift.
Since our founding by forward-looking community leaders in 1983, the Foundation has grown from scarcely $4 million in assets to more than $275 million in assets under management–and 700 donor funds–today. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the region, but also prompted an outpouring of generosity from long-time supporters and new donors from around the world.
The Foundation played a key role in the region’s recovery, coordinating donor efforts and rallying support for the Unified New Orleans Plan–which made possible the release of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid.
Since our founding by forward-looking community leaders in 1983, the Foundation has grown from scarcely $4 million in assets to more than $275 million in assets under management–and 700 donor funds–today. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the region, but also prompted an outpouring of generosity from long-time supporters and new donors from around the world. The Foundation played a key role in the region’s recovery, coordinating donor efforts and rallying support for the Unified New Orleans Plan–which made possible the release of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid.
Our housing and community development efforts since Katrina included the Economic Opportunity community revitalization Community Revitalization Fund, a five-year, $25 million initiative to support the organizations, people, and systems that produce affordable workforce housing in the City of New Orleans. Since 2007, the Community Revitalization Fund has made 63 grants and other investments to 51 organizations, supporting the development of nearly 9,500 housing units.
Our housing and community development efforts since Katrina included the Economic Opportunity Community Revitalization Fund, a five-year, $25 million initiative to support the organizations, people, and systems that produce affordable workforce housing in the City of New Orleans. Since 2007, the Community Revitalization Fund has made 63 grants and other investments to 51 organizations, supporting the development of nearly 9,500 housing units.
We also worked with the City of New Orleans Center for Community Progress to reduce the city’s number of vacant, abandoned, and blighted properties in the city. We also worked with the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, and the Center for Community Progress to reduce the city’s number of vacant, abandoned, and blighted properties in the city.
Southeast Louisiana faced another unprecedented disaster when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 2010, causing the largest oil spill in the nation’s history. The Foundation responded within days by opening the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund, designated for projects that would restore and strengthen the communities and environments affected by the disaster. Donations poured in from around the world and were channeled into millions of dollars in grant assistance over the next three years.
Southeast Louisiana faced another unprecedented disaster when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 2010, causing the largest oil spill in the nation’s history. The Foundation responded within days by opening the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund, designated for projects that would restore and strengthen the communities and environments affected by the disaster. Donations poured in from around the world and were channeled into millions of dollars in grant assistance over the next three years.
Recognizing that a full 44 percent of our region’s residents live in threatened coastal parishes, addressing both the short-term and long-term needs of these residents–and the environment upon which we all depend–is one of the Foundation’s top priorities.
Most recently, the Foundation’s Coastal 5+1 Initiative has been helping the region’s coastal parishes and the City of New Orleans identify and implement immediate, concrete solutions to long-term problems created by marginalized economies, poor planning, and environmental degradation.
Recognizing that a full 44 percent of our region’s residents live in threatened coastal parishes, addressing both the short-term and long-term needs of these residents–and the environment upon which we all depend–is one of the Foundation’s top priorities.
Most recently, the Foundation’s Coastal Issues - Coastal 5+1 Initiative has been helping the region’s coastal parishes and the City of New Orleans identify and implement immediate, concrete solutions to long-term problems created by marginalized economies, poor planning, and environmental degradation.
Today, GNOF manages more than 700 funds devoted to charitable, environmental, cultural, and economic development purposes. As one of the oldest and largest philanthropic organizations in the region, we’re proud of our investments in creating a thriving community for all.
Today, GNOF manages more than 700 funds devoted to charitable, environmental, cultural, and economic development purposes. As one of the oldest and largest philanthropic organizations in the region, we’re proud of our investments in creating a thriving community for all.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Jane's Walk
Location: International
Website: www.janeswalk.org
Jane’s Walk celebrates the ideas and legacy of urbanist Jane Jacobs by getting people out exploring their neighbourhoods and meeting their neighbours.Free walkin g tours held on the first weekend of May each year are led by locals who want to create a space for residents to talk about what matters to them in the places they live and work.
Since its inception in Toronto in 2007, Jane’s Walk has expanded rapidly. In May of 2013, more than 800 walks were held in over 100 cities in 22 countries worldwide.
The main Jane’s Walk event takes place annually on the first weekend of May, to coincide with Jane Jacobs’ birthday. Jane’s Walks can be organized and offered any other time of the year by enthusiastic local people or organizations, although the first weekend in May is where we focus our organizational energies and resources.
Jane’s Walk honours the legacy and ideas of urban activist and writer Jane Jacobs who championed the interests of local residents and pedestrians over a car-centered approach to planning.
Jane’s Walk often takes Jacobs’ ideas to communities unfamiliar with her ideas, in order to advance local engagement with contemporary urban planning practices. The walks helps knit people together into a strong and resourceful community, instilling belonging and encouraging civic leadership.
Thousands of people have taken part in a Jane’s Walk. Past walks have explored a wide range of urban landscapes, from social housing slated for redevelopment to areas with a rich architectural and cultural heritage, to teen hangouts and secret gardens.
Walks are led by individuals and small groups. Some are focused around historical themes more than geographical areas, for instance, some strolls have been built around ideas like the urban forestry, gay and lesbian history, places of relevance to the homeless, the history of ‘skid row’, and urgent planning matters facing certain neighbourhood. The walks offer a more personal take on local culture and issues. They are not a tourist driven initiative but an insider tour of a neighbourhood that helps open up a friendly, engaged discussion amongst interested participants.
As always, people face a complex array of challenges and hazards in our social and built environments. The decline in physical health is a problem that is exacerbated by our reliance on mechanical modes of transportation that burden our environment and infrastructure.
When it comes to making improvements to the livability and vibrancy of neighbourhoods, people are often isolated or unaware of others who may share their interests. Jane's Walk attempts to do this by the following:
- Help bridge these gaps and encourages people to explore the sidewalks they use for the basic tasks of daily life – tasks like shopping, getting to school and work.
- Help make cities and streets safe for all users. We encourage people to get out and walk not just for recreation, but for basic tasks of daily life, shopping, schools and work. Walking not only improves health, it increases social cohesion and connection.
- Help pedestrians by providing a simple walkability tool kit, available on our website, which gives the basic tools for recognizing, discussing and improving local walking conditions.
Jane’s Walks are usually organized by a broad network of people and groups who share a common concern for making cities more livable but a spectrum of approaches and observations about the neighbourhood, the city, the past and future are welcomed.
As with all community organizing, the wider the network, the lighter the organizational load for everyone. A key principle of Jane’s Walk is that it is self-organizing and self-selecting. Tour guides don’t have to be familiar with Jane Jacobs’ work to lead a tour, but we encourage people to find out more by reading her books or consulting our website for more links and primers on her ideas.
Jane’s Walk was inaugurated on May 5, 2007 in Toronto by a group of Jane Jacobs’ friends and colleagues who wanted to honour her ideas and legacy. They decided upon a simple, adaptable, and what would prove to be, an internationally successful concept – free neighbourhood walking tours led by local volunteers. Mary Rowe, Margie Zeidler, Chris Winter, Alan Broadbent and Ann Peters made the first Jane’s Walks happen that year with 27 tours. Attendance and buzz exceeded all expectations.
CBC broadcaster Jane Farrow, one of the inaugural tour guides, quickly came on board to explore how Jane’s Walk could be shared with other cities. That fall, she organized the event in New York City, making sure to include a range of neighbourhoods outside the core and in the process showcased an exciting variety of perspectives on city-building and community organizing. It was clear that Jane’s Walk filled a need people had to talk about issues affecting their neighbourhoods, and as such, had unlimited potential in helping communities find their voice.
Since then, Jane’s Walk has been successfully exported and adapted to many more cities. The event and its namesake, Jane Jacobs, mobilizes local residents to get out and share the stories of the urban spaces they know and love, to meet neighbours, to explore common cause in making improvements and celebrating their successes.
Jane’s Walk has expanded beyond the confines of an annual event by researching urban and suburban walkability conditions in association with Paul Hess of the University of Toronto Geography Department.
We are also engaged in consulting with planning firms and municipal stakeholders in how to make the city more walkable and welcome the input of local residents. Jane’s Walk has been adapted in schools and used both in classes and as an extra-curricular activity.
The City of Toronto has made good use of our bank of neighbourhood tour guides, getting employees out on ‘discovery walks’ and getting to know how their policies have an impact on people and places.
Website: www.janeswalk.org
Jane’s Walk celebrates the ideas and legacy of urbanist Jane Jacobs by getting people out exploring their neighbourhoods and meeting their neighbours.Free walkin g tours held on the first weekend of May each year are led by locals who want to create a space for residents to talk about what matters to them in the places they live and work.
Since its inception in Toronto in 2007, Jane’s Walk has expanded rapidly. In May of 2013, more than 800 walks were held in over 100 cities in 22 countries worldwide.
The main Jane’s Walk event takes place annually on the first weekend of May, to coincide with Jane Jacobs’ birthday. Jane’s Walks can be organized and offered any other time of the year by enthusiastic local people or organizations, although the first weekend in May is where we focus our organizational energies and resources.
Jane’s Walk honours the legacy and ideas of urban activist and writer Jane Jacobs who championed the interests of local residents and pedestrians over a car-centered approach to planning.
Jane’s Walk often takes Jacobs’ ideas to communities unfamiliar with her ideas, in order to advance local engagement with contemporary urban planning practices. The walks helps knit people together into a strong and resourceful community, instilling belonging and encouraging civic leadership.
Thousands of people have taken part in a Jane’s Walk. Past walks have explored a wide range of urban landscapes, from social housing slated for redevelopment to areas with a rich architectural and cultural heritage, to teen hangouts and secret gardens.
Walks are led by individuals and small groups. Some are focused around historical themes more than geographical areas, for instance, some strolls have been built around ideas like the urban forestry, gay and lesbian history, places of relevance to the homeless, the history of ‘skid row’, and urgent planning matters facing certain neighbourhood. The walks offer a more personal take on local culture and issues. They are not a tourist driven initiative but an insider tour of a neighbourhood that helps open up a friendly, engaged discussion amongst interested participants.
As always, people face a complex array of challenges and hazards in our social and built environments. The decline in physical health is a problem that is exacerbated by our reliance on mechanical modes of transportation that burden our environment and infrastructure.
When it comes to making improvements to the livability and vibrancy of neighbourhoods, people are often isolated or unaware of others who may share their interests. Jane's Walk attempts to do this by the following:
- Help bridge these gaps and encourages people to explore the sidewalks they use for the basic tasks of daily life – tasks like shopping, getting to school and work.
- Help make cities and streets safe for all users. We encourage people to get out and walk not just for recreation, but for basic tasks of daily life, shopping, schools and work. Walking not only improves health, it increases social cohesion and connection.
- Help pedestrians by providing a simple walkability tool kit, available on our website, which gives the basic tools for recognizing, discussing and improving local walking conditions.
Jane’s Walks are usually organized by a broad network of people and groups who share a common concern for making cities more livable but a spectrum of approaches and observations about the neighbourhood, the city, the past and future are welcomed.
As with all community organizing, the wider the network, the lighter the organizational load for everyone. A key principle of Jane’s Walk is that it is self-organizing and self-selecting. Tour guides don’t have to be familiar with Jane Jacobs’ work to lead a tour, but we encourage people to find out more by reading her books or consulting our website for more links and primers on her ideas.
Jane’s Walk was inaugurated on May 5, 2007 in Toronto by a group of Jane Jacobs’ friends and colleagues who wanted to honour her ideas and legacy. They decided upon a simple, adaptable, and what would prove to be, an internationally successful concept – free neighbourhood walking tours led by local volunteers. Mary Rowe, Margie Zeidler, Chris Winter, Alan Broadbent and Ann Peters made the first Jane’s Walks happen that year with 27 tours. Attendance and buzz exceeded all expectations.
CBC broadcaster Jane Farrow, one of the inaugural tour guides, quickly came on board to explore how Jane’s Walk could be shared with other cities. That fall, she organized the event in New York City, making sure to include a range of neighbourhoods outside the core and in the process showcased an exciting variety of perspectives on city-building and community organizing. It was clear that Jane’s Walk filled a need people had to talk about issues affecting their neighbourhoods, and as such, had unlimited potential in helping communities find their voice.
Since then, Jane’s Walk has been successfully exported and adapted to many more cities. The event and its namesake, Jane Jacobs, mobilizes local residents to get out and share the stories of the urban spaces they know and love, to meet neighbours, to explore common cause in making improvements and celebrating their successes.
Jane’s Walk has expanded beyond the confines of an annual event by researching urban and suburban walkability conditions in association with Paul Hess of the University of Toronto Geography Department.
We are also engaged in consulting with planning firms and municipal stakeholders in how to make the city more walkable and welcome the input of local residents. Jane’s Walk has been adapted in schools and used both in classes and as an extra-curricular activity.
The City of Toronto has made good use of our bank of neighbourhood tour guides, getting employees out on ‘discovery walks’ and getting to know how their policies have an impact on people and places.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development
Location: New Orleans, LA
Website: www.sustainthenine.org
Founded in December 2006, the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED) is a 501(c)3 grassroots organization devoted to restoring New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward as a safe, environmentally just and economically vibrant community – and one of the first to become carbon-neutral in North America.
Born in the aftermath of catastrophic flooding in the Lower Ninth Ward caused by the failure of the federal levee system following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, CSED provides community-based support to residents of the Lower Ninth Ward – from “River to Bayou” – in all aspects of sustainability for area neighborhoods as part of long-term recovery and rebuilding efforts.
Our mission is to stimulate civic engagement, repopulate, sustain natural systems, assist community leadership and preserve resources in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhoods.
Our goal is the re-creation and repopulation of a strong community, mindful of its resources and vulnerabilities, with an engaged citizenry that is active, resilient, prosperous, energy independent and beautiful as Built Environment.
In addition, we continue to maintain a strong presence in all development initiatives for the Lower 9. CSED remains dedicated to supporting the construction of the Alfred Lawless School system that was lost during the flood due to the failure of the federal levee system, the development of economic opportunities along the commercial corridors of the L9, as well as the on-going effort to bring a grocery store to the community through the Fresh Food Initiative (CSED administers a $25K Chase Design Competition award to support the grocery store development).
CSED also hired a local resident to support mental health outreach efforts for people still affected by Hurricane Katrina as well as the new disaster from the BP Oil Spill.
CSED also continues to work with multiple state and local partners on:
- Louisiana Coastal Restoration initiatives and the L9 Bayou Bienvenue regeneration.
- Built Environment efforts which includes rebuilding and renovation, blight issues, empty lots, and energy efficiency of existing structures, infrastructure, walkability, return of displaced residents
- Food Security for all L9 residents that involves community gardening, urban farming, reintroduction of tree canopy and support of the local Sankofa Farmers Market.
These and a growing number of new initiatives are led by CSED’s talented Executive Director, Tracy Nelson, a resident of the Lower Ninth Ward.
Website: www.sustainthenine.org
Founded in December 2006, the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED) is a 501(c)3 grassroots organization devoted to restoring New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward as a safe, environmentally just and economically vibrant community – and one of the first to become carbon-neutral in North America.
Born in the aftermath of catastrophic flooding in the Lower Ninth Ward caused by the failure of the federal levee system following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, CSED provides community-based support to residents of the Lower Ninth Ward – from “River to Bayou” – in all aspects of sustainability for area neighborhoods as part of long-term recovery and rebuilding efforts.
Our mission is to stimulate civic engagement, repopulate, sustain natural systems, assist community leadership and preserve resources in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhoods.
Our goal is the re-creation and repopulation of a strong community, mindful of its resources and vulnerabilities, with an engaged citizenry that is active, resilient, prosperous, energy independent and beautiful as Built Environment.
In addition, we continue to maintain a strong presence in all development initiatives for the Lower 9. CSED remains dedicated to supporting the construction of the Alfred Lawless School system that was lost during the flood due to the failure of the federal levee system, the development of economic opportunities along the commercial corridors of the L9, as well as the on-going effort to bring a grocery store to the community through the Fresh Food Initiative (CSED administers a $25K Chase Design Competition award to support the grocery store development).
CSED also hired a local resident to support mental health outreach efforts for people still affected by Hurricane Katrina as well as the new disaster from the BP Oil Spill.
CSED also continues to work with multiple state and local partners on:
- Louisiana Coastal Restoration initiatives and the L9 Bayou Bienvenue regeneration.
- Built Environment efforts which includes rebuilding and renovation, blight issues, empty lots, and energy efficiency of existing structures, infrastructure, walkability, return of displaced residents
- Food Security for all L9 residents that involves community gardening, urban farming, reintroduction of tree canopy and support of the local Sankofa Farmers Market.
These and a growing number of new initiatives are led by CSED’s talented Executive Director, Tracy Nelson, a resident of the Lower Ninth Ward.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Homegrown National Park
Location: Toronto, ON
Website: www.davidsuzuki.org
Inspired by Richard Louv and Douglas Tallamy, in 2013 we embarked on a mission to establish the world's first "Homegrown National Park" by crowd-sourcing a vibrant green corridor along the former path of Garrison Creek in the City of Toronto.
In the project's first year, our 21 volunteer Neighbourhood Park Rangers helped partner organizations to spur more than a dozen creative green interventions, from pothole planters and canoe gardens to butterfly friendly schoolyards and "parkify-ing" a residential street.
In 2014 we are aiming to deepen and expand the project to adjacent neighbourhoods in the Greater Garrison Creek area. We will begin connecting with community groups this winter and plan to train another crop of Park Rangers in the spring. Find out more by reading stories below, and stay tuned by joining our Facebook page.
If you're interested in getting involved or learning more, feel free to contact project leader Jode Roberts.
Website: www.davidsuzuki.org
Inspired by Richard Louv and Douglas Tallamy, in 2013 we embarked on a mission to establish the world's first "Homegrown National Park" by crowd-sourcing a vibrant green corridor along the former path of Garrison Creek in the City of Toronto.
In the project's first year, our 21 volunteer Neighbourhood Park Rangers helped partner organizations to spur more than a dozen creative green interventions, from pothole planters and canoe gardens to butterfly friendly schoolyards and "parkify-ing" a residential street.
In 2014 we are aiming to deepen and expand the project to adjacent neighbourhoods in the Greater Garrison Creek area. We will begin connecting with community groups this winter and plan to train another crop of Park Rangers in the spring. Find out more by reading stories below, and stay tuned by joining our Facebook page.
If you're interested in getting involved or learning more, feel free to contact project leader Jode Roberts.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Data Driven Detroit
Location: Detroit,
Website: www.datadrivendetroit.org
From the Michigan Metropolitan Information Center at Wayne State University, to the Southeast Michigan Information Center at United Way, there have been many initiatives to collect and democratize data about Detroit and its neighborhoods.
In 2008, The Skillman Foundation and The Kresge Foundation awarded City Connect Detroit a $1.85 million grant to incubate Data Driven Detroit (originally named the Detroit-Area Community Information System).
Within its first year, D3 was selected by the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP). NNIP is a select group of organizations that have built advanced and continuously updated data systems to track neighborhood conditions in their cities.
In December 2012, after an extensive period of review, discussion and due diligence, Data Driven Detroit became an affiliated program of the Michigan Nonprofit Association.
This move has strengthened D3′s operations and increased our exposure to a statewide network of member nonprofits and philanthropic organizations. Data Driven Detroit provides accessible, high-quality information and analysis to drive informed decision-making.
D3 believes that direct and practical use of data by grassroots leaders and public officials promotes thoughtful community building and effective policymaking.
As a “one-stop-shop” for data about the city of Detroit and the metro area, D3 provides unprecedented opportunity for collaboration and capacity building in Southeast Michigan.
D3 incorporates features of “neighborhood data systems” that have been created in a variety of cities across the country. Such systems have been recognized and championed by the Urban Institute, which created the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership in 1995. NNIP partner communities incorporate a number of different models of data access and analysis.
While their structures, staff, and delivery mechanisms may differ, they share a set of principles that D3 supports:
- Design indicator systems for the explicit purpose of changing things – not just to monitor trends.
- Develop a single integrated system that can support one-stop shopping.
- Develop indicators at the neighborhood level – not just for the city as a whole.
- Build a data “warehouse” from which indicator reports can be derived – not just a set of files on indicators.
- Serve multiple users but emphasize using information to build capacity in poor communities.
- Democratize information – help stakeholders use information directly themselves.
- Help stakeholders use data to tackle local issues, but do so in a way that leads toward more comprehensive strategies.
- Use information as a bridge to promote collaboration.
- Use available indicators but recognize their inadequacies – particularly the lack of sufficient data on community assets.
- Assure integrity in the data and the institution that provides them.
Website: www.datadrivendetroit.org
From the Michigan Metropolitan Information Center at Wayne State University, to the Southeast Michigan Information Center at United Way, there have been many initiatives to collect and democratize data about Detroit and its neighborhoods.
In 2008, The Skillman Foundation and The Kresge Foundation awarded City Connect Detroit a $1.85 million grant to incubate Data Driven Detroit (originally named the Detroit-Area Community Information System).
Within its first year, D3 was selected by the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP). NNIP is a select group of organizations that have built advanced and continuously updated data systems to track neighborhood conditions in their cities.
In December 2012, after an extensive period of review, discussion and due diligence, Data Driven Detroit became an affiliated program of the Michigan Nonprofit Association.
This move has strengthened D3′s operations and increased our exposure to a statewide network of member nonprofits and philanthropic organizations. Data Driven Detroit provides accessible, high-quality information and analysis to drive informed decision-making.
D3 believes that direct and practical use of data by grassroots leaders and public officials promotes thoughtful community building and effective policymaking.
As a “one-stop-shop” for data about the city of Detroit and the metro area, D3 provides unprecedented opportunity for collaboration and capacity building in Southeast Michigan.
D3 incorporates features of “neighborhood data systems” that have been created in a variety of cities across the country. Such systems have been recognized and championed by the Urban Institute, which created the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership in 1995. NNIP partner communities incorporate a number of different models of data access and analysis.
While their structures, staff, and delivery mechanisms may differ, they share a set of principles that D3 supports:
- Design indicator systems for the explicit purpose of changing things – not just to monitor trends.
- Develop a single integrated system that can support one-stop shopping.
- Develop indicators at the neighborhood level – not just for the city as a whole.
- Build a data “warehouse” from which indicator reports can be derived – not just a set of files on indicators.
- Serve multiple users but emphasize using information to build capacity in poor communities.
- Democratize information – help stakeholders use information directly themselves.
- Help stakeholders use data to tackle local issues, but do so in a way that leads toward more comprehensive strategies.
- Use information as a bridge to promote collaboration.
- Use available indicators but recognize their inadequacies – particularly the lack of sufficient data on community assets.
- Assure integrity in the data and the institution that provides them.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
New Communities Program
Location: Chicago, IL
Website:
The new communities program is a long-term initiative of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation/Chicago to support comprehensive community development in 16 Chicago neighborhoods. The 10-year effort seeks to rejuvenate challenged communities, bolster those in danger of losing ground, and preserve the diversity of areas in the path of gentrification. NCP neighborhoods span a cross-section of Chicago's South, Southwest, West and Northwest sides. Each effort is led by a neighborhood-based lead agency that coordinates programs among other local organizations and citywide support groups. The 14 lead agencies (one of which serves three adjacent communities) have at their disposal:
- Two full-time staff positions: an NCP director and an organizer.
- A pool of loan and grant funds to mount short- and long-term initiatives. The funds, distributed by LISC on a competitive basis, serve as seed money to leverage other public and private resources.
- Technical support and peer-learning opportunities, including planning expertise, trainings, access to subject-area experts and meetings with peers in other NCP agencies.
Lead agencies are encouraged to forge partnerships with other nonprofit groups, businesses, government and residents to address issues such as affordable housing, prisoner re-entry, cultural programming, education reform, and community marketing.
All NCP neighborhoods have undertaken a structured community planning process that involved local residents and leaders in the creation of strategies to improve the community's quality of life.
Three communities completed plans in a pilot phase of the program, from 1998 through 2002; most of the others participated in neighborhood planning programs leading to a quality-of-life plan between May 2003 and May 2005. A total of 3,000 people across the city participated in the meetings that produced the NCP plans, which were unveiled May 18, 2005 during a downtown ceremony attended by 500 residents and other partners including Mayor Richard M. Daley.
- Agencies involved in NCP will spend 10 years and perhaps more implementing their plans.
Creating local and citywide partnerships, communities are addressing issues including employment, parks and recreation, health care, housing affordability, commercial and retail development, child care, education quality, neighborhood aesthetics and personal security.
NCP is designed to strengthen communities from within - through planning, organizing and human development. The comprehensive approach helps broaden opportunities for local residents through better education, broader job choices, safer streets, new economic opportunities and stronger personal finances. This strengthened community is better equipped to take advantage of larger market forces:
- Attracting retail and housing development to areas that have experienced little new construction.
- Achieving economic balance in neighborhoods where working-class residents fear displacement by higher-income newcomers.
- Creating stronger connections to metropolitan-wide business, employment and educational opportunities.
A central NCP strategy is to create active communication among participating communities, lead agencies and support organizations. By documenting the activities and sharing strategies and methods through a newsletter, meetings, training sessions, web site and other methods, NCP hopes to multiply the impact of each neighborhood's work while advancing knowledge of community development practice.
More than $47 million has been committed to NCP by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and LISC/Chicago to provide lead agencies with staffing, planning assistance and project seed money. Additional funding has been secured from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Bank One (Chase), Joyce Foundation, Living Cities, Mayor's Office of Workforce Development, Partnership for New Communities, Polk Bros. Foundation, State Farm Insurance Companies and the Steans Family Foundation. LISC/Chicago and the lead agencies will seek the additional private and public support necessary to implement the quality-of-life plans. NCP is one of four demonstration projects of Living Cities, a partnership formerly called the National Community Development Initiative.
Website:
The new communities program is a long-term initiative of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation/Chicago to support comprehensive community development in 16 Chicago neighborhoods. The 10-year effort seeks to rejuvenate challenged communities, bolster those in danger of losing ground, and preserve the diversity of areas in the path of gentrification. NCP neighborhoods span a cross-section of Chicago's South, Southwest, West and Northwest sides. Each effort is led by a neighborhood-based lead agency that coordinates programs among other local organizations and citywide support groups. The 14 lead agencies (one of which serves three adjacent communities) have at their disposal:
- Two full-time staff positions: an NCP director and an organizer.
- A pool of loan and grant funds to mount short- and long-term initiatives. The funds, distributed by LISC on a competitive basis, serve as seed money to leverage other public and private resources.
- Technical support and peer-learning opportunities, including planning expertise, trainings, access to subject-area experts and meetings with peers in other NCP agencies.
Lead agencies are encouraged to forge partnerships with other nonprofit groups, businesses, government and residents to address issues such as affordable housing, prisoner re-entry, cultural programming, education reform, and community marketing.
All NCP neighborhoods have undertaken a structured community planning process that involved local residents and leaders in the creation of strategies to improve the community's quality of life.
Three communities completed plans in a pilot phase of the program, from 1998 through 2002; most of the others participated in neighborhood planning programs leading to a quality-of-life plan between May 2003 and May 2005. A total of 3,000 people across the city participated in the meetings that produced the NCP plans, which were unveiled May 18, 2005 during a downtown ceremony attended by 500 residents and other partners including Mayor Richard M. Daley.
- Agencies involved in NCP will spend 10 years and perhaps more implementing their plans.
Creating local and citywide partnerships, communities are addressing issues including employment, parks and recreation, health care, housing affordability, commercial and retail development, child care, education quality, neighborhood aesthetics and personal security.
NCP is designed to strengthen communities from within - through planning, organizing and human development. The comprehensive approach helps broaden opportunities for local residents through better education, broader job choices, safer streets, new economic opportunities and stronger personal finances. This strengthened community is better equipped to take advantage of larger market forces:
- Attracting retail and housing development to areas that have experienced little new construction.
- Achieving economic balance in neighborhoods where working-class residents fear displacement by higher-income newcomers.
- Creating stronger connections to metropolitan-wide business, employment and educational opportunities.
A central NCP strategy is to create active communication among participating communities, lead agencies and support organizations. By documenting the activities and sharing strategies and methods through a newsletter, meetings, training sessions, web site and other methods, NCP hopes to multiply the impact of each neighborhood's work while advancing knowledge of community development practice.
More than $47 million has been committed to NCP by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and LISC/Chicago to provide lead agencies with staffing, planning assistance and project seed money. Additional funding has been secured from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Bank One (Chase), Joyce Foundation, Living Cities, Mayor's Office of Workforce Development, Partnership for New Communities, Polk Bros. Foundation, State Farm Insurance Companies and the Steans Family Foundation. LISC/Chicago and the lead agencies will seek the additional private and public support necessary to implement the quality-of-life plans. NCP is one of four demonstration projects of Living Cities, a partnership formerly called the National Community Development Initiative.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
CIVITAS
Location: Manhattan, NY
Website: www.civitasnyc.org
We are a union of citizens dedicated to improving neighborhood quality of life in the Upper East Side and East Harlem since 1981.
CIVITAS promotes urban planning, zoning and land use policies that are sensible and sensitive to residential life in our neighborhoods.
CIVITAS supports environmentally sound development, vibrant retail activity at street level, uncluttered sidewalks and access to good public transit.
CIVITAS opposes overbearing towers that are non-contextual and cut off light and air from surrounding buildings and the sidewalk below.
CIVITAS commissions urban planning studies, speaks out at public hearings, issues reports and keeps its members informed on current issues impacting on urban life, including traffic congestion, historic preservation, zoning variances, water quality and public access to parks and the waterfront.
In 1981, when CIVITAS was founded, August Heckscher, its first chair, hearkened back to the Roman Republic to find a name that would express the spirit of the new community organization. The name chosen, “CIVITAS,” referred to that quality of a citizen that made him deeply involved in the life and fate of his city. Such has been the guiding spirit for CIVITAS ever since.
The mission of CIVITAS is to foster, mobilize and coordinate civic concern in the community of Manhattan’s Upper East Side and East Harlem. To that end, CIVITAS seeks to promote, preserve and protect residential neighborhoods that are lively and livable.
Website: www.civitasnyc.org
We are a union of citizens dedicated to improving neighborhood quality of life in the Upper East Side and East Harlem since 1981.
CIVITAS promotes urban planning, zoning and land use policies that are sensible and sensitive to residential life in our neighborhoods.
CIVITAS supports environmentally sound development, vibrant retail activity at street level, uncluttered sidewalks and access to good public transit.
CIVITAS opposes overbearing towers that are non-contextual and cut off light and air from surrounding buildings and the sidewalk below.
CIVITAS commissions urban planning studies, speaks out at public hearings, issues reports and keeps its members informed on current issues impacting on urban life, including traffic congestion, historic preservation, zoning variances, water quality and public access to parks and the waterfront.
In 1981, when CIVITAS was founded, August Heckscher, its first chair, hearkened back to the Roman Republic to find a name that would express the spirit of the new community organization. The name chosen, “CIVITAS,” referred to that quality of a citizen that made him deeply involved in the life and fate of his city. Such has been the guiding spirit for CIVITAS ever since.
The mission of CIVITAS is to foster, mobilize and coordinate civic concern in the community of Manhattan’s Upper East Side and East Harlem. To that end, CIVITAS seeks to promote, preserve and protect residential neighborhoods that are lively and livable.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The Urban Assembly
Location: New York, NY
Website: www.urbanassembly.org
The Urban Assembly was founded in 1990 to address a wide range of poverty issues. In the mid-'90s we spearheaded a major planning effort to transform a 300-block area of the South Bronx.
That effort identified the lack of high-quality local secondary schools as a major concern and recommended creating three model high schools, each tied to a major local institution.
In 1997, in partnership with the New York City Department of Education and New Visions for Public Schools, the Urban Assembly opened the first of these schools, the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice, and in 2002 it opened the second, the Academy for Careers in Sports.
Based on our success, the Urban Assembly was invited to submit proposals for two more schools. In 2003, we opened the Bronx Academy of Letters, and, inspired by the commitment of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, shifted the organization’s focus exclusively to the creation and support of new small schools.
Twenty-one Urban Assembly schools are now up and running.
We are reaching into the communities where kids need us most and giving thousands of students the education they deserve. By every measure, our children are among the city’s most underserved.
94% of our students are African-American and Latino. 69% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch programs. 70% of 9th graders enter our high schools with scores below city and state proficiency levels in math. 64% are below proficiency in reading. 50% of our students speak a language other than English at home.
Our schools demonstrate that at risk students can achieve incredible success with the right learning environment, instruction and support. The Urban Assembly’s network-wide graduation rate is 76% — 15 points higher than the New York City average and seven points higher than the national average. Several of our schools have graduation rates above 90%.
Website: www.urbanassembly.org
The Urban Assembly was founded in 1990 to address a wide range of poverty issues. In the mid-'90s we spearheaded a major planning effort to transform a 300-block area of the South Bronx.
That effort identified the lack of high-quality local secondary schools as a major concern and recommended creating three model high schools, each tied to a major local institution.
In 1997, in partnership with the New York City Department of Education and New Visions for Public Schools, the Urban Assembly opened the first of these schools, the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice, and in 2002 it opened the second, the Academy for Careers in Sports.
Based on our success, the Urban Assembly was invited to submit proposals for two more schools. In 2003, we opened the Bronx Academy of Letters, and, inspired by the commitment of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, shifted the organization’s focus exclusively to the creation and support of new small schools.
Twenty-one Urban Assembly schools are now up and running.
We are reaching into the communities where kids need us most and giving thousands of students the education they deserve. By every measure, our children are among the city’s most underserved.
94% of our students are African-American and Latino. 69% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch programs. 70% of 9th graders enter our high schools with scores below city and state proficiency levels in math. 64% are below proficiency in reading. 50% of our students speak a language other than English at home.
Our schools demonstrate that at risk students can achieve incredible success with the right learning environment, instruction and support. The Urban Assembly’s network-wide graduation rate is 76% — 15 points higher than the New York City average and seven points higher than the national average. Several of our schools have graduation rates above 90%.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Flint Public Art Project
Location: Flint, MI
Website: www.flintpublicartproject.com
We organize workshops and temporary installations to inspire residents to reimagine the city, reclaim vacant and underutilized buildings and lots, and use innovative tools to steer Flint's long-range planning.
We support collaboration among local residents and organizations as well as with leading artists, architects, planners and community organizers from around the world, connecting Flint to regional, national and global movements to revitalize neighborhoods and cities through art and design.
We will document and amplify the many ways local residents, businesses and institutions are transforming Flint and its public image and identity, and will broadcast this new story to audiences throughout the city and the world.
Executive Director Stephen Zacks is an internationally recognized architecture and urbanism reporter, theorist and cultural producer based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and a native of Flint, Michigan. Co-founder of the Bring to Light–Nuit Blanche New York festival, he is currently writing Beautiful Ruin: The Generation that Transformed New York, 1967-1986,a nonfiction narrative about New York during the mid-70s fiscal crisis
Director of Programs Jerome Chou is an urban planner and landscape architect. Previously he was Director of Programs for the Design Trust for Public Space, where he led projects to retain garment factories in Midtown Manhattan and to expand urban agriculture throughout New York City. He also has worked for the Baltimore City Planning Department, as a community organizer for ACORN, and for the nonprofit book publisher The New Press.
Architect-in-residence Andrew Perkins recently completed a collaborative Master's thesis project at the University at Buffalo, which transformed an abandoned house into his year-long off-the-grid home, using only waste materials. Focusing on areas of blight, depopulation, and economic tension, he uses waste materials as the common denominator to transcend social and financial gaps. His work with Flint Public Art Project involves transforming the long-vacant Spencer's Mortuary into a cooperative art space and model for material reuse.
James Andrews is an artist, educator, organizer, curator, and arts producer based in New York City. His work involves exploring new forms of social organization and experimental groups. Prior to studying systems approaches to art and collaboration with Paul Ryan at The New School, Andrews was artist in residence at the Banlozi Camp for Refugees in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 2003 he co-produced Art, Circuitry, and Ecology, a conference at the City University of New York Graduate Center and Berkeley Hall of Science, honoring the anthropologist Gregory Bateson. Andrews has exhibited, taught, performed, and organized extensively, including shows and events at Postmasters Gallery, Sculpture Center, the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ABC No Rio, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Deitch Projects, and the Queens Museum. Andrews is a founding member of Nsumi Collective. Nsumi creates collaborative artwork that combines fine art, architecture, community engagement and experimental design. They produce and participate in exhibitions and events, conduct research on public art, pedagogy and emerging collaborative practices. Andrews has organized numerous public workshops and lectures on topics such as formal decentralization, swarm intelligence and emerging forms of civic protest with the Museum of Arts and Design, Storefront for Art and Architecture, School of the Future, and Creative Time as a part of the Living as Form show, with Trade School NYC.
His collaborative work has been covered by NHK TV (Japan), The New Yorker, Metro NY, Total Theater Magazine, Archinect, the New York Times, Art News, Waging Non-Violence, and The Economist.
Website: www.flintpublicartproject.com
We organize workshops and temporary installations to inspire residents to reimagine the city, reclaim vacant and underutilized buildings and lots, and use innovative tools to steer Flint's long-range planning.
We support collaboration among local residents and organizations as well as with leading artists, architects, planners and community organizers from around the world, connecting Flint to regional, national and global movements to revitalize neighborhoods and cities through art and design.
We will document and amplify the many ways local residents, businesses and institutions are transforming Flint and its public image and identity, and will broadcast this new story to audiences throughout the city and the world.
Executive Director Stephen Zacks is an internationally recognized architecture and urbanism reporter, theorist and cultural producer based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and a native of Flint, Michigan. Co-founder of the Bring to Light–Nuit Blanche New York festival, he is currently writing Beautiful Ruin: The Generation that Transformed New York, 1967-1986,a nonfiction narrative about New York during the mid-70s fiscal crisis
Director of Programs Jerome Chou is an urban planner and landscape architect. Previously he was Director of Programs for the Design Trust for Public Space, where he led projects to retain garment factories in Midtown Manhattan and to expand urban agriculture throughout New York City. He also has worked for the Baltimore City Planning Department, as a community organizer for ACORN, and for the nonprofit book publisher The New Press.
Architect-in-residence Andrew Perkins recently completed a collaborative Master's thesis project at the University at Buffalo, which transformed an abandoned house into his year-long off-the-grid home, using only waste materials. Focusing on areas of blight, depopulation, and economic tension, he uses waste materials as the common denominator to transcend social and financial gaps. His work with Flint Public Art Project involves transforming the long-vacant Spencer's Mortuary into a cooperative art space and model for material reuse.
James Andrews is an artist, educator, organizer, curator, and arts producer based in New York City. His work involves exploring new forms of social organization and experimental groups. Prior to studying systems approaches to art and collaboration with Paul Ryan at The New School, Andrews was artist in residence at the Banlozi Camp for Refugees in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 2003 he co-produced Art, Circuitry, and Ecology, a conference at the City University of New York Graduate Center and Berkeley Hall of Science, honoring the anthropologist Gregory Bateson. Andrews has exhibited, taught, performed, and organized extensively, including shows and events at Postmasters Gallery, Sculpture Center, the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ABC No Rio, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Deitch Projects, and the Queens Museum. Andrews is a founding member of Nsumi Collective. Nsumi creates collaborative artwork that combines fine art, architecture, community engagement and experimental design. They produce and participate in exhibitions and events, conduct research on public art, pedagogy and emerging collaborative practices. Andrews has organized numerous public workshops and lectures on topics such as formal decentralization, swarm intelligence and emerging forms of civic protest with the Museum of Arts and Design, Storefront for Art and Architecture, School of the Future, and Creative Time as a part of the Living as Form show, with Trade School NYC.
His collaborative work has been covered by NHK TV (Japan), The New Yorker, Metro NY, Total Theater Magazine, Archinect, the New York Times, Art News, Waging Non-Violence, and The Economist.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
National Day of Civic Hacking
Location: Nationwide
Website: www.urbanretailinstitute.com
National Day of Civic Hacking is a national event that will take place June 1-2, 2013, in cities across the nation. The event will bring together citizens, software developers, and entrepreneurs from all over the nation to collaboratively create, build, and invent new solutions using publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country. National Day of Civic Hacking will provide citizens an opportunity to do what is most quintessentially American: roll up our sleeves, get involved and work together to improve our society.
The event will leverage the expertise and entrepreneurial spirit of those outside federal, state and local government to drive meaningful, technology-based solutions for federal, state and local government. It demonstrates what's possible when we all work together to strengthen our society and our lives. YOU can make a difference no matter where you live.
You should participate in National Day of Civic Hacking because the toughest challenges are not one community’s alone to solve. This is a unique opportunity to:
- get involved, connect with others like yourself,
- develop technology that will make the world a better place,
- demonstrate a commitment to the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration.
- exercise a government’s interest in using open data and technology, in partnership with others, to address your local community’s felt needs,
- liberate open data that can inform better problem solving in every community,
- continue to collectively map a national innovation ecosystem and create new access points to that system,
- engage citizens in cities with little technology infrastructure to contribute to changing their community through open source, open data, entrepreneurship and code development,
- promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education by encouraging students to utilize open technology for solutions to real challenges, and
- encourage large scale partnership and mutual understanding.
National Day of Civic Hacking will not be the same type of event in each city. Depending on the local needs of your community, it might be a block party brigade meetup - or something else entirely.
Our vision is for the National Day of Civic Hacking to take place in at least one city in all 50 states and territories. If you do not see your city on the list and are interested in planning or supporting an event, get involved today!
There are many ways you can get involved in National Day of Civic Hacking. Our success will lie in government agencies, companies, organizations, universities and citizens working together to make a difference.
Plan an event today and bring the National Day of Civic Hacking to your town!
Your first decision will be to determine which type of event you want to host.
Are you interested in helping to host, fund or support an event in your community? This is truly a community effort and we need your help! Contact us for more information on how to get involved. Contribute data, code, or a challenge idea.
Do you have data, APIs, code, or other resources that could help inform solutions? Do you have an idea for a challenge to be addressed?
There are many ways in which you or your organization can support National Day of Civic Hacking. If you are interested in supporting National Day of Civic Hacking at a National Level, contact us. If you are interested in sponsoring exclusively at your local event, check the events page and reach out to an organizer near you.
Website: www.urbanretailinstitute.com
National Day of Civic Hacking is a national event that will take place June 1-2, 2013, in cities across the nation. The event will bring together citizens, software developers, and entrepreneurs from all over the nation to collaboratively create, build, and invent new solutions using publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country. National Day of Civic Hacking will provide citizens an opportunity to do what is most quintessentially American: roll up our sleeves, get involved and work together to improve our society.
The event will leverage the expertise and entrepreneurial spirit of those outside federal, state and local government to drive meaningful, technology-based solutions for federal, state and local government. It demonstrates what's possible when we all work together to strengthen our society and our lives. YOU can make a difference no matter where you live.
You should participate in National Day of Civic Hacking because the toughest challenges are not one community’s alone to solve. This is a unique opportunity to:
- get involved, connect with others like yourself,
- develop technology that will make the world a better place,
- demonstrate a commitment to the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration.
- exercise a government’s interest in using open data and technology, in partnership with others, to address your local community’s felt needs,
- liberate open data that can inform better problem solving in every community,
- continue to collectively map a national innovation ecosystem and create new access points to that system,
- engage citizens in cities with little technology infrastructure to contribute to changing their community through open source, open data, entrepreneurship and code development,
- promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education by encouraging students to utilize open technology for solutions to real challenges, and
- encourage large scale partnership and mutual understanding.
National Day of Civic Hacking will not be the same type of event in each city. Depending on the local needs of your community, it might be a block party brigade meetup - or something else entirely.
Our vision is for the National Day of Civic Hacking to take place in at least one city in all 50 states and territories. If you do not see your city on the list and are interested in planning or supporting an event, get involved today!
There are many ways you can get involved in National Day of Civic Hacking. Our success will lie in government agencies, companies, organizations, universities and citizens working together to make a difference.
Plan an event today and bring the National Day of Civic Hacking to your town!
Your first decision will be to determine which type of event you want to host.
Are you interested in helping to host, fund or support an event in your community? This is truly a community effort and we need your help! Contact us for more information on how to get involved. Contribute data, code, or a challenge idea.
Do you have data, APIs, code, or other resources that could help inform solutions? Do you have an idea for a challenge to be addressed?
There are many ways in which you or your organization can support National Day of Civic Hacking. If you are interested in supporting National Day of Civic Hacking at a National Level, contact us. If you are interested in sponsoring exclusively at your local event, check the events page and reach out to an organizer near you.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Center for an Urban Future
Location: New York, NY
Website: www.nycfuture.org
The Center for an Urban Future is a NYC-based think tank dedicated to highlighting the critical opportunities and challenges facing New York and other cities, and providing fresh ideas and workable solutions to policymakers. The Center’s primary focus is on growing and diversifying the local economy, expanding economic opportunity and targeting problems facing low-income and working-class neighborhoods. We consistently elevate important, but long overlooked, issues onto the radar of public officials—and we push policymakers to think differently about economic and workforce development.
The Center does this through publishing fact-based research reports that are accessible to a wide audience and holding high-profile policy forums.
Jonathan Bowles is the Executive Director of the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan-based think tank dedicated to independent research about key policy issues facing New York and other cities. During his 12 years at the Center, he has been the architect of the policy agenda for the Center and is responsible for making it one of New York's most innovative and influential organizations and one in which its policy ideas are well-respected and widely used by policymakers, business leaders, and nonprofit practitioners.
At the Center,Jonathan has authored more than two-dozen reports, including a widely acclaimed 2007 study about the significant impact immigrant entrepreneurs are having on cities' economies, an influential study about New York City's innovation economy and a report about how to retain and grow New York's middle class. He has been asked to be a guest contributor for the New York Times and The Council on Foreign Relations on a range of urban issues including New York City's need to diversify its economy and immigrant entrepreneurs.
His research about key economic trends facing New York and its five boroughs, the value of small businesses to cities, and the economic impact of industries ranging from air cargo to biotechnology has been covered in publications ranging from the New York Times to The Economist. Jonathan is a frequent moderator and speaker at conferences and panel discussions on urban policy in New York and nationally.
Website: www.nycfuture.org
The Center for an Urban Future is a NYC-based think tank dedicated to highlighting the critical opportunities and challenges facing New York and other cities, and providing fresh ideas and workable solutions to policymakers. The Center’s primary focus is on growing and diversifying the local economy, expanding economic opportunity and targeting problems facing low-income and working-class neighborhoods. We consistently elevate important, but long overlooked, issues onto the radar of public officials—and we push policymakers to think differently about economic and workforce development.
The Center does this through publishing fact-based research reports that are accessible to a wide audience and holding high-profile policy forums.
Jonathan Bowles is the Executive Director of the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan-based think tank dedicated to independent research about key policy issues facing New York and other cities. During his 12 years at the Center, he has been the architect of the policy agenda for the Center and is responsible for making it one of New York's most innovative and influential organizations and one in which its policy ideas are well-respected and widely used by policymakers, business leaders, and nonprofit practitioners.
At the Center,Jonathan has authored more than two-dozen reports, including a widely acclaimed 2007 study about the significant impact immigrant entrepreneurs are having on cities' economies, an influential study about New York City's innovation economy and a report about how to retain and grow New York's middle class. He has been asked to be a guest contributor for the New York Times and The Council on Foreign Relations on a range of urban issues including New York City's need to diversify its economy and immigrant entrepreneurs.
His research about key economic trends facing New York and its five boroughs, the value of small businesses to cities, and the economic impact of industries ranging from air cargo to biotechnology has been covered in publications ranging from the New York Times to The Economist. Jonathan is a frequent moderator and speaker at conferences and panel discussions on urban policy in New York and nationally.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Rebuild Foundation
Location: Nationwide
Website: www.rebuiild-foundation.org
Rebuild Foundation helps neighborhoods thrive through culture-driven redevelopment by activating abandoned spaces with arts and cultural programming. We transform under-resourced communities by leveraging economic and cultural resources to:
- Strengthen neighborhoods through community-driven programming,spatial equity for underserved artists and creative people,
- Educate and provide opportunity through work force enhancement, and
- Invest in creative entrepreneurs and local artists to spark economies.
Rebuild hosted the 2012 Bruner Loeb Forum "The Art of Placemaking" conference and will break ground on the Dorchester Artist Housing Collaborative in 2013 with the Chicago Housing Authority, transforming an empty housing project into a 36-unit complex with mixed income housing and a community arts center for programming, performance, and arts exhibitions.
Rebuild Foundation, a not-for-profit creative engine focused on cultural-driven redevelopment and affordable space initiatives in under-resourced communities, currently manages projects in Chicago, St. Louis and Omaha. Our programs enlist teams of artists, architects, developers, educators, community activists, and residents who work together to integrate the arts, apprenticeship trade training and creative entrepreneurship into a community-driven process of neighborhood transformation.
Rebuild engages an artistic practice which uses as its medium the urban fabric of under-resourced districts, bridging the creation of art with adaptive reuse of abandoned spaces and community-driven initiatives for neighborhood revitalization.
Rebuild Foundation is the creation of Chicago native, artist, urban planner, and a Wall Street Journal 2012 Innovator of the Year, Theaster Gates, Jr. who has conducted innovative renovation of unused spaces and community service activities through his art practice since 2005. Rebuild received its official 501 status in December 2010, and immediately continued Gates work leveraging creative community resources to build thriving neighborhoods. We act as a catalyst in local economies by integrating arts and cultural programming, workforce enhancement, creative entrepreneurial investment, hands-on education, and artistic intervention. Rebuild began creating cultural programming in Gates' renovated and repurposed buildings first in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood of Chicago South Side. Next, Rebuild established operations in the Hyde Park neighborhood of St. Louis, activating two residential spaces of Gates'. Soon after, Rebuild entered a partnership with Beyond Housing to establish a programming hub from one of their neighborhood spaces in the north St. Louis community of Pagedale. Also in 2011, Rebuild began a partnership with the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha to activate a derelict bank building with renovation, arts programming, and the incubation of a local small business.</p><p class=\"p1\">Rebuild hosted the 2012 Bruner Loeb Forum. The Art of Placemaking\" conference and will break ground on the Dorchester Artist Housing Collaborative in 2013 with the Chicago Housing Authority, transforming an empty housing project into a 36-unit complex with mixed income housing and a community arts center for programming, performance, and arts exhibition.
Rebuild Foundation has received funding support from ArtPlace, Creative Capital Foundation, JB and MK Pritzker Foundation, Kanter Family Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Leveraging Investments in Creativity, W. Clement & Jessie V. Stone Foundation, University of Chicago, and others.
Website: www.rebuiild-foundation.org
Rebuild Foundation helps neighborhoods thrive through culture-driven redevelopment by activating abandoned spaces with arts and cultural programming. We transform under-resourced communities by leveraging economic and cultural resources to:
- Strengthen neighborhoods through community-driven programming,spatial equity for underserved artists and creative people,
- Educate and provide opportunity through work force enhancement, and
- Invest in creative entrepreneurs and local artists to spark economies.
Rebuild hosted the 2012 Bruner Loeb Forum "The Art of Placemaking" conference and will break ground on the Dorchester Artist Housing Collaborative in 2013 with the Chicago Housing Authority, transforming an empty housing project into a 36-unit complex with mixed income housing and a community arts center for programming, performance, and arts exhibitions.
Rebuild Foundation, a not-for-profit creative engine focused on cultural-driven redevelopment and affordable space initiatives in under-resourced communities, currently manages projects in Chicago, St. Louis and Omaha. Our programs enlist teams of artists, architects, developers, educators, community activists, and residents who work together to integrate the arts, apprenticeship trade training and creative entrepreneurship into a community-driven process of neighborhood transformation.
Rebuild engages an artistic practice which uses as its medium the urban fabric of under-resourced districts, bridging the creation of art with adaptive reuse of abandoned spaces and community-driven initiatives for neighborhood revitalization.
Rebuild Foundation is the creation of Chicago native, artist, urban planner, and a Wall Street Journal 2012 Innovator of the Year, Theaster Gates, Jr. who has conducted innovative renovation of unused spaces and community service activities through his art practice since 2005. Rebuild received its official 501 status in December 2010, and immediately continued Gates work leveraging creative community resources to build thriving neighborhoods. We act as a catalyst in local economies by integrating arts and cultural programming, workforce enhancement, creative entrepreneurial investment, hands-on education, and artistic intervention. Rebuild began creating cultural programming in Gates' renovated and repurposed buildings first in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood of Chicago South Side. Next, Rebuild established operations in the Hyde Park neighborhood of St. Louis, activating two residential spaces of Gates'. Soon after, Rebuild entered a partnership with Beyond Housing to establish a programming hub from one of their neighborhood spaces in the north St. Louis community of Pagedale. Also in 2011, Rebuild began a partnership with the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha to activate a derelict bank building with renovation, arts programming, and the incubation of a local small business.</p><p class=\"p1\">Rebuild hosted the 2012 Bruner Loeb Forum. The Art of Placemaking\" conference and will break ground on the Dorchester Artist Housing Collaborative in 2013 with the Chicago Housing Authority, transforming an empty housing project into a 36-unit complex with mixed income housing and a community arts center for programming, performance, and arts exhibition.
Rebuild Foundation has received funding support from ArtPlace, Creative Capital Foundation, JB and MK Pritzker Foundation, Kanter Family Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Leveraging Investments in Creativity, W. Clement & Jessie V. Stone Foundation, University of Chicago, and others.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
596 Acres
Location: New York, NY
Website: www.596acres.org
We build online organizing platforms for land access advocates and facilitators. In New York City we are land access advocates and use one of our platforms.
Hundreds of acres of vacant public land are hidden in plain sight behind chain-link fences in New York City, concentrated in neighborhoods disproportionately deprived of beneficial land uses.
We are building the tools for communities to open all these rusty fences and the opportunities within them to improve the areas they live in by:
- Making municipal information available online and on the ground (e.g. by placing signs on vacant public land that explain a lot’s status and steps that the community can take to be able to use this land.
- Providing education about city government and ways to participate in decisions that shape neighborhoods,
- Assisting communities with legal support and campaign-development on land use issues,
- Maintaining a network that allows communities to share knowledge and relationships with decision-makers, and
- Working with groups after they get access to land to build sustainable community governance as they become stewards of a public and inclusive resource; and
- Advocating for municipal agencies to increase participatory decision-making surrounding public resources.
Website: www.596acres.org
We build online organizing platforms for land access advocates and facilitators. In New York City we are land access advocates and use one of our platforms.
Hundreds of acres of vacant public land are hidden in plain sight behind chain-link fences in New York City, concentrated in neighborhoods disproportionately deprived of beneficial land uses.
We are building the tools for communities to open all these rusty fences and the opportunities within them to improve the areas they live in by:
- Making municipal information available online and on the ground (e.g. by placing signs on vacant public land that explain a lot’s status and steps that the community can take to be able to use this land.
- Providing education about city government and ways to participate in decisions that shape neighborhoods,
- Assisting communities with legal support and campaign-development on land use issues,
- Maintaining a network that allows communities to share knowledge and relationships with decision-makers, and
- Working with groups after they get access to land to build sustainable community governance as they become stewards of a public and inclusive resource; and
- Advocating for municipal agencies to increase participatory decision-making surrounding public resources.
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