Location: Nationwide
Website: legacycities.org
The Legacy Cities Partnership aims to establish a framework for the revitalization of legacy cities, improve the community of practice working on these issues, and change the policies that govern practice in these cities. The Partnership was founded by The American Assembly, the J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City, and the Center for Community Progress.
We believe that these cities can thrive once again if the assets, energy, capacity and love for these places at the local level can be nurtured by effective shifts in public policy, coordinated advocacy, mutual learning about what works, and careful, strategic implementation.
A compilation and discussion of the changes contemplated, inspired and completed by the citizens of neighborhoods and/or cities around the world.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has"
Margaret Mead, Anthropologist
(used with permission)
"If you don't like the news .... go out and make some of your own !!"
Wes "Scoop" Nisker, Newscaster
INTRODUCTION
Government is a slow and tedious process. While it often includes citizen and neighborhood involvement, non-governmental, private organizations have created movements and interesting groups which can create positive change in our cities and towns.
I am fascinated by the way groups are created and how they influence public decision making. This blog merely recognizes them and forwards the description of these groups from their own websites.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Association for Community Design
Location: Nationwide
Website: communitydesign.org
Established in 1977, the Association for Community Design (ACD) is a network of individuals, organizations, and institutions committed to increasing the capacity of planning and design professions to better serve communities. ACD serves and supports practitioners, educators, and organizations engaged in community-based design and planning.
ACD is incorporated as a 501(c)3 membership organization and is governed by a volunteer board of directors. Membership is open to both organizations and individuals. The dues collected by the ACD support an annual conference, program development, and the maintenance of this website.
Website: communitydesign.org
Established in 1977, the Association for Community Design (ACD) is a network of individuals, organizations, and institutions committed to increasing the capacity of planning and design professions to better serve communities. ACD serves and supports practitioners, educators, and organizations engaged in community-based design and planning.
ACD is incorporated as a 501(c)3 membership organization and is governed by a volunteer board of directors. Membership is open to both organizations and individuals. The dues collected by the ACD support an annual conference, program development, and the maintenance of this website.
Citizens Institute for Rural Design
Location: Nationwide
Website: rural-design.org
Residents in America’s small towns and rural communities care deeply about the future of their towns and value their uniqueness, strong sense of community, and special places. However, they increasingly face urgent challenges: How can they add jobs and support local businesses? How do they create a positive future for their kids? How can they honor and protect local character and history? How do they use limited financial, human, and natural resources wisely?
Developing locally-driven solutions to these challenges is critical to the long-term vitality of these communities, and the arts and design can play a powerful role in this process. Across the country, community leaders and residents are coming together to tackle these challenges and to find creative strategies that address:
How to build strong economies and grow jobs; Where to locate new growth or redevelop older areas; How to design efficient transportation systems; How to protect the community’s historic and culturally significant resources.
Rural design is an important tool for rural communities to build upon existing assets and improve the way a community looks, its quality of life, and its economic viability. However, few rural communities have access to design assistance or the expertise to tackle these challenges on their own.
The Citizens' Institute on Rural Design™ (CIRD) provides communities access to the resources they need to convert their own good ideas into reality. CIRD works with communities with populations of 50,000 or less, and offers annual competitive funding to as many as four small towns or rural communities to host a two-and-a-half day community design workshop. With support from a wide range of design, planning and creative placemaking professionals, the workshops bring together local leaders from non-profits, community organizations, and government to develop actionable solutions to the community's pressing design challenges. The community receives additional support through webinars, conference calls, and web-based resources.
Established in 1991 as Your Town: the Citizens' Institute on Rural Design™, CIRD has convened more than 70 workshops in all regions of the country, empowering residents to leverage local assets for the future in order to build better places to live, work, and play. Initially a partnership among the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the State University of New York (SUNY) at Syracuse, the program was managed by Richard Hawks and Shelley Mastran from 1991-2012.
CIRD remains one of the NEA's key design leadership initiatives and is currently conducted in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Project for Public Spaces, Inc., along with the Orton Family Foundation and CommunityMatters® Partnership.
Website: rural-design.org
Residents in America’s small towns and rural communities care deeply about the future of their towns and value their uniqueness, strong sense of community, and special places. However, they increasingly face urgent challenges: How can they add jobs and support local businesses? How do they create a positive future for their kids? How can they honor and protect local character and history? How do they use limited financial, human, and natural resources wisely?
Developing locally-driven solutions to these challenges is critical to the long-term vitality of these communities, and the arts and design can play a powerful role in this process. Across the country, community leaders and residents are coming together to tackle these challenges and to find creative strategies that address:
How to build strong economies and grow jobs; Where to locate new growth or redevelop older areas; How to design efficient transportation systems; How to protect the community’s historic and culturally significant resources.
Rural design is an important tool for rural communities to build upon existing assets and improve the way a community looks, its quality of life, and its economic viability. However, few rural communities have access to design assistance or the expertise to tackle these challenges on their own.
The Citizens' Institute on Rural Design™ (CIRD) provides communities access to the resources they need to convert their own good ideas into reality. CIRD works with communities with populations of 50,000 or less, and offers annual competitive funding to as many as four small towns or rural communities to host a two-and-a-half day community design workshop. With support from a wide range of design, planning and creative placemaking professionals, the workshops bring together local leaders from non-profits, community organizations, and government to develop actionable solutions to the community's pressing design challenges. The community receives additional support through webinars, conference calls, and web-based resources.
Established in 1991 as Your Town: the Citizens' Institute on Rural Design™, CIRD has convened more than 70 workshops in all regions of the country, empowering residents to leverage local assets for the future in order to build better places to live, work, and play. Initially a partnership among the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the State University of New York (SUNY) at Syracuse, the program was managed by Richard Hawks and Shelley Mastran from 1991-2012.
CIRD remains one of the NEA's key design leadership initiatives and is currently conducted in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Project for Public Spaces, Inc., along with the Orton Family Foundation and CommunityMatters® Partnership.
Mayors' Institute on City Design
Location: Nationwide
Website: micd.org
The Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD) is a leadership initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the American Architectural Foundation and the United States Conference of Mayors with support from United Technologies. Since 1986, the Mayors’ Institute has helped transform communities through design by preparing mayors to be the chief urban designers of their cities.
MICD achieves its mission by organizing sessions where mayors engage leading design experts to find solutions to the most critical urban design challenges facing their cities. Sessions are organized around case-study problems. Each mayor presents a problem from his or her city and get feedback from other mayors and design experts.
Every year, the partner organizations plan and manage six to eight Institute sessions held throughout the country. Each two and one-half day session is limited to less than twenty participants, half mayors and half a resource team, consisting of outstanding city design and development professionals. Mayors present a range of challenges, including waterfront redevelopment, downtown revitalization, transportation planning, and the design of new public buildings such as libraries and arts centers. Following each presentation, mayors and the resource team identify important issues, offer suggestions, and discuss potential solutions. The interchange sparks lively debate, opens new perspectives, and generates creative ideas.
Website: micd.org
The Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD) is a leadership initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the American Architectural Foundation and the United States Conference of Mayors with support from United Technologies. Since 1986, the Mayors’ Institute has helped transform communities through design by preparing mayors to be the chief urban designers of their cities.
MICD achieves its mission by organizing sessions where mayors engage leading design experts to find solutions to the most critical urban design challenges facing their cities. Sessions are organized around case-study problems. Each mayor presents a problem from his or her city and get feedback from other mayors and design experts.
Every year, the partner organizations plan and manage six to eight Institute sessions held throughout the country. Each two and one-half day session is limited to less than twenty participants, half mayors and half a resource team, consisting of outstanding city design and development professionals. Mayors present a range of challenges, including waterfront redevelopment, downtown revitalization, transportation planning, and the design of new public buildings such as libraries and arts centers. Following each presentation, mayors and the resource team identify important issues, offer suggestions, and discuss potential solutions. The interchange sparks lively debate, opens new perspectives, and generates creative ideas.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Walkable and Liveable Communities
Location: Nationwide
Website: walklive.org
The WALC Institute helps to create healthy, connected communities that support active living and that advance opportunities for all people through walkable and bikeable streets, livable cities and better built environments.
Eachyear, we directly help as many as 80 communities across North America by providing technical assistance and working alongside them to plot a course toward a more walkable future. We also develop and broadly disseminate educational materials and tools that are free to the public and that help to advance the walkability movement. And because a picture is worth a thousand words, we produce inspiring photo-visions to help local leaders and residents see for themselves how walkability, bikeability and livability can transform the community.
Website: walklive.org
The WALC Institute helps to create healthy, connected communities that support active living and that advance opportunities for all people through walkable and bikeable streets, livable cities and better built environments.
Eachyear, we directly help as many as 80 communities across North America by providing technical assistance and working alongside them to plot a course toward a more walkable future. We also develop and broadly disseminate educational materials and tools that are free to the public and that help to advance the walkability movement. And because a picture is worth a thousand words, we produce inspiring photo-visions to help local leaders and residents see for themselves how walkability, bikeability and livability can transform the community.
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Homes For All
Location: Nationwide
Website: homesforall.org
Homes For All is a national campaign with the goal of broadening the conversation of the housing crisis beyond foreclosure and putting forth a comprehensive housing agenda that also speaks to issues affecting public housing residents, homeless families, and the growing number of renters in American cities.
Homes For All aims to protect, defend, and expand housing that is truly affordable and dignified for low-income and very low-income communities by engaging those most directly impacted by this crisis through local and national organizing, winning strong local policies that protect renters and homeowners, and shifting the national debate on housing.
RTC is working collaboratively across sectors to develop national housing policy that ensures that our communities and future generations have homes that are truly affordable, stable, and dignified.
Today, people who buy their homes are thrown out if they cannot make their mortgage payments, renters are either the new hot deal on the housing market or dealing with rising rents and costs and buildings in disrepair. With no comprehensive federal plan to preserve and build public housing, the idea of housing as a human right is under threat of demolition. As vacancies climb in cities, homeless families look on, wondering why there are so many homes without people in them.
The Homes for All campaign wants to draw attention to the housing crisis facing urban and suburban low and extremely low-income people of color. We want a to assert a holistic vision to affirming housing as a human right. Through this campaign, we are challenging the absurd assumptions that the housing crisis is over and that the market holds all (if any) of the solutions to our problems. We believe our government has a responsibility to create and strengthen laws and programs that will allow our communities to remain and flourish.
The recent and ongoing financial crisis has revealed that millions of residents of the United States experience housing insecurity, many of them for years at a time. Yet, housing policy in recent decades, whether implemented by government, the corporate sector, or some combination of the two, has contributed to a loss of affordable housing and has often displaced the members of our communities in the name of de-concentrating poverty. At the same time, corporations have shifted enormous amounts of investment into our cities, but their interest in property speculation and maximizing quarterly profits undermines our interest in long-term neighborhood stability. And when the crisis hit, they got bailed out and we got left out.With the latest wave of REO (Real Estate Owned) to rental properties being snatched up as the newest gambling scheme for hedge funds and private enterprise, we are on the cusp of what could become the creation of yet another housing bubble. Astronomical rents and displacement are already on the rise and this unbridled “game” threatens to further weaken an already fragile economy and devastate the hope for stable and sustainable communities now or in the future.
We want policies that allow us to strengthen the bonds we build with each other in our communities, and which help us to survive in the face of resource scarcity, economic hardship, environmental degradation, and political marginalization. To this end, we call for an end to speculation driven development in our cities that produces housing our communities can’t afford. We assert our right to stay in the communities we have built and refuse to be displaced!
Website: homesforall.org
Homes For All is a national campaign with the goal of broadening the conversation of the housing crisis beyond foreclosure and putting forth a comprehensive housing agenda that also speaks to issues affecting public housing residents, homeless families, and the growing number of renters in American cities.
Homes For All aims to protect, defend, and expand housing that is truly affordable and dignified for low-income and very low-income communities by engaging those most directly impacted by this crisis through local and national organizing, winning strong local policies that protect renters and homeowners, and shifting the national debate on housing.
RTC is working collaboratively across sectors to develop national housing policy that ensures that our communities and future generations have homes that are truly affordable, stable, and dignified.
Today, people who buy their homes are thrown out if they cannot make their mortgage payments, renters are either the new hot deal on the housing market or dealing with rising rents and costs and buildings in disrepair. With no comprehensive federal plan to preserve and build public housing, the idea of housing as a human right is under threat of demolition. As vacancies climb in cities, homeless families look on, wondering why there are so many homes without people in them.
The Homes for All campaign wants to draw attention to the housing crisis facing urban and suburban low and extremely low-income people of color. We want a to assert a holistic vision to affirming housing as a human right. Through this campaign, we are challenging the absurd assumptions that the housing crisis is over and that the market holds all (if any) of the solutions to our problems. We believe our government has a responsibility to create and strengthen laws and programs that will allow our communities to remain and flourish.
The recent and ongoing financial crisis has revealed that millions of residents of the United States experience housing insecurity, many of them for years at a time. Yet, housing policy in recent decades, whether implemented by government, the corporate sector, or some combination of the two, has contributed to a loss of affordable housing and has often displaced the members of our communities in the name of de-concentrating poverty. At the same time, corporations have shifted enormous amounts of investment into our cities, but their interest in property speculation and maximizing quarterly profits undermines our interest in long-term neighborhood stability. And when the crisis hit, they got bailed out and we got left out.With the latest wave of REO (Real Estate Owned) to rental properties being snatched up as the newest gambling scheme for hedge funds and private enterprise, we are on the cusp of what could become the creation of yet another housing bubble. Astronomical rents and displacement are already on the rise and this unbridled “game” threatens to further weaken an already fragile economy and devastate the hope for stable and sustainable communities now or in the future.
We want policies that allow us to strengthen the bonds we build with each other in our communities, and which help us to survive in the face of resource scarcity, economic hardship, environmental degradation, and political marginalization. To this end, we call for an end to speculation driven development in our cities that produces housing our communities can’t afford. We assert our right to stay in the communities we have built and refuse to be displaced!
Friday, June 26, 2015
Living Mobs
Location: Mexico City (DF)
Website: livingmobs.com
La Ciudad de México necesita tu ayuda en el Audi Urban Future Award 2014, una iniciativa global para pensar el siguiente salto en movilidad urbana. Con tu participación, arquitectura 911sc, IIMAS-UNAM y Laboratorio para la Ciudad, área experimental del GDF, buscan entender y mejorar como nos movemos.
El Sistema Operativo de la Ciudad es un nuevo contrato social por medio del cual un grupo de socios, plataformas tecnológicas y procesos generaran oportunidades para re-imaginar la movilidad de la Ciudad de Mexico.
Living Mobs es una encuesta interactiva que obtiene datos anónimos sobre movilidad de la ciudadanía. Donando datos, contribuirás a mejorar las políticas públicas, la movilidad y la calidad de vida de nuestra ciudad.
Mexico City (DF) needs your help in the Audi Urban Future Award 2014, a global initiative to take the next leap in urban mobility. With your participation, architecture 911sc, IIMAS-UNAM and laboratory for the city, experimental area of the GDF, seek to understand and improve as we grow.
The operating system of the city is a new social contract by means of which a group of partners, technology platforms and processes generate opportunities to re-imagine the mobility of Mexico City.
Living Mobs is an interactive survey that gets anonymous data on mobility of citizens. Donating data, contribute to improve policies, mobility and quality of life in our city.
Website: livingmobs.com
La Ciudad de México necesita tu ayuda en el Audi Urban Future Award 2014, una iniciativa global para pensar el siguiente salto en movilidad urbana. Con tu participación, arquitectura 911sc, IIMAS-UNAM y Laboratorio para la Ciudad, área experimental del GDF, buscan entender y mejorar como nos movemos.
El Sistema Operativo de la Ciudad es un nuevo contrato social por medio del cual un grupo de socios, plataformas tecnológicas y procesos generaran oportunidades para re-imaginar la movilidad de la Ciudad de Mexico.
Living Mobs es una encuesta interactiva que obtiene datos anónimos sobre movilidad de la ciudadanía. Donando datos, contribuirás a mejorar las políticas públicas, la movilidad y la calidad de vida de nuestra ciudad.
Mexico City (DF) needs your help in the Audi Urban Future Award 2014, a global initiative to take the next leap in urban mobility. With your participation, architecture 911sc, IIMAS-UNAM and laboratory for the city, experimental area of the GDF, seek to understand and improve as we grow.
The operating system of the city is a new social contract by means of which a group of partners, technology platforms and processes generate opportunities to re-imagine the mobility of Mexico City.
Living Mobs is an interactive survey that gets anonymous data on mobility of citizens. Donating data, contribute to improve policies, mobility and quality of life in our city.
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