New Approaches to Comprehensive Neighborhood Change: Replicating and Adapting LISC’s Building Sustainable Communities Program
Date Published: 06/10/2010
Author: Chris Walker, Sarah Rankin, Francisca Winston - LISC Research & Assessment
Building Sustainable Communities is proving to be a powerful framework for driving lasting change in distressed areas.
It is now at work in 63 low-income neighborhoods across the country. It rests on the premise that it takes more than physical redevelopment to truly impact the quality of life for disadvantaged families and the places where they live. As such, Building Sustainable Communities integrates ongoing investments in affordable housing and other real estate with plans and programs focused on economic development, education, healthy lifestyles and environments, and family income and asset-building. It encompasses everything from community safety to after-school programs to financial literacy and job training to the revitalization of neighborhood parks and the resurgence of commercial corridors. The key is that all of this is going on simultaneously, in one place, based on a plan developed by local stakeholders.
This is our first research evaluating how Building Sustainable Communities is being implemented in different places. It is part of an ongoing assessment effort designed to identify best practices that will inform this work going forward. It demonstrates that Building Sustainable Communities is successfully being tailored to the needs of a broad range of communities and providing the fuel for the economic and social resurgence of places too often written off as lost.
It is a compelling first look at Building Sustainable Communities in action. Continued[+]..> Download the Executive Summary (PDF, 276 KB)
> Download the full report (PDF, 1.23 MB)
> LISC Research and Assessment
Topics: Economic Development & Safety, Education, Children & Youth, Housing, Organizational & Professional Development, Land Use & Planning, --Community Planning, --Community Development, Policy, Rural
Type: Case study / model practice, Research paper