"Building Sustainable Communities: Moving from Quality-of-Life Planning to Implementation"

Using LISC Indianapolis as a test bed, this report explores what it takes to implement a quality-of-life plan. The authors outline when and why implementation of specific goals and strategies occurred in two Great Indy Neighborhoods Initiatives (the Indianapolis version of LISC's Building Sustainable Communities program).

The report summarizes their findings into eight elements necessary to go from a plan to successful action:

  1. LISC leadership: Committing to a trusted executive director and activist program officers
  2. Neighborhood capacity: Amassing community development capability for maximum impact
  3. Engagement: Generating the collective will of conveners and partners
  4. Future vision: Developing a unified, inspiring vision
  5. Neighborhood partnerships: Engaging partners and building coalitions
  6. Incentives for action: Providing tools and resources to produce results
  7. External partnerships: Connecting with regional civic leadership
  8. Carrying on the work: Institutionalizing the commitment

This in-depth, 36-page report gives examples, details and suggested actions for each of these eight strategies, providing practitioners with ideas for how to build their local capacity for implementation.

A set of appendices in the back includes examples of roadblocks for each of the eight elements and how LISC and partners addressed these problems. 

"The overall success of a BSC program in a targeted neighborhood is contingent upon a set of elements that must be developed," the authors write in the introduction. "It is the responsibility of LISC and its local partners to cultivate them. You will see through the following stories, which are drawn from Indianapolis interviews that such cultivation has led to successful, and in some cases remarkable outcomes. And, where these elements are absent it can be extremely hard to achieve even modest accomplishments."

"Building Sustainable Communities: Moving from Quality-of-Life Planning to Implementation"