WITHIN East Side
LISC launched this program first on the East Side of Buffalo, the heart of Buffalo’s Black community. This was purposeful to build upon and lift up the long-time visions of residents and community leaders in neighborhoods most impacted by historic disinvestment, environmental, structural, & systemic racism.
A multitude of community partners and neighborhood-based initiatives through 2020-2022 generated the bold and comprehensive vision reflected in the WITHIN East Side Neighborhood Investment Plan. This is their plan. LISC works with public and private partners to aggregate the capital to support this agenda and augment the ability of our East Side partners to absorb this capital in support of plan implementation.
Interactive Map
Our online, interactive mapping tool layers several data sources across various livability and neighborhood planning topics.
You can read the full comprehensive plan and supporting data, maps, and historical contexts and/or dive into sections most interesting to you.
The investment plan is grounded in local, place-based data. As part of the WITHIN East Side program, LISC worked with our organizational partners to generate an interactive data map. This hub site tool equips residents and organizations with a resource to make data-informed decisions about strategy, programming, and development.
Pride in Place Buffalo Idea Box Installation. Part of the 2020 AARP Community Challenge, in partnership with the Buffalo Center for Health Equity. An early project of the WITHIN East Side program.
Partners & Contributors
Investment Plan Goals
1
East Side residents and businesses lead the revitalization, collaborating with partners to get projects done with an equitable development framework2
Build an equitable, predominately Black, inclusive community of diverse residents3
Connect residents to family sustaining jobs & reduce the racial income gap for East Side residents4
Build Black and Indigenous People of Color wealth to close the racial wealth gap5
Support place keeping projects to amplify economic vitality and celebrate culture, neighborhood identity, history and wellness6
Food access, infrastructure, and business support that increases healthy food options, creates neighborhoods economic opportunity, and contributes to a shared vision of food sovereignty7
Public infrastructure supports community health and sustainable economic revitalization8
Legacy contamination and environmental pollution no longer impacts East Side resident health outcomesGuiding Principles
First, and above all, this plan represents a shared commitment to anti-displacement. The goals of the action plan are intended to create beautiful, healthy communities for the very residents who currently live in them. The strategies must be coupled with wealth building and poverty eradicating commitments that simultaneous build up these communities, preserve historic treasures, and tear down the racist and polluted policy and structures responsible for the current neighborhood conditions.
Community residents and leaders of all ages must have authority, ownership, and power to influence development that occurs in their neighborhood. An equitable development rubric is a tool that will be created by the neighborhood implementation team to hold development partners accountable to community values and priorities.
Intentional coordination and collaboration to leverage and maximize resources across programs and services has been identified as a critical strategy to both meet the needs of and sustain ongoing support for community organizations. Residents expect that the design of community development coming into their neighborhoods will be creative, beautiful, and equipped for a changing climate future, while respecting an important cultural history and inclusively designed for a diverse population of all ages.
Process Timeline
Get Involved
Join the East Side Implementation Team
As a WITHIN community partner, you’ll connect with a diverse network of community builders who share a common purpose — to invest resources and exponentially broaden impacts. Through these valuable relationships, you’ll not only spark opportunities that help your community thrive but for your organization or business to grow in creative, measurable ways. Email us to learn more about how you or your neighborhood can get involved.
Fund the East Side Investment Plan
When you invest in WITHIN, you’ll be powering the ideas and visions of people building their own healthy futures in their neighborhoods. This inclusive and sustainable initiative is driven by the community and emboldened by its connection with LISC—an organization with a four-decade track record of turning community priorities into progress. Reach out to learn more about supporting the WITHIN WNY program.