Building the Next Generation of Federal Place-Based Programs

Place matters. The neighborhoods, cities, rural communities, and metropolitan regions where we live shape both our day-to-day quality of life and our families’ prospects for upward mobility. But our nation’s history of racial discrimination in both public policies and institutional practices has built profoundly separate and unequal places, sustaining and exacerbating racial inequity and injustice.

The scale of today’s inequities raises a central — but unresolved — question of what it would take for the next generation of federal place-based investments to deliver meaningful change for people and places.

With support from Blue Meridian Partners, the Urban Institute and PolicyLink have partnered to tackle this question by developing a blueprint for the next generation of federal place-based policy. The blueprint draws upon community voices, research evidence, and practitioner insights to lay out principles and a structure for incorporating lessons from the past into future place-based policies that confront long-standing racial inequities and injustices.

This effort is informed by a policy working group that advises on lessons learned from past place-based programs and raises crucial issues for the design of new place-based programs and the refinement of existing ones.

Our hope is that this work will help clear a path forward for communities and policymakers interested in strengthening federal investments in place-based work and improving economic mobility for people regardless of where they live.  

For more information about the project, contact Jessica Pizarek.