This is the third in a series of briefs that describe the changes, insights, and lessons when arts and cultural strategies are deployed in service of comprehensive community development and planning. During ArtPlace America's Community Development Investments initiative, six participating organizations which had not previously focused on the arts developed creative placemaking projects and cultural strategies that could help them more effectively achieve their missions. PolicyLink conducted a research and documentation project to measure the progress, immediate outcomes, and impacts of those projects.

This brief examines how community developers working with artists created innovative ways of organizing residents and building power for policy change.

Explore more about our research and documentation project and view the other briefs at communitydevelopment.art/strategies.

The issue highlights how community development that infuses arts and cultural strategies helps residents reclaim community identity, strengthen cultural resilience, and build power—all key components of achieving equitable community development outcomes. It also explores changes and practices to the field of creative placemaking and provides new deep dives, perspectives, and analysis on the implications of this work for broad equitable development goals. Read the full issue here.

The issue features research and documentation from ArtPlace America’s Community Development Investments (CDI) program. The CDI program was a significant three-year investment of resources and technical assistance in six community development organizations who had not previously worked with the arts and culture sector. These investments have yielded valuable insights and lessons for a wide range of fields of practice, from affordable housing development to parks stewardship, from the social practice of art to youth development, from community organizing to public health. With new tools and ways of thinking, imagining, and acting, they have helped residents own and express the identity of their communities, build cultural resilience, and change the ways in which neighborhood planning is carried out.

Read more about the issue on the National Endowment for the Arts’s Art Works Blog or watch video from a release event held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Describes how pioneering organizations and partnerships are turning robust, integrated parcel data systems into powerful tools for guiding community change, such as monitoring and preserving affordable housing and planning commercial district revitalization.

Houston-Galveston is characterized by overall economic strength and resilience, but wide racial gaps in income, health, and opportunity coupled with declining wages, a shrinking middle class, and rising inequality place the region’s economic success and future at risk. Our analysis showed the region already stands to gain a great deal from addressing racial inequities. If racial gaps in income had been closed in 2012, the regional economy would have been $243.3 billion stronger: a 54 percent increase. You can also download the summary and addendum.

Find other equity profiles here.

Explains why addressing environmental justice (EJ) is a key aspect of creating sustainable regions, and presents ways in which those involved in local and regional planning can achieve EJ in their communities.

In celebration of the fifth anniversary of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, HUD, DOT, and EPA released their five year annual report. This report shows how the three agencies are changing their policies and removing barriers to help communities provide more housing choices, make transportation systems more efficient and reliable, and create vibrant neighborhoods while protecting the environment.

Common Market is a regional food hub whose mission is to increase the availability of local, sustainably grown farm food throughout Philadelphia and surrounding areas. This case study provides an in-depth look at Common Market's growth and development, including efforts to build financial sustainability.

Provides an overview of current efforts to improve the prevention, tracking, diagnosis, and treatment of childhood asthma and accompanying opportunities for policy change. Asthma is a growing problem for children and families in California and in the nation as a whole. While children of all socioeconomic status contract asthma, it disproportionately affects low-income children, particularly African American and Latino children. Moreover, for uninsured and underinsured children, lack of access to care can exacerbate a vulnerable health status.

Developed by PolicyLink, and funded by The California Endowment, this annotated bibliography contains more than 150 entries of research on how community factors affect health. This resource provides insight into the ways that researchers have investigated community effects on health, their findings, and the program and policy implications that researchers have drawn from their work. (html and print publication)