In many low-income neighborhoods, new green infrastructure elements and green spaces signal the beginnings of gentrification. A coalition in one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon is draw...

Across the country, street newspapers - written by low-income people and those experiencing homelessness - are empowering their writers and providing necessary perspectives to the communities they serve. For vendors, ...

As the struggles of refugees and immigrants drudges on, a number of cities across the US are gathering funding for their legal defense. One strategy, a legal counsel program called New York Family Immigrant Unity Proj...

Creating and deploying exhibitions in response to real-time events can allow museums to play a larger role in community engagement and education. By developing so-called rapid-response exhibits, museums can respond mo...

Partnerships between those incarcerated and volunteers from the outside are crucial. Collaborations—such as the one between the Wall City magazine, the UC Berkeley, and the San Quentin Journalism Guild—make it possibl...

Pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) is a model that charges residents of a given city for the trash they throw away, aiming to spur people to decrease the amount of waste they dispose. Acting like a utility payment, this model ha...

Sherriff’s offices can provide resources and encourage underserved communities and communities struck hard by disinvestment to grow their civic capacity. In Alameda County, California, the county Sherriff’s office ope...

In this excerpt from Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt’s book, Biased, the author details the role surveillance and apps like Nextdoor play in perpetuating and disrupting discriminatory housing policies, racism, and segregation ...

A membership organization called Pipeline Angels helps women and nonbinary femme entrepreneurs find investors and start their own businesses. Pipeline Angels addresses the investment disparities between businesses own...

Formerly incarcerated individuals, community leaders, and members of San Francisco’s District Attorney’s office, have joined forces to create a collaborative advisory board. The board meets to share re-entry challenge...

When big box stores shutter, communities can suffer: vacant buildings deter investment and sites can encourage vandalism and other crimes. Because demolishing the stores can prove prohibitively expensive, three cities...

A new park plan in Washington, D.C. addresses systemic racism and inequity in current city infrastructure, digging deeper than traditional urban planning landscapes. The new plan takes into account perspectives from m...

A planning expert dives into responses from cities around the country to the infrastructural red tape faced by many brick-and-mortar retail businesses in the wake of an ecommerce boom. In Corning, NY, city officials c...

A collaborative funding organization called the Runway Project gives loans to minority entrepreneurs in the Oakland area. The initiative aims to address the gap in funding given to white vs. minority business owners; ...

North Charleston, SC, struggles to offer affordable housing, much like other cities across the United States; however, a partnership between the city and the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative better address...

Using an algorithm designed by Code for America, the city of San Francisco has been able to identify and start the process of expunging almost 10,000 marijuana-related convictions. While the initiative has faced some ...

Art inspires innovation. At the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the annual Black Creativity festival focuses both on championing the voices of African-American artists, innovators, and community leaders, an...

Columbus, Ohio aims to make housing more affordable by enacting he Central Ohio Community Land Trust; the community land trust uses ideas from other national affordable financing models to ensure low-income Columbus r...

In an initiative to level the playing people for women- and minority-owned businesses, cities and businesses work together to evaluate and address racial and gender disparities in the private sector. By performing stu...