Paving, rumble strip installation underway at site of fatal May 5 crash

Chicago is asking its citizens, including youth, to help determine how to spend public money. Participatory budgeting involves communities identifying their greatest needs and guiding spending towards solutions.

As climate change drastically alters the land, sea, and how humans subsist in the face of a changing environment, governments are finding that traditional methods of development are no longer sufficient or sustainable. To adapt, governing bodies around the world are turning to their citizens - especially those most at-risk to the effects of climate change - to lend their ideas and experiences to ensure better, more sustainable development for the future.

Through the Park Friends Network, local volunteer groups work to preserve public spaces in their neighborhood and communicate with the city about needed repairs or improvements. More than 140 Park Friends groups have formed in Philadelphia, with many hosting events such as cleanup days, school supply giveaways, and neighborhood meet-and-greets.

The Yucca Mountain project, intended to safely hold radioactive spent nuclear fuel from around the country, was paused after resistance from Nevada locals and politicians.

Through participatory budgeting, New York residents can propose and vote for community improvement projects through their local city council. In one Queens City Council district, more than 2,300 people aged 11 and up voted to allocate funding to five projects, including new trees and sidewalk guards, new X-ray equipment for the area hospital, and a hydroponic science lab for a local school.

Together Baton Rouge connects different organizations and individuals to collaborate on important community issues, such as advocating for needed infrastructure work. The group helped bring about the restructuring of a corporate tax break program that brought in $282 million in revenue in 2021.

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes worked to design and implement 42 animal crossings along 56 miles of Highway 93 to reduce wild animal collisions. An average of over 22,500 animal crosses happen per year at just 29 of the structures and collisions have reduced by 71%.

Civic engagement academies throughout Kansas provide participants with behind-the-scenes views of how their local government operates. Participants meet with emergency responders, learn how city officials put together a budget and hear from those who maintain municipal utilities. Understanding the inner workings of city operations helps citizens become more engaged in bettering those operations and find ways to be involved outside of running for office. Participation often brings to light city resources they didn’t know existed, which they are quick to share with their fellow residents on social media.

When city planners rushed early in the pandemic to close streets to automobile traffic in order to give residents a safe space to roam outdoors, they ended up learning lessons entirely apart from their original goals rooted in public health and traffic safety. In Durham, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Oakland, community groups pushed back at the cities' initial failures to consider the opinions of communities of color whose neighborhoods were affected by the changes. The pushback led to collaborations and modified plans that redefined the problems at issue and the ways to address them.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a New Deal program to build outdoor recreation facilities, creating thousands of jobs during the Great Depression and building iconic state parks. Delaware programs, like the Senior Corps that enlists the help of people over 55, encourage civic engagement modeled after the CCC. Pennsylvania's Outdoor Corps hires young people to restore public lands over the summer. Congress introduced bills to revive CCC-like initiatives that could support rural economies hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, but environmental funding is not a priority of the current administration.