Can we transform civic assets for everyone?

Tools for capturing the value of the commons

by Carol Coletta, The Kresge Foundation

The Rail Park at sunset with views of the city skyline in Philadelphia. Image credit: Albert Yee.

There is a debate raging today in America’s cities. How do we invest in neighborhoods without causing prices to skyrocket and displacing residents? Does new investment inevitably result in “gentrification” or displacement? Is gentrification even relevant in slow-growth cities? Who speaks for communities, especially when communities are always changing? And what do we do about the fact that today there are three times as many high poverty neighborhoods in large U.S. cities than in 1970?

Reimagining the Civic Commons was created to revitalize sleepy civic assets that exist in all our communities — libraries, parks, recreation centers, community centers, trails, lakes, rivers and streams, streets and sidewalks, even vacant land. We aim to demonstrate that the right investments in these public places can positively impact the social, economic and environmental circumstances of people in neighborhoods. We have four main goals, and one of them — to invest in public places in ways that increase economic value in surrounding neighborhoods — has caused us to consider how to capture this value for the benefit of existing residents, those who call these neighborhoods home.

We recognize that great placemaking is not just about what can be seen. It is also about the who, the how and the why. It directly calls the question: Who are we building places for and to what end?

A before and after rendering of Chicago’s St. Laurence School. Images courtesy of Rebuild Foundation.

Tools for cities

As the civic commons is reimagined through projects like those in Akron, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis and Philadelphia, and as other cities work to create public places for everyone, the value of nearby real estate may increase. But as the real estate value increases, few cities have systems in place to capture that value.

There are ways to capture some of that value in a manner that both benefits existing residents and better sustains these renewed civic assets over time. The Value Capture in the Commons toolkit is designed to serve as a starting point for doing so for neighborhoods, municipalities, non-profits, and philanthropic organizations.

Many of the tools are well-established, with significant applicability to civic assets. Others are ideas that leading national experts have just begun exploring. Together, they provide a variety of options that those of us working to revive public assets can use to both sustain operations and benefit the people who live nearby. They include more traditional value capture mechanisms, emerging tools and indirect value creation methods. And while not all tools will be applicable to all assets, many can be layered to provide maximum flexibility and sustainability.

Download the toolkit

One of the reasons we created this toolkit is because we believe investment in civic assets that creates social and economic change is urgently needed.

We are living in a time of great economic dislocation and growing inequality. In communities across the United States, there is growing economic segregation, with almost a third of us living in neighborhoods where everyone is either affluent or everyone is low-income. Poverty is also growing: the number of people living in neighborhoods where the poverty level is greater than 40 percent has doubled since 2000.

At the same time, trust between people is in freefall and we barely know our neighbors. Only 20 percent of Americans report spending time regularly with neighbors. And a third of us say we spend no time at all with neighbors at all.

First public access to kayaking on the Mississippi River in Memphis provides a new perspective of the city. Image courtesy of The Fourth Bluff.

If we want to tackle the big challenges our communities face — resilience, smart growth, equity, poverty, drug addiction — pick an issue! — we have to begin with simple acts of bringing strangers together, not online, not digitally, but in place. This is the goal of Reimagining the Civic Commons — creating great public places that are shared by everyone, a neutral ground where common purpose can be nurtured.

This is the promise of a robust civic commons.

There is a reason trust is plunging. It’s not just a “fake news” problem. It’s not just a Russia problem. It’s not just a social media problem, or a cable news problem. Those are amplifiers. Trust starts in community. It starts with making places all of us want to occupy.

That is the purpose of Reimagining the Civic Commons and why we work every day to find the support to sustain it.

Skate night on Akron’s Cascade Plaza. Image credit: Tim Fitzwater.

Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration between The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and local partners.