How Civic Infrastructure Grows the Local Economy
5 ways cities are leveraging public space to spur economic activity
New research from The Brookings Institution on smaller communities finds that investments in “quality of life and place” are more effective than many traditional economic development tools, including incentives and lower taxes.
The report also demonstrates that investment in civic infrastructure like parks, trails, libraries and cultural centers remains an under-recognized economic development strategy. As the report’s authors state: “Our research on smaller communities has found that community amenities such as recreation opportunities, cultural activities, and excellent services (e.g., good schools, transportation options) are likely bigger contributors to healthy local economies than traditional ‘business-friendly’ measures.”
As communities grapple with how to recover and rebuild in an ongoing pandemic, some cities are reconsidering the role of civic assets in intentionally fostering local businesses, creating economic value in communities and contributing to equitable neighborhood development. We profile five cities focused on supporting local economies and the people who live there with investments in better civic infrastructure.
Macon: Reimagining downtown for people
A city’s downtown can be an important civic, cultural and economic center, and often drives the vitality of an entire region. In Macon, Georgia, for years local leaders had been focusing on new construction and attracting new businesses to the city core, but were left scratching their heads as to why downtown’s nascent potential wasn’t turning into more activity. This changed when the government and non-profit partners turned their focus to attracting new residents to downtown, instead of focusing solely on business growth.
In 2014, the Macon-Bibb County Urban Development Authority, with funding from Knight Foundation and the Peyton Anderson Foundation, convened a multi-sector group of partners to begin a “people-first” downtown master plan. After a robust public process, the Macon Action Plan was born, and its “big tent” approach allowed the plan and partners to focus on creating a new inviting experience downtown.
In just four short years, the city saw an increase of almost 800 residents living in the downtown core, a 25 percent increase in storefront occupancy (along with high retention of those businesses) and a 100 percent increase in property values. With help from the Downtown Challenge, a grant program designed to implement the Macon Action Plan through a series of small grants, over 92 percent of the plan was completed by 2018. The activity that resulted from an influx of new residents had the effect that no amount of economic incentives had ever achieved — it created a market for business growth.
When the Macon Action Plan was updated in 2019, the team and stakeholders working on the plan wanted to change the central question of the plan from “How do we make something happen downtown?” to “How do we ensure that the right things happen downtown?” The success of the initial efforts downtown allowed partners, particularly NewTown Macon, to invest in attracting diverse business and property owners, increasing by double-digits the percentage of black owned businesses since the plan update in 2019. Programs such as their Entrepreneur’s Academy, Downtown Diversity Initiative and Developer’s Academy have demystified real estate and business processes for first-time investors and given people from marginalized communities direct access to capital previously unavailable. By putting significant effort into providing funds and programming for diverse audiences, such as an annual Buy Black tour led by One World Link, downtown Macon has become a far more inclusive, welcoming place.
Chicago: An artist-led platform for food entrepreneurs
A stone’s throw from the Stony Island Arts Bank, the Chicago-based Rebuild Foundation has created the Retreat at Currency Exchange Café, which serves as an innovation and incubation hub for local culinary artists and hospitality entrepreneurs on Chicago’s South Side. The Café, owned and operated by the foundation, provides an artist-led platform for emerging chefs, coffee companies and hospitality entrepreneurs to refine and build their businesses through financial support, mentorship and community engagement. Retreat, whose not-for-profit model lends a new method of artistic engagement through the culinary and hospitality arts, is a beacon of Rebuild’s ambitious cultural initiatives.
Relaunched in 2020 when public gathering restrictions were lifted, Retreat at Currency Exchange Café has become a thriving performance venue, providing local musicians and artists paid opportunities to perform, showcase their talents and share their work.
Every Thursday evening, Retreat hosts live performances by local musicians, as well as rising groups known internationally. On Friday evenings, the cafe transforms into a platform for disc jockeys to experiment with genre-based sets exploring Afrobeats, 90s R&B, Lover’s Rock and more. This past spring, Rebuild partnered with Oldtown School of Folk Music and their community-based arm, Music Moves Chi, to present a special performance by Les Filles de Illighadad, a musical group from Niger reasserting the role of tende in Tuareg guitar.
With exceptional and culturally-relevant beats and bites, Retreat is a destination for patrons on the South Side. The careful curation of music and food programming has made Retreat a neighborhood staple, a community gathering space and a place of cultural exchange for the nearby Washington Park neighborhood.
Lexington: Public space provides an everyday market for artists
Art on the Town, a new program of the City of Lexington, provides free mobile art carts for eligible local artists to sell, demonstrate or display their artwork along the Town Branch Commons. The program began in June 2022 with eight mobile carts.
Town Branch Commons, a transformative public-private park and trail system that traces the historic Town Branch Creek through downtown Lexington, provides a unique sales and demonstration venue for local fine artists, craftspeople and authors. The carts are available seven days a week, giving dozens of individual artists and small creative businesses a highly visible opportunity to sell their work and grow a customer base amongst residents and visitors.
Artists are a valuable component to Lexington’s and Kentucky’s economies. According to the State Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, artists in Kentucky comprised a group of more than 46,000 people, or 2.4 percent of Kentucky’s workforce in 2020. They added $5.6 billion to Kentucky’s economy, and collectively earned $2.8 billion. By supporting both local artists and public space, Lexington is harnessing both vibrancy and economic momentum throughout downtown Lexington.
San José: Improving parks while addressing core civic priorities
Like many cities and communities across the nation, San José faces critical challenges around public space and environmental stewardship, homelessness and economic development. While these are often positioned as conflicting priorities, San José is approaching these intersectional issues with a program partnership that has potential to address them all: employing and supporting unhoused residents, enhancing park stewardship and building pathways to future gainful employment and civic connection.
Since its inception in 2005, the non-profit Downtown Streets Team (DST) has been cleaning up communities and providing pathways out of homelessness throughout California. In downtown San José, with funding from Valley Water’s Safe, Clean Water and Natural Flood Protection Program, the partnership between Guadalupe River Park Conservancy (GRPC), and DST engages homeless, formerly homeless, or housing insecure individuals in cleaning up Guadalupe River Park — the very park where some of them once resided.
Through weekly litter removal and park maintenance, the program promotes skill development combined with case management, while building a sense of teamwork and connections to the broader community.
Team member Daniel Washington, who has been with DST for a little over three years, says, “Their case management is very thorough. They have different resources to help you with just about anything you might need help with. The most impressive part about DST is anything you need help with, they’re there for you.”
Team members find a sense of pride in giving back to the community, both the greater San José community and their homeless community.
Evelyn Bonato, a nine-year volunteer with DST, says, “A sense of community and togetherness kept me stabilized and supported. We’re all a team and work great together because we all come from a place of homelessness and/or crisis so we understand.”
As an outcome of this partnership, GRPC connected DST with BrightView, a landscaping company which provides in-kind maintenance in Guadalupe River Park and shares the common challenge of too few staff in the current economic climate. DST and BrightView have since established an apprenticeship pipeline program which has welcomed five DST program participants.
San José’s civic commons team and partners continue to understand and explore the connection of promoting economic empowerment programs while addressing additional community priorities. The workforce development program led by DST has successfully provided economic empowerment that helps participants escape the cycle of homelessness, while removing trash from contaminating the Guadalupe River and making the River Park more welcoming. In the process, other cross-benefit programs continue to be developed and prototyped: paying unhoused residents for trash collected, connecting housing with employment and park maintenance, and developing a more robust career path from existing opportunities that increases economic mobility.
Philadelphia: Cleaning up is creating jobs and supporting small business
Centennial Parkside Community Development Corporation (CPCDC) is a community-based organization made up of residents, business owners and local development boosters in the East Parkside neighborhood of Philadelphia. The East Parkside neighborhood borders the city’s largest municipal park, the 2,000-acre Fairmount Park. In 2017, shortly after it was founded, CPCDC hired three “Clean and Green Ambassadors,” a team of uniformed local residents tasked with keeping the East Parkside neighborhood clean. Since that time, the Clean and Green Team has grown from three Ambassadors working 12 hours a week to five Ambassadors working a minimum of half-time. All Ambassadors earn a living wage and are led by a full-time Director of Sanitation and Environmental Programming.
What originally started as a program supported by CPCDC’s operating budget is now supported by contracts with four organizations: the non-profit Fairmount Park Conservancy, the City of Philadelphia Water Department, the Philadelphia Zoo and the Philadelphia Department of Commerce. In addition to creating living-wage employment for local residents, the Clean and Green Ambassadors program supports local businesses by keeping nearby commercial corridors clean.
In 2021, the CPCDC Clean and Green Team collected more than 2,000 bags of trash; during the first five months of 2022, the Clean and Green Team collected more than 600 bags of trash. Further skills development for Clean and Green Ambassadors comes through training in park and rain garden maintenance, giving them new skills in a rapidly-changing economy.
As East Parkside resident Lorraine Gomez explains: “If we did not have our Cleaning Ambassadors, our community would not be conducive for our residents to shop on our corridors. Your environment affects how you feel and what you do. People’s behavior is often a reaction to their environment and when the environment is clean, that is 30 percent of the battle in achieving economic development.”
The historic Strawberry Mansion neighborhood in North Philadelphia also borders Fairmount Park, considered the neighborhood’s “back yard” that has provided generations of Mansion residents with recreation (biking, hiking, swimming, tennis) and gathering spaces for cook-outs with family and friends. Residents access the park through several major corridors, which house a mixture of residences, vacant parcels and a sprinkle of businesses. Because of their heavy use, these corridors are prone to litter and large trash piles (called short dumping), which threatens the health and safety of those using park access points. The Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corporation (SMCDC) Clean Pathways Initiative aims to keep these corridors clean both by hiring local cleaning crews and engaging residents for assistance.
Once a week, a 10-person crew of cleaners armed with SMCDC’s trademark red vests, large rolling trash cans and pickers removes 5 to 7 bags of litter and notes short dumping sites for later reporting along an 8 block stretch of the 10 corridors that open to Fairmount Park. Crews consist of people aged 18 to 34 interested in training programs or gainful employment. Through the SMCDC’s “Day Pay” model, crew members earn $100 per day and receive assistance with resumés and financial assistance in obtaining necessary identification to qualify for work. Weekly commitments to the work are encouraged.
Residents living on the corridors are encouraged to participate in the corridor’s maintenance by utilizing SMCDC’s “Litter Kits.” The kits contain gloves, pickers and a bag. They are free to residents along the corridors who take a pledge to help keep the corridor clean. Local businesses are also encouraged to help maintain the corridors and to sponsor kits for their area.
Clean Pathways creates opportunities for residents to earn income, while helping to keep the access to a beloved public space safe and free from litter.
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration of The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and local partners.
