How to Show (and Grow) the Impact of Your Civic Spaces
Why measurement matters — and tools for your city
There’s strong demand for high-quality civic infrastructure in communities across the U.S. A 2020 report by the Kinder Institute identified more than $12 billion in needed funding for high-priority civic infrastructure projects nationwide. And when local governments have access to flexible federal funding, they often prioritize civic infrastructure. For example, Lexington, Kentucky, dedicated nearly 25% of its investments from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in parks and public spaces, and Akron, Ohio, used its ARPA funds to invest heavily in parks and public spaces. Cities of all sizes, including Detroit and Oskaloosa, Iowa, have used flexible funds from HUD’s Community Development Block Grants to transform vacant lots into a greenway and revitalize downtown building facades.
Despite the fact that local, state and federal governments recently have made notable investments in parks, trails, libraries and other civic spaces the funding is often through one-time sources such as ARPA, and regular funding is still far from sufficient to address this great demand.
To secure the level of investment needed, it’s important to make a strong case to elected officials and funders at all levels that recent investments are paying off for communities. Civic infrastructure can contribute many positive outcomes. It can create spaces for people to gather and socialize, combatting America’s loneliness epidemic. It can shift a neighborhood’s reputation, reducing the stigma born of disinvestment and negative media reports. It can mitigate climate impacts and support neighborhood economies.
But the narrative about civic infrastructure investments rarely elevates these multifaceted outcomes. Instead, standard performance metrics for shared civic spaces like parks and libraries often measure operations. Departmental reports mention data points such as the number of acres mowed or the number of books in circulation. There tends to be little, if any, measurement of community impact. And with no data revealing an investment’s civic, social, environmental and economic impacts, communities have no way to tell if their investments are having an impact at all.
However, if communities measured their investments for much-needed outcomes like trust, safety and social connection, they’d be more capable of demonstrating the power of civic infrastructure to policymakers, foundations and others who can invest in these assets. By focusing on these outcomes, they may also be more likely to implement projects in ways that deliver them.
Measuring what matters
We developed a powerful way to demonstrate — with data — the many ways that investments in civic infrastructure matter for people and communities. In partnership with City Observatory and Interface Studio, our measurement system and kit of DIY tools are available to help cities show the benefits their civic infrastructure is providing.
In Detroit, Reimagining the Civic Commons efforts have focused on the Fitzgerald neighborhood, a formerly disinvested, majority-Black neighborhood on the city’s northwest side. After baseline data was collected in 2017 on the four priority outcomes of civic engagement, socioeconomic mixing, environmental sustainability and value creation, a collection of vacant lots were transformed into Ella Fitzgerald Park and Greenway, the transformation of McNichols, a major neighborhood thoroughfare, kicked off, and HomeBase, a storefront community hub, opened. All of these assets were co-created together with neighbors, who were engaged in the process in ways that built trust and buy-in.
Here’s a preview from our soon-to-be-released metrics reports of what was discovered when data was collected again in 2023 — and how measuring what matters can deliver powerful stories of community change:
Blossoming trust: At a time when just 37% of people believe most people can be trusted and the public’s trust in the federal government is dipping toward an all-time low, it is notable when, on a local scale, trust in both people and government increases substantially.
That’s what’s happening in Fitzgerald. Between 2017 and 2023, the percentage of residents who say most people can be trusted nearly tripled from just 13% to 34%. A similar increase was seen in trust of local government, with the percentage of residents who say they can trust their city government to do what is right most of the time growing from 12% to 30%. Equally powerful, the percentage of people who said local government can almost never be trusted fell dramatically — from 39% in 2017 to just 13% in 2023.
Hubs of social connection: Social isolation is increasing among Americans, creating what U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has deemed a “loneliness epidemic.” In a report released in 2023, the Surgeon General’s office found that loneliness increases the risk of premature death by 26% — equivalent to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.
As communities look for ways to bring people together, data confirmed that Ella Fitzgerald Park and the McNichols corridor are hubs of social capital and new connections. An impressive 82% of visitors to the sites said they have met someone for the first time while in Ella Fitzgerald Park or on McNichols commercial corridor. Additionally, neighborhood residents are connecting with one another more often. In 2017, more than 1 out of 5 (23%) Fitzgerald residents said they never spent time socializing with their neighbors. Now only 5% say that’s the case.
Hope for a brighter future: Communities that have suffered decades of disinvestment and years of racist public policies are often also the subject of stigmatized stories and media narratives. These narratives contribute to a vicious cycle that can lead to further disinvestment: Research has demonstrated that a neighborhood’s reputation is a stronger predictor of future poverty than almost any other factor.
In Fitzgerald, there are signs that a new, hopeful narrative is emerging. Residents are feeling positive about the trajectory of their neighborhood, with 94% saying the neighborhood has changed for the better in recent years — an increase of 60 percentage points since 2017. And the overwhelming majority feel hopeful about its future: 97% believe the neighborhood will improve in the next few years (up 20 percentage points since baseline). This shift shows up in external narratives, too, with recent stories sharing everything from how the investments have spurred business growth to how they have intentionally benefited existing residents and prevented displacement.
Now is the time to start measuring
Data like Detroit’s can demonstrate that a city’s investments in civic infrastructure are having an outsized impact, encouraging further investment in these critical assets. The story of Fitzgerald also shows that when a community sets out to create civic infrastructure that contributes to key outcomes, those outcomes are more likely to be achieved.
If your community is investing in civic infrastructure as part of a federal grant or with state, local or private dollars, now’s the time to start measuring. Download Measuring the Civic Commons and our DIY Toolkit today so you can reveal the multifaceted value of your community’s investments in public spaces.
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.
