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"The Thriving Places Index is a new way to look at the strengths and challenges of the place where you live. It shows whether the conditions are in place for people to thrive - in a fair and sustainable way. Click here to see the full Thriving Places Index website.  "

Experts from around the world-in academic, business, and public sectors alike-have shown that strategically investing in communities is a critical element to long-term economic development and quality of life in the 21st century. The future of communities in Michigan and elsewhere depends on their abilities to attract and retain knowledge-based workers, entrepreneurs and growing industries. Central to attracting these important commodities is the concept of PLACE. To be successful communities must effectively develop and leverage their key human, natural, cultural and structural assets and nurture them through enacting effective public policy. That's one (long) answer.  Another one is, with a tip of the cap to Fred Kent at the Project for Public Spaces, "turning a place from one that you can't wait to get through into one that you never want to leave."  I like this one better.

The PLACE Program fosters policy change that supports healthy, safe, and active environments for all Los Angeles County residents. We recognize that the design and structure of our cities, communities, neighborhoods, work sites, schools, and streets can impact how much physical activity we get, what we eat, the safety of our streets, and the quality of the air we breathe. How we choose to design or improve various aspects of our environment plays an important role in preventing injury and many chronic conditions - such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes and asthma - whose risk factors include physical inactivity, poor nutrition and exposure to air pollution. As more Angelinos face the threat and reality of developing these chronic conditions, the PLACE Program supports the development of healthier communities by fostering policy change that improves the places where people live, work and play.

WHAT IF WE BUILT OUR COMMUNITIES AROUND PLACES? As both an overarching idea and a hands-on approach for improving a neighborhood, city, or region, Placemaking inspires people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of every community. Strengthening the connection between people and the places they share, Placemaking refers to a collaborative process by which we can shape our public realm in order to maximize shared value. More than just promoting better urban design, Placemaking facilitates creative patterns of use, paying particular attention to the physical, cultural, and social identities that define a place and support its ongoing evolution.

Creative placemaking is a new way of making communities more livable and prosperous through the arts, and making them better places for the arts. Creative placemaking is about more than public art or performing arts centers. It is about making places better for everyone. Traditional approaches to using arts as a revitalization tool tend to focus on building large institutions, districts or just 'doing projects.' Creative placemaking starts with building effective partnerships. Our approach to creative placemaking is based on six key elements: Building diverse and productive partnerships in communities and with local leadership to implement ideas. Enhancing quality of life for more people in communities Increasing economic opportunity for more stakeholders in communities Building healthier climates for creativity and cultural expression Engaging existing assets (both physical and human) as much as possible Promoting the best and distinct qualities of a place Our work is guided by the teachings of reflective practice, double-loop learning, asset-based community development, fifth level leadership, arts-based community development, communicative practice, environmental justice, and other current and cutting-edge philosophies of practice.  

The Lloyd & Delphine Martin Prosperity Institute is the world's leading think-tank on the role of sub-national factors - location, place and city-regions - in global economic prosperity.We take an integrated view of prosperity, looking beyond economic measures to include the importance of quality of place and the development of people's creative potential. The Institute conducts relevant research to shape debate about economic prosperity and to inform private, public and civic decision-making at the highest levels. Headquartered at the MaRS Centre in downtown Toronto, we are affiliated with the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. We also serve as a special resource to the province of Ontario and the greater Toronto region.

Built on the idea that every past is a place, HyperCities is a digital research and educational platform for exploring, learning about, and interacting with the layered histories of city and global spaces. Developed though collaboration between UCLA and USC, the fundamental idea behind HyperCities is that all stories take place somewhere and sometime; they become meaningful when they interact and intersect with other stories. Using Google Maps and Google Earth, HyperCities essentially allows users to go back in time to create and explore the historical layers of city spaces in an interactive, hypermedia environment.

A growing number of places recognize that being welcoming leads to prosperity. Welcoming America provides the roadmap and support they need to become more inclusive toward immigrants and all residents. Launched in 2009, Welcoming America has spurred a growing movement across the United States, with one in eight Americans living in a Welcoming Community. Our award-winning, social entrepreneurship model is beginning to scale globally. A non-profit, non-partisan organization, Welcoming America is proud to support the many diverse communities and partners who are leading efforts to make their communities more vibrant places for all.

Housing California is the only voice in the state Capitol for children, seniors, families, people experiencing homelessness, and everyone who needs a safe, stable affordable place to call home. Mission Since 1988, Housing California has been working to prevent homelessness and increase the variety and supply of safe, stable, accessible, and permanently affordable places to live. Housing California staff accomplishes its goals through education, advocacy, and outreach.

Popularise is the online platform that shares the power to build new places in your neighborhood with local residents like you How often have you thought, "Why doesn't someone turn that vacant building down the street into a bakery, bar, or restaurant?" Now you have the ability to be directly involved in transforming your neighborhood, rather than waiting for someone else to do it. By joining other people in your area on Popularise, you can create the kind of cool, authentic places you want in D.C. Submit your own ideas, and vote for what to build on projects posted by real estate developers and local business operators.

E.F. Schumacher (author of Small is Beautiful) offered timeless advice about how to boost our communities, "Perhaps we cannot raise the wind. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it." Here's a handy list of ways you can capture the breeze in the place you call home. And we're sure you'll discover more ideas of your own.

The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking (NCCP) was created to build capacity for sustainable and cost-effective creative placemaking. Creative placemaking is a new way of making communities more livable and prosperous through the arts, and making them better places for the arts. Creative placemaking is about more than public art or performing arts centers. It is about making places better for everyone.

An initiative of Peter Block and friends, Restore Commons aims to curate the ways of thinking and practice towards the common good. The move to the commons is well underway. We simply want to document it. Restore Commons is designed to be an online gathering place for stories and radical ideas strong enough to build the social capital and engaged community required to restore the common good. The website features a variety of content including stories, articles, videos and podcasts that highlight inverted and radical thinking that is essential to an alternative economy, a connected neighborhood, and ways of dealing with the end of the so-called consumerist middle class. This is what is required to restore compassion, civility and interdependence that is disturbingly fragile in today's world. The focus is on place-based, localized and grassroots initiatives that are alternatives to the tools of empire.

The rise of the state is a key marker in the evolution of human society. States typically emerged when one chiefdom (amid a competing set of chiefdoms) achieved a greater and more effective level of organization.
Despite the presence of similar conditions, some states rose and flourished while some advanced chiefdoms never passed the threshold into statehood. Why states emerged in some places and not others, why they arose independently in six places around the world starting about 5,000 years ago, and why their rise was usually associated with the growth of cities, are fascinating questions for anthropologists. Answers to these questions could offer insights into today's urban systems.

We're working with NYU's Jay Rosen to bring our model for journalism to the US and beyond, as The Correspondent, where journalists and members meet. The Correspondent will provide a different kind of news. Instead of amplifying the outliers that took place today, we'll work to uncover what takes place ev

Placekey is a free, universal standard identifier for any physical place, so that the data pertaining to those places can be shared across organizations easily. However, Placekey goes beyond just an identifier. It's a movement of organizations and individuals that prize access to data. Placekey members want geospatial data that is easily joined and combined...because real answers come from combining data from many different sources. It is a philosophy that data should be easy to access, and data should not be hoarded. These members believe that data, when combined, can do massive good.

#…we made a great place even better? **Dunbar East Linton and the local villages have always been community-minded places with get-it-done approach to making live better.** Community groups central [response COVID-19] are now working on recovery so area can be home thriving people in while respecting wellbeing of all whole planet.

It is time for a profound shift. As we experience the effects of a global economic system that values profit and endless growth over the welfare of humans and the biosphere, we believe that people are more ready than ever to usher in something radically different. We are reconnecting to our hearts, to our communities, and to the jusearth, and committing to building a future that works for all.  A new system must be built from the bottom up, person by person, place by place, working together for the common good. We believe that change is inevitable, but justice requires conscious work. We stand for wise choices as we navigate the future, and we see a thriving network of people, working collaboratively, as the path to a regenerative economy and a more just society.

The highest rates of multidimensional poverty are found in Southern and Western metro areas like Memphis, Birmingham, and Miami, where more than 1 in 5 low-income adults live with multiple disadvantages. The McAllen region exhibits the highest rate of multidimensional poverty overall (41 percent), followed by metropolitan Fresno, where one-third of adults are at least doubly disadvantaged. In each of the regions mentioned, living in a poor area is the most likely additional disadvantage experienced by low-income residents. But in other metro areas with above-average multidimensional poverty rates, different disadvantages come to the fore, like limited education in Stockton, lack of health insurance in Deltona, and lack of employment in Lakeland (see the interactive bar charts below, or the full appendix tables).

Some may be surprised to hear PPS echoing a version of the modernist mantra "form ever follows function" (see principle 9), but it's important for us to remember what that phrase is really all about. When it was first coined by Louis Sullivan, it was a humanist idea: that the form of a building should serve first and foremost the human uses that animate it. But over time, as Jane Jacobs observed, the idea of function underwent a "drift from humanism to gimmickry."