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Public spaces are an important part of Knight Foundation's work in cities and the communities where we invest. We believe that great public spaces have the power to transform cities. They are where neighbors can meet and residents can enjoy local arts and culture, take a jog or spend time with family. They help to advance civic engagement and the attachment people feel to their cities - both necessities for creating more informed and engaged communities. Recent research by the Center for Active Design shows that public spaces can help to facilitate community connection, trust and involvement.

Democracy Beyond Elections is a collaborative, national campaign dedicated to transformative democracy rooted in community led decision making.  It is not enough to get the right person elected or to know that those closest to the issues are closest to the solutions - we must act on this knowledge and put real decision making power in community hands. This means equipping community-members often ignored, pushed out, or marginalized by our current democratic systems with the tools, resources, and opportunities to deeply engage in democratic processes. This means committing to radically reimagine what participation and civic engagement really entail - including tangible and consequential power sharing. And this means expanding our definition of democracy to extend between and beyond elections in participatory practices that include everyone.

The Global Development Research Center is an independent nonprofit think tank that carries out initiatives in education, research and practice, in the spheres of environment, urban, community and information, and at scales that are effective.

The concept for this site was born when a group of us at West End Community Ventures were launching Ottawa-Carleton's first Green Community initiative. We wanted to better our understanding of how to improve our own program's impact. In securing funding from the Ontario and Canadian governments, we were encouraged - and enabled - to step back from the day-to-day urgencies of our particular program and to take a broader and longer view.

Learn more about the system dynamics lab at Washington University in St. Louis. We are experts in developing simulation models of problems facing complex social systems. A resource for students, professionals, and researchers, we help build the capacity of those who want to learn and apply system dynamics in order to understand and address specific problems within an organization and community. Our Research Our research includes a focus on understanding the role of social determinants at the community level, identifying strategies for reducing disparities, and informing implementation, scale-up and sustainability of evidence based interventions. Application areas include community responses to intimate partner violence, mental health, natural resources, obesity, cancer, child and maternal health, financial inclusion, K-12 education, and juvenile/criminal justice. Community Engagement We are actively involved in advancing participatory group model building (GMB) methods in diverse communities including both international and domestic settings. Teaching We are invested in building capacity in system dynamics among the next generation of researchers, policy makers, and social innovators. The lab offers a sequence of graduate level courses that prepare students to tackle dynamic social problems with innovative, design-driven, transdisciplinary solutions.

Transition is a movement that has been growing since 2005. It is about communities stepping up to address the big challenges they face by starting local. By coming together, they are able to crowd-source solutions. They seek to nurture a caring culture, one focused on supporting each other, both as groups or as wider communities.

This is a tool for looking up who your elected representatives are across the United States. Based on your address, we can find all the federal, state, county and local officials who represent you in government.

Voter Participation. By keeping voters informed throughout the year on issues that matter most to them, more people will see how legislation affects those issues, and recognize the importance of voting and engaging with their representative year-round. Voters will have a more informed view their representatives during election season.

Since our founding as a multi-partisan and non-profit organization in 2005, The Davenport Institute (formerly Common Sense California) has worked to engage the citizens of this state in the policy decisions that affect our everyday lives. It is our firm belief that, in today's world of easy access to information, and easy connectivity to others, California's municipal and education leaders are seeking ways to involve the residents of their communities in the important issues they confront. Done legitimately, this new kind of leadership produces better, more creative policy solutions and better, more engaged citizens committed to the hard work of self-governance.

The Motivate Cape Town Challenge: Make Cape Town a Fantastic Place to Live, Work and Play! The Plan: CHALLENGE 2012! Empower communities to turn their innovative ideas into sustainable projects. 'Communities' are any gatherings of positive and passionate Capetonians. 'Innovative ideas' are the common wisdom and ability to create the solutions we need.'Sustainable' means lasting, positive change for all the people of Cape Town. 'Projects' are any projects that contribute to positive change.

Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) builds grassroots power to create social and economic justice for low-income, women and women identifying, immigrant, black, and brown communities in Los Angeles. To do this, SCOPE organizes communities, develops leaders, collaborates through strategic alliances, builds capacity through training programs, and educates South L.A.'s residents to have an active role in shaping policies that affect the quality of life in our region. Justice, respect, responsibility, integrity, and voice: These are our core values.

#…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.

From 2014 to 2015, more than 70,000 residents across the United States and Canada directly decided how their cities and districts should spend nearly $50 million in public funds through a process known as participatory budgeting (PB). PB is among the fastest growing forms of public engagement in local governance, having expanded to 46 communities in the U.S. and Canada in just 6 years.

Together We Will: Provide resources and guidance to empower everyday people to organize and act locally; whether new to community organization, returning to a new era of civil rights defense, or seasoned veteran of political and social activism, we will curate and produce resources to serve their needs. Work to elect progressive government leaders in local, county, state, and national races who will defend our values and rights, with an emphasis on identifying and providing resources to prospective candidates of color, female, diverse in abilities, and from the LGBTQ community. Radically include underrepresented groups in our leadership and membership, at all levels of our organization to explicitly combat systemic racism and build institutional equity. Partner with organizations who do the above successfully and amplify their actions to give voice to the millions who have been silent for far too long.

But the good stuff only happens if these organizations know what the entire neighborhood actually needs. Sometimes they don't. And in those cases, it's not possible to vote them out or hold them accountable. If a nonprofit dissolves, it's hard to pick up the pieces quickly, because the infrastructure for a new organization has to be rebuilt from scratch.

The PBNYC example reminds us that pilot programs are useful testing grounds, but promising experiments are unlikely to translate into large-scale successes without careful effort. Such a transformation requires shifts in strategy and tactics, matched with steadfastness in mission and values. Those interested in government innovation can learn a lot from watching PBNYC as it charts this course for participatory budgeting processes around the world.

Through SC2, 19 federal agencies work together in partnership with committed city leaders as they implement locally driven economic visions. SC2 does not involve new federal money nor is it a top-down approach. Based on a city's local vision and its request for federal involvement, SC2 seeks to support each city by increasing federal-local collaboration and improving how the federal government invests in and delivers technical assistance to advance locally driven economic development and job creation goals.

Imagine a world in which ordinary citizens are invested in their governments and take ownership of them by virtue of actually knowing a) how government works and b) how their tax dollars are used for public services. We at CACS see that world vividly and are guided by the vision that solutions to major local and state problems will stem from the marriage of transparency and engagement. The innovative technologies we use open up government, expose its excesses, draw its shareholders-particularly young people-into the political process, and improve the efficacy of services on which citizens rely.

Participedia's searchable database of democratic innovations is made up of three distinct content types including Cases, Methods and Organizations. Bolstering this knowledge base are added resources, including surveys, teaching tools and external data sets. The initial vision for Participedia was developed by Archon Fung (Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) and Mark E. Warren (Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia), and is guided by a set of standing committees.