New Community Paradigms

IAP2 USA advances public participation in the United States by providing its affiliate members with tools and information to conduct high-quality public participation processes, by providing government, industry, nonprofit organizations and participants with educational resources to increase the quality and value of their participation in such processes, and by advocating for quality public participation programs based on our Core Values and Code of Ethics.

Strategy-Nets is a spin-out from the Purdue Center for Regional Development. The principals of Strategy-Nets understand the dynamics of developing and implementing complex strategies in open networks. The primary challenge of civic leadership today is to create and sustain adaptive regional economies. By definition, an adaptive economy has the built-in ability to renew itself by continuously developing new strategies to thrive.

The Purdue Center for Regional Development will foster Indiana becoming the nation's leader in supporting creative, regional approaches to development, that build on three core values: a voluntary approach; the power of data, analysis, ideas and information; and the importance of dialogue, social capital development, and collaborative partnerships.

The slow implosion of the Republican Party - along with the growing strength of a Democratic coalition dominated by low-to-middle-income voters - threatens the power of the corporate establishment and will force big business to find new ways to reassert control of the policy-making process.

"Full exploitation of a technology can take far longer than that. Innovation and technology, though talked of almost interchangeably, are not the same thing. Innovation is what people newly know how to do. Technology is what they are actually doing; and that is what matters to the economy. Steel boxes and diesel engines have been around since the 1900s, and their use together in containerised shipping goes back to the 1950s. But their great impact as the backbone of global trade did not come for decades after that."

Passyunk Avenue Revitalization Corporation (PARC) has a dual mission as both a non-profit real estate development/management company and a public space maintenance and enhancement organization. As a non-profit organization, PARC owns real estate primarily on the Passyunk Avenue retail corridor from Federal Street to McKean Street. With the income from these properties PARC provides supplementary public space maintenance and improvement services on Passyunk Avenue and on the surrounding residential blocks from Broad Street to 9th Street, Federal Street to Snyder Avenue.

PEC primarily serves homeless families consisting of single mothers and their young children. Many of these families are headed by young mothers with little or no work experience and some history of personal or familial trauma. The work of PEC is to support these families through a complement of social services that are intended to chip away at their barriers to success. Families at PEC are supported through emergency and transitional housing, employment and job training, computer skills development, GED and workplace literacy, as well as case management and counseling services. Through its efforts, PEC enables the families it serves to achieve long-term economic and personal self-sufficiency.

University City District is a partnership of world-renowned anchor institutions, small businesses and residents that creates opportunity, improves economic vitality and quality of life in the University City area of West Philadelphia. Our primary mission is community revitalization. We work within a place-based, data-driven framework to invest in world-class public spaces, address crime and public safety, bring life to commercial corridors, connect low-income residents to careers, and promote job growth and innovation.

NKCDC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to revitalizing the Kensington, Fishtown, and Port Richmond neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Our mission is to strengthen the physical, social, and economic fabric of the community by being a catalyst for sustainable development and community building.

Too often, our national debates are defined by the rigid or outdated orthodoxies of both the left and right. This polarization leads to ideologically driven policies and political gridlock, and it drowns out the voices of millions of Americans in the forgotten middle. We believe there is a better way, a "third way"-one that discards the false choices presented by both sides. This third way philosophy is ideal for fostering the most effective and emergent approaches to major problems-ones that can attract the plurality of citizens who represent the political center and whose support is crucial to effective and credible governance.

This Website contains information on the NRCS uses of the IMPLAN data and model for regional economic, program and project analysis. IMPLAN is a PC based regional economic analysis system. Unlike other economic analysis products, IMPLAN constructs a complete set of regional social accounts. The 'Region' can be any combination of US Counties. For more information see NRCS IMPLAN Basics. For additional materials, see www.implan.com. Please contact David Buland for assistance.

The TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE TOOL is designed to help optimize the impact of economic development investments on economic vitality, natural resource stewardship, and community well-being. Click below to get quick facts, or download this User's Guide to dig into details.

The U.S. Economic Development Administration's investment policy is designed to establish a foundation for sustainable job growth and the building of durable regional economies throughout the United States. This foundation builds upon two key economic drivers - innovation and regional collaboration. Innovation is key to global competitiveness, new and better jobs, a resilient economy, and the attainment of national economic goals. Regional collaboration is essential for economic recovery because regions are the centers of competition in the new global economy and those that work together to leverage resources and use their strengths to overcome weaknesses will fare better than those that do not. EDA encourages its partners around the country to develop initiatives that advance new ideas and creative approaches to address rapidly evolving economic conditions.

If you are a systems thinker, you might sometimes feel you are going a little crazy. We still live in command-and-control land and our assumptions haven't caught up to the realities of the world. If you have begun to act and talk like a systems thinker, you may be treated a little like the court jester. Actually, I'd say it was closer to the boy who declared the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. Nonetheless, this is what it's like being a systems thinker. You see and say things that others think are a little crazy. Alternatively, people hear your words, but you realise after a while that they are processing them with an analytical mindset and so misunderstand the whole thrust of thinking systemically. We are all prisoners of our own flat-earthisms, after all. So you are either side-lined because your ideas seem a little far-fetched ("If there is no hierarchy, how do you control people????") or what they think they understand is not what you intended.

Davidson Design for Life (DD4L) is an initiative of the Town of Davidson to foster healthy community design through the use of health impact assessments (HIA), public participation, and collaborative efforts in Davidson, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region, and North Carolina.

All Minnesotans should have the opportunity to make choices that allow them to live a long, healthy life, regardless of their income, education, or ethnic background. Everyone wants good health in order to be productive at work and to succeed in school, and to have affordable medical and housing costs. To make this opportunity a choice for all Minnesotans, we all have to do our part in creating and maintaining healthy homes and communities. Every person and every organization has a role to play, small or large.

It's easy to confuse the merely complicated with the genuinely complex. Managers need to know the difference: If you manage a complex organization as if it were just a complicated one, you'll make serious, expensive mistakes.

"If we want our economy not to be merely resilient, but to flourish, we must strive for antifragility. It is the difference between something that breaks severely after a policy error, and something that thrives from such mistakes. Since we cannot stop making mistakes and prediction errors, let us make sure their impact is limited and localized, and can in the long term help ensure our prosperity and growth."

We have coined the term "Heart & Soul Community Planning" to describe an approach that engages citizens in land use planning as a pathway to vibrant, enduring communities. Our approach helps diverse citizens identify and enhance a town's most valued attributes: those special places, characteristics and customs that residents treasure and that connect them to one another. If lost, these attributes would be widely missed and alter the character of the town.

The mission of the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities is to create strong, sustainable communities by connecting housing to jobs, fostering local innovation, and helping to build a clean energy economy.