New Community Paradigms

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 Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership supports and promotes public participation as a way of developing more creative and sustainable policy decisions, and more engaged and informed citizens. To fulfill this mission, we assume three roles as we work with California's cities, counties, school districts and civic organizations:

PACE's mission is to inspire interest, understanding, and investment in civic engagement. PACE'S goals are... to build a community within philanthropy committed to vigorous debate and action around encouraging participation and engagement in community, civic, and political life; to inspire and incubate strategic collaborations with policy makers, nonprofits, business, and the media to support active citizenship; and to increase the quantity and the quality of philanthropic investment in civic engagement strategies.

We provide a transformative global system for thousands of companies and cities to measure, disclose, manage and share environmental information. When provided with the necessary information, market forces can be a major cause of change. Working with the world's largest investors, businesses and governments, CDP is uniquely positioned to catalyze action towards a more sustainable economy. New link https://www.cdp.net/en

Some pro-development commentators are starting to suggest a different strategy: acknowledge that NIMBY fears are frequently well-founded and address them with changes in design, policy and process that respect their concerns.

The Partnership for Sustainable Communities works to coordinate federal housing, transportation, water, and other infrastructure investments to make neighborhoods more prosperous, allow people to live closer to jobs, save households time and money, and reduce pollution. The partnership agencies incorporate six principles of livability into federal funding programs, policies, and future legislative proposals.

Many of us remember a time when walking and bicycling to school was a part of everyday life. In 1969, about half of all students walked or bicycled to school.1 Today, however, the story is very different. Fewer than 15 percent of all school trips are made by walking or bicycling, one-quarter are made on a school bus, and over half of all children arrive at school in private automobiles.2

The Carbon Tracker initiative is the first project of Investor Watch, a non-profit company established by its directors to align the capital markets with efforts to tackle climate change. The board of Investor Watch includes Mark Campanale and Jeremy Leggett. Investor Watch was founded in 2009 (Company No. 06888857)

At the Design Management Institute we connect design to business, to culture, to customers-to the changing world. We bring together educators, researchers, designers, and leaders from every design discipline, every industry, and every corner of the planet. The results are transformational. Design that delivers competitive advantage. Design that raises the bar of performance, fit, and feel. Design that touches the heart and mind. Design that creates a unique and memorable bond. Design that changes the world.

If you are like us, you want to participate, yet attending a public meeting that requires physical presence is both time consuming and inconvenient. Plus, you want to contribute ideas of your own, not just listen to someone else tell you what's best. Adding MindMixer to your community-planning project will only enhance your experience, broaden the reach of participants in your community and allow you and others true freedom to infuse your own creative ideas into the process.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.