FREE SPEECH ZONE | Amid decline, local rebirth—five community development plans get traction

Any opinion section of Twin Cities media shows there's a lot to be worried about these days -- monumental budget shortfalls, continuing home foreclosures, and local school closings and program cutbacks. Those are just a few of the troubling challenges out there.

But there's also a lot going in the Twin Cities to be proud of-especially in our neighborhoods. These are stories that rarely make it into the mainstream media, but they are nonetheless inspiring.

Despite all the bad news around us, five areas in the Twin Cities are making remarkable progress toward revitalization. Over the past year, driven by resident vision and wide-spread participation, each area has created an action plan and eagerly started implementing it.

The North Side of Minneapolis has the NoMi plan, while the South Side has the Backyard Initiative plan and the American Indian Community Blueprint. St. Paul's Central Corridor has the Frogtown Rondo Action Network plan, and the East Side, the Prosperity Campaign Action Plan. In Hopkins, it's the Blake Road Collaborative Action Plan.

Recognizing the unique strengths and goals of residents in each area, these plans approach community development in slightly different ways. In South Minneapolis, where there are two revitalization movements, the American Indian Community Blueprint emphasizes culture, and outlines the transformation of Franklin Avenue into a cultural corridor that restores pride and prosperity to residents and serves as a tourism magnet. Blocks away, the Backyard Initiative emphasizes health, and unites local residents and Abbott Northwest Hospitals and Clinics in a large-scale effort to improve the health of those living within a square mile of the hospital campus.

Their approaches may be different, but each of the five areas is using a similar process--one that's proving community-based planning and development really do work.  It starts with community engagement-getting people who live and work in these five areas involved by asking their opinions and perspectives. Those local voices lead to a community-driven vision and plan of action, with improved quality of life as the goal.

One notable difference in these plans is that they are comprehensive. They don't just address affordable housing, but the full range of opportunities that neighborhoods must offer in order for residents to achieve a higher quality of life. That means considering things like job training, employment assistance, transportation, education, child care, environmental quality, and health issues as part of community development.

Because of the breadth and depth of these plans, no one can do the job alone. More comprehensive development means much wider partnerships among individuals, organizations, sectors, and systems. And, to ensure implementation efficiency, there needs to be community leadership and accountability in the form of a partnership and coordinating agency. Finally, this collaboration must understand and use the power of communications to tell its own story of community vitality and sustainability.

Because community strength and sustainability isn't one thing, it's a thousand things-from a neighborhood clean-up in Hopkins to working on diabetes prevention in South Minneapolis to the efforts of the Central Corridor partnership to design a tool that government can use to measure the impact of their development efforts on community health.

These examples are a great reminder that all community development happens locally, in a particular place among particular people. Residents and business owners not only need to lead such efforts, they need to be among the chief beneficiaries. And, at Twin Cities LISC, that's what we support. We understand, as do many others, that local vitality is inextricably linked to regional vitality. Every improvement made in these neighborhoods reverberates positively throughout the Twin Cities. And in such times as these, that's very good news for all of us.

Andriana Abariotes

Executive Director

Twin Cities Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)

Andriana Abariotes