Giving Thanks, Giving Tuesday: 8 Awesome Orgs Fostering Spatial Justice
For the past six years, State of Place has been sharing its gratitude for “place” as well as compiling a list of organizations fighting the good fight for better places. This year, we’re combining these efforts (I may have gotten a little busy cooking up a storm for Thanksgiving last week - oops) into this list of amazing place and justice fighters for which we’re thankful and of course encouraging you to consider supporting them in their efforts to create more livable, sustainable, and EQUITABLE places people deserve.
Smart Growth America
At the core of Smart Growth America’s (SGA) overall approach is empowering communities through direct technical assistance, powerful advocacy, and thought leadership to realize their vision of fostering livable places, healthy people, and shared prosperity. SGA currently focuses on three specific priorities: climate change and resilience, advancing racial equity, and creating healthy communities. They rely on an interdisciplinary approach across a span of interrelated areas: housing, zoning, planning, land use, economic development, transportation, and others, recognizing the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts nature of equitable citymaking (we see you!). In January of this year, they launched their very successful Equity Summit and are gearing up for an amazing second edition in Jan 2022. This Giving Tuesday, we hope you consider donating to SGA so they can continue their critical work - and you can also sign up for the equity summit to support their ongoing efforts to create more livable and equitable communities. For our part, having worked with SGA on a project that kicked off our AI-powered urban design data collection last year, we hope 2022 brings new opportunities to partner to foster more just, thriving communities.
BlackSpace Urbanist Collective, Inc.
BlackSpace is a nonprofit focused on the empowerment and importance of Black-centered city planning and design. With over 200 Black artists, architects, and urban planners & designers, they are a driving force in ensuring our cities reflect equitable practices and development when shaping their communities. BlackSpace challenges those in the industry and in positions of power to unlearn traditional values and rethink Manifesto-based practices. Please consider a donation to them this Giving Tuesday to support their efforts in protecting and creating Black spaces. Read more about how non-black citymakers can help advance equity here.
The National Fair Housing Alliance
The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) is the “voice of fair housing.” NFHA works to eliminate housing discrimination and to ensure equal housing opportunity for all people through leadership, education, outreach, membership services, public policy initiatives, community development, advocacy, and enforcement. Never has it been more clear than in the post-2020 world that housing is (should be) a basic human right. NFHA works across a variety of issues, including ensuring equitable tech access (we’re all about that), eradicating structural racism, addressing Covid19, and more. We hope you will consider donating to them this giving Tuesday.
Center for Community Progress
Since 2010, the Center for Community Progress has impacted the lives of millions nationwide by transforming vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties into assets for neighbors and neighborhoods. As the leading national, nonprofit resource for urban, suburban, and rural communities seeking to address the full cycle of property revitalization, we work with state and local governments, national partners, and resident leaders to reform vacant property systems and policies, ensuring these properties are returned to productive use that benefit the surrounding community. As the post-2020 world has made clear, spatial inequities - including divestment in marginalized communities - leads to inequitable quality of life outcomes. Consider donating to the Center for Community Progress to help them foster stronger, equitable communities.
The TRust for Public Land
The value of access to parks and public spaces - and the inequitable access to these places by marginalized communities - has never been more glaringly clear. The Trust for Public Land (TPL) has been spearheading efforts to ensure that all people can access nature and the outdoors, close to home, in the cities and communities where they live - as a matter of health, equity, and justice. Not only that, they are (also) fans of data and evidence, putting out important and influential work quantifying spatial inequities tied to park access. From helping to raise funds for conservation; to protecting and restoring natural spaces; to collaborating with communities to plan, design, and create parks, playgrounds, gardens, and trails; TPL works with communities to ensure that development happens for them, and not to them. We hope you consider donating to them today (they have a 3X match today - so do so ASAP!).
Urban Institute
Speaking of data and evidence, for nearly five decades, the Urban Institute has provided policymakers and practitioners with the evidence-based, nonpartisan research they need to make smart decisions and implement practical solutions. Best of all, they have spatial equity embedded in their mission statement: “We are truth seekers, problem solvers, and strategic advisers. We are driven by a passion to ensure that everyone—regardless of income, race or ethnicity, education, or zip code—has the chance to achieve their highest potential.” The consistently put out critical research on topics as wide ranging as community engagement to mobility to the social determinants of health. They’re also an org we SO hope to be able to partner with in 2022! We hope you consider donating to them to help them continue to use evidence to usher in a more just world.
The Thrivance Group
Now, the Thrivance Group, spearheaded by the formidable Dr. Destiny Thomas is not technically a non-profit, but rather a “a for profit, socially-responsible planning firm working, in the interest of racialized people, to bring transformative justice into public policy, urban planning and community development.” However, their work - especially around dignity informed community engagement - is SO critical to ensuring true spatial justice. They are “passionate about creating a world where everyone has equitable access to safe neighborhoods, beautiful spaces, social enterprise, healthy food options, quality healthcare, affordable housing, active transportation and clean air and water.” We hope you will consider supporting them in these efforts!
BONUS EFFORT: PHEAL
Last but not least, we wanted to highlight the efforts of a newly formed initiative, PHEAL, or Planning for Health Equity, Advocacy, and Leadership, of which our Founder/CEO is a contributor and Steering Committee member. The PHEAL collaborative, comprised of 77 planning, health, and equity professionals, established three guiding principles with the aim of informing a policy platform that would reaffirm the imperative need for public health and design professionals to work together to foster an environment of synergy with the purpose of empowering and elevating the voices of historically overburdened communities with health inequities in the time of COVID-19. While PHEAL is not a formal organization as of yet, you can “donate” simply by getting involved - and there are a variety of (non-monetary) ways to do that! So check it out today.
And to learn more about how State of Place’s software allows citymakers to use community-led, data-driven, evidence-based approaches to foster more just, thriving communities, check out our process here and/or contact us to learn more and get a demo! :)