Background Papers

• RegionsThis is the sixth update to partners concerning the Partnership for Regional Livability
• Federal Role
• Issues
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Archive of Previous Project Updates

• The Learning Plan
• Innovations in Metropolitan Cooperation by Julia Parzen
• The Federal Role in Metropolitan Cooperation by Clem Dinsmore
• Outlining to New Metropolitan Initiative by Tony Hiss

Regional Activities

• Atlanta
• Bay Area
• Chicago
• Denver

Atlanta National Meeting

• Hope for the Regions
• Reports from the Regions
• Learning to "Do It Together
• Lessons from the PRL Experience
• A Conceptual Framework for the Next Three Years
• Background Research
• Meeting Participants
• Minutes

San Francisco Working Meeting

• Meeting Notes Day 1 (June 28, 1999)
• Meeting Notes Day 2 (June 29, 1999)

Presentations

• Alternative Approaches to Federal Regional Collaboration by Doug Henton
• Regional Dialogue on Clean Air and Dialogue by Tim Brown
• DRAFT Presentation before the Partnership for Regional Livability by Bruce Katz
• Oberservations about PRL (revised) by Peter Plastrik

Media

• Strategy
• Coverage
• One Page Description

Calendar

• Meetings

Project Organization

• Work Plan & Timeline

Participants

• Foundations
• Government
• Regional Partners
• Resource Group
• Staff

Related Initiatives

• Funders Working Group on Sprawl
• Smart Growth Coalition
• Smart Growth Network
• SprawlWatch
• Other Links

What is the Partnership? The Partnership is a project started in 1999 to help civic leaders in regions across America address large-scale, intractable problems, such as air pollution, sprawl, poverty, and unemployment. The Partnership delivers technical assistance to regions, drawing on a national network of experts. It organizes a region's access to federal government expertise and resources, with the cooperation of local and state elected officials. It helps develop federal readiness and capacity to work with regions. And it helps regions build supportive relationships with each other, exchange information, and share tools and lessons learned.

The Partnership initially selected four regions to work with: Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Each region developed one or more projects to address regional challenges: cleaning up air pollution; connecting poor, inner-city job seekers to jobs sprouting in suburbs; preventing sprawl into the countryside and congestion on the roadways; attracting private investment for housing and businesses in impoverished neighborhoods; and protecting the quality of drinking water. After the regions designed their projects and built local and state support for them, they each asked an array of federal agencies to participate in the projects. Today, the projects are in various stages of development, with more than a dozen federal agencies participating in discussions about how the federal government can add value to the regional projects using existing authorities.

In addition, the Partnership launched an Information Project in collaboration with the four regions and several federal agencies to create better information tools and data bases for regional decision making. This Partnership, for example, will help the Denver region to develop the capacity for mapping and analysis of the regional job market and help the Bay Area to provide information and planning tools to communities so that they can map alternative growth scenarios.

Why is the Partnership needed? Cities, suburbs, and rural communities within regions are finding that they share problems that reduce the quality of life for many of their residents. Still, finding ways to work together at the regional level to make communities better places to live is a struggle. Because regional areas are largely unclaimed by government or other institutions, new capacities must be built, especially the capacity to bring together stakeholders from the private, nonprofit, and public sectors. The Partnership was originated by a coalition of national foundations, federal officials, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and others to build these regional capacities for innovative solutions.

Where is the Partnership going? The Partnership's first year has been very productive. It has brought together diverse stakeholders in the regions and Washington to work on regional problems. It has helped regions build stronger relationships with federal officials and other regions. It has provided technical assistance to regions that can be turned into tools for other regions. It has helped federal agencies work with regions and collaborate with each other. It has supported regional projects that are making progress in tackling difficult problems. In short, many of the seeds - the ideas and hopes -- of the Partnership are bearing fruit.

A key to success has been to ensure that the Partnership is flexible, timely, and innovative in responding to the needs of regions and federal officials. The Partnership intends to grow without losing its responsiveness and creativity. One way will be to expand the number of regional projects the Partnership supports. Another will be through the Information Project, which involves many federal agencies and can use regions as "test users." A third way will be through the creation of a national network of regions.

The Regional Projects

The Denver Regional Team of the Partnership for Regional Livability is focusing on creating a high performance network to help the working poor work their way up in partnership with Metro Denver's information, telecommunications and knowledge based industry. The core strategy is to (1) develop the knowledge base to anticipate the demand and supply sides of the labor market in greater metropolitan Denver and (2) build the capacity for the region's communities and sectors to collaborate effectively using this information to target job opportunities that allow residents of the region to advance out of poverty.

The Chicago Regional Team of the Partnership for Regional Livability has focused on advancing the Regional Dialogue on Clean Air and Redevelopment. The purpose of the Regional Dialog is to create and implement innovative strategies for attaining Clean Air Act standards in a manner that works for diverse local interests in the Chicago metropolitan region, including industry, environmentalists, developers, local governments, labor, academics, and federal and state agencies.

The Atlanta Regional Team of the Partnership for Regional Livability has focused on three related projects: (1.) Empowering GRTA, (2.) The Chattahoochee Riverway and (3.) The Mixed Income Communities Initiative. What binds these three projects is that they all deal with aspects of the larger "regional livability" debate and all fall within the mandate of the new Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA).

The purpose of the Empowering GRTA project is to help the GRTA board and staff to quickly identify transportation solutions to achieve cleaner air and, over a longer period of time, establish a work plan for its broader mission of statewide land use and comprehensive planning. The purpose of the Chattahoochee Riverway project is to create a 160-mile, near-continuous ribbon of green running diagonally across the state from the North Georgia Mountains to Columbus, protecting safe drinking water and enhancing communities with recreational and natural lands. The Chattahoochee Riverway Protection project is part of a broader vision to combat in metro-Atlanta. The purpose of the Mixed Income Communities project is to insert the critical issues of affordable housing and jobs/housing balance into public discourse about the region's future.

The San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose Bay Area Team of the Partnership for Regional Livability has focused on two projects: (1) Community Capital Investment Initiative (CCII) and (2) Bay Area Livability Footprint (Footprint).

The purpose of the CCII is to create a mechanism to engage business, community, and government leadership in the use of market forces and access to capital to reduce poverty and create healthy and prosperous communities in the 46 communities in the Bay Area with concentrated persistent poverty. CCII will focus on identifying and encouraging completion of keystone housing, commercial, industrial, and business developments that will create significant deal-flow and lead to economic, social, and environmental benefits in the targeted communities.

The purpose of the Footprint project is to use state of the art information and planning tools to help communities throughout the Bay Area region identify and implement alternative development options that ultimately will reverse the current urban trends of suburban sprawl, heavy traffic congestion, inner-city disinvestment, and ecological degradation. The Footprint will provide a crucial decision-making tool by mapping alternative future growth, natural resource preservation, and community revitalization scenarios.