Framework for integrated, place-based community revitalization and economic development

Recent economic trends suggest that the City of Sacramento is experiencing resurgence, yet the growth and opportunities vary across the City’s neighborhoods. The current environment suggests that the City refocus on the neighborhoods by developing a holistic, placed-based community revitalization and economic development initiative. The initiative will incorporate a neighborhood-based process that identifies assets, needs, and priorities with the goal of building cross-sector collaboration and capacity within the neighborhoods and integrating government services and resources to address equitable economic and community development across the City’s neighborhoods.

The goal during the EED Fellowship is to utilize the place-based concept to build better communication, relationships, and trust between the City and its residents; increase the effectiveness and efficiency of City services; and improve economic opportunity. The Neighborhood Economic Development Strategies Initiative will build both community and City capacity to address problems such that direct and indirect investments in services, programs for business and households, and infrastructure will provide a better quality of life and greater opportunity for attracting further economic and social investment in the neighborhoods. The Initiative seeks to cultivate comprehensive change in our neighborhoods.

Sacramento has already started to examine how a neighborhood-based community revitalization and economic development initiative could help address Mayor and Council priorities, the fiscal outlook for the City, and trends of inequitable growth. The Sacramento Equitable Economic Development (EED) Fellowship project seeks to leverage this current effort and gain insight, technical guidance, and advice on the creation of a Neighborhood Economic Development Strategies Initiative.