Graham Street: A Community Driven Neighborhood Vision

It’s not just about the challenges we face now or in the future. It’s not the opposite of what’s wrong, but the affirmative of what would be right. While we have to find solutions to immediate threats and looming challenges, we also have to know where we are going and why. Our vision will help guide us through the challenges and forces beyond our control that we will face in the next 10 years.

Our vision puts community stakeholders and people of color at the center of that future, not the margins. Our vision states that we who have built resilience and cohesion over past decades should lead in building that future. We are lifting up communities that usually are left out of planning and decision making.

Our vision is not set in stone. We see it as a living thing that will change and improve over time, as old and new hands shape it. We anticipate many new ideas, some conflicting, that will make it better.

We hope this vision can be used by our communities as a source of inspiration. We hope that policy makers use it to guide their decisions on who gets to benefit from public investment. We hope that our vision shapes the physical and social environment for the next generation. We hope that people who come to make money in our community from land-use it to understand how to do their role better.

Published March 2019