Two themes—community revitalization and economic development—comprise more than 50 percent of the Knight Foundation‘s second-round winners list.
Revitalizing blighted vacant or public spaces was the most popular theme among the Knight Cities Challenge’s second-round winners, with applicants from Detroit proposing perhaps the most ambitious project.
The Motor City received a $75,000 Knight grant for Give a Park, Get a Park, the selling of side lots to residents only to develop more accessible, sustainable neighborhood mini-parks nearby.
The volume of applications were down but the numbers of winners are up in the second round of the Knight Cities Challenge, which on April 12, 2016 awarded $5 million for 37 innovative projects in small-to-midsize communities.
The Knight Foundation received about 4,500 entries, down from the first round’s approximately 7,000 applications submitted in 2015. But five additional projects were selected as winners this time around.
The average grant size is $134,757, about $20,000 less than what was awarded in 2015, and Detroit boasts the most winning projects with six—from neighborhood story tours by bike to sensors measuring residents’ urban surroundings.
Philadelphia won the biggest slice of the funding with four projects receiving $875,000.
See April 17 follow-up article on revitalizing Detroit’s parks.