On January 1, 2024, a powerful new community revitalization and resilience resource will burst onto the scene: RISING PLACES. It’s an initiative of RECONOMICS Institute, but will have its own site at RisingPlaces.org.
We’ll cover RISING PLACES here in REVITALIZATION in more detail after the launch.
For now, we want to let you know about the opportunity to be one of the Local Benefactors of RISING PLACES.
Corporations, non-profits, foundations, individual philanthropists and local governments can all support their local community—and our shared planet—by becoming a Local Benefactor of RISING PLACES.
You can proudly display your RISING PLACES Benefactor logo in your ads, or on your website, showing that you help make places better. Benefactors will appear in RISING PLACES advertising, editorials, articles and our other promotional exposure.
Once a Local Benefactor registers their community, everyone in that city or county (residents and leaders alike) gets permanent, FREE access to the RISING PLACES Tools. The Local Benefactor is exclusively featured in the Local Benefactor Banner on that community’s RISING PLACES Page for 5 years, with the right of first refusal for renewing as the Local Benefactor.
RISING PLACES helps communities become magnets for funding, employers and residents. It does this by:
- Accrediting communities with superior renewal capacity, which makes them more productive places to invest (high ROI);
- Helping employers and public/private funders find high-ROI communities;
- Accrediting projects that help build the renewal capacity of the overall community;
- Helping residents ensure that local renewal efforts benefit all./li>
RISING PLACES merch is available now!
See all the beautiful items here.
Revitalization, resilience and recovery efforts can be driven by design, planning, economic development, placemaking, heritage, arts, etc.
But those are just tools and tactics with limited scope: success is far more likely for the community as a whole when those tools and tactics are supported by a strategic process.
To attract public and private funding—as well as residents and employers—you must inspire confidence that your community 1) has a bright future; and 2) can help their investments succeed.
Both depend on your local renewal capacity.
Almost any community can recruit low-quality employers with incentives, and do successful redevelopment projects: only those with superior renewal capacity can actually reverse a downward trajectory in their economy and/or quality of life.
Increasing confidence in a better local future is often the most important strategic outcome. Confidence that your economy and quality of life are on the upswing is what attracts new investors, employers and residents…and helps retain the ones you have.
A 20-year research program analyzed revitalization, resilience and recovery successes and failures worldwide. It identified a common factor that was present in the successes and missing in the failures: a strategic process.
Each community invented theirs from scratch, calling it different names. Despite diverse cultures, economies, politics, challenges and dreams, the same process emerged in the successes.
The process of getting accredited as a RISING PLACES community also helps the community make the changes needed in order to qualify: it’s a community improvement process, not just a test.
The RISING PLACES Tools offered by RISING PLACES put that proven process in your hands. You can modify and adapt it as needed to build the brighter future your community desires. The goal is to create a tide of renewal that lifts all lives.
How do you start creating a brighter local future with RISING PLACES? That depends on who you are.
If you’re a local resident, you can use our RISING PLACES Tools free of charge, once your local site has been activated by a Benefactor, who pays the one-time setup fee. Learn how you or your organization can be a RISING PLACES Benefactor.
NOTE: You can benefit more than one community, but each community has only one Local Benefactor. Once you’ve activated a community’s access to the RISING PLACES accreditation process, they have permanent access to it, and to our RISING PLACES Tools. You will forever be credited on that community’s RISING PLACES page as the local Benefactor. That makes being a Benefactor a wonderful investment for political candidates who wish to let voters know that they support inclusive, effective community revitalization and resilience efforts.
The Benefactor opportunity for any particular community is on a first-come, first-served basis, so benefit the community you love now, while it’s still available.
You might also want to consider getting certified as a RISING PLACES Planner (this is the new name for the former Revitalization & Resilience Facilitators).
If you’re a real estate developer or commercial / industrial / multifamily residential property owner, you can submit a recent, current or proposed project for certification as a RISING PLACES Project, once your local RISING PLACES Tools have been activated by a Benefactor.
If you’re an elected leader or public agency executive, you can submit your neighborhood, city or county for certification as a RISING PLACES Community, once your local RISING PLACES Tools have been activated by a Benefactor.
The communities that use our RISING PLACES Tools will form the first global network of neighborhoods, cities and counties where quality of life, health, infrastructure, housing and economic opportunity are being enhanced for all.
One of the primary purposes of the site is to serve an unmet need of public and private funders: it will help them find more productive targets for their grants, loans and real estate investments.
Too many communities waste transformative opportunities. They squander precious influxes of money on expensive revitalization plans that are subsequently ignored, or on redevelopment projects that—even when successful for a given property—don’t reverse the downward trend of the overall neighborhood or community.
Likewise with local climate resilience efforts that don’t gain traction because they are planned and designed in the “resilience silo”: they fail to address other urgent community needs like affordable housing, quality of life, economic opportunity, etc.
Federal and state agencies, foundations and private redevelopers all have one thing in common: they prefer to invest in communities that know how to put their investments to good use. This increases both safety and ROI (return on investment). The current condition of a community is less important than its trajectory: a rising place lifts all boats.
Currently, those working to revitalize communities—or to make them more resilient—have to rely on generic tools like PowerPoint, GIS, Facebook, project management, email polls, etc.
RISING PLACES provides tools specifically engineered to regenerate places in an inclusive, equitable manner. It’s the world’s first social media, team collaboration and process management tool designed to quickly advance efficient, inclusive, green economic renewal (urban or rural).
Agencies, non-profits and foundations license the software for local use, providing all local stakeholders with a free (to them), easy, more harmonious way to grow a strong, green, equitable economy. It also makes the work of Rising Places Planners (RP) easier and more effective. Only a certified RP can administer the local site (as a community employee, or as a consultant).
Rising Places is the all-in-one community renewal site, where people work together to enhance their local future. Resilience, revitalization and disaster recovery are all based on the same regenerative actions. But they are normally pursued in separate silos, leading to delays, waste and failure. When integrated, success is faster, better, cheaper and more reliable.
The leading-edge technology offered by RISING PLACES Tools helps governments, stakeholders and funders (public & private) work together for faster, better, cheaper, more harmonious progress towards revitalization and resilience.
That continuous progress builds confidence in a better local future. That confidence, in turn, attracts jobs, residents and investment, which leads to more revitalization, which creates more confidence.
This creates a positive feedback loop whereby revitalization begets revitalization, decreasing dependence on external inputs. Funders love that.
The resulting data will feed the RISING PLACES Report, which will attract employers and real estate investors to these rising places.
A “rising place” is simply a community or region where the economy and quality of life are improving. The trajectory is what counts: not the current condition.
Resilient prosperity arises when:
- economic growth is equitable, diverse and based primarily on repurposing, renewing & reconnecting existing natural, built & socioeconomic assets; and
- a growing quality of life is based on increasing healthy housing, green space, food & infrastructure for all.
WHAT PROBLEMS DOES RISING PLACES SOLVE?
It’s estimated that around 90% of revitalization, recovery and resilience initiatives fail to achieve their goals.
Few public goals are sought more, and achieved less, than revitalization and resilience (AKA: resilient prosperity, or regenerative growth). Three key factors make failure the norm:
- Lack of strategic renewal process: The result? Ignored plans, isolated projects…and not much more. A process is needed to reliably produce anything, and a process for revitalization or resilience must be based on asset regeneration;
- Lack of integration: Revitalization and resilience efforts for the natural, built and socioeconomic environments must be synced to get what everyone wants: resilient prosperity; and
- Lack of effective, inclusive stakeholder engagement: We specify “effective” and “inclusive” because there’s no shortage of lip-service visioning and collaboration exercises that are done in isolation, with little or no effect on the community’s future, and/or with few benefits for marginalized residents.
When ALL residents enjoy healthy housing, ample economic opportunity and high quality of life—and when that economy and qualify of life are based on the resilient regeneration of your built and natural assets—achieving ALL of your other community goals becomes possible. But it all starts by becoming a welcoming place for regenerative investment.
Again: RisingPlaces.org won’t go live until January 1, 2024, but you can buy the merch and/or become a Local RISING PLACES Benefactor right now!