Community Lots Mobilizing Community Assets for Community Benefits

How can community assets be best mobilized to benefit communities? This question lies at the crux of the set activities that constitute our Community Lots project. With many community-based organizations (CBOs ) enlarging their efforts beyond their traditional role of housing development, our program seeks to build capacity, facilitate information sharing, create and sustain networks of CBOs in the functioning of urban land markets. The Community Lots project will provide research and training to those involved in community development including CBOs, non-profit developers, practitioners, engaged citizens, policy makers and academics.

Over the last few years, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has developed a number of initiatives for CBOs. The themes include brownfields redevelopment; GIS for CBOs; Community Land Trusts (CLTs); and neighborhoods & universities. Through our work, we have learned that these groups would benefit from learning more on the functioning of urban land markets and in doing so, and thus, enhance their capacity to be an institutional mechanism to aid the capture of land value increments for community benefit. The larger goal of Community Lots is to integrate our four initiatives on land markets and to provide a forum to initiate and sustain information sharing, dialogue and debate among a diverse groups committed towards revitalization and development of neighborhoods and communities.