Parks, green infrastructure and sustainable development bring a range of social, cultural, health and environmental benefits. But too often the public, private and non-profit sectors do not appropriately address the ‘unintended consequences’ of these improvements. How do we ensure that communities most impacted by environmental harms historically reap the benefits of new and ongoing investments?…

It was 1995 and the Minnesota state legislature was considering a measure that would become the Livable Communities Act. The Alliance for Metropolitan Stability called a press conference on the steps of the capitol to promote the bill and elevate the need to invest state funds in environmental remediation and housing redevelopment. They weren’t on the list of speakers, but Caty Royce and a dozen other members of the Community Stabilization Project (CSP) showed up with signs that spoke volumes.

Beyond its rebranding from Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition in 2017, Our Streets Minneapolis has been working over the past several years to center equity in its organizational operations and approach to advocacy. Hired as Executive Director in March 2019, Ashwat Narayanan is bringing his background in community organizing and focus on transportation justice to the group’s…

The Alliance is excited to welcome Ricardo Perez as a Coalition Organizer. Ricardo was born and raised in Mexico and moved to the United States in 2004. Ricardo has more than 10 years of experience working in the non-profit sector alongside community on issues that disproportionately impact immigrants and people of color. More recently, Ricardo…

The Alliance is excited to announce Tram Hoang as its new Policy Advocate.  Tram was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and her community development perspectives are heavily shaped by the gentrification and displacement she witnessed growing up in North Portland. After attending Oregon State University, she served on the board of Depave (a radical…

From community benefits to co-creation, local organizing is beginning to shift the calculations around large-scale developments, pressing government officials and private developers to consider and address the potential impacts of their investments on local residents and businesses. In St. Paul, the construction of Allianz Field has raised concerns about the impact of the soccer stadium…

From organizing in manufactured home parks to leading community engagement efforts with the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, Margaret Kaplan has dedicated the past 20 years to affordable housing advocacy. In 2018, she returned to the Housing Justice Center — where she had her first job out of law school back in 2003 — and as of…

Everyone deserves a safe, dignified, and affordable home. But some landlords would rather protect their own profits over tenants’ rights in Minneapolis, launching the deceptive “Safe and Affordable Minneapolis” campaign to attack two proposed city ordinances for renter protections in Minneapolis. On Thursday, renters and community organizers hosted a press conference to respond to this…

Despite a massive public investment of more than $40 million for the acquisition and clean up of the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP) site in Arden Hills, plans for the largest mixed-use development in the Twin Cities region actively perpetuate inequity and exclusion  by failing to meet even the lowest bar for affordable housing…

From helping raise funds for conservation; to protecting and restoring natural spaces; to collaborating with communities to plan, design, and create parks, playgrounds, gardens, and trails; Trust for Public Land works with communities to ensure that development happens for them, and not to them. In the Twin Cities, the Equitable Development Principles & Scorecard galvanized a process to create a tool specific to parks development that could build intention and aspiration around not only engaging neighbors about park design but actively cultivating new community leaders and building capacity.