Land Use & the Built Environment

Community design and land use shapes health, safety, and wellbeing. Safe and inclusive access to housing, clean air and water, greenery, equitable transportation, public spaces, and cultural expression impact social connection, mobility, economic opportunity, and access to health-promoting goods and services. Yet generations of discriminatory land use policy and disinvestment have segregated entire communities from these conditions and from power in decision-making. Black, Latine, and Indigenous communities have long borne these inequities while also leading efforts to place power over land use decisions in the hands of community members and local leaders. 

Our approach is guided by an understanding of how inequities in the built environment are produced and by the primacy of community-led innovation and self-determination in planning. We support movement-building strategies that center community power. This includes strengthening park and green space equity, transportation equity, preventing displacement. We conduct research and evaluation with government, philanthropy, and community-based partners to operationalize equity, and we co-develop and advocate for policies and systems that repair past harms, center community in decision-making, and affirm land use and the built environment as foundational to the public’s health.

Our work contributes to community-driven land use systems, stronger anti-displacement protections, and increased community power in decision-making. In the long term, this foundation supports lasting access to healthy, stable environments and deepens the evidence base, public understanding, and partnerships that guide equitable land use and built environment policy.