Introduction
How Does the City Pay for Public Works
Steps for Organizing
Organizing Tips
Neighborhood Plannning and NCBG
The NCBG Neighborhood Atlas

What do we understand about community change?  How do low-income communities reverse their economic and political disenfranchisement?  How do we reinvent urban communities afflicted by decades of disinvestment and isolation from the economic mainstream, to nurture sustainable neighborhoods that offer a genuine quality of life?  Will low-income communities really benefit from the booming national economy and the redevelopment going on in Chicago? 

These are the huge questions facing cities like Chicago and the ranks of community activists and change agents struggling to rebuild our neighborhoods from the very ground up.  In part, increased and more strategic investment must occur in these communities.  To secure that investment, community-based organizations must increase their capacity to identify and articulate the strategic goals for reinvestment, and then be able to capture the needed resources. But redevelopment and increased investment can also mean displacement and gentrification. How can a community control, or least influence, the process of rebuilding so that long-time residents and stakeholders are participants in and beneficiaries of revitalization?

NCBG's goal is to help community stakeholders find answers to these questions, and along the way, to do the following things:

1. Provide low-income community leaders with tools to articulate and influence public sector spending priorities (increase participation in the public budgeting process).
2. Build the local capacity in each participating neighborhood to plan for and participate in their own redevelopment (support asset-based, grassroots community planning).
3. Strengthen local groups' abilities to engage the City Administration in debate over redevelopment policy (spur advocacy for policy reform).
4. Community based organizations working with NCBG for some time look to us for answers to a growing number of questions:
5. What has the City planned for the physical and economic redevelopment of our neighborhood?
6. Have some of these projects already been implemented, and if so, how did our community benefit from them?
7. Has redevelopment produced any adverse effects?
8. Are we getting our fair share of public and private investment?
9. How has public investment spurred private investment?
10. What are other opportunities for private and public investment in our community?
11. How do we get involved to capture those opportunities?
12. What do we want our neighborhood to look like in 20 years?

NCBG helps communities answer these questions by providing the following services and skills to our members:

• Meet with community organizations to explain and discuss the trends in public investment and provide a detailed assessment of the public and private investments in each community.
• Assist community representatives in developing an annual capital improvement plan for their neighborhoods and help create a community organizing strategy to win improvements or policy reforms.
• Work with the City and community groups to reform the TIF program to directly benefit neighborhoods.
• Organize leadership training activities aimed at enhancing the planning, organizing and management skills of community leaders.
• Help community organizations build positive relationships with local media representatives to insure consistent coverage of local improvement efforts.

• Devising the information management systems and geographic information systems needed for project planning.