Smart Growth America is excited to announce the 2025 Culture and Community Network. With support from the Kresge Foundation and in partnership with the State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI), the Culture and Community Network will help staff at Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and regional transportation planning organizations assess, design, and begin implementation of arts and culture strategies for community engagement within their agencies.
Beginning this month, nearly 30 participants across 10 MPOs and regional councils will join the Culture and Community Network in a series of virtual sessions led by SGA staff from April to September 2025. Participants will also gather in Seattle in June for an in-person convening in connection with the National Association of Regional Councils’ Annual Conference. Through the sessions, the cohort will learn how to integrate arts and culture within their organizations through guidance from national experts and peer learning opportunities. As part of their peer learning, they will examine a case study from SSTI of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s example as an innovative MPO engaging all regional demographics through arts and culture. By the program’s end, teams will have developed an action plan tailored to their agencies which will help them implement local initiatives informed by what they’ve learned.
The cohort is diverse in experience, geography, and agency size, serving regions across the country. The teams represent both coasts, the Midwest, and serve regions of a few hundred thousand residents to 19 million people. Each of the groups brings a different perspective on incorporating arts and culture throughout their organizations. While each agency is unique, our initial conversations revealed several similarities among the teams.
1. Desire to reimagine the planning process
No matter how early or far into their journey the teams were, all of them identified a need to break out of the normal planning process. Planners often come to communities with projects that are nearly set in stone, asking for community input at the very end of the process when little could be changed. Not only does this waste the labor spent on feedback, but it leads to harmful projects and creates a feeling of distrust that often persists long after a planning project is executed.
2. Recognition of the unique perspectives of artists and cultural workers
Another idea that the cohort expressed is that they may not be the best messenger to engage a community. There was an understanding that artists and cultural workers approach aspects of community engagement differently, coming from within communities as opposed to approaching as outsiders. The teams consistently mentioned wanting to work with people who understand their neighborhoods, with some mentioning the desire to compensate the work the artists and cultural workers provide, a rarity in today’s planning processes.
3. Eagerness to learn from other agencies
A consistent idea throughout our conversations has been the teams’ excitement of learning from their peers. Many identified both the limited organizational capacity for initiating or expanding arts and culture work and the siloing experienced by staff. Both the smallest and largest organizations struggle with finding the wherewithal to sustain and expand creative approaches to established processes. By bringing this diverse group together, we’re delighted to foster peer exploration of ways to advocate and build capacity for this necessary work.
“Many, if not all, of the issues we work on—housing, mobility, climate change— require ingenuity at the regional scale, and the stewardship of communities who have never been involved in formalized, sometimes formulaic, regional planning before. This program aims to instill a different approach toward planning and engagement, one rooted in our innate creativity and shared humanity.” -Marian Liou, SGA’s Director of Arts & Culture
The Culture and Community Network will support teams in the hard work of changing institutions internally so that they can help communities thrive. The strategies teams will learn will aid them in charting their own path of authentically and thoroughly incorporating arts and culture and creativity into planning.
The cohort
- Buckeye Hills Regional Council – Appalachian Ohio
- Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning – Chicagoland, IL
- Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission – Greater Philadelphia, including parts of New Jersey
- Flint Hills Regional Council – Manhattan, KS and surrounding areas
- Grand Valley Metropolitan Council – Grand Rapids, MI and surrounding areas
- Metropolitan Transportation Commission – San Francisco Bay Area, CA
- Oregon Metro – Portland, OR metropolitan area
- PlanRVA – Richmond, VA region
- Region 1 Planning Council – Rockford, IL (northern Illinois)
- Southern California Association of Governments – Greater Los Angeles, CA